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Hotter homemade chorizo

Thursday, February 25th, 2010
What homemade chorizo looks like baked into a delightful Spanish omelet

What homemade chorizo looks like baked into a delightful Spanish omelet

Here’s the recipe for my neighbor Yvonne’s Spanish chorizo, which is quite a bitter spicier than the Mexican version I posted about a few days ago. Jake and I loved this hotter version, but you, like Yvonne, may prefer a tamer taste.

Spanish Chorizo

It’s recommended the spices be ground with the pork, as opposed to adding to the meat afterward. If you don’t have a grinder, a food processor should be fine.

Grind 2 pounds of pork with the following:

• 2 tablespoons salt

• 2 tablespoons black pepper

• 3 tablespoons paprika, regular or, if you’re feeling adventurous, HOT

• 2 tablespoons fennel seeds (if not using a grinder, make sure to crush the seeds first)

• 1-2 tablespoons red pepper flakes, to taste

• 2 teaspoons cayenne

• 2 tablespoons crushed garlic

To Mex-ify this recipe, add the following:

• 1 tablespoon ground oregano, or 2 tablespoons fresh, chopped

• 1 tablespoon cumin

• Bump up the garlic, to taste

Here’s the part where I add, “Aye caliente!”

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Homemade chorizo

Thursday, February 18th, 2010
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I don't know who this guy is, but I like his t-shirt

Since moving to the country, I’ve had to say goodbye to ethnic restaurants. The only ethnic restaurants here in town is a surprisingly decent sushi place and a Mexican joint where they serve a bowl of spiced-up ranch dressing alongside the complimentary basket of tortilla chips and salsa. It’s pretty gross….until you get used to it, and then you find yourself eating it along with every other Mexican-deprived resident of this town.

Not having many decent dining-out options is one reason why my husband and I cook so much. Our favorite type of cuisine is Mexican. AUTHENTIC Mexican: fresh pork, tomatilloes, roasted tomatoes, chilaquiles….not the canned refried bean, melted cheddar cheese biomass you find at places like Chili’s.

But it can also be hard to get our hands on quality ethnic ingredients here. The last time I bought chorizo — spicy Spanish pork sausage that is also a staple of Mexican and South American cuisine — at the supermarket , I noticed the meat all but disintegrated in a pool of oil as soon as it hit the hot pan. It was so fatty and gross, I remember thinking, Note to self: You’ll probably never eat chorizo again.

I thought I was out of luck, or that I’d have to drive an hour to get my hands on the good stuff.

Well, after four long years of cooking without chorizo, I just learned that chorizo doesn’t necessarily  involve any sort of fancy curing process; it’s more of a simple spice blend that people like me can make at home. And chorizo doesn’t have to come in links, it can be made using ground meat. Yippee! Homemade chorizo!

Chorizo is typically made using ground pork seasoned with different spices, depending on whether you’re going for a Spanish, Mexican or Argentine flavor. I went for Mexican. Mexican chorizo differs from Spanish in that it’s usually drier due to its higher chile and spice content.

To make my chorizo, I decided to use three-quarters fresh ground venison (which, thanks to the leanness of deer, is virtually fat free, so the meat renders barely any fat when cooked) mixed with a quarter fatty pork sausage.  You gotta have some fat in there! I find that ground venison mixed with ground sausage is a great combination — the earthiness of deer mixed with the juiciness of the sausage is really great for chiles, meat casseroles, meat loafs and my beloved Super Nachos.

Anyway, smash 1 pound of ground meat of your choice into a bowl……but try to include some ground pork (not necessarily pork sausage) to keep the dish somewhat authentic.

Add to the bowl this Mexican chorizo spice blend*:

• 1 teaspoon table salt

• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

• 1 teaspoon minced garlic

• 1 1/4 teaspoon chili powder

• 3/4 teaspoon hot paprika

• 3/4 teaspoon chipotle powder (I had to special order mine from here.)

• 3/4 teaspoon dried oregano, preferably Mexican

• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

• 1/8 teaspoon ground cumin

Smoosh it all up until the spices are evenly disbursed through the meat and cook as directed.

