Coppa

Like running, some of these blog projects are sprints and other are marathons. Last Saturday, serendipitously a project that I had started in early fall was finally ready for consumption on the same day that I finished my first half marathon (in the snow and sub-freezing temperatures no less). While the running project requires far more perseverance than patience, the pride is really no less great when the results surprise you in such a good way. Especially since, for me, being patient has always been more difficult than being willful and like the half marathon as compared to a 5k, this is a more advanced project, but certainly handle-able with the right preparation. Continue reading »

Introducing Butcher’s Cuts: The Chuck Flap

It is with a heavy heart that I write this post. The project had started as experimental meat preparation with a cut of beef that rarely makes it past the grinder, the chuck flap. Between acquisition of this really nice cut of beef, preparation of the beef, and writing of the post, the owner of the ranch at which the grass fed cow was raised, Frank Morgan of Q7 Ranch in Marengo, IL, passed away suddenly. I did not know Frank, but I had grown to love his work from navels to shanks to neck and now to the chuck flap and all things in between.  My family’s sympathies and condolences go to Frank’s family and loved ones. 

As happens when you have a butcher that you know and trust, when I walked into Butcher and Larder last week, Rob approached me with a cut of meat that I had not seen before. As last year with the belly chop, lamb neck, beef neck bones, and most recently, the mutton neck, there are things that Rob has suggested that are not commonly used parts of the animal that would not fall into meat curing or offal related dishes, but rather butcher’s cuts. At first I was hesitant to blog about these because I was worried about losing the blog’s focus, but the more that I thought about it, the more I wanted to feature these types of projects. After all, the real focus on the blog has evolved from bacon making and tasting to meat curing and ice cream making to DIY production and consumption of local food that flies under the radar. We will give it a shot and see how it goes. Please give feedback as you see fit. Continue reading »

Roasted Mutton Neck a la Collins Anderson

Last winter, I ventured into the neck territory of cuisine with a great amount of deliciousness and last week alluded to the neck again. I had acquired the neck attached to the mutton’s head made into a terrine and went back to the lamb post to read up how I cooked the younger neck, but I wanted to switch up the cooking method. While I usually detest terms like “crowdsourcing”, a reader commented about his experiences cooking lamb necks at Incanto and provided a synopsis of a how to.

As Incanto is a wonderland for my tastes and Collins was nice enough to lead me down the path, I “crowdsourced” the hell out of the mutton neck. While it is not customary for me to detail weeknight dinners, I wanted to start a new feature on this blog with cooking “butcher’s cuts” as an example of how having a great butcher will open your eyes to new and delicious meals. I would describe butcher’s cuts as a cut that is not typically found shrink wrapped at the supermarket or even in the case at your Whole Foods. Think of it this way, ten years ago, you would have never found pork belly, lamb breast, or short ribs in the grocery case, but yesterday I walked past all three in the same case at the Kingsbury Whole Foods. Continue reading »

Octopus Terrine

After eating octopus at each visit to Taxim and again at Vera, I was itching to cook the cephalopod, but was alway intimidated by the beast and scared to put a plate of rubber bands in front of my wife. While Taxim and Vera do it right, I have had my fair share of mutilated, rubbery flesh and, given that I have never cooked it, did not want to do the same. I was researching how cooked octopus behaves and which method involved the most flexibility in cooking time with the least amount of risk. Continue reading »

Venison Kielbasa

It is playoff time again. I am not going to say too much about it because I am superstitious, but the Packers are my team and they play today. Last year, the playoff charcuterie of choice was a Wisconsin classic – and a year-end top 3 dish – Braunschweiger made by the Butcher & Larder. I understand this year’s version is in the works, but the Packers game won’t wait, so I took matters into my own hands.

I did not venture into Braunschweiger territory, maybe next week, if applicable, but I did make a batch of kielbasa, another Sconnie classic, and took it one Sconnie level higher by making the sausage from some Wisconsin wild venison harvested by my Sconnie father. In the North Central parts of Wisconsin where my father grew up and still hunts, the late fall butcher offerings nearly always include Northeastern European sausages made from venison scraps acquired by butchering the local deer shot during the two-week hunting season. Kielbasa is an Eastern European sausage usually hailing from Poland or the Ukraine. It is typically smoked and made from beef and pork with heavy garlic flavors. Kielbasa with kraut and potatoes is a popular Sconnie dish in supper clubs and on family tables. Venison kielbasa certainly would not be out of place in the butcher cases in towns like Willard, Marshfield, or Abbotsford. Continue reading »

Mutton Head Terrine

I am not sure at which point that I had worked with meat enough to predict when something is not right before the moment occurs when you know it isn’t right. This was certainly one of those times and maybe the first of which that felt more like experience than paranoia. I had such grand plans for a bright mutton terrine, but before the mutton went into the terrine, I knew deep down that the dish would be only half of what I wanted.

Continue reading »

Serrano Cracklins

When faced with the question this past fall of what I would do with a bacon rind, I used some to enrich a pot of beans and used a batch of fresh skin, nipple-on no less, to do the same for meatballs. Certainly delicious, if perhaps a little too precious. Faced with a slightly different challenge from myself, what to do with a bunch of rind from an already dried serrano ham, I followed Michael Ruhlman’s direction from the Butcher & Larder event and went directly for the jugular. I would attempt cracklins. Simple, delicious, undistilled, pure pork skin. But there was risk. Continue reading »

Bacon Tastings: Inovasi

Being a city dweller, despite growing up in Wisconsin, I am predisposed to being skeptical of anything suburban. I had heard good things about Inovasi in Lake Bluff, but just haven’t made the effort to get out there. Everything that I hear is that the chef out there, John des Rosiers, has serious talent. He also has serious ambition as he has opened several small take-home outlets called Wisma. When a new Wisma opened a few blocks from work, I could no longer ignore. When I got there, they were putting their first package of bacon on the shelves. It was almost like they were waiting for a sucker like me. Continue reading »

Nose to Tail Greens & Peas

Nose to Tail Greens & Peas (assorted meats clockwise from top: ears, tail, tongue, snout)

Before meeting my lovely bride, I had no tradition on New Year’s Day. We watched football, but nearly every New Year’s Day was spent the same way as my Christmas Day – in a car. Granted, my interest in food as a cultural touchpoint had not been piqued, but I was unaware of the traditions of cotechino & lentils or greens and black-eyed peas. The first New Year’s Day that she and I spent together, her mother was visiting and prepared a New Year’s meal of cheese grits,  collard greens and black-eyed peas. I did not understand the significance until she explained after the meal, but I would never spend another New Year’s day without eating collard greens and black-eyed peas.

One of my resolutions for 2012 is to learn more about classic Southern cooking and food traditions. Through some cursory research and discussions, I found that there are folks who are very particular about mixing different types of greens and how there are particular ways of cooking different types of greens. These details are what I am interested in learning more about. Continue reading »

Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year to all of you. If you haven’t noticed, I did a small relaunch with some design changes and a big update of adding a real domain to the blog. You can still access it in the same way that you do now, but the new URL is frombellytobacon.com if you want to update your shortcuts. Please let me know how you like the new look of the place and let me know if there are any projects that you’d like to see in the new year.

Additionally, I hope that everyone had a safe, happy, and extraordinarily fun New Year’s Eve. While NYE, Valentine’s Day and the like bring out the dining equivalents of Christmas/Easter church goers, we are year 2 into a tradition of having dinner at The Butcher & Larder where we were joined this year by Wendy, Ellen, Krista, and a host of others. Continue reading »

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