Amuse Bouche

Craigie on Main - The Whole Hog

As I mentioned before, Alasdair and I had a 'date' to go to Craigie on Main for their once a year Whole Hog dinner.  Originally it was supposed to be 4 of us, but at the last minute Brian had babysitter issues, so in the end Alasdair and I decided what the hell and carried on.

I apologise in advance for the photos, I thought bringing the SLR might be a bit rude, I borrowed Alasdair's dad's point and shoot, but we kept having problems with shutting off the flash and without it the pictures were hopeless, so I only have a few iphone photos with which to tempt you into going. In the end I needn't have worried, every table around us had their cellphones out snapping pictures of their pig heads.

The place was sold out and hopping when we arrived at 7:30.  We asked the hostess if we could stand on the side and watch the action for a bit. The open kitchen and pass were buzzing like a hive. Chef Maws was right there making sure everything went out perfectly cooked and plates were constantly being wiped and inspected.  Suddenly Alasdair noticed a pig head passing by us.  He looked at me with wide eyes.  When we were seated we noticed we were right near the 86 board and it read: 4 3 2 1 pig head.  We had high hopes.

Our waiter, who I hope I remember correctly was Patrick,  arrived and offered up the wine list and the prix fixe menu sheet for the night with the quote "Never eat more than you can lift" - Miss Piggy on the top of the page.  Alasdair informed me he could lift quite a bit.  I told the waiter that I was obviously the designated driver for the night, pointing over to Alasdair, and asked if perhaps they might have something sparkly and non-alcoholic for us to have instead.  Patrick asked if we would like the bar to make a mocktail flight for us for each course. I looked Alasdair and he was nodding yes wildly.

Then we asked the important question.  How could we get the pig head? We pointed at  the 86 board ever hopeful that 2 and 1 had not been taken, but the news was sad.  It wasn't listed on the menu and was only being announced table-side.  Sadly  for us the last one was gone.  Ah well.  I told him we'll go to Estragon one night and have it when he gets back from school. We placed our orders being careful to choose the opposite dishes in some courses so we could sample.

The Amuse and the first mocktail arrived.  Not to discount the pork, because boys and girls there was some fine, FINE pork to be had that night, but I was truly blown away by the mocktails.  Not only did they make a new libation for each course, they made a different one for each of us!  I'd sip mine, he'd sip his and we'd switch for a taste.  As you can see they were served in traditional cocktail glasses so I delighted in the stare of abject horror by the woman 'of an age' several tables away who likely thought I was getting Alsadair soused. Each one was spectacular.  They make all of their infusions, bitters, syrups and potions.  My favourite was one with peach, nectarine and rhubarb and one with orange blossom water. I never once missed the alcohol.  If you go, be sure to let them test out a few on you, I assure you that you will not be disappointed.

Amuse: Lardo on a crispy rice wafer, pork cracklings, Pâté de Campagne, prosciutto

The waiter, overhearing Alsadair talking about the onion and tomato confit he was planning to make the next day started asking questions.  Pretty soon he was chatting lovely food things with us as he picked up each course to clear away.  We talked about Transglutaminase-Activa and immersion circulators, le-sanctuaire and sausages.  A meal can obviously make or break your restaurant experience, but so can the wait staff and we adored our waiter.  He really made the night.  We found out that the kitchen upstairs is just for finishing the dishes, there is a whole laboratory downstairs in the basement where the real action takes place.  There are 3 walk-ins of which 2 are used just for curing everything in-house. Alasdair was telling him about his visit to tour the kitchens at no9 Park and how one huge room is just for meat fabrication all stainless steel with no seams anywhere and a whole hose system for washing everything down.  They talked about her upcoming fine dining venture and then we got back to Chef Maws and where he sources the pigs.

1st course: Alasdair chose the Tortellini of Braised Pork Belly, and after the first taste I wished I had chosen it as well.  Light as air, served en brodo and filled with perfect shredded belly  I had the Glacée of Summer Farm Vegetables and House Cured Lomo simply because I wanted to try the huitlacoche jus ( which sounds infinitely better than corn smut). Every tiny perfect vegetable tasted like it had been cooked separately, every taste was distinct and the revelation was the cooked radish.  I never think to cook them as I am too busy dipping them in butter and salt.  But cooked they are milder with just a bit of the bite left.