Tonight, I’m having people over and plan to use my homemade chorizo to make Rick Bayless’s Crusty Black Bean-Chorizo Subs. I haven’t been able to make these incredible sandwiches for four long years due to the dearth of chorizo.

So tonight, I plan to gorge.

* Chorizo recipe from Cook’s Illustrated

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I’m on the cutting edge of culinary trends again?

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

This is getting embarrassing. Who knew that living in the middle of nowhere could be so hip?

This piece caught my eye in the latest issue of New York, about the “artisanal jerky” craze that’s sweeping Manhattan. (In the same issue was this article about the “Urban Woodsman,” the latest interpretation of urban manhood; a counter-reaction to the “weiner in distress” metrosexual trend of years past.  All the dudes in the story look like the kind of guys I see standing around bonfires in the country. Except here they’re not talking about the Nexus One, but trucks and tools. )

Anyway, back to what’s important: Jerky. I’m not exactly sure what’s “artisanal” about this new wave of jerky making other than the meat being used isn’t Slim Jims.

I guess this makes my jerky “artisanal” too because it’s made from “cage free” “organic” deer shot by our neighbor Sam. Sam and his wife Sandra are avid hunters. They shot us three deer this season ’cause…..that’s what hunters do. They kill things. Three deer is a lot of meat.  Hence, my month long jerky spree.

This morning’s batch: Chipotle jerky.

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Three things I’ve learned about making deer jerky thus far:

• Online venison jerky recipes for foodies — people who peruse Cook’s Illustrated or Saveur — don’t really exist. Probably because “foodies” and “venison jerky” didn’t really go together before the New York article. All the decent venison jerky recipes I’ve  tracked down come from hunting websites, where recipe pages feature design flourishes like pulsating deer silhouettes and spinning rifles.  Chic, they’re not.

• When in doubt, use soy sauce as the jerky base. It’s impossible to use too much because it’s my opinion jerky requires a hit of saltiness to be good.

• It’s actually hard to get jerky wrong. I used to follow complicated recipes (again, those found on hunting recipes) that called for stuff like “2 tablespoons minced chives, 1 teaspoon sliced garlic” but I’ve realized you can’t taste trace amounts of ingredients in the finished dried piece of gristle anyway, so I don’t bother. And I never, ever add garlic powder, which I think is kind of gross.

I’ve learned that the best jerky recipes are the simplest. For example:

Chipotle Jerky (good for roughly 4 pounds of thinly sliced deer meat)

• a can (or two) of chipotle chilies in adobo

• 2 cups soy sauce

• a bunch of lime juice

• salt

Marinate for 24 hours, and dry in a food dehydrator anywhere from 4 to 6 hours.

Easy. Delicious. And so on-trend.

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Coca-Cola Ham

Monday, December 7th, 2009

I suck at cooking meat. I’m terrible at it. I have no “feel” for animal flesh whatsoever. My culinary prowess revolves around vegetables, fattening and totally unsophisticated dessert bars and something called Super Nachos.

So last night we had some people over and I was looking in my basement freezer full of locally procured meat stuffs, wondering what to cook and I noticed we had one remaining uncured ham, or pork butt, left over from last year’s purchase of half a pig.

As I took it out, it dawned on me that I’d never roasted a meat thing PROPERLY in my life.  I tend to either overcook it or — more often than not — grossly undercook it, which is why Jake and I end up eating a lot of vegetables and Super Nachos. But I’d seen a recipe for uncured ham in Cook’s Illustrated, aka, The OCD Guide to Cooking, that had sparked my imagination. It was just weird enough to make me think I could actually handle it.

It’s called Cola Ham wherein an uncured ham is marinated in A COCA-COLA BRINE for 24 hours then roasted with a sweet Coca-Coca lime jalapeno glaze. That sounds gross and unsophisticated,  does it not? But apparently, Cola Ham is a southern culinary tradition (I called my neighbor Ellen, a southern cook if there ever was one, and she confirmed that this is true), and the south is ham country, and southerners are way serious about food, so I knew it must be delicious. The recipe appealed to me on two fronts: 1) It’s almost impossible to screw up meat that’s been brined for 24 hours; the brine locks in moisture and flavor so I didn’t have to worry about dry meat. And 2) it calls for Coca-Cola!!

