Amuse Bouche

Another day in the kitchen with Ali (pork belly, homemade Nutella, Lancashire hot pot and more)

Alasdair (Ali) will be heading back to England in a week for school and won't be back until his half term break in October so I took a day off work and we made plans to have a cook-a-thon.  Ali's main intent was to play with the Thermomix(TM) and convince his parents that it is the next tool he needs in his arsenal.

With no clear plan for what we would do I picked up a mish mash of items including a whole pork belly from my pal Maggie when I placed my meat order for work that week.

I spent the morning plowing though my cookbooks to decide on a plan.  I started with Bruce Aidell, Martin Picard, Ruhlman and Keller and in the end I took the pork belly brine from Ad-Hoc and combined it with aspects of the one in Under Pressure.

We cut a nice piece off the belly and set it up in a brine of kosher salt, pink salt, sugar in the raw, bay leaves, peppercorns, thyme and rosemary.  We set that up in a cambro and it went into the fridge.  I'll follow up on how I finished those later, but right now I have half of it in rendered pork fat in a 200F oven for 6 hours for confit and the other half in 82.5C in the circulator for 12 hours.  Both will set up and chill overnight as long as Irene is nice and keeps the power on.

Then we mixed up the bacon rub from Ruhlman's Charcuterie and rubbed another nice piece.  That one is currently parked in the upstairs fridge in a cambro for the next 7 days.  Next weekend I will follow Aidell's formula for cold smoking it over hardwood sawdust in my Weber if I can get my hands on any.  Too bad the thermomix won't grind up the chunks of my cherry tree that Irene is sure to knock down today.  I could make my own dust.

I still have two other pieces tucked away in the freezer for later projects.  Once we dispensed with the porkie items we wanted to get the cheesecakes in the oven. 

These are gluten free (crust is GF flour, almond meal, melted grass fed butter and a pinch of salt) and the filling (1 lb cream cheese, 4oz sour cream abt 2 T sugar in the raw, lemon zest and juice, a tweak of vanilla and 2 eggs) we used little ramekins and cooked them in a water bath for about 30 mins. 

Since we made all this up as we went along we realised after that we probably should have shaved 5 minutes off the oven time but they were still very good.  We made a topping of Maine blueberries cooked down with a drop of water, a pinch of sugar, some stem ginger in syrup and a splash of port.

While these were baking we tackled the Thermomix projects.  First up was making a homemade version of the crack known as NUTELLA.  He toasted up some hazelnuts

and while they cooled some sugar went in the TM and was ground fine.

The nuts went in, and some dark chocolate and we milled it, wiped down the bowl and added some cocoa powder, butter and milk.  Heat it up to 50C and set it to stir and 6 minutes later...

better than Nutella.

I cleaned it out and we made a quick mayo and then Ali wanted to make a custard so he whipped one up in under 6 minutes with nary a scarmbled egg in site.  I want to apologise to Siân now, because he is going to be bugging her for the next 6 months for one of his own.

To make up for the pain of hearing about a TM and since Ali is Mr. Molecular Gatronomy these days with his textura, glycerin and maltodextrin I thought I would make him learn to cook a traditional, or as husband would say, proper, English dish to bring home for his parents.

Lancashire Hot Pot is one of husband's favorites and it is very simple to put together.

Salt and pepper and then sear off some nice lamb loin chops. 

Remove them from the pan for now and add in 1 chopped Spanish onion, 1 diced rutabega (swede), 2 or 3 diced carrots and 2 or 3 stalks of celery chopped.

Keep the dice a good size maybe an inch or so, because these veg will cook for 2 hours later.  Stir them around, season well with salt and pepper and when the onions start to soften sprinkle over 2 - 3 TBS flour.  Stir well. Add 8 ozs veal demi (I get mine from D'artagnan, but you can omit this if you can't find it and use more veal stock) and 1-1/2 cups of veal stock.  Add in 1 TBS chopped thyme leaves, 2 bay leaves and 3 TBS worcestershire sauce.  Taste for seasoning. 

It should have a kick from the worcestershire, if not add a bit more.  Nestle the lamb chops back in.  Make sure the stock comes right to the top of them, if not add a bit more. 

Take some yukon gold potatoes, I can't give you a quantity here because it depends on the size of your vessel, but we had a 14" All-clad pan and we used about 7, and slice them about the thickness of a popsicle stick with either a knife or a manodline and then shingle them in circles to cover the whole surface.  Season well again with salt and pepper.  Dot with butter. 

Put a lid on and pop this in a 325F oven for 1 hour.  After an hour remove the lid and back into the oven for another hour until the potatoes are soft, some of the liquid has reduced and the potatoes have begun to brown.  Gently stick a knife in and test on of the lamb chops.  If everything seems ready and you want the potatoes a bit browner, pop the whole lot under the broiler for a few minutes.

Around 6:30 we packed him up and shipped him home to continue cooking his hot pot.  We've already made plans for another cooking fest in October.  I need to start plotting.