Next course I chose the Crispy Fromage de Tête with the most perfect egg on top.

Alasdair chose the House Made Boudin Noir and Chorizo Stuffed Grilled Local Squid.

For our third course we both chose the Vermont Organic Pork Three Ways: Spice Crusted Rib, Glazed and Grilled Belly, Bacon Wrapped Loin. That pork loin was the most tender, perfectly cooked piece of loin I have ever had the joy of eating.  It certainly didn't need a knife.  But oh my.  The pork belly.  Crisp outside, soft and sweet inside.  By the time this course came and I stopped Alasdair to take a picture he was all "Come on I want to eat it!"

We finished up with the Cornbread Pain Perdu, followed by a plate of tiny Mignardises.  Alsadair dove on the truffles and I wish I could have captured his face when he bit into the first one. I think it just might have been love at first bite. There was a final nosh, courtesy the chef which was a light as air custard of rhubarb with a cream foam on top.

As we finished up Alasdair looked at me and said words to the effect of "it sucks to be your friend", meaning poor Brian who missed out, but we had an amazing dinner.  Craigie and Chef Maws deserve every bit of praise that is heaped on them.  Go, eat local, eat fresh, eat well.

Craigie on Main
853 Main St
Cambridge, MA
617 497-5511

Homemade Sausage: Chorizo, Brats and Chipolata

Those of you who follow me on twitter (joamuse) have heard me mention my 12-year 13-year old foodie friend who I take along with me on field trips.  He started out as a student at Create a cook with some of the other instructors and they all kept telling me you have to meet him. After 1 conversation Alasdair and I became fast food friends.

Let me introduce you to him by saying one of his goals is to get his parents to take him to a 3 Michelin starred restaurant.  At home he has his own personal kitchen set-up in the corner with his Cuisinart standing mixer a portable induction burner and more tools than most home kitchens. He and I can discuss any cooking technique, and cookbook, chef, etc., at length. He's eaten in far more restaurants than I ever have, in fact he's my 'date' for a friend's birthday dinner at Craigie on Main for Whole Hog night next Tuesday. He dined at Stir recently and Barbara Lynch was the chef that night. He schmoozed her up and told her he wanted a pacojet and a thermal immersion circulator so he can start trying out sous vide cooking but that he was having a tough time convincing his parents, Chef Lynch not only came to his defense saying of course they should get it for him, she also told him he was welcome to come spend a day with her at no 9 Park. Jealous! The boy is food mad.

A few years ago we started out by making a traditional Christmas Pudding at his house.  We hit farmer's markets, we went to Baza when they opened to ogle all the unfamiliar ingredients, we went to Kam Man a few weeks ago where I introduced him to banh mi with head cheese and pate and we wandered up and down every aisle investigating while he helped me pick up ingredients for some upcoming Vietnamese, Korean and Thai classes. There were two things he wanted us to make, brawn or head cheese and sausages.  I figured we could start with the easier of the two since finding a pig's head may require a trip to Maine to visit Heritage Hill Farm in October (more about my visit there later!) so sausages were the first choice.  

Through Kinnealey I picked up some fat back, pork butt and hog casings and then a perusal through Ruhlman and Polcyn's Charcuterie to make the final decisions.

I chose Mexican chorizo, Bratwurst and the 3rd recipe would possible be Italian sausage, but in a nod to Alasdair being British, not to mention husband, we went with the chipolata from the book Alasdair brought me as a gift Professional Charcuterie by John Kinsela.  He chose the book because he loved that all the recipes were charts.  I need to get him a copy of Ratio stat!

I knew it was going to be around 85 - 90F in my kitchen and about an equal percentage of humidity so I bought loads of ice, chilled down all the equipment in the fridge, left the fat in the freezer until the last minute and cut all the meat partially frozen. 

Alasdair acted as official Spice mix master.

We ground the meat into the bowl over another bowl of ice to try and keep it nice and cold.

Even with all these precautions to keep everything ultra cold we still had to pause occasionally and let things rest in the fridge before resuming the next step we sat down at the table with 1 fan aimed at us and 1 fan aimed right at the poor Kitchen-aid to try and cool the poor thing down.  You could fry an egg on the motor housing. Since he has been reading Eric Ripert's new book On The Line we were discussing the various stations in the kitchen and he was telling me how long it takes to progress down the line at Le Bernadin, today of course we were working the Garde Manger station.  I told him about Ms. Glaze's Pommes d'Amour and told him he really needs to look her up for a first hand account.

