simonthibaudeau.org

I have become a coffee nerd.

Hamburger steak with Parsnip purée

The sauce is lardons, portobello, onions, red wine and toasted flour.

• Freshly ground blade
• Organic tomatoes
• Aged cheddar
• Bacon
• Mayo
• Kaiser bun

Last night was a -very- cold night. And this risotto was just what the doctor ordered. Nice chicken stock, re-hydrated cipolini mushrooms in the stock, button mushroom and leftover chicken… Nice, simple, comforting food.

Wynton Marsalis: “At the root of our current national dilemmas is an accepted lack of integrity. We are assaulted on all sides by corruption of such magnitude that it’s hard to fathom. Almost everything and everyone seems to be for sale. Value is assessed solely in terms of dollars. Quality is sacrificed to commerce and truthful communication is supplanted by marketing. The type of gamesmanship that separates races, genders and ages by ‘preferences’ is a most cynical brand. The integrity and dedication shown by American artists throughout our history provides a most needed and unequivocal counterstatement. On the eve of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday, let’s recognize the pernicious effects of separating people by generic categories.”

via: Alex Ross

Originally uploaded by Ernest Gregory

Before Christmas, a sale at a large department store, that we shall keep unnamed, had a piece of equipment that I did not think I would like as much as it proved to be: A stand-up mixer.  Yes, that dark shadow behind the bread there is my almost brand new Kitchenaid mixer. Ever since I have it I have been experimenting with bread and so far I have had some really nice breads and some pretty average breads, but with everyone of them I get a feel for the bread even more. Despite all the hyperboles bakers make about bread being a living thing and that to make to good bread is an art and such, there is definitely a familiarity aspect to it. For example, I know when my gluten is lacking in a batch the minute it starts to rise.  I know by the touch of it that it will be a quick or slow rise. With every batch I feel more comfortable and with every batch the bread is better. For example, this bread above was probably the best ratio of wheat and white flour I have done so far, and that ratio will certainly change as the seasons change (I keep my apartment pretty cold in winter so my bread doesn’t rise as fast or as much as it would at a higher temperature so I add a little more white flour to have a little more sugars for the yeast to eat up.) Regardless of all that, making my bread every other day is incredibly satisfying and I will continue to do it for a foreseeable time.

• Torchon, French Laundry-style.
• Homemade brioche (I undercooked it but there was enough cooked bread at the ends for the 4 of us)
• Mom’s cranberry jam

Pretty stellar.

Meet Bob:

In the last couple of posts I was experimenting with techniques that are not necessarily new, are definitely newer than what I am about to describe here: Headcheese. I have made this because my father loves that stuff and I am about the only one willing to go to the trouble of making it nowadays.

To make the real deal, you need a pig’s head. Pig heads are not common in my local butcher or my local grocery stores. So I had to order it. I call my butcher sometime last week, and the response was: “Call wednesday. click!” So I was a bit surprised because these guys are usually the nicest people and always cut you a good deal. So I call back on Wednesday and the butcher goes: “yes we can have one, it’ll be here tomorrow.” Wow, quick service, I thought I’d have to wait some time but no, next day delivery. I love being in a francophone country where calling for a pig’s head is not weird. Also, to supplement some meat because the head is filled with little bits of meat but I needed to fill a terrine with it, I bought a couple of hog hocks.

I was using Michael Ruhlman’s and Brian Polcyn’s Charcuterie book as a guide for the recipe, perhaps because it was the only one I found that used pink salt to keep some of the color in the meat which I find a lot more appetizing that the gray poached meat look of what my grand mother used to make (her’s was amazingly tasty though.) So the first step was to brine the beast. That was the first issue, I don’t have a pot or a contained big enough to brine both the head and the hocks so I ended up using two containers. The brine looked like this:

• 8 liters of water
• 2 cups of kosher salt
• 1 cup of glucose (sugar works fine here but I had a bunch of glucose left from old home-brewing methods/carbonization that I have to go through and glucose disolves a lot better in water than crystalized ordinary sugar)
• 4 ounces of Pink Salt, or instacure #1 (there are other version of the nitrite salt as well)

The head and hock were brined in the fridge for 24 hours, which means that the meat will not be salty enough on its own for a cold preparation, think about that one when you adjust the seasoning of the gel later on.

After the brine, taken the meat out and rinsed thoroughly. I then threw the whole thing in the two big pots I have and added the following:

• 8 bay leaves
• 10 black peppercorns
• 1 bouquet garni (leak or celery stalk with a couple of thyme sprig, a rosemary sprig and a couple of bay leaves tied with butcher’s string)
• 6 cloves
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 2 cups of white wine

And cover the meat with about an inch or two above with water. Now the recipe asks for a three hour simmering, and my meat had been in the brine for 28 hours and I was going to bed… So I decided to bring the pots to a bare simmer and just throw them in a 200 degrees F and just go to sleep. When I woke up the meet was cooked, maybe a little too much but but it was falling off the bone as requested and still had structure to it so I my guess is that my technique worked too.

I then took the meat out and poured a ladle of the juice in a ramekin and threw it in the fridge to check the gel consistency. I waited for the hog to cool down a bit before I picked all the meat out of the skull and threw away the fat and the skin. I then proceeded to cut the meat in 2 centimeters cubes. I then lined a terrine with plastic wrap and threw the meat in.

Now the juice/gel took a lot more time than I expected. I had to reduce the liquid by more than half before I got the consistency I needed and because the liquid in the ramekin was not gelling fast enough in my fridge I had to remove the pot off the heat and then start again 15 minutes later which slows down the process quite a bit. After the liquid gelled properly I adjusted the salt and added some ground nutmeg and ground all spice in it until it had the taste I wanted (the spices are optional)

The only part of the recipe I didn’t do is that the recipe asks for cured pork tongues and I totally forgot to order some at the butcher. Regardless, I got to meet and cook Bob, and he was delicious.

What is that you might ask? Well, carrots of course. Well, not really. Anyway, this was my first attempt at one of those caviar things those chefs do. Basically, all it is carrots I grated in some water and cooked down for a while to extract as much flavour as I could. I then sieved it and put back on the stove with some agar agar. I previously had put about a cup of canola oil in the fridge. I then poured the carrot mixture in a squeeze bottle. Then I attempted to pour droplets of the mixture in the cold oil to only see the drops pancake on top of the oil…. Density was not high enough. So I put it back on the stove and reduced it more and added some salt and some more agar agar to increase the density (later of which was probably a mistake. Anyway, I tried again and it worked! Kinda. I mean it dropped to the bottom successfully and formed perly things but a squeeze bottle is not really the best tool for this and why it created those weird free form droplets, which I sorta like in their own way. Also, I guess because of the high concentration of agar, the whole thing froze solid, not having the texture I was hoping. That said it tasted great and I will have to experiment this technique again soon. I think I try to do cheese droplets next… once I find a syringe worth its weight..

Royal Oak, Michigan, around 3 in the morning.