The what, when, how much stuff used for each dish
Surprise! Pork again!
A quick brown. Then onions, flour,wine to loosen the brown. Add stock and love it until it tastes so fine.
Pop the pork in the sauce, stick in the oven. Work on your pancakes.
Zuch pans from Fannie Farmer. Fried in lard. Don’t forget some potato and sweet potato mash.
Super yum fit for six.
Friday Night Chili is brought to you this week with an abundance of duck fat.
Keep it simple:
Love thy onions with a star anise and lots of animal fat until they’re smoogie
Add some crushed garlic
Meanwhile, in a different pan, brown that beef then add wine and reduce
Add tomato paste to your onion mush
When it’s brick red, add some tin toms
When your onion-tomato goob has fallen into a rough sauce, add the beef
Then add a few cups of stock and let that baby simmer.
You can add beans, but I don’t because beans, beans they’re a musical fruit.
Don’t you go buying powdered sugar. Stick it to the man and make it yourself.
Here is how:
1cup and a half of plain granulated sugah
1tablespoon of corn starch
Stick that mix in a blender until it looks like powdered sugar. For me and my big-arse blender, that was under a minute. Let the dust settle and you will be well on your way to freedom. Freedom from people charging crazy prices for something so simple ( see vanilla extract ) makes me feel alive.
This is a fantastic thing to serve as a pre-grill munchy. Opening a bag of chips or pretzels or nuts is easy, but you can do better. Dried sausage has flavor. It has texture. It has fat to warm your bouche up for some food.
But please, peel the outer wrapper thing for your guests. Don’t make them peel it. In my hood, the ladies, they cut a long piece of sausage, peel the outer thing and then slice it. Your guests thank you for not making them work so hard to enjoy your sausage. You save on napkins from sausage fingers. Your sausage gets eaten. A peel left on sliced sausage is a barrier to entry. You look lazy. And you’re not. Deep breath. You can do this.
Should you look up on the interwebs something to the tune of “how to make lard,” you will find recipes for making lard with a LONG-ass preamble of how unhealthy lard is and “gee, lard … oh wow … so unhealthy … oh but just like masturbating … I shouldn’t really … but oh I love it … oh here’s how to make it.” I hate this hee-haw, so here’s how to make lard without the guilt. Because rule number one: Lard is good for you. It is rich in vitamin D. D! Like that shit is hard to come by. It’s just a matter of time before Frito-Lay slaps a “rich in vitamin D” sticker on their packages. D is the shit, so take a puff.
Assuming you know your way around a stove or stovetop or “hob” (I can never write the word “hob” without giggling), here’s the order and your day:
– Pig fat
– a big pot
– a day for hanging around the hob [hee hee]
– a splash of water
– jars (clean) to put your lard
– dude, that’s it
Your toughest obstacle here is finding a day and securing pig fat. If you can’t secure a tractor to hang up the pig that you and your friends tied up, lifted up and slit its throat and collected the blood for sausage but just the first bits of blood, perhaps you can ask your local butcher for pig fat. They usually have some in the back without a clue of what to do with it. When the butcher fails you, reach out to your local pig farmer. Oh they are there, you’ve never noticed because it wasn’t in the cool section at your fancy grocery store. You see, food comes from farmers. Crazy talk, but it is the truth. Figure it out. Get some pigfat. And then:
– cube your fat. Avoid meaty bits
– give the meaty bits to your cat or dog or chicken
– if you get meaty bits in your lard, it will be “savory lard” thus limiting your use of such a wonderful fat
– okay, if you insist, you can put meaty bits in your lard, but don’t go making pumpkin pie.
– Stick your cubes in a pan and add a few splashes of water to kick it off
– Then cook that shit on low heat until there’s a lot of liquid fat and little crumply crunchy things
– This could take hours
– But you can do other things
– Like start your rye bread or think or something interesting that doesn’t involve you, you’re such a narcissist.
