Homemade Corned Beef (and other cured things)

An update on the "Great Corned Beef Experiment" and other adventures in preserving: It worked! I spent a lot of time trimming the fat from the brisket. I just didn't think it needed that thick coat of fat, so where possible I left just a very thin layer. After a week of sitting in a bucket of brine in my wine fridge I took out all the pieces, cut them into meal-size portions, and vacuum packed them. I cooked one for my mom, who had never had a corned beef dinner before. For comparison, I also cooked a commercial corned beef. I also sent a piece over to my ex-husband, who has always loved corned beef and knows how to cook it, to get his feedback. Overall conclusions were consistent: richer flavor, better texture, good color. For a twist, I turned one corned beef flat into pastrami. (A flat is the flat half of a whole brisket; the other half has two pieces of meat separated by a thick layer of fat and is called the point. The top piece of meat on the point cut is called the "deckle" and it is much more marbled than the other muscle in the brisket.) I never knew that pastrami was just smoked corned beef with a pepper/coriander crust. That turned out with a flavor about as good as any pastrami I've had, once more much leaner so a healthier choice. The bacon also turned out well, though quite mild in flavor. I am turning part of the belly into pancetta, the non-rolled version. That requires some drying time in addition to the time in the cure. So we'll get to taste that in another week. But it smells really good! With the aforementioned pastrami in a sandwich, we had some of the home-cured sauerkraut. It smelled rather funky when I opened the crock, sort of like sour milk, but I knew that was just the lactic acid concentrating on the cloth on the top of the cabbage. The sauerkraut also turned out quite mild. In fact, I think it would be a great substitute for coleslaw on a pulled pork sandwich. Because it is fresh, the cabbage isn't that beige translucent stuff you get at the market; in fact it still has some of the green color and is quite crisp. Now I can hardly wait for August and cucumber season so I can try curing some kosher pickles. Now, since today is St. Paddy's, I'm making a corned beef for my husband to try. He was out of town for all of these curing chores, but is very happy to be eating the results.

Bacon and corned beef

I've now got about 18 pounds of pork belly under cure -- six pounds for pancetta, with juniper and nutmeg added to the mix. One reason there's only six pounds for pancetta is that I have to skin the belly for pancetta, and it's a lot of work and time. For bacon, you leave the skin on and then remove it after the smoking/heating to 150 degrees, and that's a lot easier. Before I could get the cure on, I had to run out and buy some more tinted curing mix (TCM) because making the brine for the corned beef took more than I expected, or maybe I thought I had more than I did. Either way, the brine for the beef is now nice and cold, so my next task is to trim the briskets. Yes, I bought two whole briskets for this. I have NO IDEA what I'm going to do with 25 pounds of brisket. But it will keep longer than a regular roast, especially since I'll vacuum pack the finished product. Later today: pictures and descriptions from the "underground" dinner I attended yesterday. An amazing meal... .....but for now, back to the kitchen with me!

Homemade Sauerkraut and Other Brined Things

I have discovered that I like sauerkraut if it is good. By good I mean fresh, certainly not canned. As it turns out, patience (along with some salt and cabbage) is all you really need to make your own. So tonight I am putting it all together, should be ready in less than a week. Tomorrow I'm going on a quest for pork bellies. Gotta make some bacon. I guess that's cured, not brined. Though a dry brine is part of the cure. I'm also going to get a nice chunk of beef brisket and make corned beef (yes, just in time for St. Pat's day). Somehow I suspect that by the end of next week this place is going to be more than a little aromatic!

Duck-fat poaching of potatoes and mushrooms

Last November, when I made my first batch of pancetta, I took some of it and made a confit of it in duck fat. There was still some left on Friday night when I was looking to do some kind of a side for steak. So I took the rest of that and put it and the duck fat into a saucepan. Then I added tiny fingerling potatoes and some crimini mushrooms that we halved. Poached them for about 45 minutes, very low heat, while I did other stuff in the kitchen. Poured it through a sieve, broke up the pork and served small tenderloin steaks beside the "ragout," sprinkled with coarse salt and minced chives. Not bad, not bad at all!

