Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24: Snout-to-Tail, Stout-to-Pale

photo by Phil

When you see those blue Eating About Beer napkins, you know you’re in for an adventure…

 
Earlier this month I was selected to participate in Foodbuzz’s 24 24 24 event that showcases posts from 24 different bloggers on 24 different meals in a 24-hour period. My dinner theme was a head-to-tail pork dinner with beer pairings for each course. I got together with a couple of the other guys from Eating About Beer to help make it happen. Eating About Beer is a group of friends focused on elevating food and beer pairing and just general beer and food awesomeness. To read about our first dinner that took place last November, click here.

The idea for this dinner was to do a head-to-tail pork dinner focusing on some common and some less commonly used pieces of the pig and then pairing those dishes each with a beer to highlight the flavors of the dish. After loads of running around picking up random (surprisingly expensive) pig parts, beer and veggies and doing a lot of prep, we pulled it off last night and it was great. A lot of the pictures in this post are by my friend Phil again, whose photo blog you can check out here.

photo by Phil

I think there will have to be some more posts later explaining some of these dishes in further detail because some of them were worth remembering and recreating. In place of bread and cheese as a snack before the meal, we had a few bowls of pork rinds that we spiced up a little bit. We tossed one bowl of them with hot sauce and another with Meyer lemon zest and cayenne pepper. Goooood stuff.

 
And then came the real food…

 
—First Course—

We started off with fried pig ears over a salad of watercress and radish dressed with a balsamic vinaigrette.

photo by Phil

This was paired with Saison Dupont – a light, fresh and slightly sour Belgian farmhouse ale to complement the fresh spiciness of the salad and the crunchy fried ears.

 

—Second Course—

Next up was a fresh homemade bratwurst over homemade soft pretzels and Eric’s amazingly awesome homemade sauerkraut topped off with a beer mustard sauce and some pickled mustard seeds. Check out Eric’s blog about all things fermentation Awesome Pickle.

photo by Phil

Naturally, we had to pair this one with German style beer… it just wouldn’t have been right otherwise. We went with a Marzen from Gorden Biersch, here in town. Slightly caramel-y, bready and malty with enough hops to cut through. Marzen (meaning March beer – which was brewed in March to be served in September) is a traditional Oktoberfest beer and it was pretty much made to be consumed alongside large quantities of pork.

 

—Third Course—

Third round was trotters (pig feet!) in a Korean kimchi jigae-like stew with kimchi, daikon and rice cakes, topped with green onion.

photo by Phil

We paired this one with the Hitachino’s Nest Red Rice Ale from the Kiuchi Brewery in Japan. And not only did the flavor pair well, it was red too!

 

—Fourth Course—

Next up was the pork jowls. We did a classic Italian dish of pasta all’amatriciana. For this one we used the guanciale that I’ve had curing & drying here for around a month. We served the sauce over homemade pasta and topped it off with some Pecorino Romano.

photo by Phil

We paired this one with a Duchess du Borgogne, a Flanders red-ale style beer from Brouwerij Verhaeghe in Belgium. The slightly sweet, sour tanginess of this one really did a number on that sweet, tart tomato sauce.

 

—Fifth Course—

Finally the part you’ve been waiting for… the head! This was definitely the most fun part of all of this to prepare, but it was also the biggest shot in the dark because this was the first time I’ve ever dealt with a head of a pig… or any other beast, for that matter. I decided that I really wanted to do more of a roast than a porchetta di testa lunchmeaty type of deal so I decided to take it more the traditional porchetta route. I removed the face/jowls, trimmed it down a little, rolled it up and we roasted it pretty much all afternoon. Then to serve it we cut up a few little pieces of the different parts for each plate. The round one is snout! We served it with simple vinegar pickled vegetables and a spiced mango sauce dressed up to look like mustard.

photo by Phil

This one was paired with Russian River’s Temptation Ale. This one is a sour Belgian style ale that’s aged for almost a year in used French Chardonnay barrels. It has a really interesting and complex flavor profile because of that and it went really well with both the meat and the pickles. Nice slightly smoky malt flavors to compliment the roast pork but also some tartness to hook up with the pickled veggies.

 

—Sixth Course – Dessert—

And finally, dessert. I went pretty simple on this one but also had to keep the pig prominent. Chocolate creme brulee topped with candied bacon bits. The bacon I used was my homemade bacon.

photo by Phil

We paired this one with Mikkeller’s Beer Geek Breakfast Beer – an oatmeal stout brewed with coffee. Not really much explanation necessary… chocolate + smokey bacon + smokey stout + coffee = amazing.

 

And here’s the lineup of beers in order.

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That was the meal. Now for the fun part… some more of the process…

Ear Salad

Whole ears that were simmered for about an hour with the trotters. (I think longer would have been better because they were still pretty tough in the middle down that white stripe of cartilage you can see in the next photo of the slices.

photo by Phil

photo by Phil

photo by Phil

 

Sausage & pretzels

Soaking the intestines to be stuffed…

Israel fighting with my stupid stuffer while I just hang out and catch the sausage… I think this is really what they’re talking about when they say food porn.