After it rested in the fridge and we gulped down more liquid, the meat and spices would go back under the mixer with the paddle attachment to add some liquid, in the case of chorizo it was ice cold tequila and red wine vinegar!

After we made all three sausage mixes, cooked off little patties of each to test for seasoning and chilled everything down it was time for the stuffing.  Alasdair referred to the hog casings I been soaking in water all morning as 'granny stockings'.

The first batch, the chorizo, took us over 30 minutes to stuff, by the time we got to the chipolata we were down to 10 minutes.  Sure, we overstuffed here and there, there were a few 'blow outs', but we just squished it back in the bowl and started again.

Alasdair took charge of the link twisting.

We started at 10:30 and finished the last of the sausages by 5:30.  We were both dripping and exhausted but it was a great day.   I sent home half with Alasdair and we kept half here to freeze later.  Even though the sausages were twisted when we cut them to cook them I tied each end off to prevent the sausage from oozing out the ends as it cooked.  Husband and I sautéed some onion and peppers from the farm stand we stopped by in Ipswich on Friday and grilled some of the Brats and I made some of the Cooks Illustrated recommended Yukon gold fries that you start in cold oil (novel, but it worked!) and all was well in the world.  I'm not going to give you the recipe here Charcuterie is well worth the investment. Stay tuned for head cheese. YIKES!

Stuffed pork Tenderloin Part III Hardwood Smoked

 

The idea began to seep into the back of my brain around 1:30 as the clouds thickened and began closing in and the winds that were drying my sheets earlier suddenly turned colder. My plan of dragging the Weber closer to the back door and setting out some chairs suddenly looked less appealing with every degree that dropped off the thermostat.  All day I had been considering the taste of a nice grilled pork tenderloin over some hardwood charcoal, but the idea of doing it in a coat and gloves just didn't appeal.  I have a gas grill in the kitchen, but i really wanted the smoke.  I looked over at my kitchen fireplace and the stack of hardwood in front of it and the wheels began churning.  

At first I started scouring the house for metal.  I was looking for something i could use to build a tripod in the firebox to hold up the grate to my Weber kettle grill.  I was wandering around muttering, metal, I need metal under my breath.  Husband looked up at one point and said, "Metal? What do you want metal for?" Never mind I said, you'll think I'm nuts.
As I was sitting at the table and watching the chipmunk race across the back garden over the stones it hit me.  Bricks!

I have tons of spare bricks around here from past gardening projects. They would be fireproof, for at least a few fires, and I could get the height I needed to be over the grate that holds the wood.
I donned my raincoat, grabbed the garden trolley and started stacking bricks.
I dragged them into the house and rinsed them all off in the sink and started building the structure.  I went out to the garden and got the grill from my Weber kettle and laid it on top. Husband just came up from the basement, shook his head and laughed.

I found my cast iron pan (I need to remember to bring Grandma's 20-inch one back from Maine after the summer) and even though it is fairly small I figured I could just put a curve on my dinner plans to get it to fit in the pan.

Then I had to decide what I was going to do with my tenderloins. 

I started raiding the fridge and I decided to take the two tenderloins and put a stuffing in the middle, wrap it in a bacon blanket to keep it moist.  I found some double smoked bacon  that I finely diced and it went into the pan with a little olive oil.  When it started to smell nice I added 2 finely minced shallots.  When they were translucent I added a few crimini mushrooms I had left over that I minced fine.  Over in the fruit bowl I spied an apple so I peeled and minced that and in the drawer in the fridge were a few clamshells of herbs so I chopped some fresh sage and thyme and tossed that in as well with some salt & pepper. 

While this cooked down I went to the upstairs fridge and brought down a bottle of French hard cider and popped the cork.  When the pan started to go dry I poured in a few TBS and let it reduce, stirred, added a bit more, let it reduce and then I tasted it.  I had some garlic confit in the fridge as well so I added a bit of that, but you could easily add a few minced garlic cloves.