 

Grilled Quail and Colcannon Cakes

On Saturday I intended to go to John Dewar just to get some duck boobs.
I should know that I have never in my life left that place with just one thing.  As I was paying the case of D'Artagnan products was making me blind in my left eye with their glare of yummy things to come, the girl ringing me up said, "anything else today?" and "2 packages of Quail please." just leapt out of my mouth before I even had a chance to think about it.

This morning while I was vacuuming the kitchen with one hand I was toasting some coriander seeds, peppercorns, allspice berries, juniper berries and sea salt in a dry pan and reducing OJ with the other.  When the spices started to smell nice and toasty, I shut them off to cool a bit. By the time the kitchen was vacuumed it was cool enough to grind up in the coffee grinder.  

Into a giant ziploc went the spices, 1 cup of fresh squeezed OJ reduced to a half a cup. 5 or 6 garlic cloves smashed with the side of the knife were tossed those in.  Mince up about 1/2 a Spanish onion, or 1 whole yellow onion and throw that in as well.  Dice up a couple of chipotle peppers and add some of the adobo from the can and pour in 1/3 cup of vinegar, white, I used Pinot Grigio vinegar because i had some, but really any white vinegar will do in a pinch.  To that mixture add a half cup of wine and toss in a few thyme sprigs, just because I like thyme.  Slosh this round in the bowl and dump it into the ziploc. I added some olive oil, squished everything around. 

The quail are mostly boned out with just the wing tips and drumsticks still retaining bones.  They also mount them conveniently on these v-shaped skewers that make it easy to flip on the grill.  You can do the same thing with a few wooden skewers soaked in water and trimmed.  Put them through the quail in an X pattern from drumstick to wing across and it keeps them nice and flat.  I tossed them in the ziploc, sealed it, wrapped it up so the marinade was touching all the meat and then wrapped it in a tea towel in case the skewers broke through and put it in the fridge.

Saturday we also had to pick up a couple cases of wine for work and oddly the liquor store also had challah.  The challah was a nice braid, totally moist and filled with raisins.  It followed me home.  After the quail were safely locked in the fridge the challah flung itself out of the microwave bread box and demanded that I make it into a bread pudding.  The cheek!  Of course since it was raining and I had nothing better to do, like laundry, I acquiesced. I gave the challah a nice lubrication of eggs, some cream and milk, some lemon zest and a little vanilla and then I put it in a nice hot tub in the oven for an hour.  If there is a better smell than a bread pudding cooking on a Sunday morning I do not know what it is.  Okay, maybe bacon, bacon smells pretty damn good, but really bread pudding comes in a nice second.

Now it's late afternoon and I have caught up on some of my DVR collection, read through the Globe and the Times and considered and then reconsidered dusting so instead I put together the components for the colcannon cakes while cooking some peeled red peppers in Madeira for Monday night and roasting husband's chicken boobs for his lunch during the week.

Savoy cabbage is my cabbage of choice for these.  And really, there is no strict recipe just start with potato and cabbage and add what you like.  I steam the cabbage, peel and cook some yukons or russets and mash them up with a little butter.  This all gets tossed in a bowl with a bunch of scallions chopped loads of chive, oh chive how I adore thee, some nice aged cheddar, a bit of Comte for glue, salt and pepper and bob's you uncle or maybe Seamus pick your uncle.

These will be packed into patties and slowly cooked in a non-stick pan with some butter until a serious crust forms on one side.  Flip and continue until they are nice and brown.  The quail had a quick meeting with the grill.

Dinner on a rainy and cold Sunday night.  Perfect.

What's Missing?

A trip to the grocery store yesterday afternoon led me to two conclusions. 

First: Everyone is apparently brining their turkey these days. Welcome on-board folks.

Second: The grocery stores have yet to pay attention to this trend.

My local Stop and Spend had a very empty spot on the lower shelf where the Kosher salt used to be. Not a single box to be found.

There was also a large empty hole where the very large Ziploc bags usually reside.

Thankfully I have been able to scrounge up both items at home.

Currently cooling:

Apple Cider Brine

2 quarts non-pasteurized apple cider
1/2 cup kosher salt
1/2 - 3/4 cup brown sugar
4 bay leaves
1/2 tsp smoked sweet pimenton
1/2 tsp smoked hot pimenton
2 sprigs fresh thyme
2 tsp whole cumin seeds, toasted lightly
1 large sprig fresh rosemary
2 TBS ground black pepper
1 sweet onion
6 cloves garlic
1/2 cup water

Place water, onion and garlic in the blender and puree. 
Dump this mixture as well as all the other ingredients in a large pan, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and simmer gently 15 minutes.
Allow the brine to cool.  Place in one giant Ziploc bag and add 8 pound turkey breast and pour over liquid.
Place this whole thing in another Ziploc bag for leak assurance.
Place this in the fridge and allow to mingle for 8 hours.

Rinse your turkey thoroughly before proceeding.

More Thanksgiving updates later.