2011 St. Patricks Day - Not like any other for me

Last year, I pulled out all the stops and put on an amazing St. Patricks Day dinner.  I brined my own beef brisket, cooked it up with potatoes and cabbage and made my favorite bread pudding recipe for desert.  I love brining my own Corned Beef, it's far superior to anything you can buy, and you can skip the nitrates.  But, this year is a whole different situation.  I have since left my married life and I'm living as a single mom off and on as I share custody with my ex.  A full corned beef would be a crazy amount of food for me and my girls.  But I figured, what the heck - plenty of sandwiches later.  But, the economy being what it is, and the divorce doing what it has to my own personal economy, I can't justify buying an entire brisket to corn when I have just $60 to make it to the next paycheck.  So what to do.

I decide, while I'm feeling sorry for myself, to pick up one of my favorite books, in the spirit of St. Patrick's Day.  Angela's Ashes.  Frank McCourt's memoir of his extremely challenging and poor childhood in Ireland and the U.S.  This book always makes me feel grateful for what I have, and points out to me the hell that human beings can survive.  After re-reading the part in chapter three about Frank's mother, Angela, managing to get a pig's head for Christmas dinner.  That's all they could afford, and they were lucky to get it.  To top it off, there isn't enough coal to cook the pig's head, and the boys and their father have to go out on the streets to scrounge for coal to get their Christmas dinner cooked.  I won't even begin to go into the hell that their living conditions were.  I will just say, that's enough to make me stop whining about not being able to have corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick's Day. 

So - I decide to thoroughly go through my pantry and figure out just what we can have for St. Patrick's dinner - I have managed to find 6 lamb chops left from the 4-H sheep Cordelia raised a couple of years ago, and I decided to take with me when I left my married life - tightly wrapped, and due to be used.  There are 3 potatoes in the bottom of my fridge needing to be boiled up and mashed up with some butter and milk, and, hello!  A bag of frozen peas in the back of my freezer.  Voila!  St. Patrick's day dinner is good to go, and I'm counting my blessings!  Lamb chops!  Yum! 

Hmmm - and desert?  I know apple pie doesn't sound Irish - it's all American right?  Well, apples were a big part of the Celtic diet, and I already have the apples sliced and frozen in my freezer.  I just need to make a pie crust, put the apples in it with sugar, butter, cinnamon and a little lemon zest, all of which I have on hand, bake it, and we have a traditional Irish desert for St. Patrick's day. 

Hopefully I'll pull of of this off, and hopefully everyone else out there will have a wonderful, nourishing, and plentiful St. Patrick's Day. 

'Beannachtam na Feile Padraig!'
Happy St. Patrick's Day!

P.S. - when the money situation lightens up a bit, I still plan to corn that brisket and have myself a belated St. Patrick's Day dinner. 

Prosciutto update

A little over two weeks ago I was inspired to try my hand at making duck prosciutto.  I got the idea from one of my favorite blogs Michael Ruhlman's Blog.  He posted a quick blurb about these two ladies, Kim and Cathy who are putting on a Charcutepalooza - or a year of "making meat".  Their first project was duck prosciutto which is suppose to be one of the easier meats to cure.  They used Michael Ruhlman's and Brian Polcyn's book Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing, which I just happen to have in my cookbook collection.
Well, a couple weeks later, plus a few days, I decided to unwrap my duck breasts and see what I had.  I was so upset when I saw this.  I panicked!

AHHHH!  MOLD! 
Well, after a little panic time I calmed down and did some research, including reviewing my Charcuterie book - No need to panic.  The mold, both green (bad) and white (good) was only on the surface.  It hadn't gone any further.  I good cleaning with some white vinegar and patting dry and wrapping and refrigerating and we were good to go.  I got brave yesterday had a little taste.  Yum!  Perfection! 
So today I fixed myself a nice little prosciutto lunch - prosciutto, garlic jack from Loleta Cheese Factory and some 3 bean salad. 

