Salted Smelt: The Midwestern Anchovy

20 Monday May 2013

Posted by in Cured Meats, Fish, Making Charcuterie

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We have moved. We are still in boxes, but we are in our new home. Before we left though, there were things I had to take care of. I went to some of my favorite restaurants, I ran my old running routes, and I cleaned out our fridge. In the meat drawer of our fridge sat a glass container that had been there so long I barely recognized it. A week before we left, I was reminded what it was – smelt, little fresh water fish with a small, but fervent following in Chicago. A few days before we left,  I finally tried the smelt I had been salting and preserving like anchovies for over two years. Continue reading »

Preserved Blood Orange.

13 Monday May 2013

Posted by in Condiments and Pickles

≈ 3 Comments

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Surely others have preserved blood oranges in salt before. If they haven’t, and if you haven’t, next winter give it a shot and you will find the same unexpected result that I did. I have  preserved lemon, preserved buddha’s hand, and preserved smoked limes in a similar fashion and the results of the lemon and lime were expected. They were deceptively savory. In fact, there would be almost no pastry application that I would advocate for with either of them. The buddha’s hand is one of my favorite condiments. It is sweet and acidic – it is like adding salt and acid in a large amounts. My thought with the blood oranges was that it would be similar to the lemons and limes and turn into a mysteriously savory ingredient. I was wrong. Continue reading »

Pickled Cherry Blossoms

10 Friday May 2013

Posted by in Condiments and Pickles

≈ 5 Comments

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As alluded to multiple times this Winter and Spring, we are moving. We are moving next week. Holy Moses. Moving is awful, but moving away from a place you love is worse. I moved to Chicago 13 years ago and love this city. I love Chicago, but once we had kids, our clock started running. Still I love Chicago.

There are infuriating aspects about Chicago, to be sure. It is huge city made up of little burghs with individual personalities all their own. Like people, some of the neighborhoods here are jerkstores and, with others, there are not enough hours in the day to spend with them. It is a city big enough to become lost in, but friendly enough to never feel lost. There is art, green space, and amazing restaurants. My adult life has been spent in the city. Many of my most memorable moments have happened here. Continue reading »

Tare Cured Jowl

06 Monday May 2013

Posted by in Bacon Making, Cured Meats, Making Charcuterie, Pork, Smoked Meats

≈ 1 Comment

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One bowl from my first two gallons of homemade ramen and I was hooked. It was not the best, but it was mine and it put the bug into me. Tinkering on the recipe to improve it, or in some cases make it worse, was a new “hobby”.  From the order of operations to the ratio of bones to water to the time boiled, the process is set up to make it your own, but the part of the process that pleases me the most is the fabrication of the seasoning, the tare. Continue reading »

Smoked Plantain Chorizo

02 Thursday May 2013

Posted by in Bacon Projects, Making Charcuterie, Pork, Sausages, Smoked Meats

≈ 2 Comments

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This is an all too common tale of things that taste good together outside of sausage casing are great when encased together. One of my absolute favorite combinations is chorizo and banana/plantain. The sweet flavors from the fruit goes so well with the deep and piquant flavors of chorizo, a vastly underrated sausage that it is terribly easy to make at home. I happened to have a few plantains on hand and, with the smoker already running, I thought to take it one step further and smoke the plantains.

Continue reading »

Tongue Cecina

29 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by in Offal

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Walking around Logan Square, I spend a lot of time ducking into and out of little mercados. I see things for which I do not have much context, but some reason stick in my mind, even when I may not initially realize it. It was the odd phenomenon of trying to describe something I had seen, what ended up being “cecina”, to my wife without having the words that planted the seed for this project in my mind. There were thin sliced lean cuts of beef marinating in red liquid in the meat case, but I could not remember the name – finally it came to me in the middle of a work meeting. Continue reading »

Toasted Preserved Lemon Salt Cured Bacon

22 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by in Bacon, Bacon Making, Bacon Projects, Charcuterie, Cured Meats, Making Charcuterie, Pork, Smoked Meats

≈ 3 Comments

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Twitter again has proven to be a petri dish for ideas. I have been using this salt for four months or so when it was suggested that you might be able to cure meat using preserved lemons. I suggested one better, use the residual salt to actually do the curing. It takes the guess work out of how much to use. Continue reading »

Lamb Neck Terrine with Grapes

19 Friday Apr 2013

Posted by in Lamb, Making Charcuterie, Pâtés and Terrines

≈ 1 Comment

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Inspiration and ideas are great things, but without execution, they disappoint. This was an idea from a long time ago, but sloppy execution took it from the must-have-again list to the must-try-again list.

It was last fall, as I tossed a bunch of concord grapes into my brussels sprouts with lamb bacon, when the trigger was made. The concords were roasted with the sprouts and the lamb to where you could get a little bit in each bite. Despite being a huge fan of sprouts, I kept pushing them aside to get bites with only lamb and grapes. It was a combo that was unfamiliar but amazingly good. Continue reading »

Marrow Buns

11 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by in Beef, Cured Meats

≈ 5 Comments

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In full freezer cleaning mode in advance of an upcoming move, I grabbed the most delicious thing in my freezer door. A cryovac’ed bag of cured bone marrow from Matt Troost at Three Aces (you may remember this ingredient from Valentine’s Day anticuchos). I looked around at what I had and realized that I had some levain left over from making sourdough. At first, I simply thought of making marrow burgers for Sunday Dinner. Continue reading »

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