Pig Butchering Demo at Mado

A couple weeks ago, Abby and I attended a pig butchering demo at Mado. This restaurant is one of those places that specializes in head-to-tail cooking. Every week, they get a whole side of pig from a local farm, that they use to create specials throughout the week.
They sent us home with a sampling of different cuts that included some pork belly (see previous post), a cut from the leg, and a loin chop. Below is a picture of one of the dishes that I made. I made a confit of pork leg by slowly poaching it in rendered pork fat for a few hours, then I seared it and served it over white beans with bacon and rosemary, grilled asparagus, and a spicy aioli. The recipe for the white beans is below.
INGREDIENTS:

2 small cans of white beans.

chicken stock

2 sprigs of rosemary

1 bay leaf

2 strips of bacon, chopped, or 1/4 cup chopped pancetta

1 shallot, finely chopped

6 cloves of garlic confit

salt, pepper

Render the bacon in a saucepan, remove bacon bits and drain all but 2 tsp of the fat. If using pancetta, use some olive oil to cook the pancetta.

Cook the shallot and garlic confit over medium heat for about 1 minute. Add the beans, along with the rosemary and bay leaf. Keep the rosemary whole, so you can remove it later. Add chicken stock to cover, bring to simmer, turn the heat down to low, and simmer for about 30 minutes, partially covered. Remove the rosemary and bay leaf. If the beans are still soupy, turn up the heat to reduce it more.

Wild boar chop with fennel pollen, flageolet beans with rosemary, and grilled asparagus

This dish continues my quest to clear out as much of my pantry and freezer as possible before we move to Chicago. 9 days to go, and so many more items left. For this meal, I cleared out some flageolet beans that had been sitting in the pantry for ages and a bag full of chicken bones that had been sitting in the freezer. Often, I buy whole chickens and part them out at home so I can keep the bones for stock. This is one of those things that is a good idea that is only rarely executed on, so I had a whole bunch of bones for stock that I needed to put to use. I used the bones, along with some carrots and celary that were sitting in the fridge, to make a really strong chicken stock. After soaking them overnight, I cooked the flageolet beans in the chicken stock along with some crushed garlic and a couple sprigs of rosemary (from a plant on the back porch that I'm also trying to get a lot of use out of). Most of the effort went into making the boring starch and, as usual, I turned to Cambridge's excellent food purveyors to make the rest of the meal interesting. Wild boar chops came from Savenor's and fennel pollen came from Formaggio. Fennel pollen is tough to track down, but if you ever come across it, buy it. I can't think of a better thing to season pork with. It's amazing stuff. Here's the recipe. As usual, it's for 2 servings.

INGREDIENTS
-1.5 cups dried flageolet beans
-3 qt chicken stock
-2 sprigs of rosemary
-2 crushed garlic cloves
-1 minced shallot

-2 wild boar chops
-fennel pollen

-asparagus
-cayanne pepper

-salt, pepper, olive oil.

Soak the flageolet beans in water for a day.
In a medium pot, saute minced shallots and crushed garlic clove over medium heat for about five minutes or until the shallots become translucent. Add the soaked beans and chicken stock. Raise the heat to bring to a boil, and then return to medium heat. Add two sprigs of rosemary. It's best if you wrap the rosemary in some cheesecloth so the needles don't fall off and get mixed in with everything else.
Let the beans simmer for a looooonnnng time (a few hours). Flageolet beans have a really firm texture, and they take forever to soften up. Over the course of the cooking period, the stock will reduce. Add water to keep things from drying out. (Note: flageolet beans are usually a light green color, but the stock gives them a dark brown color in the picture above.)
Once the beans are done, keep the pot simmering over low heat and prep everything else. For the asparagus, break off the tough part at the bottom of the stem, dress with olive oil, and season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of cayanne powder. Season the boar chops with salt and pepper and a dash of oil.
Cook the asparagus on a grill pan over medium high heat until done. For the boar chops, heat a cast iron skillet, griddle, or stainless steel pan to a super high heat (give the pan at least 5 minutes over the flame before starting to cook). Sear the boar chops for two to three minutes on each side. Remove from the heat after a nice crust has formed and sprinkle a little fennel pollen on each side and finish in the oven at 350F until done. The cooking time will depend on how big the cuts are. You can check by using a thermometer or just checking the consistency of the meat after two to three minutes and every minute thereafter. For the chops I was dealing with, I just needed another two minutes in the oven.

