July 2004 Archives

Hey man, NO Fatted Calf at the market until August 14th. Take note. Go for fresh coffee & crusty bread, but no meat. And surely no green garlic, too late foo.

CLOSED

Yahoo !!! Meat Sauce. Good meat sauce, tasty meat sauce. Lovely happy wonderful meat sauce. The kind of meat sauce you add tomatoes to and nothing else. The kind of meat sauce you don't have to add tomatoes to. Nor do you have to add salt and/or pepper. The kind of meat sauce that gives you smiles from your tummy to your mouth and back again. This my good people, is Sugo Di Carne.
Now that I have your hopes up, here comes the truth. I didn't make it. I picked it up from The Fatted Calf last Saturday. Speaking of which, they won't be there for the next two Saturdays. Good thing I have ONE LAST container of Sugo. However, when they return you'll be able to do this for yourself ...

Got chicken pieces? Was the butcher out of whole fryers? Rick was. So I bought three breasts & a pound of bacon (to make up for lost pieces I wasn't going to get). I believe I can work with this, chicken & cured pork. Nothing wrong with THAT.

Uh, ya know, I may be cutting my own throat here, but getting to the Berkeley Farmer's Market at 10am could be too late. Sure they open at 10, but when I got there last week at 9:53, Taylor had already sold out of the Sugo Di Carne (meat sauce). So, now that he has his Wild Mushroom Crepinettes listed, I would have to say getting there by the time he is supposed to open might be a little late. Maybe 9:30 or so? I know this week I WILL come away with the Crepinettes, Sugo and some of the Saucisson Sec.
I for one, would like to see the Wieners with Wild Mushrooms. Yes.

... on with the news

If you're a fan of the Henge, there are posts that you expect to see. At the root level, we're talking about cooking food. Just above that, maybe MEAT and then all hell breaks loose.
Well, it's been about 14 months since we went up and this will be our first Is My Blog Burning (IMBB).
Aroo ?!??! you say? It is a game that a fellow food blogger (Il Forno ) put up on
the wall. To play you have to cook the Food Theme called, then either post it directly to the host or put in your URL of your blog. There really aren't any rules, just some people getting together for some fun.
It can be interesting to see what people come up with when you say, RICE !!! Or SEAFOOD. Sure as hell I'm going to cook something with rice differently that someone in Manila.
This time it is all about Grilling / Barbecueing. I thought this might be the time to step in.

This conversation comes up far more often than you'd expect. Mostly because sometimes there ARE leftovers from cooking out of doors.
Here you find yourself with a rack of pork ribs or 3 lbs of smoked beef brisket. Today we have the 3 lb smoked beef brisket I got from Rick's Quality Meats of El Cerrito. I'm glad I called that second on Monday, because by the time the meat came out of the smoker (82 pounds), it was all sold. I got mine and here it is. But that was yesterday, now it is cold and the fat has solidified. No problem.

Meatloaf can be one of those wonderful comfort foods that nearly anyone can cook. The simplicity is at the heart of this meaty wonder. One can use just ground beef or stir in some ground pork to help out. Emeril adds half & half and stuffs the center with an italian sausage in the casing. I usually just do a few eggs, crumble up some crackers or old bread, herbies with spices. Coat with que sauce or ketchup, install in baking dish and in the oven it goes along with some bakers.
There's one thing you simply can not leave out, no matter how you make meatloaf. The lack of this turned our meal in to a meat brick. It sat at the bottom of my tummy for over 24 hours, gack.

pictured above; two 1 lb. pork top round roasts from Niman Ranch

(doing the crepinette dance!) Check out what we have this Saturday buckaroos! Duck Crepinettes with Picholine Olives and Thyme escorted by Taylor's brined 2 pound pork loin roasts. Those two for certain will be in my cotton meat bag. Something else you need to take a peek in to, the Sugo Di Carne. It's their Meat Sauce and it has already be cooked and seasoned perfectly. You can warm it, dump over pasta or add some nice maters. I did the diced tomato version and it was delightful. Quite rich and again, perfectly seasoned. As the tomatoes simmered, I kept tasting it to see if it needed anything. From the container to the table, not one anything needed addition. No kidding. This week should be quite spectacular in the meat arena, I will go this week. I promise.