Of course I have to talk about Thanksgiving dinner

First, though, I apologize for not writing recently. (Some members of my family pointed that out yesterday.) It's not, of course, that I'm not cooking. I've just been kind of busy. Partly because I committed to do T-giving dinner for the family and I don't do much for that that isn't completely from scratch. So this entry will kind of fill you in on some of the cooking adventures over the past couple of weeks that led to the end result. Like: instead of using commercial bacon in my green beans and in the brussels sprouts, I made my own pancetta-style bacon. Cured and roasted to 150 degrees, not dried or smoked. This was my first adventure in curing. It was great. Only did three pounds of pork belly, and it really was on a whim. We were in an Asian market (99 Ranch) and they had great looking pork belly. I'd worked with it last summer in my Preserving class, so figured I'd give it a try. Like: for the dressing, I baked my own seasoned bread. Put extra salt, thyme, rosemary, minced parsley flower heads, and sage in it (does that make it "Scarborough Fair" dressing??). I also used some of the homemade sausage I made a few weeks ago. Like: I made "Le Bete Noire" (see previous post from September 13th). Like: I got a free turkey two weeks before thanksgiving and so I took off the breasts and cured them, too, and then hot smoked them. Boy is that good! I roasted the legs and the carcass and made a couple of gallons of very rich turkey stock, and then reduced it to 2 quarts so I could just take a quart when I needed it and make a gallon of stock for the gravy etc. That worked out great. Like: I tried the Cooks' Illustrated method for salting the turkey instead of brining it. But I combined that recipe with the spice rubbed turkey from the November Bon Appetit, sort of. So I loosened the skin from the entire turkey, and combined some of the spice rub (coriander, cinnamon, cumin, smoked pimenton) with the salt for the rub and put that under the skin for 36 hours. Then I washed it all out and rubbed the skin with more of the spice, refrigerated overnight and so the skin got nice and dry. Turned out very crispy with great juicy meat in all places. And it was beautiful. Like: I made an ahi tartare with minced preserved lemon and some tapenade as accompaniments to the salad, which was baby greens with shaved fennel and red onion dressed with lemon viniagrette. Garnished with supremes of orange. The overall combination tasted great together and the platter was gorgeous. I taught my brother how to make little quenelles of the ahi and he put it together very nicely.

Making up for 20 years? Thai cooking and other classes

Four cooking classes in the span of eight days. Having always denied myself the pleasure of taking those kinds of classes, it seems I'm trying to make up for lost time all at once. But it really wasn't intentional. One of the classes was more demonstration and book-signing reception, for Tom Douglas' new book on crab cakes. He made five different ones, and they were all interesting. But the crab foo yung was my favorite. I'd signed up to go to this a couple of months ago, and it got postponed. So it landed on the 14th. While I was at the cookware shop where it was hosted, I looked at their schedule of classes and noticed there was a five-hour class on Thai cooking the next day. (One of those advantages of being a consultant, you get to do some interesting things in the middle of the day.) The cool thing about the Thai class was that first we went shopping. So I got introduced to a great hole-in-the-wall market in the International District that even has free parking. And incredible prices on great produce as well as an amazing selection of Asian ingredients. Lots less expensive than Uwajimaya, which is everyone's go-to place for such things. I can't wait to take Dave there to shop with me. The class was fun -- practical stuff I'll use again, and learned more about how to deal with fresh rice noodles, which I love. My second week of the Culinary Communion preservation series was mostly about preserves (duh!). As a class we made a lot of recipes; I took responsibility for making a poblano ketchup, which was great. Though the batch of poblanos was pretty spicy -- you know how they can vary so much -- so the end result had quite a kick. Would be great with a chunk of halibut or deep-fried zucchini. We also did some followup work on the cured things we did the week before. So I removed the skin from the cured pork belly and rolled it very tight to continue the process of making pancetta. That was hard work! We cooked (smoked) some of the bacon we made last week and had it with our lunch, it was quite yummy. Oh, and lunch was pork vindaloo, rice, and fava bean puree. I'm feeling a little more comfortable with the group but still a little disoriented. It's fine though. Next Saturday we're making cheese -- mozzarella, Camembert, cheddar, goat's milk cottage cheese, chevre, and maybe some paneer. Mmmmmm.