Chili

Chili is one of those dishes that has an infinite number of variations. Everyone has their own recipe. I tend to make chili a few times every fall/winter, and after several years of tweaking, I've more or less settled on a recipe that I like. You can cook up a big batch, and keep a bunch in your freezer for later. This soup, like most, tastes much better the next day.

INGREDIENTS:

• 2/4 lb pork loin chops, small dice
• 1.5 lb ground beef
• 1 28oz. can kidney beans
• 1 28 oz. can pink beans
• 1 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
• 1 red bell pepper, small dice
• 1 green bell pepper, small dice
• 1 onion, small dice
• 1 jalapeno, minced
• 6-8 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 t oregano
• 3 T chili powder
• 1 T cumin
• 1 T paprika
• 1/2 - 1 t cayenne powder
• 2 t cinnamon
• salt, pepper
• 1 bottle dark beer
• beef stock or broth
• Optional ingredients:
• 1/2 small can chipotle en adobe
• Mexican chocolate, to taste. The amount I use comes out to about 3-4 T when chopped.

*This recipe is moderately spicy. If you really want to up the heat, just add more cayenne powder or throw in another jalapeno. If you don't like spicy food, leave out the jalapeno and just add 1/2 teaspoon cayenne.

It's easiest if you prep all of the ingredients ahead of time. Mix together the chili powder, cayenne, cumin, cinnamon, and paprika and toast them in a pan. This step enhances the flavor of the spices. In general, you should always toast spices before using them, but I think this is especially important for a dish like chili, which is really built on the spices.
Once all your ingredients are together, heat up 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a large pot and cook the ground beef.
Remove the beef once it looks done and add the onions and garlic. Cook over medium heat until soft, then add the peppers, spices, oregano, pork and tomatoes. Cook for about 1-2 minutes.
Add the beans, a bottle of beer, the bay leaves and, if you are using, the chipotle en adobo and/or the chocolate. Add beef stock until everything is covered and you have the amount of liquid you want. Since the beans will release some starch, this will naturally thicken over time.
Let the chili simmer for at least an hour.

Clam and white bean soup with chorizo

Here's a fairly simple dish that I came up with last night. The dish is, I think, a Portuguese preparation. At least, the main ingredients are all commonly found in Portuguese cooking. I found that the broth was a little thin for my taste, so next time I make it I'll play around with the seasoning a little more. Below, I listed the ingredients that I used, but if you make this, I would suggest trying ways to improve the broth. I listed a couple suggestions.

Depending on how long you let things simmer, this meal should take only about 45 minutes to make. I served it with baguette toasts and side of greens the had been braised with garlic, chicken stock, red pepper flakes, and cider vinegar.

INGREDIENTS (2-3 servings)
2 lb clams
2 14oz. cans of white beans.
1/2 lb chorizo, diced
1 small onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
4-6 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 small bottle clam juice
1/4 cup white wine
olive oil
red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper to taste
parsley or cilantro for garnish

Start by cooking the onions, garlic, carrot and chorizo with 1 Tbsp olive oil a pinch of salt and red pepper flakes over medium heat for about 10 minutes. Add a splash of white wine and turn the heat up to high to reduce the wine. Let the wine reduce for about a minute then add the clam juice. Add another 2 cups of water, the beans, and bring everything to a boil. Turn the heat back down to medium and let everything simmer together for a while. It can be as little as 10 minutes or as long as an hour. The more time you let this cook, the more the flavors will blend together. As this mixture is simmering, you can start seasoning. You can add a bay leaf and/or a few sprigs of thyme to add some depth to the flavor. Add salt and pepper a little bit at a time, and keep tasting the broth until you like the taste.

