December 2003 Archives

For this holiday's meal my wife was kind enough to offer a few of these tourtières. As you can see, it's a bit of work. She did the pie dough cause she knows how. I supplied the LARD and fresh ground pork meat, cause I know how. (Thank you to Jan for dropping off the remaining needed LARD). If you haven't had or made a tourtière in the last ten years, you haven't lived. Print out this recipe and swear to yourself, DAMMIT TO HELL MAN, THIS TIME I AM GOING TO MAKE THIS WORK !!!

MeatHenge hosted the meal this year, sort of at the last moment. We had considered not doing much else other than relaxing and doing what we felt like (watching dvd's). At the semi-last moment we decided to cook and invite. My wife wanted to do a Canadian Pork Pie (tourtière) and I felt like grilling some large amounts of meat. So we did. However, she made 3 tourtières and I grilled/smoked tons of pork meat and chicken. Everything went very well, everyone had a great time and I'd had enough cooking, for Xmas 2003.

For this entry we see the grilled meatses: A leg of pork that had been sitting in a dry rub for 2 days with bay leaves and a bit of olive oil. Two other beasts consisted of chickens marinated in fresh lemon juice with a load of dry rub as well. OH yeah and don't forget about the country style pork ribs. Yes, they had yet another damned dry rub on them. And because we don't want to exclude sausages (we must support our local sausage makers), I tossed in a few of those. Toss in some hickory to the fire, close the lid & walk away for 3 hours.

All DONE !!!

The tourtière portion of this meal will be added over the next day or so.

Hugs to all.

Okay, so admissions to MeatHenge have been sparse to say the least. Most cooking web sites are hunkering down and sending forth everything to bear so everyone has a nice holiday meal. And it seems many cooking web logs are doing the reverse. We're tired, over worked and ready for some rest.
Clearly we are digging for content, and speaking of content ... I would think most of you are getting nice new socks for gifts! Go now and have a close look at your existing sock family to see if you can toss them. Maybe you don't know what needs to be tossed and what needs to be retained. Looky here, these need to be tossed.

Yeah, I dunno man. That bagel looks like it's up to something.

This last week I heard a juicy rumor. A butcher had left Cafe Rouge a few years back and had started his own charcuterie. Saturday at 11am found me at the Berkeley Farmer's Market searching for Fatted Calf.

Yeah yeah, you all know what to do. Buy your meat in those cute little plastic wrapped foam containers and toss it into the freezer. Simple, easy and a waste of perfectly good meat. Remember pal, that animal gave up it's life (probably not without a fight) so it could feed you. Pay a little respect won't you?

Freezers are for a few things. Ice Cream comes to mind right away. Maybe frozen grape juice, chicken parts for stock and ice cubes. Please keep your fresh meat out of the damn freezer. I know it's handy to come home, pull out a pound of some ground meat and toss it into a skillet for god knows what. The next time you do that, pay attention to what you end up with. Pay attention to what that meat looks like while it is whistling away in your skillet, frozen like a brick. Take note and next time try it fresh. Next time roast your chicken from a FRESH chicken, not FRESH frozen. Foo. Notice and take note. I believe you'll find with a little more effort and time at the butcher your dinners will improve.
If you need to keep your pork chop, beef roast or bacon a few extra days, re-wrap it in aluminum foil. MAKE SURE YOUR HANDS ARE CLEAN. Foil will give you at least ONE extra day in the fridge, which could mean the difference between a nice steak dinner or Lucky Charms & skim milk.

Against most everyone's advice (especially my doctor's), I still like to fry food. OH sure, using less oil in the pan is better for you, but can you possibly get a decent crispy brown pork chop without much oil? Mebe.

A month ago, give or take, I purchased some fancy Calphalon commerical 11" fry pan (non-stick). I figured I should have at least 1 or 2 non-stick rigs in my arsenal. Well, I was wrong. My pork chops looked as though they'd been microwaved. Nasty to say the least. So I gave it to my uncle, he's not a snob.
Since I feel right at home cooking with cast iron, I had no problem going back to using it for my chops. I can also say that my cast iron is pretty damned well seasoned, by that I mean I can fry an egg with no added fat and NOT have it stick. Anyhoo, I've been playing with getting an even brown crust on my chops with very little fat. And by taking a look at the picture above, you'll see it's pretty darned close. I melted just a little bit of Lard in the pre-heated cast iron and wiped it with a paper towel. Truly, not much fat in pan. I turned up the heat a bit more, tossed in the chop with a bacon press on top. I left the press on top for the full cooking time, maybe 6 minutes a side or so. Look! That's nice lookin' and not all greasy!
Not enough leavenings for gravy, but this is supposed to be somewhat healthier for you, eh? This and a vegie or salad is well worth the price of admission.

Yes, that's right. Glory be! THERE'S NO MEAT !!!! Not only that, it's spiffy good.

Hey, go git your flu shot if you haven't already. It is such a collosal waste of time to be severly sick like that. I went down November 28th and didn't get back to work until Dec. 8th. That includes a week of pneumonia too, so go get your flu shot today!
There is some back tracking to do here. Since I was out so long, you never got to see our Thanksgiving Day meal. It was a real traditional one; I didn't smoke or deep fry the turkey. Mostly because I wanted gravy, must have gravy. If you have no gravy, you have no meal.

And this meal was no exception. We had gravy! My sister made sausage & mushroom stuffing with a wonderfully tangy tray of macaroni and cheese. It got a little crispy, which turned out fine because we all like the crispy bits. The mashed taters were done fresh right there with two sticks of butter with milk and tater water. Simple. The gravy was made with the drippins, chicken broff and Viking Smoked Salt.
I believe the only thing I did different was cook the turkey upside down. It was flipped over just to brown for about 30 minutes or so. The breast meat was drippy juicy and the skin was crispy tasty. Then we ate it.

The meat's backin' up!