I have a huge back log of yummy things to post that have been made.  Honest.

T-minus seven days until my thesis is in.  Those of you who have done this know the special hell that is editing a ~180 page document that you have been working on for two years.  Sick of it.

Some things I have made recently:

-one damn fine roast chicken (comparing and contrasting methods from Cooking (peterson) River Cottage Meat, Batalli, and Bourdain)

-pork chops in morel sauce (yum)

-roasted red pepper soup (for the freezer)

Sept will see a flurry.  I promise.

It’s just that my thesis is due in 35 days.  Kind of ruins any semblance of a life as the soulcrushing weight of it makes me drink crappy coffee and sweat at my computer, print, edit, rewrite, cringe, panic, etc.

Looking forward to finishing and working a normal 9-5 instead of a ?? - ?? sun-sat

I’ve been craving clams for months. Every recipe I came across in every cookbook would slay me. I’d linger on pictures of clams and stare wistfully at them at the fish monger. But I never bought them for no clear reason than I can.

K gave me back my copy of Heat and I was re-reading it the other day while doing my laundry. There is a section in there where the author comes to an epiphany about clams in the linguine that goes against what he has learned already (that the pasta is about the noodles, not about the sauce) EXCEPT for this case where it is all about the sauce and not at all about the dinky little scrap of meat in the clam. Mind you, this dinky little scrap is delicious. There are some rough directions for how to make something simple and yummy and I pretty much just ran with what was on hand.

Clams are cheap in these parts. I picked up a pound for something like $5.50 –effectively nothing. B was supposed to come over for dinner but bailed again, her loss. The roommate got the other serving instead. These were great! Slippery and slimey and sweet and homey and tasting like the sea. A little bit of punch from the lemon zest was perfect. Quick, cheap, and didn’t require turning my kitchen into an inferno. This is certainly something going on the list:

Clams! - with linguine in a lemony-C2H5OH sauce (pour deux)

• 1 pound clams, scrubbed under cold water, opened one that don’t close when you touch them and broken ones chucked out
• 250g linguine
• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 1 large shallot, chopped
• 1 cup white wine (or if you don’t have that… 1/3 cup brandy + 2/3 cup chicken broth)
• 3-4 1″ chunks of smokey bacon, salt pork, or similar (optional, but adds a bit of depth to the cooking liquid)
• Lemon (for zesting)
• Parm (for grating)
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 handful of fresh thyme, picked for leaves
• Pinch or two chili flakes

Heat some olive oil over medium heat and add the onions, thyme, and bacon (if using) for 5 minutes. Add the garlic and sweat for another 2 minutes. Add wine (or other liquid) to stop the cooking process. At this point, have a pot of water on a good boil and add the linguine. FIre the other pan up to hot and reduce the wine by half. Add the clams and cover for 3-4 minutes, stirring once. At this point most of the clams should be open. If they aren’t, cover and give them another minute. Discard any that don’t open. Remove the bacon and discard (or munch on). Add butter and chillies swirl for another minute. Linguine should be done, so add and swirl everything around. Taste, season with salt if needed. If the liquid seems too thin add a bit of the starchy pasta water. Plate and add (using a microplane) some lemon zest shavings and a thin vaneer of parm. Serve with a bowl to dump shells. Yummy deliciousness from the clams barfing up their juice when they open into the sauce. Mhm.

-m, out

On the day I smoked the bacon I was stuck at home cleaning and though the bacon would have been good for dinner it would not be ready in time (smoking + freezing + cutting = too damn long for this hungry guy) so I hit up the butcher originally looking for chicken to cook for me and B. You know, because roasting stuff in the oven is such fun in a crappy ventilated hell-hole of a tiny 4th floor kits kitchen. Whatever. I like roast chicken. Besides, excessive heat keeps me skinny, right?

Well, chicken’s were ridiculously expensive at my butcher and Large. I’m all for organic and all but I’m not willing to shell out $25-$30 for a fucking roast chicken. Not on what I get paid for slaving to my ivory tower overlords anyways. But, tucked away in the corner were some gorgeous GORGEOUS thick berkshire pork chops staring at me in the face saying “mat… eaaaat me… it will make you more attractive, honest”. Ok, maybe I lied about the last part. Regardless, two were snappd up for the scandalously low price of $9. Bite me chickens.

