Brooklyn Grubber

Damn it

So you did see the size of the sausage my efforts resulted in yesterday? Well today I was even more pissed off, and too embarassed to show my equivalent of the thick cripsy slices of salty goodness that Ransay promised. I followed his recipe and the results looked nowt like it.  I will have another go when time permits. It really is soul destroying to get to this stage only to unwrap an anaemic, flaccid and frankly weak skinny sausage-shaped morsel from the fridge, one that doesn't slice properly. It would rather fall apart under knife pressure and make a mess of my cutting board. Not to mention a mess of my hob. The vaguely shaped slices that did  make it in to the pan spat and hissed like angry cats, and covered my naked chest and cooker with sizzling fat globules. I didn't even think the fat was hot enough! There must have been too much moisture in the sausage, I deduce.  I need more advice. Detailed advice.

They say that practice makes perfect. Well, I certainly hope so. I  need lots of it.

Pied de cochon farci (as they say in the Dordogne)

My fridge is still stuffed full of all sorts of smoked meats, salted meats, bloods and animal bits leftover from a trip to Chinatown. I had to get eating that pigs trotter (with hock attached) so tonight I thought I'd flex the old culinary muscle and try to make crispy stuffed pigs feet. I had a lot of trouble finding a suitable recipe. The only one I did find was in a tatty old Gordon Ramsay book I had in the bookcase. And he makes it sounds so simple.

In fact, I decided to make it tonight, last night. It does take some time, patience and lots of fucking around with different stages. The first three laborious tasks, you must complete the day before. First I soaked the pied for 12 hours, or overnight. This gets rid of the blood. Secondly, I had to skin and debone the damn thing. This was a bit daunting. I vaguely remember watching a butchery show back in the UK where some grimy farmer had the skin off and bone out in mere minutes. OK, he's a dab hand at it, but I reckon the bastard must have cheated, or there was some great editing going on. It took me about 1 hour. I turned the foot 'palm up' on a board and cut all the way down to the second 'knuckle'.

Then, by stretching and pulling the skin away, scoring with a knife as you go, you can take the skin off to the toes. I located the joints, sliced through the cute little pig 'palms' and cut as far down into the 'wrist' as I could. (You may think I'm using terms we would associate with the human hand but in reality, pig feet and human hands, they're not much different. When I thought about my own anatomy while wielding my boning knife, it became a whole lot easier.) Now came the tricky part. I had to wiggle the knife in between what felt like two rounded pebbles in Porky's wrist and slice away as much tendon as possible. By pushing the hand as far back as it would go, I was able to expose the really chunky joints in the wrist, and there is a pesky little tendon that connect the whole hand to the wrist. Once I twisted and twisted it over and again, I just knicked at it and the foot sprang free from the bone. I now had an empty glove puppet type thing, and a huge hunk of bone and meat, both ready for the braising pot.

Ramsay recommends braising the skin and toes for 3 hours, and the hock and bone for about 2. I gathered up a large Dutch oven, my mirepoix, herbs, oilve oil, stock and got to work. Just a simple braise, you know the stages...Don't you? I removed the meat and let it cool in some of the stock. I returned the skin to the oven for another hour. I shredded the cooling meat, and chilled the ham stock to form a jelly. The skin was plucked from the heat and after some cooling, laid flat on a chopping board. Ramsay reckons you need about four sheets of pig foot skin altogether to form a proper
sausage. I had only one. So it was going to be a small sausage indeed. Well fuck it, I just need one for me, right? I had all sorts of trouble getting the shredded meat to stay in the thick skinned casing. With the aid of a sushi rolling kit and some clingfilm, I was able to get something accomplished. Not quite the result I was expecting, but I didn't expect miracles first time around.

I did have a lot of meat leftover, which I was able to mix with some Dinosaur BBQ sauce. I toasted some wholemeal buns, drenched them in jellied ham stock and made one of the greatest impromptu pulled pork sarnies the World has ever seen. I loved it all - Greasy, tasty, spicy and wholly satisfying considering all the pissing about.

The resulting tiny sausage will have to wait until tomorrow before the frying as it needs to chill in the fridge in clingfilm, so it adopts a true sausage shape. It won't take much eating. It's a slighty anticlimactic moment considering all the effort I put in. I did manage two pork sarnies out of it though, some totally fabulous pork stock and the bits of skin I had leftover will make scratchings or chicharrones. All I was left with was a pile of bone and some gristly bits. Tomorrow I will know about true success or failure.

          

       

       
                     

There is an EU black pudding mountain...

...And it's in my fridge. 