Testing thermometer accuracy… the digital was way off. Could have killed our yeast!

Rolling out pretzels

 

Trotter Jigae

Trotters were simmered for about 3 hours until they were falling apart

We attempted to make trotter cakes (inspired by In Praise of Sardines) but they just fell apart in the end. Still delicious. They were seasoned with garlic, Korean chili flakes, sesame seeds and salt to throw a little more Korean flavor in the mix.

 

Tagliatelle All’amatriciana

Making the pasta…

 
Making the sauce…

Slice the guanciale

Dice the guanciale

Sweat some fat out of it and crisp it up a bit

Slice the onions super thin and sautee them in that fattyness until they’re soft

Reduce a bottle of white wine in it and then add a big can of San Marzano tomatoes and let it simmer for a couple hours really low and then season to taste

And we had to test out the pairing in the kitchen too, of course…

 

Pig’s Head Porchetta

This one was my attempt at creating something like a porchetta but with the head. After removing all of the meat and face from the bone (see previous post here) and seasoning it and letting it sit for a day and a half or so, we took it out and decided that this pig’s head was just way too big to roll into itself. So we cut off one of the jowls and saved it for later. Trimmed a bit off of the one still connected to the rest of the face to make it more even, and then seasoned it with rosemary, lemon zest, garlic, salt and pepper.

Then we scored it, rolled it up and tied it.

Rosemary, thyme and lemon straight from the back yard – super local.

After about 4+ hours of slow roasting, it was perfectly cooked inside but the skin was a little hard so we ended up not using it. How bout that snout??

Cutting some slices

photo by Phil

Plating it

photo by Phil

 

Baco-choco Brulee

Candied bacon… who would have thought? I got the idea from David Lebovitz’s recipe for Candied Bacon Ice Cream. Mine didn’t look quite like his because I cut it really thick but I did essentially the same thing… covered it with brown sugar and baked it. Sooooo good.

photo by Phil

 
Israel, Eric & me
photos by Phil

 
Menu Recap:

Fried Pig Ear Salad with watercress, radish and balsamic vinaigrette – paired with Brasserie Dupont Saison Dupont (Tourpes, Belgium)

Bratwurst, soft pretzel, sauerkraut, beer mustard and pickled mustard seeds – paired with Gorden Biersch Marzen (San Francisco, CA)

Trotter Kimchi Jigae with daikon and rice cakes – paired with Hitachino’s Nest Red Rice Ale (Ibaraki, Japan)

Pasta All’amatriciana – paired with Brouwerij Verhaeghe Duchess du Borgogne (Vichte, Belgium)

Pig Head Porchetta – paired with Russian River Brewing Company Temptation (Santa Rosa, CA)

Chocolate Creme Brulee with candied bacon – paired with Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast Beer (Copenhagen, Denmark)

Here’s a little gallery of closeups of each of the beers (click to enlarge)

photo by Phil

Success!

*All of the pork came from Range Brothers through Prather Ranch Meat Company. It’s pricey but some of the best pork I’ve ever tasted… and you can rest easy knowing that it comes from happy pigs.

 
Links to related pages…
Eating About Beer
Awesome Pickle
Phil – Clubantietam.com
Prather Ranch Meat Company

KFC

Korean Fried Chicken. Well, more like Southern style fried chicken with a Korean kick. The Colonel ain’t got shit on me. King Kong either, for that matter. Fried chicken is hands down one of my favorite foods ever. EVER. It’s probably my “if you were stuck on an island and could only eat one thing for the rest of your life…” – yes, I’d eat it forever.

This can easily work as just a simple fried chicken and it would be bad ass just as it is, but seeing as how I’m equipped with what seems like an unending supply of Korean chili flakes and sesame seeds, I figured I’d put em to good use. This would definitely be better if the bird could sit in the marinade overnight, but the couple of hours I had it in there turned out to be plenty to give it some good flavor.

First step, was to break down the birds. I started with two whole chickens that I broke down and saved the rib cages for stock I made the next day. Recipe for that to follow. I broke them down into ten pieces: two wings, two thighs, two drums, and two breasts that each got split in half. So from two chickens that cost anywhere from $5 to $10 each, you can get 20 pieces of chicken. Basically a buck a piece (at most) for some damn good chicken. I think that’s even cheaper than Popeyes…

Second move is to season the chicken and soak it in the buttermilk. This is basically combining two techniques of either brining chicken in a seasoned bath, or soaking it in buttermilk. The buttermilk helps to tenderize the chicken but if you’re only soaking it for a couple of hours it’s not going to get to do much of that work. If you soak it overnight you’ll see some results. Either way you get great flavor from the buttermilk so why not bring it along for the ride.

I seasoned the chicken pretty liberally with salt, Korean red chili flakes and a bunch of chopped garlic.

The idea was that since the marinade was only gonna to hit the chicken for a short period, I bumped up how much salt I seasoned it with to make sure it was salty enough. If I were going to let it soak overnight I would definitely have pulled back on how much salt was in there to compensate for the extra soaking time. I also imagine it would get a hellofa lot spicier overnight with the chili flakes in the marinade.