That’s it. When you get a soupy, fatty, bubbly liquid of gold, you grab your sieve (oh yeah, get a sieve to strain the puffy fatty bits) and ladle that beauty in your clean jars. Then, get on with your busy life. After your jars cool a bit you need to find time to stick them in the fridge. Don’t forget to turn off your hob. You’ll turn it on again some other time, I’m sure.
Easy, now off you go. When you’re done, you will have lard. Lard for making great stuff that doesn’t involve unwrapping anything.
Here’s a tip: never process cockerel in faded blue jeans. Zara can handle the club with the bub, but it is unknown their strength with culling the boys in your peep of chooks.
Poor radish, they need a mama. No one really appreciates its spice, its potential, its history. So easy to grow and yet what the heck do you do with them? Well, let me tell you, you keep it simple. A little criss-cross, some salted butter, you’re done. But you MUST prepare these babies or no one will eat them. They will see radish along with some cucumber or dried ham and think, “ooo ham. I love ham. How pretty it looks with all that radish pizazz.” A radish can stand alone. Don’t forget that. Or I’ll hit you.
You need:
– fresh radisheseses
– salted buttah
– a sharp knife for all the criss-cross bidness
Stick delicate shavings of butter in your perfect criss-cross. Think outside the radish. Let the radish move you. Make it pretty.
Why pay the man to make substandard vanilla extract when you can make your very own. You can pick your alcohol. You can pick your bean. You can adjust your vanilla bean to alcohol ratio. You can save hundreds. You can make gifts for friends. You can be quiet, listen and slow down.
All you are doing is sticking a bean in a jar with some alcohol. So hard? Can you handle it? Then you wait. You wait two or three months. You may need to not wait months because you’re impatient. And it will still taste great.
Of all the vanilla extract recipes I’ve tried, I chose Chef and Steward. It’s simple. It’s fantastic. Some people talk about heating or adding water and I feel that is wrong. – clean jar – some nice, juicy, wet vanilla beans – some alcohol. Stick them together, shove in a dark cupboard and wait. Get on with your life. Forget the vanilla bean project. Your work is done.
Here are some tips:
1) When the vanilla extract you used to buy before starting your new life as a vanilla extract maker says “Bourbon” … the alcohol used was not Bourbon Whiskey, it is a French island. Oh, do a little Wikipedia number and clear up some things. I’m not going to rewrite that.
2) Bourbon Whiskey might make for interesting vanilla extract. I’ve not tried it. Do tell.
3) White rum is a wonderful vanilla extract alcohol, but think about some alternatives. I used Armagnac (okay, husband’s idea. there. i said it). And let me tell you right here, right now, vanilla soaked in Armagnac is crack. “This is the best cookie I ever ate,” they’ll say. “What is this cake made out of, crack?” To which you can explain that the crack you used in the cake is but a dash of salt compared to the amazing vanilla extract you made and used in your confections.
4) Should you not live in the middle of Armagnac-ville, your local alcohol man can easily get you to the good stuff if there isn’t any on the shelves. You can then flip your hair back and indulge in all your wankery that you know what Armagnac is.
5) Don’t use dry, sad vanilla beans.
5.5) Imitation vanilla is made from wood that was once friends with vanilla. Don’t try to make that. That is yucky.
6) After you’ve used your extract a bit, you can add more alcohol to the same beans and restart your date of commencement.
That’s it. Now get out of here. Back to work.
I’ve been working hard on my Pavlova bottom. Fruit season is coming, so you must be locked and loaded to serve and enjoy this hugely fantastic, light, creamy, yummy, somewhat fancy dessert. My Pav pretty much sucked until I found Mama. I knew about the heat-oven-then-turn-down-heat technique to achieve Pav perfection, but it never worked for me. That is, until I tried this recipe. Mama has it right. Don’t argue with Mama. My only tweaks to suit my French location were:
– my oven run-eth hot. – so I did 100C then 50C
– my sugah is sweet (ah yeah) – so I used 1/ 2 cup less sugar
– I don’t have one of those fancy pans – so my simple round cake pan with parchment worked juuuuust fine.