Despite giving away a couple of sturdy nuggets to blood believers, I had to do something else to use it up. There was only one option. Could I really eat 2 portions of blood and guts in one day? Piece of piss. I had no trouble getting the second helping of pigs innards on board. 

This time however, it was dinner. I riced some floury potatoes, mixed in some leftover cauli soup I had the fridge, a dash of Colman's and I had the starchy base. I made a bit of caramel, rolled some chopped Granny Smith's in it, cooked for about 5 minutes, whizzed it up in the blender with a slug of Triple Sec for some tartness and a small piece of butter, and put the whole mess together. 

Christ, it was good. Dare I say it, better than Casimir's.

Black Pudding - King of Breakfast

After finding black gold in Chinatown, I scoured my cookbook collection for suitable black pud recipes. My first stop was obviously Fergus Henderson's incredible 'The Whole Beast - Nose To Tail Eating'. He calls it blood cake and dishes up the pudding with fried eggs. I did look at two others for further inspiration. The Bible contained countless variations for black pudding/boudin noir and I also thumbed through porn-heavy Boulevard and found a sound variation by an Irish chap called John Desmond. His BP recipe used a 7 cup dish for the final baking. I did have a 7-cup terrine dish by Pyrex so it seemed that my weights and measures should match the Boulevard recipe roughly, but I did make a few substitutions.

You will need, for a large pud able to serve about 6-8 dudes for breakfast or dinner:

1 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp port
1/2 tsp each of mustard, fennel and cumin seeds
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 crumbled bay leaf
1lb in total of pork meat and fat - I used 1/4 lb of chilled streaky bacon and 3/4 lb of ground pork
1 1/4 cups of fresh pigs blood
1 1/4 cup of cereal(s) - I used a cup of cooked rice and 1/4 cup of corn meal
1/2 cup of mixed fresh herbs - I used sage, tarragon, parsley, thyme, oregano.
1 tbsp Maldon sea salt
1 tsp smoked paprika pepper
1 tsp ground black pepper
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1 large beaten egg

Sweat the onion in the oil for a few minutes until soft and add the port. Cover, and cook for about 20 mins on low heat, taking care not to brown the onions. Allow to cool and reserve. Take the fennel mustard and cumin seeds, bay leaf and red pepper flakes and warm in a skillet over a low flame until they release some of their oils into the air. Allow to cool, whizz in a spice blender with the bay leaf until powdery and reserve. Chop the bacon into the smallest pieces you can , and add to the ground pork in a bowl. Combine with all the other ingredients and mix very well for a few minutes with a spoon or your hands if you're brave. Preheat the oven to 325 F. Put the mixture into the terrine dish, cover tightly with foil and then into a large hotel pan. Add boiling water until it come 2/3 of the way up the terrine dish, and back for 1 1/2 hours. Remove from the ban marie, and allow to cool for 2 hours, before refrigerating overnight.

I woke up with a start and all I could think about was carving my creation up and serving it as part of the traditional Full English breakfast. OK, it wasn't the FULL English, a few items were not present - sausage, mushrooms, maybe some beans. I sliced some of the loaf and cut some small rounds from it. I popped them under the grill for a few minutes with tomatoes, bacon and fried an egg and hey presto. I reached for the HP, made some tea and toast and got stuck in. Tremendous.

Surprising Chinatown

What to with a long Memorial Day weekend? I fancied taking the opportunity to chain myself to the kitchen in front of a large AC unit and whirring fan for 3 days, rolling up my sleeves and really getting down to some serious cooking. But what would I cook? I considered something unusual seeing as I had plenty of time on my hands. A trip to Chinatown might be cool, they are well known for selling 'weird' shit. As I jumped on the F train north to East Broadway I was imagining some crisply cooked goose, maybe something big and bloody to throw on the barbie, or perhaps a medley of seafood, shellfish and lots of sauce Vierge or tarragon butter. In the blistering heat, I headed from the subway west along Canal, enjoying the bustle of one of NY's busiest streets.

What was once part of a thriving Italian community, Mott Street, north off Canal, is now festooned with Chinese markets, most of them selling green produce or fresh fish. I did poke around in a few shops, eyeing the bored looking fish in tanks and oggling feisty lobsters in glass cages vying for space. One shop had a bucket outside full of live frogs, and I thought at one moment I might make some golden fried grenouille. But I just wasn't feeling the fish or amphibia, and I stumbled back south across Canal to Bayard Street, home of some solid butcher shops. I headed straight for Bayard Meat Market, a first rate and incredibly low cost meat vendor. I saw some pork loin, which I thought could be a great thing to barbecue, but it looked a bit 'wet' and that turned me off. They had some virtuous beef fillets also, but I denied their presence in the shopping trolley as I'd been eating a lot of cow as of late. I couldn't resist purchasing some of those splendid little red sausages called lop cheung, and piled high next to these were some salted duck legs. I'd never even seen these things before so they went in the bag too, for consumption at a later date or raw on the subway home. I was also tempted by the dried quail, but I had no idea what I would do with that. I paid the nice lady at the till a dn headed out again into the hot sun. I was very tempted to duck into one of the many noodle shops for a chilled beer and some pig knuckles to chew on, but I remained focused and I promised myslef suitable rewards when my main task was completed. 