I sealed that up and let it hang out in the fridge for a couple of hours.

I headed over to my buddy Kurt’s house where we were having dinner. He made an amazing mac and cheese to go with the chicken… I’m planning to get the recipe and recreate it. It was insane. When it was time to fry I filled up a deep, heavy stock pot with oil and brought it up to about 350F. You want the oil right around 325F for frying but if you start out a little higher, the first couple pieces of cool chicken in the oil will bring the temp back down. You should keep good watch on the temperature until you get a feel for how hot it is by how quick the chicken’s cooking. It shouldn’t ever drop below 325F.

While the oil was heating up I got my chicken all ready for the ball. Obviously I couldn’t just dredge this chicken in flour and call it a day. If you’re frying chicken (or anything really that you want breaded) generally you’ll dredge it in flour to dry it off, then dip it in an egg wash of some sort (or buttermilk), and then dredge it back in either flour or breadcrumbs. You’re kindof just making a batter on the surface that will actually stick, since if you tried to dunk it in batter it would just slide right off. Don’t ask me why, just trust.

Since this stuff was already soaking in seasoned buttermilk – we passed up the massage and the pool and went straight for the flour treatment. I mixed in with my flour some garlic salt and a whole load of sesame seeds. I went with mostly black ones to give it the cool speckled look and added some light brown toasted ones too for the flavor. Now the holy trinity of Korean flavor was complete – garlic, chili and sesame – through the marinade and the breading. It’s really an unbeatable flavor combination… I’d put it up against just about anything.

When the oil was hot I went to town and started bathing those beauties in the tub. You just fry em a couple pieces at a time for about 10 minutes if they’re totally submerged or about 8-10 minutes on each side if you’re doing it in a shallower pan and can’t completely cover them. The oil should be around 325F – no lower – while they’re frying.

You don’t want to rush them or they’ll be undercooked inside and you really don’t want to crowd them in the pot or the oil will get too cool and they’ll just soak it all up

They should come out looking like this and tasting even better…

 
What you need
Chicken
Buttermilk – to soak
Salt – to season
Flour – to dredge
Hot oil – to fry
A lotta soul – to love it

**Added Bonus**
Chili flakes
Garlic
Sesame seeds

The point really though is that you can flavor it however you want… experiment with the coating. Get crazy. Next time I’m gonna pulverize those sesame seeds in my food processor and see if I can get a really dark coating on it. Maybe chop up some fresh herbs into the flour mixture? Or just keep it simple and old school – buttermilk, chicken and flour. Can’t go wrong there…

Chicken Fried Tonkatsu

 

I love pork. It’s no big secret, and it’s nothing new right? Everyone loves pork these days, it’s cool to like pork. But it’s actually a great thing that it is so hip to like pig because it means we can get amazing quality pork everywhere now.

One of my favorite things to make lately is a brined pork chop. A big thick hog chop brined over night and then pan seared and oven roasted. But you don’t always have time for all that nor do you always have a nice fat center cut chop just lying around. What you can find pretty much anytime anywhere are boneless shoulder and sirloin chops that are cheap and… usually terrible due to the large amount of connective tissue they contain. They just don’t cooperate – sear and sautee as you may, they always end up the texture of a twelve year old truck tire. Not any more. I’ve got the trick – beat it. Beat the shit out of that chop and then bread it and fry it or sear it or whatever you need to do to get it crispy – torch it, broil it(?) toast it, microwave it. I don’t think it matters… once it’s pounded and breaded you can do whatever you want with it – it’s gonna be good.

No no but in all seriousness – chicken fried steak, wiener schnitzel, milanesa, tonkatsu – every culture has their own version of breaded, fried, flat meat… it’s all good any way you fry it. Tonaktsu is usually just a piece of boneless pork breaded and fried. I like to take the chicken fried steak/schnitzel method to make sure it’s tender… you just pound it thin (around 1/4″), bread it and fry it. I’ve deep fried and I’ve pan fried… similar results. Pan frying obviously seems a little bit healthier. I’m not totally convinced that it is, but I’m no expert. You’re also essentially pounding out the meat in favor of having a much higher breading to meat ratio… so let’s be serious – the reason you eat fried food is for the breading so just give it up already.

I put a little bit of a Korean twist on this too… because German/Texan/Japanese just wasn’t enough. I spiked the breading mix with a healthy dose of korean chili flakes and garlic salt. Otherwise it’s just flour and an egg for dipping.

I pan-fried these until they were crispy and cooked and then tossed a little bit of the seasoned flour and a knob of butter into the pan for a quick roux. I poured in a splash of the Belgian style trippel I was drinking and simmered it for a minute to make gravy. Side note – beer makes great gravy. In many many cases, for whatever you’re cooking, you don’t have stock or broth but you do have beer – 90% of the time, if you’d be needing less than say… a cup of broth or stock – I’d say substitute away.

 

I ate the chicken fried pork steak with a soft-fried egg (like katsudon),beet greens (the tops left over from a bunch of beets that I pickled) and pickled daikon over 50/50 rice (half white, half brown).