It was sooooo good!  My oldest daughter decided to give it a little try.  I love when I feed her something I made and her eyes roll up in her head with pleasure at how good it tastes.  She's hooked!  So, the duck prosciutto turned out to be a success.  What next?  Bacon maybe?  Hmmmm.

Waiting on proscitutto and hoping to get better.

My life, for the past 8 months has been a constant go go go, with little time to myself. I think it's finally all caught up to me. This week I finally hit the wall emotionally and physically.  Today I had to just stay home, for the whole day, hope that losing those few extra dollars doesn't put me over the edge financially, which  I'm not sure why I'm worried about that, I'm already over the edge, and hope that this fever I've been living and working with for the past 3 days will finally go away.  I think the fever is making me delirious, because I almost had myself convinced that my body is just running hot naturally in defense of my impossible to heat freezing cold house. 

Which brings me to my prosciutto project. ("I've got a natural meat locker, I might as well cure meat.")

The instructions said the duck breasts should lose 30% of their original weight - and that should take a week.  The week has come and gone.  They weren't at 30%.  So, after God knows how many hours of sleep today, I wandered into my refrigerator - um I mean kitchen - and got a cup of coffee - and there were my duck breasts out in the meat locker/foyer staring me down.  Hmmm.  I wonder.

At 30% weight loss they should weigh 11.9 ounces. 

They are at 12.9 ounces today!  One more ounce to go.  I'm thinking they may just be ready by this Sunday - which would be 2 weeks from the beginning of this project.  I guess I should have factored in the moisture of the North Coast and of this house.  I think when Michael Ruhlman said they should hang in a moist area that always stays between 50 and 60 degrees, he wasn't thinking about those of us who live in a rain forest. 

As for the other part of my charcuterie experiment with the duck, the duck confit came out perfect!  I didn't get pictures unfortunately.  It was all I could do to get dinner together last night.  I was feeling pretty under the weather, but my 12 year old and 7 year old raved about the duck!  How many kids can say their mom serves up duck confit for dinner?  Way better then anything from a fast food joint!  They even loved my botched first attempt at homemade pumpkin gnocchi.  So ill or not, I've still got it in the kitchen. 

The rest of my day, that which hasn't been spent sleeping or weighing meat, has been spent checking out video's from IFC and discovering this funky new show called Portlandia.  When I saw this video called "Is It Local", I had to laugh.  To me this clip doesn't just poke fun and Portlander's, but at all of the local food activists out there who take things to ridiculous extremes ( we American's can really get carried away with our causes).  Don't get me wrong, I'm all about eating local when you can and in season, but you have to admit, there are some nutjobs out there who come close to taking it to this extreme.
Here's your chuckle for the day.  Enjoy! 

And I swear the last time I ate at a restaurant in Portland this lady was our waitress! 

Duck Prosciutto and More

A couple of years ago I got the book Charcuterie written by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn.  I love this book, I can spend hours looking at it, but so far the only thing I've managed to actually make out of it is is my corned beef.  I haven't been brave enough to try the "real" cured meats in the book, but I've been itching to do it. 

A couple of weeks ago a couple of things inspired me to finally take a chance.  First this post on Ruhlman's blog about a couple of women (Kim Foster andCathy Barrow) who have decided to put on a CharutePalooza challenge.  The second motivator was, that my house is so damned cold that my entry way is at the perfect temperature to hang meat to cure.  I figured I've got lemons, I might as well make lemonade - or more like I've got a natural meat locker, I might as well cure meat.

Their first challenge turned out to be a simple one - duck prosciutto, so I decided to give it a shot - the biggest challenge is living in Humboldt and trying to find duck breasts.  I didn't want wild duck, I didn't think it would be fatty enough. Turns out there is no such thing as just duck breasts in Humboldt County grocery stores, but there is this wonderful person named Pixie who owns a great little meat market by the name of Loleta Meat Market.  If you live in Humboldt, I highly recommend her homemade sausages.  They're to die for!  I gave Pixie a call, asked her if she had any duck.  Turns out she did.  Then came the hard question, "would you be willing to bone it out for me?"  The answer was no.  But then I asked if she could just cut out the breasts for me - that was a yes.  When I showed up Friday night, 45 minutes after her closing time, she welcomed me to the back of her butcher shop, pulled out the boned duck - turns out she did bone the thing - and proceeded to tell me how much fun she had doing it, and lovingly presented every part to me.  I told her what my plans were, and now I hope it comes out good, because I owe her some duck prosciutto now.  She zipped it up in a bag, charged me a nominal fee and I was on my way. 

