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Thanksgiving 2009 minus day 4
Sunday was simple, I had a short list.
- Coffee
- Feed the cat
Bagel with lox spread- Marylin's Toffee
- Pralines
- Smoke the bacon
- Country Terrine
- Duck Pate
- Eat Dinner
- Feed the cat
Some of those items I'm quite experienced at; coffee, bagel, feed the cat and the country terrine. I've even gotten Ruhlman to eat that terrine.
I've smoked a couple of sides of bacon in the past, but I have never attempted to bone a duck, especially with the added requirement that I not cut through the skin, just remove the duck from the intact skin.
I've never made either of the candys at all. My only attempt at candy have been chocolate truffles. OK I've burned a couple of things.
This then is the story of that list.
Now coffee is simple and you may note, to the cat's disgust it is above feeding the cat. And you don't need a picture of a cat dish with food.
So we start with Marylin's Toffee. The recipe can be found on the second page of this thread toward the bottom.
Above is the mise, 1 pound of butter, 2 cups of sugar, slivered almonds, 12 oz of semi-sweet chocolate, water, salt and 2 cups of pecans, which will be Cusinarted.
Toast the pecans first, a few minutes - until they start to release an aroma - in the oven at about 350.
Melt the butter over medium heat.
Slowly add the sugar, stiring contantly.
At the correct time add the pecans and bring to the hard crack 310-320 point.
Then pour onto buttered foil on a half sheet spread smooth, pour on the melted chocolate and add the almonds.
Wait until cool and break into bite sized pieces.
By the way, go look at the recipe, it has a lot more detail including the amount of water and sugar. I've had Marilyn's Toffee made personally by Marilyn, and it is good. I expect this to go over well with the younger crowd.
I don't have pictures of the pralines, essentially it is dark brown sugar and lots of pecans. Melt the sugar, add the pecans and bring to about 230. Pour on to buttered foil on half sheet. You can make nice sanddollar shaped candies, but I need this as an ingrediant for a cheese cake on day minus 2, so I didn't. Don't think this will be a problem with the left overs, do you?
Now on to the Country Terrine, first I need one large onion chopped.
The above isn't quite large enough, so I will to 3 halves.
Cut the onion in two, from pole to pole and trim off the stem end, leave the root end on it.
Cut the onion, not quite cutting into root end, from pole to pole, as if lines of longitude.
Now cut lines of latitude, starting at the stem end and working to the root end. The root holds the uncut part together, but each cut forms onion diced as finely as you would like.
(to be continued with pictures).
Thanksgiving 2009 minus day 12
The top of the three is most of the mise, the middle whole pepper corns, the bottom, just freshly ground pepper.
Now not only am I doing breakfast sausage and the French Garlic, but I perfer doing three or four sausages at a time. So I will also do both hot and sweet Italian in casing. I've uncased of both in the freezer but for some things we want casings. The above is of the hot version as it is the only one of these four with basil. The breakfast sausage is CIA, the other three Charcuterie.
Pork shoulder, various spices and in the case of one, fresh basil and salt. I know what is in these sausages, no mystery meat here.
The last picture is a stack of the cook books to be used for Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving minus day 13
Thanksgiving morning we will serve breakfast, breakfast involving bacon. Home cured, home smoked bacon, from a pig who died happy.
So first we make the dry cure, salt, sugar and dry salt. This, as does the bacon recipe comes from Rhulman and Polcyn's Charcuterie, which I'm happy to report rumor has it is soon to be joined by a second work.
Then we mix the cure ingrediants well.
Then we pour some over the pork belly. We want it to stick to all six sides.
That is a five pound piece of fat back, on its way to being cured into Lardo, also from Charcuterie.
But first it must be skinned.
Then salted.
And bagged. All in all that is 3 pieces of soon to be bacon and one of fat back, 20 pounds all told. It is comfortable in the fridge, getting flipped, and long about Saturday will go in the smoker.
I will slice up and freeze two of the slabs of belly, the lardo will hang in cheese cloth in the basement. The third bacon will be left whole, to be sliced just before being fried on Thanksgiving morning.
And none for the starving cat.