Well, I’m happy to report that the meal was a success. The ham was unbelievably tender and juicy, it was unique, it was fantastic.  The Coca-Cola added its own original flavor to the meat and tenderized it much more than a simple water/salt brine solution. Everyone raved. Maybe I have a future in meat cookery after all.

Note:  Fresh, uncured ham, preferably the shank end, is called for in this recipe. It’s not suitable for cured, frozen hams you find at the grocery store. Your local butcher will have the right cut. Also, the original recipe called for a 6 to 8 pound ham; mine weighed 4 pounds, so I cut amounts by half (what you see here is for a 4-pound ham).

ROAST

1 fresh bone-in uncured ham (4-6 pounds), preferably shank end, rinsed

BRINE

3 liters of Coca-Cola

3/4 cup salt

1 garlic head, cloves separated, peeled and lightly crushed

5 bay leaves

1/4 cup black peppercorns, crushed

Add all brine ingredients to a large bucket or stockpot, stir to dissolve the salt. Add the ham, then cover. Refrigerate for 24 hours.

Remove the ham from the brine, rinse under cold water and dry completely with paper towels. Discard the brine. Place the ham wide cut-side down on a flat rack in a roasting pan. Let the ham stand, uncovered, at room temperature for one hour.

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. As it heats up, make the Garlic and Herb Rub.

GARLIC AND HERB RUB

1/2 cup lightly packed sage leaves

1/4 cup parsley

4 medium garlic cloves, peeled

1/2 tablespoon kosher salt

2 teaspoons black pepper

1/4 cup olive oil

Process all ingredients in a food processor for 30 seconds, or until it forms a smooth paste. Rub paste all over the ham.

Roast the rubbed ham at 500 degrees for 15 minutes. Remove ham from the oven. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and brush the ham with Coca-Cola Glaze with Lime and Jalapeno (recipe below). Continue to brush the ham with glaze every 30 minutes until the center of the ham registers 145 to 150 degrees on an instant-read thermometer, anywhere from 1 1/2 hours to 1 hour 45 minutes.  Tent the ham loosely with foil and let stand until the center of the ham registers 155 to 150 degrees on the thermometer, about 30 minutes more. Carve and enjoy!

COCA COLA GLAZE WITH LIME AND JALAPENO

1/2 cup Coca-Cola

The juice from 1 lime

1 cup packed dark or light brown sugar

1 medium jalapeno, stemmed, seeded and cut crosswise into 1/4-inch thick slices

Bring ingredients to a boil in  small saucepan over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until syrupy and reduced to a cup or so, 5 to 7 minutes. (The glaze will thicken as it cools.)

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Lots of eggs equals many, many crepes

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

Well, we’re already overflowing with eggs.  Yesterday we got a full dozen.  Today we got another full dozen. This is on top of the three cartons already in the refrigerator.

So last night, out of necessity, we made crepes. Lots of light and fluffy, thin and stretchy crepes.

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See the crepe cook in the pan.

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Lots and lots of crepes. So many, in fact, that we quickly ran out of ideas for what to fill them with. Until we stumbled upon this:

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Mr. Hershey bar, meet Mrs. Crepe.  Warning: Sensitive foodies may want to avert their gaze before taking a look at this next picture. It will disturb you to your core.

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“Peter Pan on a crepe? Econo-size, no less. Take it away! It’s disgusting! I can’t look! The horror!”

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Maybe I’ve spent too many years swimming in above-ground pools, but Hershey, Peter Pan and crepes make an elegant trio.

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It was like eating a chocolate peanut butter cup wrapped in a cumulus cloud. It was good. Real good.

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I ate the first egg!

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Our flock laid its very first egg and last night we celebrated by eating that sucker!

We ate it as part of — what else? — an Egg McHuzband, Jake’s leading contribution to the culinary world so far.

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Because he’s that kind of guy, he let me have the Special Egg, while he ate two from Walmart.