While this cooled I made a bacon blanket and put the two tenderloins in a yin and yang fashion, thick end to thin, thin end to thick and seasoned them with some salt and pepper.  I pressed the stuffing on to the bottom tenderloin, laid the other on top and then wrapped the bacon around and tied it up to hold it together.

In order to fit this in the pan I had to give it a curve which made some of the stuffing fall out, but I figured it would all just become good pan fond in the end for a sauce.

I threw in the rest of the the thyme sprigs, some garlic confit and poured the cider in the pan and onto the grate it went.  In total I think it took a little over an hour to cook and I flipped it once, added chicken stock to the pan periodically to keep it moist and to prevent the fond from burning.  I did flip it once just to see what it was looking like underneath and to get a nice sear on both sides. That is the picture you see on top, the picture below is when it was finished and resting on the board.

When a thermometer hit 137F I pulled it and let it rest on the board.  I strained the juices in the pan and tossed in a little oil and 1 minced shallot.  When it was soft I poured in some calvados and reduced that, then in went the pan juices and a shot or two of cream to bring it all together.  I think I might have added a squirt of lemon juice to brighten everything up and they seasoned with some s&p.

I wish you had smell-o-vision because this was incredible.  Bacon-smoke-apple-scented heaven.  The inside was perfectly moist as you can see from the picture and the pan sauce, oh the pan sauce redolent of smoke and onion, garlic and thyme, bacon and calvados, a definite repeat. 

My only advice to anyone with a fireplace is to rig it up right now, cook in it, you just may never use your grill again.

**Stuffed pork tenderloin I and Stuffed pork tenderloin II

Bacon and Egg Salad

A trip to Russo's completed and inspiration for a salad in the bag.  I made this up for lunch as a wild storm blew in on a lazy Friday afternoon.

Guanciale rendered, browned, drained.  (I probably really should have called it cheek and egg salad, but it just doesn't have the same ring)

Garlic scapes chopped and sauteed in the rendered pork essence, drained. 

Chanterelle and morel chopped and torn and sauteed in the pork essence with a splash of sherry to finish. 

A quick pickle of thinly shaved red onion, brown sugar, salt and cider vinegar.

Baby arugula (Russo's), Vietnamese cilantro, shiso, mibuna, tatsoi (all from the garden) dressed in hazelnut oil and Brix verjus. 

Top with a pan fried egg, left slightly yolky and runny. 

I love summer.

Sausages Roasted with Grapes and Seared Foie Gras

Arguably the ugliest food photo ever*, but seriously, SERIOUSLY good.

A harvest dish in Italy, roasted grapes with sausages as interpreted by my tastebuds.
Black organic seedless grapes and blanched pork and provolone sausages were roasted at high heat for about 20 minutes or until sausages were cooked through and the grapes all nicely sugary and soft.
I made a glaze of reasonably priced balsamic cooked down with some dark muscovado and drizzled it over the finished sausages and grapes.
Some d'Artagnan foie gras slices graced with some sea salt and pepper and seared in a hot pan to gild the lily washed down with a Barbaresco. 

Not too shabby for a 30 minute meal eh? Take that Rachel Meh!

*New camera choices have been narrowed to the Canon EOS 5D, Nikon D200 or the Sony Alpha DSLR.  I swear I will make a decision one day soon.

Stuffed Pork Tenderloin II

Since the number one hit on this site week after week after week is the stuffed pork tenderloin, I thought it high time that I gave you another option.

In a pan heat up some cognac and toss in some prunes and dried cherries, shut off the heat and let it steep a couple of hours if you have time, 30 minutes or so if you don't.
Take two pork tenderloins, and rub them with a paste you make of salt, crushed black and white pepper, olive oil and fresh thyme. 
Get some nice bacon and lay it out strip by strip until it looks like a nice sheet of bacon paper. 
Lay one of the tenderloins down close to one edge of the paper. 
Lay on your cognac soaked prunes and cherries. 
Pick up the other tenderloin and notice which end is thicker, lay the thicker end of the loin in your hand on top of the thinner end of the bottom tenderloin so that they form a roast of equal thickness. 
Roll the whole thing up in the barding of bacon paper and tie it at regular intervals. 
Toss this on a rack over a sheet pan or roasting pan and pop it in a 350 oven. 
Cook to 137 internal temp and then let it rest tented for 20 mins.  Remove the bacon wrapping and carve. 
Use the leftover cognac soaking liquid to enhance your pan sauce made with the drippings.
Silly me forgot to take a photo of the nice internal view of pork and fruit, I shall endeavor to resolve that the next time we make this. 

