Comparing chicken

About ten days ago we went to a local market that had free-range chickens on sale at a great price (.97/lb). Picked one up, rubbed it in and out and under the skin with kosher salt and let it sit for two days. Rinsed the skin and then put some butter flavored with black truffle trimmings under the skin on the breasts, thighs, and legs. Cut out the backbone and flattened it, cooked it in a broil/roast manner. Probably the best chicken we've ever eaten.

Need to see if this is repeatable, and if the chicken was that good because of what it is, or it black truffle butter just makes everything wonderful.

So went back and the chickens had gone up in price but just to $1.29/lb, so picked up two of them. Also went to Costco and picked up two Foster Farms chickens. Have salted all four of them, and Thursday I will prepare one of each in the broil/roast method and the others I will roast and probably glaze with cranberry. Then we will evaluate. And of course I will tell you, just as I promised the meat dept manager at the store I would share the results with him.

Duck posole, pork posole

Skinned a duck. Put the skin in a roasting pan in a slow oven to render fat and get crispy. Boned breasts are marinating in homemade red chile sauce. Carcass is in the stockpot. Blue corn posole is soaking with Mexican oregano and cumin. Leg/thighs are waiting for the joining of the stock and the posole, along with green chile. Yes, I know I made posole stew on Monday. Oh, I forgot to tell you about that. Trimmed out the leanest tenderest part of a pork shoulder, cut into stewing cubes. Used Hatch green chiles (frozen) that DH brought back from Albuquerque and dried blue corn posole I brought back from Santa Fe last summer. It was amazing, very spicy but the flavor triumphed over the spice. I had a duck defrosted in the fridge, and caught Emeril doing a duck posole on a rerun last night, it inspired both of us. So I am making a deluxe duck posole stew today. It will freeze beautifully, I am sure. Or if there is really a lot I will can it. Gotta go skim the stock....

Trying a chiffon cake today, candied orange sections

Something one of my mom's cousins mentioned on email a couple of weeks ago has stuck in my mind: chiffon cake. I have all of my pieces in place to make one today, an orange chiffon cake. Am on hold until hubby gets home to get my tube pan down from a high shelf. While I wait, I am going to try candy-coating some clementine sections. I am using the zest from the clementines in the cake. It is kind of a lot of fuss over a cake that I will have to give away, as that's way too much for us to eat. But the eating isn't the point, I guess. I have a quart of thick syrup left over from preserving some plums and while it is not flavorful it has a pretty pink color. I'm heating it up to the crack stage and will dip the clementine sections in that. An orange glaze with bits of zest and some of the sections should make a pretty decoration on the cake.

Ricotta crab dumplings

I think these might be a bit like gnudi, which are Italian dumplings that are like the filling of ravioli without the pasta: 2 C homemade ricotta 2 eggs, beaten 1.5 C homemade crab salad Mix together. Wrap 1-oz portions in plastic wrap and secure into golf-ball shapes. Poach in simmering water until firm. Blend 1 can chopped tomatoes, 1/2 C heavy cream, a pinch of white pepper, a pinch of salt, a pinch of dried thyme, and a pinch of ground fennel. Bring to a brisk simmer. Ladle over dumplings.

Another great Hawaii food experience - fruit and loco moco

Well, we're back from two weeks in Hawaii. The time when I always have fried rice on hand and a maitai in hand :)

I think I love all the fresh fruit the best. I learned the joys of champagne mangos this trip. Intensely floral and oh, so sweet. I'm still having a little trouble differentiating rainbow papayas from strawberry papayas. So I just ate them. Best app is just a mixed fruit bowl with Maui pineapple, nice ripe papaya, and of course the champagne mangos. I like to make sure they are all cut to about the same size.

And those apple bananas! Best to get a serving of the fruit salad and then slice a banana over it at the last minute.

Oh, and for fun, a bit of dark rum. Yum yum.

Back to the fried rice. I think I did an entry on loco moco a couple of years ago. If you've never heard of it, in its basic form it is a hamburger patty on white rice with a fried egg on top then covered with brown gravy. Of course I can't leave that combo alone.

First, I want fried rice instead of white. Small dice of carrots, some diced Portuguese sausage, a minced clove of garlic, some grated fresh ginger. Some diced Maui sweet onion and some finely sliced green onion. Start the sausage in a non-stick skillet and cook until it starts to brown. Add some oil to the pan and add the garlic and ginger. When it is nicely fragrant but the garlic hasn't started to brown, add in the carrots and sweet onion. Saute for about two minutes until the carrots start to soften. Put in a few cups of cold cooked rice. I like to use medium-grain rice, the chewy consistency works great in fried rice and adds another texture. Pour in a tablespoon or so of soy sauce, preferably Aloha brand. Cook and stir until you've broken up all of the rice into grains. Move the rice to the sides of the pan and pout two eggs beaten with soy sauce into the center of the pan. Stir it around as it cooks to make small soft curds. Yes, some of it will spread into the rice and that's no big deal. When the eggs are barely set stir everything together. Mix in the sliced green onion and taste for seasoning, adding plenty more soy sauce to your taste.