As I was sitting around smoking all day what was to stop me from sitting around brining all day too? Apples go with pork so I grabbed a tallboy of horse piss (aka: strongbow) which is a foul substance to drink but delicious to marinade with. I had some sage and thyme leaves kicking around too so I used those. Basically, for 2 1 1/2″ thick pork chops (double for 4, triple for 6, etc), the brine:

• 500 ml hard cider (strongbow, okanagan springs, etc) –I’m sure apple cider or even apple juice would work. But I like C2H5OH and so do my pork chops.
• 500 ml water
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup kosher salt
• lots of black pepper
• handful of fresh sage leaves (2 tablespoons?)
• handful of fresh thyme (2 tablespoons?)
• 2-3 garlic cloves, crushed

Heat all that up on the stove until the sugar dissolves. Cool. Toss in pork chops and refridgerate for 2-4 hours. Remove, wash off brine, pat dry and let stand (in the fridge, uncovered) for another hour before removing 20 mins before cooking.

Then it’s just a simple pan-to-brown-then-in-oven deal. Heat over medium-high-high heat a good cast-iron pan that can go in the oven and add a thin film of canola oil and add seasoned (salt, pepper) pork chops to the pan. Move them around a bit after a minute so they don’t scorch/burn. Do this for 4 minutes a side before tossing in 350F preheated oven. Depending on your chop, you will want to leave them in for 8-15 minutes until an internal temp of 135-140F. Remove, let stand covered with foil. Mine were about 12 mins and pink inside (but clear juices). The meat will continue to rise in temperature (mine hit around 149-150) while standing and be safe to eat, don’t worry. Pork chops are easy to overcook and that’s a crime, man up people. Man up.

Remove the pan and set on a medium burner. Remember at all times that the handle is fucking hot so don’t burn your hand like I did. Smooth. Now you need to make the pan gravy:

• 1 small onion (or a 2-3 shallots), chopped
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 teaspoon flour
• Few splashes of worscheshire sauce
• Few splashes of bitters (hey, they were around)
• 250 ml chicken stock
• 1/3 cup brandy
• 1 tablespoon mustard

Toss butter into the pan with the onion and give it a good browning for 5-6 minutes. Add the flour and stir for about a minute. Deglaze with the brandy and scrape up all the yummy burnt crunchy bits. Add the chicken stock, and splashes of various things. A bit of pepper probably wouldn’t hurt. Reduce this liquid by half, remove from heat, stir in mustard, and season to taste. Plate pork (maybe with some oven roasted potatoes and green beans) and dump the sauce on top.

Not the most photogenic of dishes (is that poo on the top?) but honestly really delicious. One of the better pork chops I’ve had actually, fairly quick, and would probably impress the ladies without turning your apartment into a sweltering vietnam POW camp like roasting a chicken in the heat.

-m, out.

Hey gang… behold my belly!  9 lbs of fresh organic berkshire pork from my butcher

While everyone else was out enjoying the gorgeous day in Vancouver I’ve been slaving away at home cleaning my house. Made a nice batch of iced tea, went out shopping, picked up some good looking pork chops from my butcher for me and B who then bailed on dinner (boo) and keeping me company. Company you ask? I needed someone to keep me busy while I smoked a 5 pound pork belly. It’s my first shot at something from Charcuterie and one I’ve been looking to do for awhile. I’ve done bacon once before and it turned out ok. And by ok I mean it didn’t kill me. It was horridly salty. Different technique this time. A 7 day brine in:

• 1/4 cup kosher salt
• 2 teaspoons pink salt / prague powder #1 / instacure #1 or whatever it’s called in your area
• 1/4 cup maple sugar or dark brown sugar
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1 5-pound pork belly, skin on

I mixed all the dry ingredients and mixed for awhile then mixed in the maple syrup. Rubbed it all over the belly. Tossed in a giant ziplock bag with all the cure that was left over. Rubbed  it around for awhile. Refrigerated it, turning the belly and redistributing the cure (now a liquid brine) every other day, for 7 days. At this point the meat was pretty firm. Remove the belly from the cure, wash it well under cold water, pat dry and put back in the fridge uncovered for another day. Then… well, it’s time to choose your wood. I went for a mixture of 75% hickory and 25% apple, as that’s what I had on hand. Hot-smoke the belly on a weber for about 3 hours (to a internal temp of 150 F).