Thanksgiving 2009 day -14
OK, the beans are for a lunch a bit later in the week, but the meat is for meatballs. It does have to be ground, so we cut it into pieces small enough for the grinder.
Starting into the grinder above. Veal and pork, frozen, not solid, but below 32 F for sure.
And coming out of the grinder, bowl set in ice.
Above the meat balls, two half sheets of them, then into the freezer and the next morning into baggies.
Above phylo triangles being filled. These also have been frozen and await cooking.
Pickles III a
The good news, however, is I finally went to the trouble of figuring out how to post pictures directly in HTML and avoid the stupid and slow controls this blog system has.
This means I may blog more.
Now back to the pickles
Above is a Ball(r) canning or Mason one pint jar.
Here it is again with a trimmed to proper length cuke standing in it. That is our calibrated pickle(pre) from which all other pickles will be measured. sort of like the platinum-iridium 1 meter standard kept in France, from which all other measures or length are derived, including the inch, which is exactly 0.0254 meters
We will refer to our standard length as the cP(P).
Five pounds of cukes trimmed to length via the cP(P). We don't need the cP(P) for regular slices but will for sandwich slices.
Two views of a mandoline a ver useful tool for ensuring all slices are the same width. You can just make out a gap between the plate and the blade, about half way down this. That gap is adjustable, there is also a wavy blade and blades that cause it to cut vertically as well as horizontally simultaneously.
This device is, as are knives in general, totally indifferent as to whether it is cutting the flesh of vegetable or you. So be very careful with it. Above it is pictured with the safety holder. Use it. I personally will nt use this until my fingers are within two inches of the blade. I also have decades of using power saws and can concentrate on both safety and accuracy. This does take practice.
Sandwich slices, simply cut the standard length cuke on the vertical axis not the horizontal.
See our standard length cucumber fits nicely.
Again safety is important.
We will need garlic and I forgot to pick up peeled cloves.
One of the pickling liquids.
Jars with sandwich slices, garlic, dill and I think clove. Definitely Bay leaf.
Works for slices too.
Do not put mandolines in dishwashers, that is a special imported mandoline washing machine.
Cucumber up against the cP(P) about to be trimmed, note both ends of the cP(P) are gone.
Standard lengths quartered.
The mandoline washing machine also does dishes.
Cucumbers in liquid being brought to temp.
Ready to be put in the jar.
Apres Pickle.
I will publish this now and add the titles and sources of the pickles I made later today or tomorrow.
Added on Nov. 1, 2009
In the first pickle post there were two watermelon pickles:
watermelon pickles from Putting Food By page 310, I think the 3rd not the fourth edition.
watermelon pickles from Small Batch Preserving pp 159
The second post was the Traditional Dill Pickles from Charcuterie pp 71
increased to 10 pounds.
The third post was turned into the following pickles, 5 lbs each:
short brine slices and spears - Putting Food By page 312
Dill Sandwich Slices Ball's - Complete Book of Home Preserving page 302
--also 5 lbs done as chips or horizontal slices.
Traditional Garlic Dill - Small Batch Preserving page 132
Sweet Garlic Dills - Small Batch Preserving page 134
Curry Pickle Slices - Small Batch Preserving pp 136
Sweet Pickles - Putting Food By page 306
Pickles II
A Traditional Dill Pickle - Charcuterie pp 71
Now I mentioned that I have 46 pounds of Kirby cucumbers.
When I met Michaell Ruhlman May of 2008, in Cleveland May 2008, we served him lunch. I had brought a pate, the one featured in the blog top photo, several other dry cured sausages (recipes to be found in Charcuterie as is that for the proscuitto) and some pickles, from fall 2007. Michael asked if any were natural, as in the one on page 71 of the book. No, was my answer.
Well this is my first attempt at that pickle, and as described in the book, worked quite well. I don't know what the preserving method has done to it, but will blog on that when I open the jars. I've still five of the pickles in the garage reefer in brine.
Half a bushel of Kirbys. I'll use 10 pounds, the Charcuterie recipe calls for 10 cucumbers, about a pound. This does scale quite nicely however.
I have decided that this is the pickling spice described on page 70 of Charcuterie and not for the watermelon pickles. I will use it in a number of recipes for pickles this weekend.
