Meal Plan March 20, 2011

For the next two weeks, I am teaching full time at Franklin Park Conservatory for their Growing Young Chefs from the Ground Up spring break camps. There is still time to register for March 28-April 1! I am looking forward to all the fun activities planned but having me out of the house all day two weeks in a row is really going to change the way things work around here. Ingredients and Influences:

  • We want to keep things simple to prepare and cleanup.
  • We'll use up food from the freezer and pantry, including homemade tamales and tomato sauce.
  • We have a whole cauliflower, a bag of spinach greens, some crimini mushrooms, and big bag of yellow and green beans from our trial Green B.E.A.N. delivery box.
  • We have a hunk of mozzarella and provolone in the fridge that need to be used.
  • Despite today being the first day of spring, it looks like winter will make a comeback towards the end of the week.

Meal Plan:

Sunday - Alex brewing beer for his brother's wedding during the day, we're contributing a salad to family dinner at his parents.

Monday - homemade pizza topped with homemade pancetta and mushrooms, spinach salad

Tuesday - from the freezer pork tamales, roasted cauliflower

Wednesday - dinner out with my family

Thursday - spaghetti and home canned sauce and leftover cauliflower

Friday - pad thai with green beans

Saturday - wedding shower and bachelor/ette parties for Alex's brother Ben and fiancée Kim. I think Alex will smoke chicken wings for Ben's bachelor party and pork loin for the April charcutepalooza challenge.

The Story of The Rachel

Once upon a time, a brown eyed girl named Rachel lived in a small Midwestern town. Her family occupied a hundred year old house surrounded by edible gardens. Their kitchen was always bustling with cooking activity. sliced homemade corned beef charcutepaloozaGranny invited Rachel and her little brother Reuben to lunch. Father sliced off some fresh homemade corned beef and pastrami and sent them to walk the few blocks to Granny's.

Ten year old Rachel and six year old Ruben peaked into their wicker basket lined with checked cloth. Rachel's mouth began watering and her thoughts turned to what would pair well with the cured briskets. Waiting at the cross walk, Reuben picked up a nickel while Rachel dreamed of the perfect sandwich for Granny.

"Eww! Did you know money is one of the germiest things in America?!" Rachel admonished her little brother. "Let's go, the light changed."

Across the street, Rachel and Reuben stepped into the grocery store. Rachel had decided that rye bread with its spicy seeds and dark color would contrast nicely with the rich pastrami. She passed by the cabbage and placed a head in her basket. "Crunchy cabbage would be good on a sandwich too, don't you think?" she muttered to Reuben. Reuben ignored her, running his hand along the rows of shiny apples.

They passed the cheese display on the way towards the checkout. "And some melted swiss on top," Rachel concluded.

"Can I get a chocolate bar? PLEASE?" Reuben begged his sister at the checkout. Rachel refused, saying "You know there will be cookies at Granny's, Reuben. No candy now." The cashier rang them out and the siblings walked back into the sunshine outside.

They soon arrived at Granny's to her smothering hugs. As predicted, Granny offered them cookies. Reuben grabbed one in each hand and looked for a way to hold a third before Rachel reminded him they were planning to make Granny lunch.

Rachel searched Granny's fridge for the rest of the ingredients for her creation. She mixed mayonnaise and mustard with sliced cabbage to make coleslaw and whipped together ketchup, mayo and relish for a sandwich dressing. Rachel carefully sliced the pastrami, layered on swiss cheese and broiled it to melt. "Reuben, are you making something with yours? Come on! I'm almost done!" big sister hollered.

Fueled by cookies, Reuben threw together a sloppy sandwich of rye bread, corned beef and swiss topped with what he found in Granny's cupboard - thousand island dressing and sauerkraut.

The grandkids served their sandwiches side by side. Rachel's was layered with perfect proportions of pastrami, cheese, coleslaw, and dressing on rye. Reuben's was a hot mess on a plate. homemade reuben sandwich charcutepalooza "Try mine first!" Reuben insisted. Granny bit into his slip-sliding dressed corned beef between bread. It was so goopy that it fell from her hands. Her dog snatched it in midair and swallowed in one gulp.

Granny was able to enjoy the whole of Rachel's sandwich. She loved the balance of flavor and texture among the layers of pastrami, coleslaw, cheese, and dressing. Granny sighed with contentment, "That is one fantastic sandwich. Thank you Rachel!"

Many years later, Reuben opened a deli and offered the Reuben sandwich to all the world. At the urging of Granny, he put the Rachel on the menu too.

This entirely fictional story of the Rachel and Reuben sandwiches was inspired by the March Charcutepalooza challenge, brining. The pictures of corned beef and the Reuben sandwich are the very real and exceptionally delicious brined and cooked brisket we made.

