Burger Quest Part 1: Good Stuff

Quest for the best burger part I – Washington, DC – Good Stuff Eatery

I’ve decided it’s time to start talking restaurants on here. If i’m opinionated and critical, forgive me for insulting your favorite restaurant along the way… but it probably sucks anyway.

I’m on a quest to determine what makes the ultimate burger. I know – everyone has their own (strong) opinions about what makes a good burger – but these are just mine. I suspect this search is going to go on for a while but so far I have some findings…

I got into an argument with my friend Nick the last time I was in Washington visiting Stef. We were sitting around talking and I hadn’t seen him in months, maybe years, and we got into an argument about what has become my favorite restaurant in Washington – Good Stuff Eatery. It’s in Capitol Hill and is owned/run by one of the former Top Chef competitors – Spike Mendelsohn.

I was fully prepared for Good Stuff to suck the first time I went to check it out. Walking in it looked more like a Chipotle serving burgers than a gourmet burger joint. Little did I know, this was just your typical nod to Washingtonian corporatized restaurant identity that apparently sells much more product than individual, quirky style like you’ll find more of in New York or San Francisco.

The good news about Good Stuff for me (and for Spike) is that the product they’re slangin’ is top notch. It far exceeded the expectations I had based on the corporate identity they’re repping. At the rate those bugers are rolling out of that place, I’d wager they have good reason to keep that corporate identity around too because I think it’s likely they could go running with that brand, the gourmet burger and the shake assembly line they’ve got set up.

As far as the food – the menu is simple enough… actually the perfect size for me. Just enough variety but not so much that it’s overwhelming. And, while the prices may seem steep for the size of the burgers, in my opinion the quality of the product that goes into them and the flavor that comes out is definitely worth it.

I have to put this out there – I’m a total sucker when it comes to burgers with eggs on them. That said, I liked these burgers before I even tasted the egg burger… that one just took it to the next level. My three favorites in order are Spike’s Sunny Side (which I think they used to call the 5 Napkin), the Prez Obama and the Blazin Barn. The Obama totes Roquefort (I think?) cheese and caramelized onions, the Sunny Side is one of my all-time favorite combos (bacon, egg and cheese) done the best I’ve ever had on on a ridiculously good sweet roll and the Barn is pretty obviously Spike’s nod to his time in Vietnam – basically a banh mi burger. I was worried about the Barn not coming with cheese because I have to have cheese on a burger but he proved me wrong there too. The pickled carrots and daikon combined with the sriracha mayo bring plenty of flavor and creaminess to keep me satisfied. The burgers themselves – perfectly cooked, perfect texture, nice and fat and super juicy. Quality. And they’re cooked on a flattop griddle, which I’m beginning to realize is one of the keys to the perfect burger. Another key to the perfect burger is the bun – and they have the perfect buns at Good Stuff as well – sweet and soft.

And the fries… the fries are cooked until they’re nice and crispy but they’re still just thick enough to be a little soft in the middle, which I like – but my favorite part is that you can get them tossed with a pretty healthy pinch of fresh thyme, rosemary and pepper.

Oh and the price – the first time I thought the burgers were a little bit small but every time I go I’m totally satisfied with a burger and half a small order of fries so i’m beginning to think it may be just right. They’re around $7 a piece… pretty standard for a burger like that. The quality of ingredients and the taste make that thing well worth the 7 bucks to me.

I was in Washington a couple weeks ago and we had plans to check out Ray’s Hellburger in Virginia but somehow we found ourselves in Capitol Hill and just couldn’t resist Good Stuff. The famous Hellburger will have to wait for another visit. As expected, Good Stuff delivered again and every time it leaves me wanting more. I’m still having dreams about that egg burger. Either way I’ll have more burger news soon as the search continues.

****
Good Stuff Eatery
303 Pennsylvania Ave S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20003

Hours: M-Sat. 11:30am-11:00pm, Closed Sundays

Cobb Salad

Here come the posts. They’ve been piling up for weeks now and I’m just getting around to sorting things out so bear with me. I made this cobb salad a couple weeks ago and it was pretty awesome. The whole operation takes a fair amount of prep but once you have everything ready it’s easy to throw together another one the next day or every day following until you run out of ingredients.