I have a little chief smoker that I use for smoked salmon that became the bacon smoker in this case. It doesn’t quite get hot enough in there for 150F (I got to about 115F), so after three hours of smoking I threw it in a low oven @ 225 until I hit an internal temperature of 150F.

Let the belly cool and then cut off the skin leaving as much fat as possible. Let it cool, wrap it in plastic and fridge/freezer until you want to use it.

I wish I had a meat slicer as cutting slices with a knife is a bitch. I semi-froze most of it and sliced it into thin slices (approx. thick cut, actually didn’t do a half bad job) and then wrapped breaky/dinner sized portions very well and stuck in the freezer.  This stuff JUST froze which is probably due to the depression of the freezing temperature from the salt.

Luckily, this stuff was done for Canada Day and my friends had no plans.  I set out the call for canada day brunch BLTs and drinks and stuffed my friends faces with my sketchy (to them) house cured hickory bacon.  The taste, well, the taste was awesome!  Not the best bacon I’ve had but certainly some of the better bacon I’ve had the pleasure of eating.  The best bacon still goes to the bacon found once in a brunch sandwich at Fuel.  Damn.  That stuff was good.  This stuff was certainly worth the experience and much better than the stuff you would get in a supermarket.  Different.  Very, very smokey due to the harshness of the hickory.  Sweeter and saltier too.  Texture was good, crisp, but still a bit of chew.  The bacon did not shrink very much in the pan and surprisingly rendered only a small amount of fat for the 4ish pounds I cooked up for everyone.  Everyone loved it and was suitably amazed.  I have serious street cred now in food amongst my friends.  People I barely know at school heard about my bacon and deemed it badass as well.  Gogo science experiments.  This is certainly one I will repeat from now on but more playing with the cure and trying various woods and combinations there of.  I think a lightler, softer, fruiter wood will be next to tone down the extreme smokey flavour from the hickory.  Still, it made for a damn good BLT.

-m, out.

sidenote:  who the hell is Luhr Jensen and why is he on my smoker?

Let’s see what kind of google searches find THIS post.

Really, I’m just cracking into Charcuterie that B got me for xmas.  I have a smoker on loan from a friend stuck in the bush for another month so it’s tempting fate with the botulism gods time.  Teaser shot for the house-smoked maple bacon currently curing in my fridge:

-m, out.

Hey gang,

I had my eye on this recipe for a long time from The New Spanish Table and I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to making it.  You see, I am now an addict.  I probably eat this stuff two-three times a week and I’m not even particularly fond of spinach.  Don’t get me wrong, I get fabulous spinach out in restuarants but my spinach is always ho-hum.  Not this stuff, it’s like crack.

I had a busy day yesterday getting all my data/figures/etc and re-reading all my tech reports for my meeting with a nice company in North Van who is providing me with case history data for my thesis so I needed something quick to make with some greenery (as I’ve been slacking in that dept lately) and these fit the bill.  Perfect, perfect with a poached egg on top and maybe a side or two of butter fried feta… oh baby.

Fast-forward to today, 5 hour thesis/stability modelling meeting and loads of things cleared up and loads more of loose ends to chase down.  Isn’t science research fun?  Ugh.  I whipped up some “spanish” russian salad which took forever and a day to make –mostly as I didn’t have any mayo and broke my mayo cherry by making some up for this recipe.  Huzzah!  It held and was delicious and not scary at all.  As long as I don’t die from some horrible raw egg disease I’m gold.  Made a little tapas plate of thick-cut feta, roasted red pepper antipasto, espinacas con garbanzos, and the spanish russian salad (which admittedly, looks like vomit, but is delicious), seen below (gee can you tell I’m writing a thesis?):

The beans though!  They can hold their own.  Good the second day cold for lunch, good hot with a poached egg, good under beef, good under grilled fish.  It seems to go well with anything so far.   Worth making, and is probably ridiculously good for you.