Pixie rocks like Iron Maiden by the way - she's a rare creature - a female butcher.  She's one of my heroes.

So, back to the duck prosciutto:

I pulled out my Charcuterie cook book, and also referenced Michael's blog for the instructions.  First I packed the breasts in salt.  I got a little creative - using ideas from Charcuterie and I crushed juniper berries and added them to the cure.  (Those aren't bugs in the pictures - they're juniper berries - I promise. )

I covered them with plastic wrap and set them in the fridge to cure for 24 hours. 

Tonight I pulled them out, rinsed them, thoroughly dried them, dusted them in white pepper, wrapped them in cheese cloth and hung them in my "meat locker" of an entry way.

Now, not being the kind of person who likes to waste food I decided I would take the legs from this duck and make duck confit.  So I started that little project tonight as well.  I used Ruhlman's recipe from his blog instead of the one he has in Charcuterie because it calls for olive oil, which is much cheaper then duck fat.  I also used the spices he suggested on his blog.  Fresh ground pepper, coriander, thyme, oregano, garlic and brown sugar.  This is now curing in my refrigerator, and will spend 10 to 12 hours in a 180 degree oven tomorrow after curing for 24 hours. 

Speaking of duck fat - I then decided it would be a cool idea to get as much fat out of the remaining carcass as I can, save it and use it to fry up some potatoes in later.  When I'm done with that, I'll take the roasted duck, the neck, the leg bones and the giblets, throw in some onion, carrots and garlic and cover them in water and make duck stock.  I bet that's going to make for some yummy soup later!

So - one duck for $20 turns into prosciutto, confit, and soup stock for another day. 

So stay tuned ............ I'll be back to let you know how it all turns out. 

St. Patty's update, better late then never

There it is! My wonderful corned beef, corned personally by me. And man was it good! It didn't have that red coloring that you get when you buy one in the store, because I didn't have any of the insta cure no. 1. But it didn't look as disturbingly gray as I thought it would. It just looked like a beef brisket (purchased locally at Loleta Meat Market). It also wasn't as dry and tough as the ones I've had from the store. It was more tender, and the texture was softer. Another difference is, I didn't just cook it in pickling spices like you do with the ones from the store. I brined it with pickling spices, but I used a boquet garnis, or a spice bag filled with bay leaves, coriander seeds, allspice, and a dried chile. It gave it a subtle but distinct difference from store bought. That slight taste of allspice really made it unique. Another thing a friend of mine pointed out, is that it still tasted like beef. She noted that the ones from the store taste like pickling spices, and you don't really taste the meat, in mine, you could still taste the meat. I would say that's a good thing.
I got the idea for brining my own corned beef from Bon Appetite (you should be able to find the recipe at epicurious.com). I made my brine slightly different from theirs. I borrowed a few things from the brine method out of Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman.
Otherwise I followed Bon Appetite's recipe for cooking it on St. Patty's. I cooked it in Guiness Stout with the spice sack I mentioned above, turnips, potatoes, carrots, and cabbage. I made the horseradish cream and guiness mustard from Bon Appetite as well. It was all worth every minute of my time, and was topped off by my Bailey's Bread Pudding topped with a hard cream sauce. YUM!
Then the next weekend it was off to Chico to spend Easter with the in-laws which I got to do no cooking, but enjoyed every bit of food, as the scale will attest.
Unfortunately the only food picture I have of the Easter feast is this one:


These turned out to be some very comforting and delicious scalloped potatoes that went along great with the ham asparagus and rolls.
Then the next weekend was John's birthday. I made my Mom's potato salad recipe (sweet pickles, not dill)and I boiled corn on the cob, while John made his own special rub and BBQ'd pork ribs, which he later doused in Stubbs BBQ sauce. The first set of ribs came from a pig our friend raised locally. John helped with the culling ( a story you don't want to hear). Those ribs came out incredibly good. Slightly spicy, the fat was crisp on the outside, soft on the inside, and the meat tender. The other ribs came from a wild boar that John and his friend Pat had killed the year before.