The Berkeley Farmer's Market is within a few blocks of the Berkeley Bart Station, take that if you're coming in from SF or Walnut Creek. Don't forget to pick up some Green Garlic while yer there

on with the show

Here at MeatHenge Labs we have two semi-small children. What this means is that from time to time we end up at a drive-thru fast food place. Wendy's is pretty darned close so that tends to be what shows up on our dining room table. Well, here I was waiting for the sewer guy and my wife pulls up waving the Kid's Meals from Wendy's. Turns out you have an option other than FRIES. That's right, a container of Mandarin Oranges! INSTEAD OF FRIES !!! How cool is that ?!? Of course Z wasn't fooled and got the fries & the oranges, but just the sheer thought of some fast food place offering a replacement for Fries I thought was earth shattering news that warranted an entry. I say, bring it on.

meat above; beef roast with a bacon blanket of love

Some days it pays to just stop by your butcher to see how the day was, chew the fat so to speak. Guess what week this is ?!?! That's right, you guessed it. It's Smoked Beef Brisket Week at Rick's Quality Meats in El Cerrito!
To those of you who understand brisket, really deeply understand that cut, this is something special. To those of you who don't, please lend an ear.
The brisket for the most part is a really fatty tough cut of meat that can ONLY be dealt with over a long slow heat. If you're willing to put in the time, the result is something that just can't be matched in the meat arena. In a smoker this means 8 to 12 hours, no kidding. This is a premium true barbecue moment. This week is special.
Briskets come out of the Beef in about 12 pound slabs and Rick is probably doing maybe 6 slabs or so. He only does briskets once in a slow while and each time they're ALL SOLD before they come out of the smoker. This is without the Meat Alerts.
MeatHenge is giving you a heads up so you can call RIGHT NOW, or tomorrow and get yourself a half slab of brisket. This is special and doesn't happen frequently. Let Rick take the time to smoke these hunks for you and just show up late Thursday for your treat. If you hesitate even the smallest, you'll lose. I have my name on one, you call and git yours. This will be good enough to make a special party for.
Plan to make a trek in to little E.C. and get the ONLY decent smoke beef brisket in town. GO !!!

Rick's Quality Meats
510.233.9390

1600 Liberty Street
El Cerrito, CA 94530

p.s. please let Rick know you got this notice from Meathenge. I don't get any kickbacks, it's just nice to know whether MeatHenge works or not.

Salt, doesn't that look nice? I finally got a chance to use a portion of the Coarse Italian Sea salt I bought a while ago. A few months ago I marinated a whole chicken in a salt marinade for nearly 3 days. This bird came out absolutely amazingly moist & happy. You'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between that and a fancy rotisserie one. Interested? Yes you are. That was a bit long and the Meathead family had a disaster of a time reproducing it. So, this last Saturday I decided to lay down some recipe that was reproducible. What I came up with only takes 2 hours and just couldn't possibly be any easier. This will render you rotisserie juice flavor action with almost no work. How do you like that? A lot. Time to move on.

Hey, the Fatted Calf Newsletter just rolled in. Looks like we have a really nice layout for tomorrow. If there is any chance you could possibly make it in to the Farmer's Market in Berkeley, do so. Just because Taylor is there every weekend right now, doesn't mean he won't hit the big time and open his own shop somewhere and ditch the market. So go now, while you can.

The image above is from our July 4th meal this last Saturday. If you look to the right of the image you'll see two little puffy crepinettes and Taylor's wieners. One little crepinette got a little dark, that darned caul fat really splatters. I can assure you, the inside was perfectly done. The large pile of meat to the left are two cut up chickens and a load of country style pork ribs all smoked with raw hickory chunks. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

I put a home made dry rub on both the chickens & pork the day before. Well, okay it was a wet rub. I doused everything in olive oil first, then the powdery love.

I forgot to get most of the makin's for sauce, so I had to improvise with the sauce. For some odd reason it came out REALLY well. Ha ! I like to make most of my sauces on the thin side. This way you're getting mostly meat flavor and the sauce just adds a little something plus some juicy squeeze.

I hope to see you at the market!

Here's another reason to try out the Farmer's Market. Check out those heirloom 'maters from last week. Absolutely amazing. Get off yer rear and get out the door before this summer is over, foo.

On to the Newsletter ...

Yup, been about 6 days since my last post. Between the July 4th weekend and about enough inspiration to get my lazy ass out of bed in the morning, this post is about all I can handle at the moment. Inspiration will return, I'm sure. Let's take a quiet interlude and explore the evil & dark world of 'frozen prepared foods', like the ones we find at Costco and large retail super outlets.

image above is a Duck Crepinette Breakfast

The Fatted Calf is bringing a lot to our Saturday morning this week. Not only do they have some pork Crepinettes with hazelnuts and wine soaked figs, but they are doing their Wieners this week too. Don't discount this little guys for something ordinary. Even if you dislike hotdogs & balogna, you will love these little doggies. The texture isn't quite as smooth as you'd think and the skins do snap. A very rich and tasty treat. The tough thing is finding bread good enough to saddle them up right. I hope to see you at the market first thing, don't wait. He sells out quick.

on with the show

oooOOoo I spy pepperoni

There they are, cans of 'food'. You know the ones, I'm talking about. Those cans that just don't get used. Those bastard cans you have to move out of your way every time you reach for the pasta, tomatoes or what-have-you. This week my wife had enough of it and as I pushed the cans of beans out of the way so I could get some fresh dried beans (I planned to soak them over night) she said, "use these you foo!" In my mind I cringed, canned beans? Simmered for hours? Wretch.

The 'clear' decision was to use the canned beans for my concoction.