Pork out.

Rocking the Ribs

I assure you these ribs are gonna be soooooooooo good tonight.

Not only did everyone in class make a rack, but both Nay Nay and Ash cruised by at separate times to inquire if there was a spare rack to be had, I stopped by Whole Paycheck and picked up a few racks for hubby and I so all told we made 14 racks of baby backs and a half chicken for my kosher girl.

Racks were rubbed liberally with a serious spice rub we made and then a bit of brown ale was lovingly poured around them, they were wrapped in lovely foil blankets and set in a low and slow oven for 2 to 2 1/2 hours.  The BBQ sauce was assembled by all and we finished them on the grill with a slathering of sauce and a bit of browning action.

Here is Doctor D one of my peeps with his very stylish onion goggles.  He had just finished chopping scallions for his Southwestern potato salad with chipotle in adobo sauce.  Uh huh...they all said it was yummy.  Of course he continued to wear them while we went out and grilled as well.  I think he just likes them.

Corn, on the grill.  After?  Smothered in mayo, chili powder, salt, lime juice and cotija cheese.  Seriously try it.

I have just showered the smell of the 14 racks of ribs off my person and sent the laundry down the magic chute.  I think it is time for a nice Campari Gin & Tonic.

Tomorrow? 

Middle Eastern BBQ.

Oh and Flummel, this is my view from work, not quite as lovely as yours, but oddly rather soothing.

Yet another reason to support small farmers

This article is not pretty to read. 

It is an eyes wide open look at one of the largest commercial hog producers in US. It just confirms for me the need to support smaller agricultural and farming interests and to spend our money wisely.  Every time you choose to buy cheaply from a Smithfield or a Perdue you are choosing to support the giant machine.  Look outside the box, know where your food comes from.

link via Michael Ruhlman

Singing the praises of Berkshire

Do you remember pork before it became the other white meat?

Do you remember when pork was juicy and tasty and you could produce a glorious Sunday meal with just salt and pepper rubbed on a pork roast on a rack with potatoes and onions mingling underneath gently cooking in the pork fat.

If you do remember I guarantee you were born before 1980.

Somewhere along the line in the diet mad late 70's and early 80's Americans convinced the pork industry to breed pigs that were leaner and less marbled.  The pork producers and the breeders obeyed the call and since we Americans are an all or nothing country, eventually all pork became almost as lean and in some cases leaner than poultry (skin off of course). 

The problem with this was that lean means tough and dry and more often than not, tasteless. I could say a lot about the fact that we no longer have many local small butcher shops, about the fact that most people would have no idea how to trim and prepare ther own cuts of meat and how places like WalFart have driven the very limited demand for what producers are willing to, well, produce, coupled with the whole HURRY UP AND JUST THROW A PIECE OF MEAT ON THE GRILL ON HIGH HEAT NOW culture that we have become, but if you are reading here, you probably know all this already because you are probably someone who wants eat better than that.

Sure you can cure a few of those dry and tasteless ills by brining your pork. Something that I heartily recommend as a solution for chops and tenderloins, but now dear readers, I have found another solution for those times when I want a taste of my childhood, a 'real' pork roast.

The pig that most Americans eat these days is the basic white pig, think Wilbur from Charlotte's web if you must.  Now an alternative pig that has been raised in the States for years is finally making it to the market. The breed is what would today be called a heritage breed.  Called a Berkshire (pronounced BARK sheer), these pigs were developed as a specialist breed in England in the mid nineteenth century as a cross between a British breed and another breed introduced from Japan. It's a smaller breed than the white with very short legs and finely marbled meat with plenty of fat and it was a perfect breed for smallholders.

I first had Berkshire pork in England dining with husband.  Eating that pork in the U.K. was a revelation.  I realised that all pork hadn't been bred to withing an inch of its taste.  There was still hope.  When husband moved over here I searched and searched for a place to get a pork roast with a fat cap still attached so I could make a proper Christmas roast with cracklings. For the first couple of years I ordered my roast from this place.  The roasts were good, the taste much closer to what I had in England, but it still wasn't the same.  Besides the shipping costs were higher than thecost of the roast itself.