Key ingredients – some mixture of salad greens, bacon, chicken, avocado, blue cheese, tomato and hard-boiled egg.

I used these nice mixed cherry tomatoes just sliced in half.

A nice ripe avocado.

Some homemade bacon.

Some Maytag blue cheese – one of my favorites.

Some of my standard vinaigrette that was a little heavier on the mustard and had a little bit of honey in there to sweeten it up.

And some hard-boiled eggs.

And there you have the healthiest salad of all time. Ok, so maybe not quite… but it’s damn tasty.

Easter Lamb

Had a little Easter BBQ in the beautiful SF rain today. Roasted a 6lb bone in leg of lamb on the grill, among other things. We did the Easter/Passover mashup with the leg of lamb dueling a nice 5lb brisket on side by side grills.

 

Rosemary and thyme from the back yard + garlic + salt + lots of crushed black pepper (not pictured). Would have been even better with some oregano and lemon juice but this was what I had so…

Into the food processor + olive oil and gave it a good whack.

Rubbed her down and let it marinate over night…

Roasted over a charcoal fire for around 3.5 hours at fluctuating temps until it was about 140F in the center.

It was almost like prime rib…

GOT Pizza?

My all time favorite pizza topping combination is bacon onion and tomato. To me it’s the perfect combination of flavors on a pizza. It’s really all about the simplicity and the quality of the ingredients… for this one I used dough from Pizzeria Delfina, roasted garlic, Muir Glen Yolo Gold canned tomatoes, Calabro mozzarella, homemade guanciale, and scallions.

Let’s break it down step by step, one ingredient at a time in order of assembly…

 
Guanciale Onion Tomato Pizza

Semolina or cornmeal to dust the underside of your dough
Pizza dough – make it, buy it, whatever
Roasted garlic – not absolutely necessary but what isn’t better with garlic?
Tomatoes – canned, sauce, sliced fresh tomatoes… whatever you have – I prefer canned San Marzano or sliced heirlooms
Mozzarella
Guanciale – or bacon, pancetta… whatever
Scallions – whites to cook and greens for garnish
Pecorino or hard parmesan – optional but… great
Sea salt – large grain

 
Dough – the single most important part of the pie. You can’t make pizza without dough – everything else is replaceable.

When I have time I love to make the dough myself… maybe sometime soon I’ll share that one. Recently though, I found out something that’s pretty great when you don’t have time to wait around for your yeast to get it on – many pizza joints will sell you uncooked portioned dough that is ready to go. Just so happens that my two favorite spots for pizza in my hood sell their dough – one is Arinell’s, the best NY style pizza in SF in my opinion, and the other is Delfina, which is constantly touted as one of the best pizza joints in the city. It’s pretty great to grab a ball of dough to use yourself that you know was made right and can get the job done well.

 
Roasted Garlic – garlic always has a place on pie.

Some people call it garlic confit when they’re trying to make it sound fancier than it really is… it’s just roasted garlic. Whatever you call it doesn’t change the fact that it’s just plain good shit. It’s so easy to make and it transforms strong sticky pungent garlic into a smooth, rich, deep, caramelized garlicky paste

 
Tomatoes – if you’re making traditional pizza, probably the second most important ingredient.

I love to just use San Marzano canned tomatoes and crush em up with my fingers. This time I tried something else. It’s a pretty funny concept and honestly could be pretty brilliant marketing if it works… they’re treating these tomatoes like wine – Muir Glen Organic Yolo Gold 2009 Reserve. Really? Whatever…

 
Mozzarella – by no means the only cheese you can use but definitely the traditional choice.

In its many forms, mozzarella always seems to work well on pizza, one way or another. This time I chose this old fashioned Calabro mozzarella. It’s slightly softer than commercial mozz and has a smooth, mild flavor.

 
Guanciale – The bacon part of this equation can really just be any type of salted pig part… bacon, pancetta, guanciale, ham, prosciutto… the important part is that it’s salty and meaty.

Like bacon, guanciale keeps well for months frozen. Because it’s so fatty and pig fat is such an amazing and delicious substance, it goes from frozen to ready to use pretty much immediately. You don’t have to worry about having to thaw or anything… just take it out, slice it up, toss it in the frying pan and you’re rolling. The ultimate convenience meat – keeps well, tastes great and easy to use. I sliced it thin and fried it like bacon until it crisped up a bit.

