Day Twenty One - Page 235 English Muffin, Page 238 Bay Leaf Butter, Page 89 Fried Chicken & Octo Vinaigrette

Taking a break from cooking with pork, I made English muffins. It turned out to be a big commitment of time and the resulting bread was successful as long as we didn't call it an English muffin as Andrea so diplomatically put it. It began with mixing the dough. Midway into the process, the recipe says that the dough will look like "an appendage of the sandman". Now, that is some strange image and had me puzzled for quite a while until I actually got to that point and, voilà , the creature's arm appeared. (See Sandman).

The next part was easy. Rolling the dough into balls and dusting tops and bottoms with cornmeal went very smoothly.

The slow baking was very tedious because I had only a cast iron skillet that held only a few muffins at a time. But I got the hang of how to do all the flipping - very, very carefully so the muffins do not deflate.

The final step, spreading the split muffins with bay leaf butter and toasting them on a hot skillet, was completed by John. He did a good job of getting a crispy top but nothing was going to make them full of holes like the things I thought I was making. They were perfectly edible, even good cold, but they just weren't English muffins. I think we'll just go with Chang's description of what he envisioned for the bread course, "a fat bomb."

Next on the menu was fried chicken. I thought I'd try it with just wings before jumping into frying up a whole chicken. They were tasty but on the dry side. The next time I'll steam them less and use larger pieces of meat.

Day Twenty - Page 201 - Pig's Head Torchon - Part 2

In spite of warnings in the book and some blogs, the broth was not too porky and, in fact, was sweet and aromatic with flavors of the vegetables. It will be great for ramen or other dishes. Because my pig's head was relatively small, picking out the meat from the cavities was easy and the fat and skin mostly just fell off the bone. I was tempted to discard some of the fat but decided against diverging from the recipe and taking a risk that the decrease in fat content would somehow mess up the process. In all, it was about 50/50: fat/meat where skin is considered fat. 

The hardest part was rolling the torchon into a cylindrical shape. Everything started falling apart and it took some wrestling and upper body contortions to get it to behave. I think the trick is to let it cool but not so much that the pieces no longer adhere to one another. Also, industrial-strength plastic wrap and larger pieces of skin to line the bottom would have made this step easier.

By the next day the garlic had permeated the whole log, it had firmed up nicely, everything held together, and it was easy to slice. I like lots of texture so, for me, the chunky marbling was just right. 

 

I deep fried the panko-coated pucks and served them with a Dijon and dried mustard mayonnaise dressing and some of last year's canned cherries that were steeped for a few minutes in balsamic vinegar. The look is deceptively simple; the payoff for all the effort is the amazing first bite of melting fat and scrumptious tender bits of meat.

Day Nineteen - Page 201 - Pig's Head Torchon - Part 1

"Farmers do not raise walking pork chops. If you're serious about your meat, you've got to grasp that concept. And if you're serious about sustainability and about honestly raised good meat ... you've got to embrace the whole pig...A farm turns out a head on each beautiful, well-raised pig, but nobody's rushing to eat it. That's where the cook steps in: you take it, cook it: elevate it, honor it, lavish it with care and attention - whether you're slicing scallions or spooning out caviar or boiling up half a pig's head. Turning ingredients into food, and sometimes almost literally turning a pig's ear into a silk purse, is what cooks do in the kitchen." (D. Chang, 2009, p.201)

Okay. I'm motivated. I got lucky and yesterday MSF (Marin Sun Farms) had a head available.

At first it wasn't easy to handle it without having second thoughts and wondering if I was getting in over my own head but I was reminded of the hundreds of heads I had seen in markets in China and Mexico and how preparing a head to eat is one of the most normal things to do in most of the world. And when the incredibly wonderful aroma from the simmering pot hit me, I knew that I was onto something.

I was also able to pick up a couple of items for the freezer:

 
a bag of chicken parts and

                          2 lbs of pig skin for future cooking.

The head is simmering now and all is well but I do have a word of warning: make sure that you have a pot that is big enough for the head. If not, you'll need a heavy cleaver, a hammer, and someone with a strong will and arm to cut through the snout. Well, it worked out but I don't recommend it. I'll post the next steps tomorrow.