I had my first Berkshire pork here when CSCA had their open house in October.  Roberta made a Korobuta ham for the event and it was spectacular. I ordered one straight way for Mom's party and we roasted it in a low oven and I glazed it in a cherry apricot cognac glaze.  It was fabulous.

A week before I had called up John Dewar to order a pork roast for Christmas to fulfill husband's dining request.  I always make a point to ask that they don't trim the fat cap and could they perhaps order a Niman Ranch pork roast.  The glorious beast that you see above is what arrived in my package wrapped like this. I'm not sure if it came from Snake River Farms or Niman Ranch, I need to check with Bill.  But this is THE SINGLE FINEST pork roast I have EVER had in my life.  *Hand held to my heart*

I treated it reverentially and gently.  I made a paste of ground white and black pepper in extra virgin olive oil with a few cloves of garlic that I pulverised in the mortar and pestle with kosher salt.  It was roasted low and slow with a high finish to form the crust.  It was cooked to an internal temp of 138 and then rested to rise through 140, my prefered cooked pork temp.

I can highly recommend calling the boys up and ordering one for yourself, find a Berkshire pork provider, talk your butcher into carrying it, write about it, tell your friends about it, raise a ruckus.

Berkshire pork.

It's most definately NOT the other white meat.

A party to go

It began with a request from a friend of the owners. 

Could we possibly create a party, a surprise birthday party, for her husband? 
Nine men would arrive along with 3 of our students and they would cook enough appetizers to feed 20 people.
The plan was get them in by 6:30 to decorate cupcakes, into the kitchen cooking by 7:00, and out the door packed and loaded with the food by 8:15 to start the party.

Sure!  No problem.

I built a list of possible appetizers that I thought some possibly culinarily challenged men could execute in the required time. A few days before the event another request for me to make my ribs and roast a few chickens along with making some cornbread came through as well.

First and foremost I'm a girl who likes a challenge.
Second, I'm a list maker.  Lists, lists and more lists.  Trust me on this one, they can make any event go easier.

A master grocery list was created, recipes were researched, tweaked, and reviewed, a schedule was made, a list of required equipment for each dish was included on the recipe page along with what the dish would be packed in for transport.

The night before after I finished teaching my class I made my spice rub, rubbed and wrapped 24 pounds of Baby Backs in foil and roasted a bunch of red peppers.

The day of, I arrived early and made a few of items in advance like the Dill and Creme Fraiche sauce for the crab cakes, the Roasted Red Pepper and Valbresso Dip. I made the Thai Peanut Sauce so the flavours had time to mix and mingle, later we would reheat it and check it for seasoning. I made a compound butter and mixed it with the same rub I used on the ribs.  I assumed some guests would eat the chicken and not the pork and I thought that the spice should carry through both.  The chickens went in around 4:00 and were pulled in the midst of one of the classes to rest. At 5:30 the ribs hit the oven and hung out for almost 2 hours at a low heat.

I went off to teach my 11 - 13 year old class, we were in France making Gratin Dauphinoise, Poulet Provencal, and a lovely Pithivier.  Renee hung by my side and cleaned like a whirling dervish as the class went on, all in an attempt to keep the kitchen clean and ready to go by the time 'the guys' arrived.

After setting up 'stations for each recipe and a briefing to let the men know what we would be making I rounded them into the kitchen. 

I quickly found a sous chef in 'M' who takes classes on Tuesday with the oldest group.

Here he is helping his Dad prep the crab cakes.

Later he helped me unwrap all the rib packets, brush them with BBQ sauce (I used a basic tomato based sauce with a bit of molasses that I had made earlier for this step) for their final turn in the oven and then he loaded them all into 9 X 12 take out containers.  After these were finished I taught him how to carve the chickens, to find the break in the joints to separate the thighs and the drumstick, where the 'oysters' lie and how to carve the breast on the bias. He did a bang up job.

I hope one day when he is invited to dine at a future girlfriend's house and the father turns to him and asks if he would like to carve, that he will tackle it fearlessly and perhaps impress a future father in law in the process.

All in all it was a pretty great night.  We had them all wrapped up and out the door by 8:00 to head to their party and I took myself and my very, very tired feet and smelly clothes home for a good Bourbon and a long nap.