We still haven't got the hang of cooking wild boar. The meat fibers are shorter, and it's way too easy to over cook. They would have been wonderful, if we had teeth like a lion.

Then, the next reason it has taken me so long give an update on my brisket, is that one of our 3 pregnant goats decided to have her kids the next weekend. This will (hopefully) be the next adventure in our culinary experiences. I'm planning on learning a few goat meat recipes in the future. These cute little kids:



will be ending up on the menu in the future. I know, how could you eat such a cute thing? But believe me, when they get big and have horns and start butting you and your children, it's not so hard. They start to look mighty delicious! So, bon appetite, hopefully it won't be so long until I post again.

Corned Beef

Saint Patrick's Day is coming! My once o' year chance to eat Corned Beef and Cabbage. I know that Corned Beef isn't actually the traditional meal eaten in Ireland for St. Paddy's day. Corned Beef is an every day food, the food of the working class. The Irish are far more likely to eat a good Lamb Stew, which sounds good too, and I'm always tempted every year to make Lamb Stew instead, but I always break down and do the Corned Beef and Cabbage, because it's the one time of year I eat it, and it is incredibly delicious comfort food.
This year, I have decided to take the Corned Beef to a new level. I happened to see a Bon Appetite magazine for the month of March, and there was this mouth watering picture of a corned beef sandwich on the front. The image drew me to the magazine and made my stomach growl. I had to buy this magazine, I couldn't be stopped! It must be mine! I was so excited when I got home

So, I saw the recipe for brining your own corned beef, and thought, "I can do this!"

The Bon Appetite Recipe was simple. A 6 lb Beef Brisket being brined in beer, water, sugar salt, pickle spices, and, if available, Cure Number 1, which of coarse was not.
Thankfully, the cure is not necessary. It's merely the agent that makes the corned beef red. So, my corned beef will be gray, not red.

Ruhlman's recipe (from his new Charcuterie book that I recently bought) was also simple. The only difference was that he did not include beer, he called for a little more salt, white sugar instead of brown,garlic, and the cure was not optional in his recipe. So, when he said cure for 5 and Bon Appetite said 8, I went with 8, since I couldn't get the cure. Just a safety thing I guess.

So Kim's recipe is: a 5 1b brisket brined in 4 cups water, 2 cups Bass Ale, 1/4 cup pickling spices, 2 garlic cloves 2 cups course kosher salt, 1 cup brown sugar. I would have put in the cure if I could have acquired some in time for starting the cure. Oh Well, A gray brisket is better than no brisket.

So, the brisket is currently out in the garage fridge brining away. This is day two ( and the garage smells like Corned beef! It's Awesome!). On Wednesday I'll take it out, and stir up the brine and turn over the brisket and let it brine for another 4 days. Sunday it should be done, which means time to cook it up with potatoes, carrots, turnips, and, of course, cabbage Monday afternoon.

I'm so excited to see what my cured corned beef tastes like. Will it be similar to what I buy, or very different, and if so, how will I feel about that? I'm not sure what to expect. So we shall see. I hope it's good.
So, I'll let you know, and in the mean time. Top O' the Mornin' to ya'

And in the words of Yeats:

"Irish poets learn your trade
Sing whatever is well made.
Scorn the sort now growing up
All out of shape from toe to top,
Their unremembering hearts and heads
Base-born products of base beds.
Sing the peasantry, and then
Hard-riding country gentlemen,
The holiness of monks, and after"
Porter-drinkers' randy laughter;
Sing the lords and ladies gay
That were beaten into the clay
Through seven heroic centuries;
Cast your mind on other days
That we in coming days may be
Still the indominitable Irishry.

W.B. Yeats, Under Ben Bulben