Day Eighteen - Xiao Long Bao Kitchen review + cheese

I took a break from cooking today and went into The City for lunch and the SFMOMA. I had saved this Chowhound post in case I had the chance to go to South San Francisco. So with visions of Shanghai dumplings in our heads we drove down the 101 and found Xiao Long Bao Kitchen on Grand Avenue, the old, well preserved, main street of town. The name source dish lived up to the hype - the dough was tender and thin but held its shape, the soup was flavorful, the meat was not too sweet, and they were steaming hot. We also tried the Spicy Wonton that were swimming in not very spicy chili oil and topped with a creamy peanutty sauce. The tender skins were filled with a mixture of pork, green onions, and cilantro. These slippery bundles slid down pretty easily!

The fat and chewy Shanghai noodles were stir fried in soy sauce with pork slivers and greens. Great texture on the noodles - I'll try making these at home.

I hope to return to XLB Kitchen for some of their other specials. The onion pancakes looked really good and home made steamed sparerib with spicy flour sounds interesting. In addition to the Shanghai specialties the menu has lots of the usual dishes but there are enough new things to make up a whole meal or more.

Last week we did some cheese tasting at Cowgirl Creamery with Andrea. She is systematically tasting all the cheeses at the store and last Wednesday the theme was aged cheeses. You can read all about it on her Ridingwiththecowgirls blog.

Day Seventeen - Kimchi Stew #2

What are you going to do with those leftovers after a pork belly feast? I made up a quick pot of kimchi stew that just might be a good candidate for my own version of the dish. I'll refine the amounts later but here is a rough draft of the recipe:
Ingredients from Momofuku:
    ramen broth
    roasted onions
    Napa cabbage kimchi
    rice cakes
    pork belly for ramen
& My ingredients:
    pieces of roasted pork skin that you forgot to remove from the pork belly before cooking it
    kochuchang and kochukaru to taste
Put everything but the kimchi in a pot (clay is the best) and simmer for about 15 minutes. Add the kimchi at the end just to heat and sprinkle with sliced scallions. The pork skin will become soft and gelatinous. The whole thing is like a menudo with complex, but delicate, textures and flavors.

   
    

Day Sixteen - Super Bowl Sunday - Page 79 Momofuku Pork Buns, Ramen, pickles + a loaf of bread

Today we had a pre-game pork bun and ramen extravaganza. I started the broth and pork belly at 8 AM and made the shiitake and cucumber pickles. Wendy came later to help roll out the noodles.

Some notes on the prep:
1. I used my reductionist/simplified method on the broth. Browned the pork bones in the pot and set them aside. Simmered together the konbu, shiitakes, and chicken but removed the first two after 20 minutes. Then added the pork bones, onions, and carrots and removed the chicken and vegetables after 1 hour. Then simmered the bones for a couple of hours more. I eliminated the bacon and tare but this was still a full, rich broth.

2. I ran out of lard so used butter for a second batch of buns. Not the same. Entirely different texture and not recommended unless you want your buns to be less light, and have a cake-like texture. So unlike the soft and smooth Chinese buns that inspired Chang. Here are the lard buns at the second rise before steaming.

3. Don't forget to remove the skin before roasting the pork. I didn't and it looked great when I took it out of the oven but it was too hard to slice - and eat. I removed it from the belly and broke it up in little pieces. They were pretty good for some added crunchiness in your bun but watch your teeth!

4. This time I didn't drain the noodles in a colander. Instead, I (actually, Wendy did this) dropped an individual portion in boiling water, as soon as it floated to the top, scooped it out with a spider strainer (flat wire scooper w/ a bamboo handle), drained and dropped the noodles into a bowl, and poured the broth over it. This prevented the noodles from becoming a mass of doughy glop in the colander. I think I saw this method at a saimin restaurant in Lihue, Kauai.

Here is Andrea's demonstration of two-fisted Momofuku fun.

We' ve been experimenting with Jim Lahey's no-knead bread and here is my attempt earlier in the week. You can find the recipe on this page of the NY Times Minimalist column.

For a moist loaf that doesn't dry out quickly, your dough should be very moist. Use at least a 1/4 cup more water than the recipe. Considering the small amount of energy that goes into it, this is a pretty good loaf of bread.