 
Scallions – you can use whatever onions you have… green, white, yellow, red…

I used scallions because I had them – and because I love the versatility… white bottoms cooked onto the pizza and then greens on top after cooking.

 

I topped it off with a little bit of Pecorino Romano and some large grained sea salt and then, into the oven.

You can crank your oven as high as you want, it won’t ever be as hot as it gets in the ovens they use at pizza joints. So sit your baking stone on the floor of your oven and fire that baby up. If you don’t have a baking stone, flip a baking sheet over and use the bottom of it as a flat surface to cook your pie on. It’ll slide right off.

They gave me the dough in a to-go pizza box so I tossed it back in for a little photo shoot.

Oh and I top it off with Frank’s. I prefer hot sauce to crushed red pepper… it just works.

Cuban Roast Chicken + Crack Sauce

And now, back to the bird. Every so often I get a serious craving for this chicken… The thing I miss the most about lunch in New York is Sophie’s. If you live there and you haven’t been, do yourself a favor and go for lunch sometime. If you work anywhere near the financial district and you haven’t been… shame on you.

The chicken part of this dish is, in the end, just a supporting role. The sauce is the real star, the reason you eat at Sophie’s at all (other than the roast pork, of course). The meat is great, but don’t kid yourself – the reason you’re eating it is just to get the green sauce into your mouth. We called it the crack sauce. I’ve googled and searched and can’t find a solid explanation anywhere of what it is. I decided to take a shot and see if I could make it happen. It’s been a while so it wasn’t so fresh in my memory but the taste of that sauce is pretty tough to forget.

The dish is simple and you don’t have to do much but the important part is that all of these simple bits have some flavor. Chicken, rice, beans, plantains, carrots and sauce. That’s it. Nothing complex and definitely not rocket science. Don’t mess with chicken breast though – go for the legs/thighs and be happy that you’re eating chicken with some flavor. “Wa wa dark meat is fatty bla bla bla” – you’re eating chicken! It’s not like it’s beef. Shut up and eat the good stuff and leave those dry flavorless breasts for the people who don’t know any better. If you have a problem eating dark meat, you should probably be eating tofu anyway…

 
Cuban Roast Chicken with the Crack Sauce

Chicken
Skin-on chicken leg & thigh pieces
Garlic
Oregano
Cumin
Salt
A little lemon juice

Sauce
3-4 cloves garlic, smashed
2 jalapenos (I used canned but fresh would be even better as long as they’re hot)
Cilantro – a little or a lot, however you like it
Lime juice from half a lime
2-4 tablespoons plain yogurt (I used Trader Joe’s European Style)
Salt – a pinch

Beans
1 large can black beans (or cook some dry beans – obviously better but canned are fine too)
1/2 a medium onion (I use yellow ones)
2-4 cloves garlic
1 jalapeno (again, I used canned but fresh is good too)

Plantains
Ripe plantains
Oil
Salt

Rice
1/2 brown, 1/2 white, cooked with a couple cloves of garlic and some salt

And you can toss a couple of carrots in the roasting pan too if you like carrots – they go well and they’re good for your eyes, right?

————

First things first – get the rice steaming. If you don’t have a rice cooker and you make rice more than once a month – buy one. It’s an amazingly worthwhile investment and you’ll probably eat more rice because you have it.

 
Grind up the dry chicken seasoning (or mix if you’re just using ground spices), mix in a little lemon juice (it should still be fairly pasty) and rub it around under the chicken skin. Toss the bird in the oven at 350 for about 40 minutes. At that point crank it to 450 for another 5 or so minutes until the skin is brown and crispy.

 

While that’s working, you have plenty of time to fix up the rest.

The sauce was an experiment but it turned out great. It’s a creamy, green, garlicky, tangy, spicy *hot mess*. The sauce is creamy but I was at a loss as to what to use to get that consistency… Maybe it’s the Armenian in me… or no wait, there’s no Armenian in me… either way, yogurt was the first thing that came to mind. I’m not sure that it’s what they’d use in Cuba or at Sophie’s, but it got the job done… and got it done well. Add the yogurt a tablespoon or so at a time until you get a good consistency.