To celebrate the consumption of our first egg, he felt compelled to whip up a THIRD batch of biscuits. We now have more biscuits in our refrigerator than condiments! The man has baked three separate batches in the last three days.

I’m of the opinion that we finally have a winner. Last night’s recipe came from Joy of Cooking. These biscuits were dense but flaky, soft on the inside with a sturdy structure on the outside. They had considerably more depth than the first version he made from the back of a bag of biscuit mix, and they were less cloying than the overwrought Cook’s Illustrated version.  I asked him, “SO?? Are you finally satisfied? Can we now bring your biscuit-making odyssey to a close?”

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He thought as he chewed and said, “Yeah. But I think they need a little more milk so they’re a little less flaky.”  Gak. He’ll never be satisfied.

Find the recipe for Basic Rolled Biscuits here. Keep in mind that superior biscuits have less to do with the quality of ingredients and everything to do with your biscuit-making technique. The secret: Properly cutting in cold butter, which is what gives biscuits their crunchy edges and flaky structure, and not over mixing the dough.

The recipe for Egg McHuzand:

- Homemade biscuit, fresh from the oven, sliced in half

- Fried egg (preferably from an egg straight from the chicken’s oviduct, but I’m no snob!)

- Crispy-fried bacon

- A smear of creamy dill mustard

- Manchego, parmesan or cheddar cheese

You will be transported. I feel it.

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Eggs McHuzband

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

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Jake has been obsessed with making his own version of the venerable Mickey D’s staple, Eggs McMuffin.

His obsession is really with biscuits. He’s been on a tear for the last month to perfect what I’d previously considered was just a  homely disc of dough. Oh, how wrong I was. Jake is of the unerring belief that biscuits are the foundation of all that is breakfast. Do not mess with the biscuit.

Yesterday morning he made a version from the back of the bag of Southern Biscuit Formula L Biscuit Mix, which, wouldn’t you know it, required a lot of lard. Bonafide Southern biscuits require shovelfuls of fat; it’s not a biscuit without it. Lard is what gives biscuits their dense flaky texture.

He baked them up, slit them in half and filled each with a delicately fried egg, crispy bacon, a bit of Gruyere cheese and what I considered the piece de resistance, a smear of creamy dill mustard. Well, eating this puff of heaven transported me to a place where Ronald McDonald was my personal bee-atch.  I oohed and aaahed throughout the meal while Jake thought the biscuit, which although dense and chewy, could use some improvement. He thought it didn’t have enough depth, enough nuance. I didn’t realize my husband spoke like this.

So he opted to made them again for dinner last night. Only this time, he whipped out our ole culinary nemesis Cook’s Illustrated and took a crack at their customarily complicated, overwrought 4-page version. This version required no lard, just lots of butter and buttermilk and whatever herbs I could scrounge from the garden (parsley and oregano). The finished biscuit was a little lighter and flakier, but the consistency was like that of a scone….WHICH ISN’T TECHNICALLY A BISCUIT.  Suck on that, Cook’s Illustrated!!  I preferred the more jejune first version, but that’s also because I have issues with CI, while Jake went with the CI version.

Oh, a note about the eggs. We recommend frying the egg a bit on the hard side. If the yolks are soft, it dribbles out of the sandwich when you pick it up, messing your plate, and it also soaks the biscuit.

Try your own version of the Eggs McHuzband. You’ll be McLovin it, I’m sure.

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No dancing. Just takedowns.

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

There’s nowhere to go dance in Manhattan.

I know this because a Gen Y Lower East Side hipster told me so himself, so it must be true.  I find this remarkable considering that we’re in the midst of a pretty serious recession, a time when you’d think people, especially high strung New Yorkers, would want to blow off steam by letting loose on the dance floor and, oh yeah, this is also one of the biggest cities in the world. You’d think SURELY there’d be a thriving underground scene somewhere.

New York, it turns out, IS the city that sleeps.  It’s tucked into bed by 10:30 p.m right after Law & Order Criminal Intent.