You can stick damn near anything on a perfect Pav bottom. Whip some cream. Slice some fruit. Add a pat of sugar. Own it. Make it pretty.
And in the immortal words of our pop gawd Prince:
The gentle breeze
It blows with ease
Let’s make IT slow
Just like the wind blows
Let’s make IT last forever
For a hundred times won’t be enough
Tonight is the night 4 making slow Pav
… but I know you won’t take it slow and I accept that. If you get your peaks stiff, no one will be the wiser.
If life gives you lemons, make lemon curd. I really hate that phrase. I can think of no finer staple than the lemon. If life is giving you lemons then things must be nice and sunny. Ain’t no lemon I know growing in the dreary, rainy places (see Seattle, WA, USA). “Curd” is the real problem. Curd sounds disgusting. It is but a ‘t’ away from being a turd. So let’s say it in French:caillé de citron. Much better. OOoo how about Japanese: レモンカード *. Or Mexican: estúpido. Yeah, that’s right, the Meximan don’t have time for your fancy lemon curd unless you plop some in a little cerveza. You must always have lemons in your kitchen. You must.
You need:
Put this in a pan and stick it on your hob:
– Lemons, a couple big or a few small ones. Zest them and juice them.
– a stick of butter, what’s that … ½ a cup/4oz/115grams
– a slightly less than full cup of sugar … you do the math. Make it sweet.
Put this in a bowl:
– four eggs … and you don’t have to separate them!. Crack-a-lack them and whisk them up
Stop resisting:
You will grab a glass of wine or whatever your poison and ease your hot, zesty lemon goob in your phlegmatic eggs like the rest of us. Those other quick techniques for curd making are for children. Despite that constant need to update your facebook page with things that make you special, you are not a child. You are not special.
Melty, melty these things: butter, sugar, zest and juice
Slowly, slowly, drip by drip add the hot stuff from your pan on the hob in your egg bowl until the eggs look like they’re getting with the program. You’re warming them up in preparation for some hot action. A little ovum foreplay. Add the stuff in the bowl back in the pan. Whisk slowly over low heat with your right hand and drink wine with your left. Think of things while it thickens. Like “curd rhymes with turd.” Or “mama-se mama-sa” neither said nor saw.
When it gets thick, you have achieved lemon curd. From there, you do what you will. I stuck it in a little tart because I’m going through a tart phase. Knock yourself out. You’re A Vegetable, You’re A Vegetable … They Eat Off Of You, You’re A Vegetable, but of a lemon curd orientation.
HEE-HAW!
* Okay, I don’t know Japanese. I hope I didn’t offend someone’s mother there. Blame GoogleTranslate on that one
This sausage is strangely suspicious. And behold, the blood sausage. Also known as Black Pudding or Blood Pudding by the Brits. It’s referred to as Blutwurst by the Germans. And in France, a lovely Boudin Noir which sounds less like a sausage and more like a hot night in the red-light district of Paris. Just about every country has their take on blood sausage. Except, of course, America where we Americans find sausage made with blood a thing of the past. Something Grandma used to eat. But let me tell you right here right now, this sausage is GOOD! When done on the grill, I’d say it’s even better. Seriously, it’s only a matter of time before these babies pop up in the wanky yup-restaurants around town (with hip names of children they never had) and make their way down to a quick morning Blood McMuffin grab. For now, finding one of these sausages will be tricky if you’re in America. I know Seattle has a wonderful German shop in Pike Street Market and that’s all I got.
This particular sausage was homemade with pig blood and bits (by a man Scott with pretty hands). It’s often served with apples of some description, but we had it with warmed avocado and a salad which worked well.
You Need:
To Grill:
Girl On Grill Action 