The Crack.

 
The beans get flavored with something like a sofrito, I guess. Just simmer the garlic, onion and pepper in some oil for about 10 minutes or so until it’s softened up and then toss in the beans and simmer until they’re nice and hot. Season with some salt.

 
At this point your chicken is probably halfway done or so. Take a minute to slice up those carrots however you want (I like to do big sticks where I basically just quarter them lengthwise) and then toss them in the roasting pan with the chicken. At this point you should have some fatty juices collecting in the bottom of the pan so you can try to slide them under the bird, maybe even lift the chicken pieces to get the carrots down in that juice.

 
The most crucial move when making plantains is choosing the right ones. You’ll be tempted to pick ones that are yellow, maybe even yellow with some dark spots – that’s because you’re used to choosing bananas. Put those ones back and grab a couple that look like they were forgotten at the bottom of the fruit bowl for a couple weeks. We’re talking black here. Soft, black and sweet – riiiipe. You see?

Slice em “on the bias” so you get some nice surface exposure to caramelize.

Sautee them in some vegetable oil (or butter if you’re feeling fatty… nothing wrong with a little butter). Sautee them in low to medium heat until they are nice and brown on each side. There’s no rule about flipping here, just get em brown.

They should look something like the shot below. The darker ones on top were actually better – a little bit crispy, good and caramelized, and still soft inside.

 
Toss those carrots around a little more and crank that oven heat for the last few minutes.

 
And then, you eat. And make sure you make enough to have some leftovers – you’ll want more tomorrow.

Pho Sho

As a cold wages war on my body I’m in need of some serious sick food. Chicken noodle soup was the obvious answer. One of my favorite noodle soups, chicken or not, is pho. Pho is the perfect example of Vietnamese food combining some of the best flavors – salty, umami, sour, spicy, sweet… and so many more. Pho traditionally contains rice noodles but I didn’t have any around. I did, however, have soba – Japanese buckwheat noodles – which are a little more healthy anyway so I decided to give em a shot. Good move.

I made fried chicken this weekend and decided to de-bone all the chicken before frying so I had a nice sack of bones in the freezer ready to boil for my soup broth. Ideally you’d simmer it for a lot longer but I’m feeling sick and was hungry so I only simmered it for about an hour. In my opinion, the thing that really makes pho broth distinct is star anise. This stuff is intensely licorice-y and you don’t need much of it. It works amazingly well in this broth. Coriander is also great in chicken pho broth but I didn’t use any this time.

Pho:

Hot broth
Meat (or not)
Noodles
Super thin sliced onion

Basil
Cilantro
Lime (or lemon if you have to but it’s really not the same)
Fish sauce
Hot sauce

That’s all you really need… the thing though, that makes it great and special, is the broth. I’m too tired to go into it but there are any number of versions… different broth for beef, different one for chicken, etc… this is a simple version that’s easy to throw together any night of the week. My Vietnamese friends will probably not approve…

If you want to make a vegetarian version you can but it really won’t have the depth of a meat broth. If you want to read about why broth made from bones is good, click here.

Bones – you can roast them first if you want a deeper broth, but it’s fine to just toss em straight in the stock pot and get right to it. Like I said, this is a quick version, so just toss em in the pot.

Water – cover the bones. I used about 2 quarts but what’s important isn’t a certain measure of water or bones, but the ratio between the two. Not enough bones and your broth will be weak.

Onion – this broth also depends on some serious onion presence. I peel and quarter an onion and toss the whole thing in. If you have time to spare, char the onion’s skin first over your stove’s flame.

Spices:
1 whole star anise
1/2 stick cinnamon
1 bay leaf

You can also add ginger, rock sugar (or regular), cloves, cardamom, fish sauce, salt… experiment. I just use what I have around rather than worrying about making sure it’s exactly like it’s supposed to be the way someone else made it.

Boil it for the first few minutes and skim off all the skum that bubbles to the top. Simmer for about an hour, skimming more as necessary. Boil it longer if you have the time, but at very least an hour. I also simmered the chicken meat with the broth to cook it at the same time and flavor the broth even more. You can roast it separately or simmer it in the broth – either is fine.

