Fried Tilapia Banh Mi/Torta

Sandwiches really are a beautiful thing… and when they’re done right they really are perfect in so many ways. I’ve realized that try as I may, I just can’t deny the fact that I love bread – it’s really not possible to make a good sandwich with bad bread… it just isn’t. And similarly, good bread makes a sandwich.

Recently I discovered that the market by my house which carries a large amount of Vietnamese ingredients, happens to sell amazing French rolls that are perfect for banh mi. I’ve always just walked right past them but lately I’ve started taking them up on the too-good-to-be-true seeming 3 for a dollar price.

They also carry lots of fresh fish that usually doesn’t look particularly fresh but on the day I made this sandwich there must have been a good haul because the whole fish were looking particularly clear-eyed. So I grabbed a tilapia – I was making a quick lunch so I didn’t have time to go catch it myself, you know… sorry, Alice!

This sandwich was really more like a banh mi meets torta. Imagine the first interlude on Ms Pacman but with two sandwiches bouncing toward each other… “they meet! <3". Two of my favorite sandwiches, squeezed into one roll. The thing that distinguishes the banh mi from other sandwiches though, is the pickled carrot, daikon and fresh cilantro. Vietnamese and Mexican flavors play really well together… lots of cilantro, lime and heavy heat in both. So I figured I might as well throw some avocado, mayo and lime in there, as if I was making a torta. And I smashed and toasted the bread a little bit too.

But I digress – back to those pickles… the pickled carrots and daikon are what really sets banh mi apart and they are so quick and easy to make it’s crazy. You can use them for so much more than just sandwiches, too. For these I just used the basic sweet vinegar mix I’ve been using that I adapted from D Chang’s Momofuku book. You just julienne the carrots and daikon and toss them in the vinegar mix before you do anything else. By the time you’re ready to put them on the sandwich they’ll have soaked up plenty of flavor and they’ll only get better the longer they sit (within reason… at least a week or so in the fridge).

So after filleting the fish, dredging the fillets in flour and pan frying them, I assembled my masterpiece…

Good slather of mayo on the bread, smashed and toasted for a few minutes in the oven. Sliced avocado spread across the top half, topped with the pickled carrots and daikon. Tilapia fillet on the bottom half topped with fresh cilantro and then all doused with lime juice. Smash together, slice and eat.

The only thing missing was the sliced fresh jalapenos…

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.

—————————————————–
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

Chicken Enchiladas

I realize that there is a theme developing here… lots of bird-related meals. I don’t know how that happened because honestly until the last few weeks I hadn’t cooked chicken in a long time. On the average I don’t eat nearly as much of it as I do pork… but somehow, here it is again. I made enchiladas last night and they turned out pretty damn good. These are their stories…

They can be as simple or involved as you want… they’re good, cheap and easy to make. I’ve had a lot of enchiladas in my life, but until the last year or so I had never actually made them. Turns out they’re super easy to prepare and actually a really economical meal. I used cheap chicken for these but I’d recommend getting a decent bird… I used to claim that I couldn’t tell the difference with organic, free-range meat… but I can definitely tell. It looks different, tastes different, smells different. It tastes cleaner – probably because it is cleaner.

 

I used leg/thigh quarters because I prefer dark meat, generally… I used the whole quarters because I get extra flavor from the bones and all the other goodies and I get some more skin to play with. First step again – skin off, skin in oven. More chicken chips.

 

After that I saute the vegetables, toss in the chicken (which I broke down a little bit to fit in the pan better), season the whole lot and crank up the heat a bit. I toss in enough chicken stock to almost cover it and once it’s simmering, cover it and forget about it for a while.

 

After about 30 to 45 minutes of simmering, the chicken is ready to pull apart. I separate the juice from the filling and set the chicken aside. Now time to make the sauce. I use a little tequila to pull up some of the good stuff that collected on the bottom of the pan, burn off the alcohol, toss the stewing liquid back in the pan and start reducing. I also added a little tomato paste to give it some extra body.

 

While the sauce is reducing, time to shred the chicken and mix the filling. I added a little bit of the reducing sauce to moisten the filling. I had a big block of mild feta hanging around so I tossed some of that in for flavor.

 

I spread a handful of the mix on each tortilla, roll them up and pack em in a baking pan. When the sauce is reduced and starting to thicken, I add a little bit of canned Mexican tomato sauce. Now, time to top them.

 

After the sauce is on, I scatter a little more feta on top and toss the pan in the oven for about 15 minutes to warm them through.

 

Back up to the top for the final plate. I topped the enchilada with a little more of the tomato sauce and some crispy chicken skin.

Ingredients:

Essential:
- 2 chicken leg/thigh quarters, but could be any cut
- 1-2 cups of stock, broth, water, beer… whatever you have around
- corn tortillas

What makes it better:
- oregano
- garlic salt
- celery seed
- mustard seed
- Some paprika would have been good too, although I didn’t use any

- 1-2oz tequila (a healthy shot)
- 1 small can of “Salsa de Chile Fresco” or any similar tomato sauce

- cheese – I prefer cotija, feta, etc. but mozzarella is good too

This made about 8-10 good size enchiladas.