As I mentioned above, the broth was a little thin. Perhaps it just needed more time, but replacing the water/clam juice mixture with seafood or chicken stock might have improved things. The right amount of salt and pepper did help out a lot, but it didn't get it all the way there.

Once you are about ready for dinner, throw in the clams and let cook, covered, until the clams open up (around 5 to 8 minutes). Garnish with parsley and lemon juice.

More home cookin' in the state of Washington

Abby, the Moys, and I were in town for a few days, so the reception dinner wasn't the only think I made. When it was just the Moys and Kinas, and not 100 guests, I was able to make a meal where I could focus on more than one dish. In addition to a simple grilled chicken, which I've made a few times this summer
I made a grilled corn salad with red onion, red bell peppers, mint, and lime
toasted orzo with artichoke hearts and almond slivers
and an appetizer of grilled toasts topped with a white bean and tuna bruscheta (I normally make this with anchovies).
For dessert, we had my mom's blackberry pie. We picked the blackberries for this from our front yard earlier that day.

Braised lamb shanks

The last time I made lamb and flageolet beans, I didn't really like the way the beans turned out, so I decided to give them another shot for this dinner party. Turns out, no matter how long you cook them, the beans stay pretty firm. I guess that's one of the properties that set flageolets apart from more common white beans like canellini's. Instead of roasting a leg of lamb, I decided to go a little further down the leg and braise a bunch of lamb shanks. The one thing about serving a cut like this is its hard to really scale the portions. The shanks that Savenor's had in stock came in one size. HUGE. The plates looked like something the Flinstone's would eat.

My summer roommates, Andre and Justin, their new roommate, Dave, my downstairs neighbor, Katherine, and Elana and Stefan came over to help put down the massive amounts of food that I made. Here are some pictures from dinner.

For the first course, we had a trio of salads that I picked out of the Bouchon cookbook: chickpea and carrot salad, roasted beet salad, and celeriac remoulade. I really liked the beet salad and the remoulade. I don't eat celeriac or beets much, but it seems to be the season for them, so maybe I should change that. The chickpea and carrot salad wasn't great, partly because the chickpeas were a bit to firm, partly because the salad didn't have enough acid and was undersalted, and partly because the carrots should have been cooked a little longer. Even if the execution was better, I don't think the flavor profile was all that interesting.

The next course was cauliflower soup with chives and white truffle oil. I got this recipe from Amanda Gerke a few years back when she had a bunch of us over at her beach house in Jersey. Its really simple, really tasty, and I don't have any pictures. To make it, throw a bunch of chopped up onions and cauliflower in a big pot and cook with some olive oil until soft. Add vegetable or chicken stock and let simmer for a while. Puree the soup (an immersion blender is very handy here) then garnish the servings with finely chopped chives and truffle oil. White truffle oil is really strong, so you only need a couple of drops.

After the main course, Stefan provided a nice cheese plate for dessert. So...much...food.

Roasted leg of lamb

Abby and I were shopping at the Market Basket the other day and I decided to pick up a leg of lamb. I hadn't had lamb in a while, and that's about as much excuse as I needed. The thing with this cut, though, is that even the smallest one I could find was way too much for two people, so rather than deal with leftovers, we had Wei Shun, Lauren, and Michael over for dinner.

I prepared the lamb by rolling it out, smothering it with a paste of garlic, olive oil, rosemary, thyme, mustard, salt, and pepper, and trussing it back up again. The lamb was served on top of melted leeks and flageolet beans (these are hard to find, but Christina's spices, right down the street, has all sorts of rare ingredients) in lamb jus. The thing about the beans is that they were dried, and they probably should have soaked for a lot longer. They tasted fine, but the texture was off.