It seems that the dominant mode of unwinding here now is through food. I knew NYC foodie culture was big,  but I didn’t realize to what extent until I noticed just how many chefs and artisanal confectioners, jam makers and cheesemongers have sprung up, a good percentage of whom look like they’re 26 years old!  It seems like it’s a very “in” thing to do; start your own artisanal food company. Which is exciting, it’s thrilling, but the flip side is that there’s an undercurrent of trendiness to it all. And I’m of the mind that trendy food isn’t necessarily good food. Especially if you graduated culinary school 6 months ago.

Culinary “takedowns” are all the rage, according to people in this scene. DIY-obsessed hipsters compete to see who can make the best apple pie, the best ironic casserole dish, the best mac and cheese, the best batch of pickles, etc.  My coauthor Kelly had to judge one these competitions — an apple pie contest — and she said that NOT one pie out of 54 entrants stood out. They were all undercooked, under or overspiced. I’ve heard of one competition where hirsute Brooklyn butchers — who are like the gods of this culinary scene, I swear — compete to see who can chop up a pig the fastest in front of a large crowd of people. It’s an interesting contradiction when you think how much attention is paid to the ethical treatment of the animal, how it was raised, what it’s diet consisted of, how much access to fresh air it had when alive,  only to see it lacerated in a gory festival of blood and guts for sport.  At the end of the day, it becomes just another big swinging dick contest.

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Roasted chestnuts

Friday, September 25th, 2009

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Chestnuts, I’ve come to learn, are regarded more as a vegetable than actual nut. Once they’re roasted — like the one you see here — they take on a dense, almost squash-like taste, a flavor that seems to lend itself wonderfully to soups or purees.

I was a little intimidated at the thought of having to shell 500 of these things.  But a friend told me that the secret to shelling chestnuts is similar to skinning peaches and tomatoes in preparation for canning.  Using a sharp paring knife, I was told to carve an X into the flat side of each shell.  This is somewhat of a daunting task, but Jake was nice enough to do it for me. He seems to have the patience for this type of work, and I think kind of enjoys it.

After he had carved all the nuts, I spread them in a single layer on a baking sheet — ideally X side up but I wasn’t exactly vigilant about this step — and baked them in a 425 degree oven for 35 minutes.  I’d never actually eaten a roasted chestnut before last night.

Roasting them not only cooked the nuts (two cups of which I plan to use in tonight’s chestnut risotto with butternut squash), but the heat caused the shells to buckle away from the nut itself, so removing the shells after they’d had a chance to cool for a bit was simple enough. This morning, I gave the leftover shells to the chickens since eating sharp, dense objects such as pebbles and sand aids in their digestion.

This may sound insane, but I’m actually kind of sad about tonight’s dinner. Butternut squash (and the surprise chestnut harvest) is among the last of my 2009 garden haul, so tonight’s dinner will be somewhat of a season finale.

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That old chestnut

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

Sometimes I feel like my yard really is the Garden of Eden. Every time I turn around, there’s another plant or tree or shrub sprouting food I didn’t know was there.

The latest example: Chestnuts. We’ve lived here for a handful of years now, and only yesterday it dawned on us that we should probably harvest the nuts littering the ground beneath the two giant Chinese chestnut trees in our yard.

A chestnut peaks from its razor sharp, cactus-like shell. The shell HURTS!!!

A chestnut peaks from its razor sharp, cactus-like shell. The shell HURTS!!!

Luckily for my fingers, chestnuts seem to birth their way from their protective shells on their own....aided by nut-loving squirrels, of course.

Luckily for my fingers, chestnuts seem to birth their way from their protective shells on their own....aided by nut-loving squirrels, of course.

Last night's haul. I've never eaten chestnuts so I'm not exactly sure what to do with them. Any suggestions?

Last night's haul. I've never eaten chestnuts so I'm not exactly sure what to do with them. Any suggestions?

They taste, uh, nutty, but I notice the texture is a little more moist than nuts I'm used to eating. I wonder if I have to let them dry out for awhile first?

They taste, uh, nutty, but I notice the texture is a little more moist than nuts I'm used to eating. I wonder if I have to let them dry out for awhile first?

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