If weather had cooperated, some of the beef would have been smoked into pastrami to create a Rachel sandwich. Alas, nearly-spring rains prevented us from firing up the smoker. As I am enthralled with the idea of eating a sandwich that shares my name, we must make pastrami at home soon.

Salt Cure, Old and New {Charcutepalooza}

salt cured lemon and fish Salt is the saline taste humans crave and would perish without. It's also the rock that allows us to preserve foods for long term storage.

The February Charcutepalooza challenge was the salt cure. As we have cured pork belly into bacon and pancetta at least a dozen times , I thought it would be most interesting to share our oldest and most recent cured edibles, both simple salt-only cures.

The Old

salt cured lemon confit

A month after Alex received Ruhlman's Charcuterie in 2009, lemons came into season. Salting them into lemon confit is a perfect gateway to meat charcuterie and that's precisely what he did.

Now aged over 2 years in a jar in the back of a cupboard, this confit is not winning any beauty pageants. The texture has disintegrated the previously tough rinds into soft bits that will mash into paste with the slightest effort.

In dressing, sauces, or marinated kale salad, just a quarter teaspoon of rinsed, minced or pasted lemon confit adds strong savory and tangy flavors. It is unlike fresh lemon or salt; instead it's an enriched strengthened combination of the two.

The New

salt cured tuna or mochama

As seasoned charcutiers, we are now true believers in the power of salt. We successfully cured salmon, cod, and pork for our refrigerator-less back country canoe trip this summer, adding meat protein to meals seven days into the trip. With practice, we have become familiar enough to alter recipes and create our own versions like the cider bacon posted last week.

Our latest salt cured project is almost as simple as the lemons, yet more exotic. We salt cured, then water rinsed, and finally air dried tuna. This traditional treatment for tuna in Portugal, Spain, and Italy is called mochama, mojama, and mosciame, respectively. We followed the method on playing with fire and ice.

Again, the final product is unlike fresh tuna. It is rich like jerky yet only subtly salty because of the rinsing. Thus far we have only tasted it raw in paper thin slices but I sense the flavor would be perfect for topping an asian style noodle soup, in a thin layer on a breakfast sandwich with eggs, or as part of a charcuterie plate.

The Future

We fully understand and have practiced the usefulness of salt in curing meat for consumption. We are just beginning to experiment with using it for other purposes. Our refrigerator currently contains one of Speckles the chicken's feet in salt to dehydrate and preserve it for display around Halloween. We plan to salt cure the hide of the next squirrel that crosses Alex's path. And of course we look forward to using salt in future Charcutepalooza challenges.

Added to Hearth and Soul Volume 35.

Cider Syrup Bacon

homecured bacon and eggs

Italy has prosciutto, German has sausages and Spain has serrano. It seems to me that America's go-to cured meat is bacon.

Long ubiquitous at breakfasts, bacon has recently enjoyed resurgence to cult status, flavoring everything from beer to cupcakes.

With a populace growing in concern about high fructose corn syrup and additives, making bacon has also become the de rigueur for the adventurous home cook. We hopped on the bacon makin' wagon over two years ago and haven't bought a pack of the store bought stuff since.

The process is simple: Rub fresh pork belly (our favorite local source is Blues Creek Meats) with a curing mix of sugar, salt, and pink salt. Under refrigeration, allow the pork to absorb the salt and leach some liquid for 4-7 days. Rinse off the salt, pat dry, and smoke or oven roast. Slice, cook, and viola! You just made the best bacon you've ever tasted.

cider syrup bacon uncut

The joy of home charcuterie rarely stops with the first batch of bacon, however. A curious cook wonders how this or that will affect the flavor and begins experimenting.

This drive to excite our mouths with interesting new flavors led to the discovery of cider syrup bacon. Just as one might make maple flavored bacon by adding maple syrup to the cure described above, we tried adding 1/2 cup of Charlie's Apple Cider Syrup to a five pound batch of bacon last year. It imbibed the pork belly with tangy zest from the apples and the slightest hint of cinnamon.

When we pressed cider and made our own syrup this fall, we made another batch, knowing the ingredients even more intimately. Perfect for winter when we don't always want to fire up the grill, cider syrup bacon is best oven roasted, lest the delicate syrup flavors be overwhelmed by smoking. This charcuterie experiment was a keeper.

If you want to jump into the world of home cured bacon and other tasty meats, we recommend Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn's book Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. You can also follow the Charcutepalooza blog project in which we are participating. If you learn best in person, join us for our Charcuterie class at Franklin Park Conservatory on March 15 from 6:30 - 8 pm.

Added to Simple Lives Thursday 30th edition.