The spice mixed with salt for the brine, Kosher salt.
The cucumbers, or some of them at the bottom of a food safe 5 gallon plastic container, they will live there for three weeks.
Mise en place for the pickling spice, the Knob Creek is for apres pickle.
Jars, 46 pounds is a lot of pickles, 2-3 year supply in most flavors. Note that most are filled with pickles. Yes that is over 7 dozen pint jars of pickles.
Those are the pickles after three weeks in brine.
A single pickle.
Sliced
And what won't be canned, six more pickles.
Cut to length for the jar, before being quartered.
Jars of the traditional dill before being processed. I also processed spears.
I could not find a processing recipe using only brine, but did find one using brine and vinegar (5%), 50% each so I used that as instructed for 10 minutes.
I don't know what the processing will do to the taste texture, but if I want these to last for more than a few months it need be done. Perhaps it won't be repeated. I will report back.
Pickles
In September I pickled. Cucumbers and watermelon.
Watermelon rind made up two different recipes, one from Putting Food By, 4th edition revised, page 310; the other from Small Batch Preserving page 159. Both appreciated.
First start with a watermelon, actually we used two. 
Halve, then quarter, then eight, then slice the eights into 3 pieces each. This gives you something the size above. Then remove the meat, as we are pickling the rind. Today's watermelon has no rind, so these pickles are thin. These pieces are a good size to then remove the skin from.
And cut into bite sized pieces.
Two different views of the process. I don't know what to do with the meat. There are frozen deserts that will use it, I tried jelly but with no sucess at all.
I'm not certain if that is used in the watermelon or with the bushel of cukes. You can just see the box in the lower right corner. A bushel of cucumbers is not quite 50 pounds.
Then the pieces are cooked, you want to retain some crispness through the hot water bath process, but if they arent precooked the will be too crisp. Two pots, two recipes.
Cloves, cinamon sticks and sliced lime for one of the batches.
The actual liquor one batch will be processed in. This is what fills the jar of watermelon rind pieces.
Just before lids, rings and 10 minutes in the bath.
Peter, for whom the pickles were made and one variant is named Rocky Watermelon Pickles for.
Next up: Traditional Dill Pickles from Ruhlman's and Polcyn's Charcuterie with instructions on how to can them.
Remember I've got 46 pounds of cucumbers to do something with, besides 10 pounds devoted to the above Traditional Dills, there will be Short Brine, Dill Sandwich Slices, Sweet Garlic, Curry Pickle Slices, Sweet and Traditional Garlic Dill. Some of these will be put up in a double batch with two different shapes, spears, slices and sandwich slices being the shape variations. Do come back for more.
The Pickle Prince of Pomona (which is how my wife insists on labeling my pickles.
Fabrication, butterflied leg of lamb
In the spring, my local supermarket Shoprite has specials on leg of lamb from New Zealand. My wife and I buy as many as we can, well 4-6 anyway, and with the trusty hacksaw, I cut them in to halves or thirds. The above is such, fabricated last spring. Plain old hacksaw, with pipe blade, used for nothing else and goes in the dishwasher after. It should be a bone saw, maybe next year.
You want a knife with a decent length blade and very sharp. I use this boning knife, this is a Henckels, probably a 31024-140.
Starting at the top, slice down to the bone for the full length of the bone.
Then start carefully working your way around the bone, to dissect it out.
That is the leg of lamb sans bone. Notice how the right is about 3 times as thick as the left? We will get to that.
The bone, saved for lamb stock. Why not lamb stock? We have trout, lobster, vegetable, chicken, pork, veal and dark beef already.
Stuffing ingredients. You can find where the recipe is from Saturday PM, here. That web site has instructions on decoding WSSSP 129.
Chopped fine.
What we did with the thick portion of the leg, was to slice it the thickness of the thin portion, until about 3/4" from slicing all the way through. Roll the still thick upper portion over to the right and repeat. As you can see we now have a wide, moderately thin and even piece of lamb.
Stuffing on top.
Roll tight and tie.
Wrap in plastic until needed.
Dinner, more pictures at the above link.
Nice meal on a day like this.
The Foodie Blog Roll
Should be getting back to stocks, sausage and smoking real soon now.
The Managment