Next, instead of the burger patty, I like a thin patty of spicy breakfast sausage. So fry up a couple of those or some burgers. Or whatever breakfast meat you want, ham or bacon are also very very good.

The egg needs to be over easy, or sunny-side up if you like it that way. The egg yolk is an important part because it is the sauce. I like to break two eggs into a small nonstick pan that I've rubbed with butter. Add a sprinkle of salt and a small splash of water and cover the pan for four minutes, over medium or medium-low heat (depends on the stove). When you remove the lid the thin coating of whites of the eggs of the yolks will have cooked and the whites will be cooked. Put on top of the meat and season to your taste.

Now, where you go from here is up to you. The traditional sauce is brown gravy from a gravy mix. Sometimes I like that but usually for me the egg yolks are sauce enough. If you want gravy, make it while you are cooking the rice and meat (the microwave is a good tool for this). Then pouritovertheeggsontopofthemeatontopoftherice. (supercalifragilisticexpealidocious)

Yes, it is a little time-consuming to make, which is why I make up a large batch of fried rice at the beginning of our week stay and also cook up the meat and gravy (my husband likes the gravy more than I do). Then it is a matter of heating up the components and frying the eggs.

Learning to cook elk meat

I am a city girl, so don't encounter game meat a lot. But I have uncles and a sister who hunt and usually get "their elk" every year. Some of that meat finds its way into my mom's freezer, and mom gave me a package of frozen elk meat a while back. I finally got around to cooking it a couple of nights ago.

I've never done anything with elk other than grill steaks, and I thought they had given me steaks. But the 2-lb package contained several 3/4” slices of meat, and I wasn’t sure where on the animal they were from. It looked to me like round steak.

What was important to me was to do a good job, one that honored the hunted and the hunter. In thinking about how to prepare them, I first considered that I wanted to minimize gaminess. If you don’t eat game much, that characteristic can really get to you. So first I made a paste of orange zest, juniper berries, ground coriander, salt, and fresh rosemary and sage. Spread that over all of it and put it in the fridge to chill for two days.

Next I had to consider the cooking method. Elk is very lean. I considered what meats I already knew about that were like elk, and I realized that veal is similar in structure as it is very lean. As the meat was cut across some muscle groups there was silverskin running across the pieces. Silverskin is not like other connective tissue – you can cook it forever and it will still be a rubber band. So some cutting into smaller pieces was going to have to happen. Okay: like veal, not steaks or chops, smaller pieces. That meant the meat needed to be cooked with moisture to get tender. So braising was the appropriate method. I settled on something that turned out a lot like Swiss steak.

I wiped off most of the rub, trimmed the meat of silverskin and then dredged it in flour. I used a “jacquardizer” with 47 razor-sharp blades to run across both sides of the meat. This worked the flour into the meat a little more and provided more tenderizing. It is similar to using the edge of a saucer to pound floured round steak. Then I cut the ½” thick cutlets into 1” squares and tossed them in the flour left from the dredging. From here on it was a pretty classic braising job: brown all of the meat in a dutch oven (two batches) and remove from the pan. Put in one chopped onion and sweat that while scraping up all the brown fond from browning the meat. Add ½ cup of water to speed it up. Then add 1 clove of minced garlic and a can of diced tomatoes with juice. Put the meat back into the pan and bring it to a simmer. Put into a 350-degree oven for an hour, serve over egg noodles.

It was very good. The flavor of the marinade can through and the orange and juniper flavor with the tomatoes was a real treat. It really did look like swiss steak, really tender meat (“like buttah”) with a nice gravy of the tomato juice and meat juices thickened with the flour. Dave was very happy to take what little was leftover for lunch the next day.

Making Fresh Ricotta

I've been wanting to make "real" fresh ricotta for a long time. Then, a few months ago, I was in one of my favorite neighborhood restaurants. I was talking to the sous chef, and he introduced me to a cheesemaker for one of the premier artisanal cheese makers around here. The cheesemaker told me I could come around any morning during a certain time frame and he would give me whey that normally goes down the drain. Whoopee! Many people make "ricotta" using whole milk, but that's not really right as ricotta means "re-cooked." This morning I picked up five gallons.

The whey is now on the stove with a small amount of cider vinegar added. When it comes to about 185 degrees, the curds will start to form and I will take it off the heat. After letting the curd develop for a little while I will ladle it into a china cap lined with a flour sack towel. It won't make as much as whole milk, but will be the real thing.