To eat – load your bowl full of noodles, slice the meat, slice an onion super thin and toss both in with the noodles. Ladle on the hot broth and then top it off with some basil and cilantro. Squeeze in the lime, spice it up with chili sauce and season it with fish sauce.

Now, this is where you have to trust me, if you’ve never had fish sauce… trust me trust me trust me. You’re going to say “well that sounds gross but since I respect your opinion so much I’ll give it a shot.” Then you’ll get home and open that bottle of fish sauce and wonder why you ever listened to me when you smell it. And again you’re going to want to leave it out. But trust me, ignore what you smell and shake it in. You will not regret. For as bad as it smells, it tastes twice as good.

And enjoy.

 
With my leftovers I chopped everything up and made chicken salad to toss on a baguette for lunch tomorrow. Chopped chicken, lime juice, cilantro, basil, fish sauce, a tiny bit of sriracha… and I’m gonna tie it all up with some mayo.

*Update – the sandwich with the leftovers was almost better than the soup itself! I will definitely be making that again. I tossed what you see in the picture with some mayo, spread it on a split open soft french roll, and toasted it until it was all nice and hot and crusty. Topped it off with some sliced avocado and wow… mmm mmmmmmm.

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

Head

Just a little preview of what’s to come… tonight I de-boned the head of what appears to have been an absolute behemoth of a hog. And boy was she a beaut. This pretty much means removing the skull while trying to keep everything else in one big butterflied piece. Fun stuff. It sounds way more gross than it really was. It’s actually pretty interesting once you get over the fact that it’s a massive head. I used Chris Cosentino’s Porchetta di Testa video tutorial as a bit of training to prepare myself…

This pig was a fatty. Fatty fat fat. The head alone weighed what felt like around 30lbs – no joke. And I won’t even mention how much it cost because honestly it was a little ridiculous, considering it’s a head. But judging by the amount of mud all over his face, I’d guess he was a pretty happy hog.

By the time I got it all disassembled (in once piece!) it started to look like a good amount of meat. I’m pretty excited about what this is going to turn into but also a little nervous because a lot of money has gone into this head and if it’s not amazing I’m gonna be pretttttty disappointed.

First step = giving the head a good shave all over to remove all the leftover stubble and the few big hairs that were still hanging around. I didn’t have a torch to burn off the tricky to get to ones so I had to just give it a proper shave.

In the end, it looked pretty much like this:

Ears on top, snout on bottom, holes where the eyes were and giant fatty jowls.

After that I seasoned with a little salt, pepper and thyme from the back yard and tossed it in a bag to marinate until Saturday.

 

And of course, in the spirit of not wasting and in the spirit of getting every drop of flavor out of every bit, I roasted the skull and am simmering it over night to make stock. Definitely the most hardcore looking pot of stock I’ve ever made…

More to come…

Baco Cakes

Vegetarians, read on. This is for you too and there’s nothing too too graphic… you can just ignore anything swine-related.

Since it’s almost the weekend, I thought some breakfast would be good inspiration. And this, seriously anyone can make. It was the first thing I ever learned to make from scratch in the kitchen – pancakes. I still remember making them every Saturday morning growing up. That was my job in the kitchen… and to this day, some 20 years later, it’s still the only recipe that I know straight off the top of my head. I even remember what page it came from in the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. You know the one – the classic gingham patterned book that was on the shelf of probably just about every Midwestern kitchen in the 80′s.

In this photo – everything you need to make pancakes. Goood pancakes. If this is it, why do we ever use Bisquick? I don’t know. These pancakes are so good you’ll never use a boxed mix again, promise.

And then, as if they weren’t good enough already, I decided that since I had a fresh slab of homemade bacon hot off the smoker less than 24 earlier, what better way to put it to use than… in my pancakes. This is the first time I’ve added the bacon twist to these cakes but it definitely won’t be the last. I figured, we eat plenty of bacon with pancakes, why not just cut to the chase and stuff it inside. Kill two stones with one bird, no?

