Come back Donald

I like the idea of creating dishes by curing. Basically you take your main ingredient, normally meat or fish, smother it in a mixture of salt, sugar, herbs and spices and then leave it to do its own thing. Come back a week later, clean your magic mix off, slice up into wafer thin slivers and serve it up cold on a plate drizzled with some olive oil or with some bread and pickles. And hey presto you're a culinary wizard, albeit a lazy one maybe but still it often impresses. Admittedly I have only ever really gone down the gravadlax route before with salmon using different cures, lime and vodka is a winner, so I am intrigued to see how this home made bresaola turns out.

Bresaola is normally made with beef, air-cured over a long period of time (3 months) but I have found a recipe that uses duck and only takes four days which is good as I am not that patient. To feed 6 people as a starter, two breasts should do the trick.

The key ingredients for the cure are salt, peppercorns, star anise, coriander seed, all crushed up in a pestle and mortar and then mixed in with the zest from one orange and one lemon. Remove all the skin and fat from your duck breasts and smother the cure over them, pat it all down and place in a fridge covered with cling film. And then the alchemy begins.

I hope, see you in four days.

Project Mayhem Parts 1 and 2

Ever experienced the scenerio of standing at the edge of a diving board on the highest platform, looking down into the deep blue water and wondered whether you could go through with it and actually jump?

Starting this food blog feels a little bit like that, especially after making a couple of abortive attempts last year to actually kick start this thing. So to get things going I thought it would be fun to set myself a challenge and attempt a couple of long term foodie projects. That way I could report back, document and create some filler for Food Urchin and hopefully gain some momentum.

So to begin, I shall mostly be making Duck Bresaola and a Sourdough Starter, the former should take about 4 days, the latter about 4 weeks. Wish me luck.

Dumpling

There are some words which should just be stricken from the English language. This one tops my list. Conjure the image now. There is someone squatting over the stockpot while it gently simmers. Little dumps. Float to the top, and they're ready.


So, I propose, as with so many other words, that we invent them anew. Borrowing from other languages if necessary. The Dutch in this instance could lend us the word turdkin. Isn't that cute? Or the French with a hearty crapette. Deux crapettes sur la plate, avec du beurre et persillade. Doesn't that sound savory? Or why not the Italians who give us parmesan-laced poopini. I can see them now in the refrigerator section of your favorite grocery. Poopini Puttanesca. Or how about German Scheißbollchen mit Speck und Kraut. Now if I could remember the dimuntive in Russian correctly.... Шицники (Shitsniki)?

Someone help me here.

This little piggie went to market

Ave porcina, herbarum plena, cocta pro nobis!

How this came to pass I can't quite say. Christine asks if I'd like to cook, and next thing I know there a little piggie in the backyard, with the sweetest face. Christine tells me the farm was lovely and the pigs ran around very happily.

Alas, she did not fit on my spit, and too long for the fireplace. Nor was there enough time to dig a pit. So it had to be the oven. And she filled the entire space. Not so little of piggie, over 30 pounds!

I marinated her in lime, chilies, onion, cilantro and cumin. And a beer. Then just popped her in the oven for about 4 hours. And the flavor was truly surprising. Delicate, light. More like turkey than any pork I've tasted. Good, unctuous and moist turkey. But definitely a white meat. The skin was crackly too, yummy crunchy ears, and I even got some tail.

And the company, as always, marvellous. The Hoodies polished off maybe half. Any ideas for leftovers? I wonder if the head can be made into testa after roasting.

Canapes

I think canapes are utterly underrated. A variety of savories such as these could make up a whole meal. These are crispy squares of polenta, with sauteed broccoli rabe (my favorite vegetable), grated parmiggiano topped with freshly smoked scallops. Worked very nicely because just the right combination of crisp and toothsome and chewy. And just a few bites in each.

It was the starter to a meal that got a bit out of hand, not in terms of taste, but in time spent in the kitchen. It was worth it. A whole wheat and flax seed bread, a roasted veg medley of parsnips, yellow beets, fennel and shallots. And a bizarre chicken experiment that tasted utterly luscious, but didn't quite look as I wanted it yet. Basically it was two chickens skinned, then completely boned, the meat seasoned and rewrapped in the skins so it looks like one chicken, but is solid and boneless. It was really bizarre cutting through actually. Oh, and the bones were made into a nice stock. It's the solution for how to get everything out a chicken at once. The only problem thus far is without bones it has no internal structure to keep it chicken shaped. So it looked like a flattened chicken. With 4 wings!

Then to top it off our friends brought 9, yes 9, ducks. Tiny little things. Which I hacked Chinese style across the breast with the bone in, into 3 or 4 pieces, and threw on the fire, a few others into a pot to see what would happen. Actually I think they all over cooked a bit. Tought and a little livery. But I have two left. If anyone has experience cooking a teeny wild duck, please let me know. I'm assuming it really should be very rare, but I've never cooked wild ducks before.

A lovely apple pie to end. Whole wheat pastry flour crust, green pippins with cranberries and walnuts. It was fab. And now I'm exhausted.

Enchilada Man

For Christmas, I became a superhero. This was illustrated by my neighbor Paul, the story taken directly from an enchilada post here, back in February. If I can figure out a way to scan it all properly, I'll put it up. But meanwhile I like this last one especially.

Bear Butt

It is such a long story, but behold the glorious roasted rear end of a bear. She was quite small and had a very sweet face. I had the chance to pet her head, albeit frozen. This rear thigh, which I sawed off from the lower leg, turned out to be seriously tasty. I thought, actually my co-author Rosanna and I thought, the simplest roasting on a bed of vegetables would be best. The flesh was a bit tough, but tasty. The accretions of fat, however, which I suppose were laid on in expectation of hibernation, were so incredibly flavorful, unctuous, and sweet, that they were dizzying. I wish I had rendered some on its own for pemmican. In any case, bear is really nothing like venison or other wild beasts, because it is truly greasy, in the best way imaginable. Sides of mashed sweet potato and brussels sprouts cut from the stalk, such opulence! Does it get more exciting than this???