Black beans

When Abby and I were visiting Costa Rica, I got hooked on their traditional breakfast: gallo pinto with eggs and Salsa Lizano, a tangy green sauce that Costa Ricans put on just about everything. Gallo pinto is really just beans and rice with a few other random things mixed in. Its a great way to get rid of bell peppers, carrots, and onions that may be sitting around the fridge. You can make up a big batch of it and just scoop out a bit and reheat it while you are cooking an egg to make a nice filling breakfast. It's really good served with warm corn tortillas, and if you can get your hands on some Salsa Lizano, use this as well.

Yesterday, I planned on making a batch of gallo pinto, but when I tasted the beans, they were so good that I decided not to mix them with rice. For breakfast, I just had black beans with a poached egg. Here's the recipe:

2 large cans black beans
½ onion (red of Vidalia), fine dice
1 green or red bell pepper, fine dice
1 carrot, fine dice
1-2 jalapeno, fine dice
5 cloves garlic, mince
3-4 Tbsp chopped parsley (substituting cilantro if available)
0.5 lb chorizo
4 Tbsp cider vinegar
1 Tbsp cumin
1 tsp cinnamon
pinch salt
¾ can of water
olive oil

Add enough oil to the bottom of a large pot. Cook the onion, pepper, jalapeno, carrot, garlic, and parsley over med-low to low heat for about 10 min. Add a pinch of salt to help everything cook down.

Add chorizo and cook over med-low heat for another 10 minutes.

Add the beans. Do not rinse or drain. Add water, vinegar, and bay leaves. Let simmer on med-low heat for 1 hour so the liquid reduces.

Serve over rice or as is. You can reduce the liquid more or less depending on whether you want a soup.

If you are vegetarian, leave out the chorizo, but add some paparika. Even better, you might be able to find veggie chorizo at the grocery store. I think Smart Food or one of those companies makes this.

This is great as a soup topped with caramelized onions and sour cream. Since I made up such a large batch, I did this for dinner (I didn't have any sour cream though). To caramelize onions, just slice them up and cook over low heat with a bit of oil or butter for a long long time (~45 min). They cook down quite a bit.

Here, I used a red onion because that was all that I had in the pantry, but I really think a Vidalia or some other sweet white onion is better for caramelizing.

Tuna & cannellini bean salad

This is a fairly simple and inexpensive salad to make. It makes a great light dinner or lunch that is perfect for the summer. Start by cutting red onion in half and then slicing very thin half rounds. You will need a little more than 1/4 of an average sized onion. Place the onions in a bowl of cold water. As you are preparing the rest of the dish, go back to the onions every 10 minutes or so, squeeze them, and replace the water.

Next, prepare a vinaigrette. Add some olive oil, red wine or balsamic vinegar, a spoon full of dijon mustard, one minced clove of garlic, and some oregano to a bowl and whisk together to make an emulsion. I think a more acidic dressing is good for this salad, so make the ratio of oil to vinegar about 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 depending on your taste.

Drain and rinse two cans of cannellini beans, add to a large bowl, and toss with about half of the vinaigrette. Next, cut a Belgian endive in half, quarter a small head of radichio, and drizzle with olive oil. Sear for about 1 min at med-high on a grill pan (a normal pan will work fine). While the lettuces are cooking, cover a tuna steak with salt, pepper, and olive oil. Sear at high heat once the lettuces are done for about 1-1.5 minutes on each side. I use frozen tuna steaks for this, which you can get at some grocery stores (like Trader Joe's or Market Basket) for about $5/lb. Once the tuna is done, let it rest while you slice up the lettuces crosswise. Add the endive, radicchio, and onions to the bowl with the beans. Chop up the tuna steak into small pieces and add this as well. Toss everything together and add more of the vinaigrette. Finish the dish off with chopped parsley and crumbled feta (if you happen to have it lying around).

This whole dish should only take about 20-30 min from start to finish.