So the first thing I did was fry up the bacon and render off some of the fat. Now this fat – from these amazing hogs – is like gold. And you have to treat it that way… any of it that comes out, gets saved and used in some way later. This stuff is no normal bacon grease… no no no this is some special stuff. Flavor like you wouldn’t believe, and I plan on savoring every last bit – just not all at once. I’m saving up for a bacon fat milkshake…

So actually, after I fried the bacon and poured off the grease, I decided to substitute a little bit of it for about half of the oil that goes into the pancake mix. I also used it to grease the pan I was frying them in instead of butter like I usually would.

So, this is how they go:

Best Pancakes Ever
Adapted from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook circa 1988

Dry
1.5 cups flour
2 Tbsp sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt – just a nice little pinch

Wet
1 egg
1 cup milk
2 Tbsp oil (vegetable, olive, canola – or slightly warmed bacon fat)

Mix the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl and mix the wet ingredients in a smaller bowl.
Mix the wet into the dry.
If the mixture is too thick or too thin, adjust with more flour or more milk accordingly. The consistency can vary, depending on how thick you like your pancakes. I prefer mine nice and fluffy so I tend to make my batter about the consistency of… a milkshake. But not a thin runny one, a good milkshake… but not an extra thick one either. Just a perfect consistency milkshake. I love milkshakes.

This is when I added the chopped up bacon.

When you’re ready to go, heat up a frying pan (I prefer nonstick – it makes things so much easier) over medium heat. I test it by flicking a drop of water on it – If it sizzles, you’re ready to go.

There are a couple of crucial moves to ensure your pancakes are perfect:

1. Don’t overmix the batter. Only mix it until the ingredients are incorporated and relatively smooth. If you beat it forever, you’ll make glue.
2. Only flip once. EVER. None of that flipping and flipping until you have the right color. Get it right the first time. You cook it on one side, flip it and it’s done. End of story, no questions.

Don’t flip until it’s done on the first side and once you get to that point, it doesn’t take more than just giving it a little color on the second side to be done. You’ll start to see little craters forming and filling in on top of the pancake. When those start to slow and it’s golden brown on the first side it’s ready to flip. Usually it’ll take a couple minutes. Then on the second side all you have to do is give it a little color and it’s ready to go.

It’ll look something like this when they’re ready to flip:

And when they’re done, they’ll look something like this:

And then of course, the marriage between bacon and maple syrup is a very stable one, sure to produce many children and last a long long time. And I’m sorry, I don’t care what anyone says about real maple syrup… when it comes to pancakes, it’s just not for me. I’ve had too many years of Log Cabin and nothing satisfies me like it does… sometimes I just need to get my corn syrup on, sorry.

Pig Party, Part II

Following the natural progression of things in my kitchen this past weekend everything kindof linked together in a big sausage link-like chain. It’s hard to decide what order to explain them in but I’m choosing this one.

So after a bit over a week of curing in the fridge, my pork belly was almost baconized. I yanked it out, rinsed it off and tossed it on a rack to dry off and develop a little tackiness for the smoke to stick to. While this was happening, I fired up my smoker…

I used to do it on a Weber and I’ve even done it on a little hibachi. It’s not impossible, just takes a lot more effort to keep the temp low in such a small space and still keep the coals hot enough to make the wood chips smoke.

First you soak the wood chips for smoking (that you can get at the hardware store or wherever else they sell grill supplies, usually) in water for a little bit. Long enough that they’re not going to just flame up and burn when you toss em on the coals… you want them to smolder and give you lots of wet, hot smoke. There are other ways to do it, but I always just use charcoal… you don’t need much and if you do it right it’ll last the whole two hours, amazingly… the trick with charcoal is that you:

1. Don’t use matchlight. I don’t care how easy it is, it burns up three times as fast as real charcoal and just doesn’t burn the same.
2. When you put the lighter fluid on you have to wait until it soaks in or the coals are just going to burn out. This applies to all grilling, not just here. Wait about a minute after soaking with fluid and then light the coals.

After that, toss the bacon on the grill once you’ve got it warmed up and smoking and then pull it off two hours later and you’ve got bacon. Voila. Seriously, this shit is better than anything you’ve ever bought in a store. Do yourself a favor and give it a shot. It’s too easy…

 
I also finished the guanciale a few days ago… it took more than the 4 days I was expecting, but by about 6 days it was nice and firm so I rinsed off the cure and hung it up over the stove. You want somewhere cool and slightly humid so it doesn’t dry out too quick.