Andalusian spinach and chickpeas (Espinacas Con Garbonzos) - bastardized from The New Spanish Table with things omitted (like saffron) and steps removed (like the things requiring saffron) because damnit, these are quicker and just as good….

ing:

• 1 large bunch of spinach (1 pound?) stems discarded
• 4 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 can (I used 19 oz, book calls for 15oz) can of chickpeas (but any white bean is better… if you can find spanish broad beans use them instead!  Much, much better.  Even white kidney beans fair better than chickpeas.)
• 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar (I use 1 teaspoon sherry vinegar, 1 teaspoon lemon juice.. tastes better)
• 1 1/2 teaspoon sweet (not smoked) paprika
• 3/4 teaspoon cumin (I use 1 teaspoon)
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano (+I use a pinch of thyme and a pinch of ajwain, again tastes better)
• 3/4 teaspoon chili flakes
• 1 pinch cinnamon (I omit..taste reasons)
• 1 pinch nutmeg (I omit..taste reasons)
• 4 plum tomatoes, chopped
• 1 small pinch sugar
• sea salt / black pepper
• olive oil

dir:

1. Rinse the spinach but don’t salad spin/dry.  Heat a pan to medium-high and add the spinach and cover.  This cooks the spinach in the water clinging to it’s leaves.  Stir once, remove once wilted (4-5 minutes) and place in a colander over a bowl to drain.  When cool enough to handle, smush with something to squeeze out the remaining liquid, plop on cutting board and rough chop.
2. Add whole cumin, paprika, chili flakes, oregano, (thyme, ajwain) and other spices (if using) to a mortar and pestle and grind up a bit to break up the cumin.
3. Heat 2-3 good glugs of olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add the garlic and cook for 2-3 minutes until just starting to brown.  Add the grinded up spices and stir for 20-30 seconds.  Add the tomatoes and cook, stirring, until reduced (about 5 minutes).   Add the can of chickpeas (+ 1/2 the liquid from the can) + spinach.  Add sugar, black pepper and simmer until most of the liquid is evaporated (8-10 minutes).  Add vinegar/lemon juice and stir.  Taste.  Salt to taste (the beans WILL require some salting, so add some please).

My brain needs a break before I wake up and play with light-tables, dip overlays, pencil crayons, and joint/fault/bedding continuity (oh my) –m out.

Just because it’s ’small’ doesn’t mean that it isn’t fantastically awesome. I have no idea where my old man got the idea for this but it is something he has been making as long as I can remember. Note, my dad didn’t cook much growing up but it seems to have been growing on him lately. Go dad. He makes his with crap vinegar and crap oil and it still turns out delicious. I use the goodstuff and it ends up much, much better.

It’s pretty simple, crunchy, and is my ubiquitous oh-crap-I-need-vegetable-intake side dish. It’s friggen delicious and I end up eating a few bowls a week as red cabbage is criminally cheap. It’s quite good for you as well.  Try to find smaller sized red cabbages, something the size of a 2 year olds head (note: The police probably wouldn’t like you harvesting heads for size comparisons, so don’t even think about it), as they tend to taste better and tend to not go skanky on the outer edges. Skanky you say? I don’t know what else to call it, but less than fresh red cabbage has this ring around the outside that is noticeble when you cut into it by the less-than-bone-white color on the inside and the cabbage doesn’t taste as good.

Anyways.. the key is finely shredded cabbage (use a mandolin or be really good with a knife), and as it stands:

• 1 child sized head of red cabbage
• 1/2 red onion
• sherry vinegar
• lemon juice
• salt/pepper
• walnut oil
• olive oil
• Sugar

Finely shred the cabbage and cut the red onion into thin half moons. Toss in a good pinch of salt and a lot of black pepper. Splash in a bit of sherry vinegar, splash in more lemon juice. A good dab of walnut oil and a good dab of olive oil (50/50 total oil between the two). Toss in a good sized pinch of sugar. I never measure I just go by taste, too sharp? more oil/sugar.. not salty enough? sugary enough? too oily (tough to fix actually).. It ends up tasting fantastic.

-m, out.