When I hit the junction of Bayard and Elizabeth, I spotted a butcher I hadn't seen before. The plastic sign was peeling off the brick, but I could make out the words 'Han May Meat'. An old Chinese woman manned the counter and bid me good day in Chinese (I think) as I entered. My eyes flicked down to the counter to see if here I could buy anything worthy of a long weekend's attentions. And holy shit, did I find it. Resting near the back, in 2 quart containers, I found pig's blood! Finding this had been a personal quest of mine. Numerous Google searches had produced nothing and pleading calls to my local Brooklyn meat emporiums had yielded nothing to date. I couldn't get my wallet out fast enough.

The bucket of blood had a pink stained label on it reading $2. What a fucking bargain. As I paid, I also saw a sign in Chinese and English, thankfully, advertising caul fat. Now that can be tough to locate too, so I had a bag of that, for something a la crepinette. There was no doubt, I was in the zone now and feeling a swell of bravado I also asked her for one of the large plump-looking rear pigs trotters. My mind was racing with the possibilities. Black pudding! Crispy stuffed pig's feet! Meaty stuff wrapped in fat! YES! I think all in all I spent about $8. Incredible, no?   

My reward came in the form of two hastily quaffed Kronenbourgs, from the cold beaded bar taps at Les Enfants Terribles on Canal Street, where Chinatown turns into the LES, and right next to my F train stop. It was a welcome break from the heat and I now know 2 placed in NYC that have my favourite beer on tap. The music was prety good too, and a brief glance at the menu looked interesting. Perhaps a visit to sample to the food would be a good idea. 

I knew my huge trotter would need bathing for 24 hours, so I chucked it in a big pail of water when I got home and, sweating, I rounded up the ingredients for a full-bodied, rich and devillishly porky black pudding. I scoured my cookbook collection for suitable recipes. My first stop was Fergus Henderson's incredible 'The Whole Beast - Nose To Tail Eating'. He calls it blood cake and dishes up the pudding with fried eggs. I did look at two others also for further inspiration. The Bible contained countless variations for black pudding/boudin noir and I also thumbed through porn-heavy Boulevard and found a sound variation by an Irish chap called John Desmond. His BP recipe used a 7 cup dish for the final baking. I did have a 7-cup terrine dish by Pyrex so it seemed that my weights and measures should match the Boulevard recipe roughly, but I did make lots of substitutions.

Casimir

When dining on the Lower east Side, one is faced with some tough decisions. Should we try that new place a couple of blocks up to road from 7B where we always end of having a pint? Or should we check out the steak at Buenos Aries? I’ve got it! What about going back to Casimir? In the end, we always arrive at a similar conclusion. Sure, I know it’s lame to ignore new culinary offerings in the area, but I just can’t resist the place. Opening a few years ago to mixed reviews, Casimir has come of age and has a special place in the hearts of all those hipsters and ex-pat French living on Avenue B. For one of our own Thursday Clubbers, the place is the centre of his universe. Jason practically lives there.

There is something to be said for having a ‘local’ and ‘regular’ restaurant spot, where the staff greet you by name and promise a fine table if you’ll just sit at the bar for a few minutes and drink this free beer and wine. This is a typical welcome for Jason, and sticking to him like glue means that I can also benefit from his relationship. We were 5-strong on this particular evening, and we did have to wait a while before being seated. It was 9.15 on Saturday night the place was packed out as you might expect.Our waitresses exhibited all that is good and great about excellent service. They’re attractive, they know what specials chef is promoting, what they have run out of and can recommend substitutes from a fine bistro menu. The food is classic French bistro fayre, and in all the years Jason has been visiting Casimir, I don’t think he’s had a bad meal from them. Nor have I for that matter. And the general concensus after we left the place full-bellied and all fired up on French red plonk 2 hours later was very positive indeed. “Wow, Man, that food was excellent. How do they make it taste SO good?” Everybody loved the dimly lit dining room and the din and clatter of lots of happy people chowing down together, with a muted soundtrack of something French and jazzy…A touch clichéd perhaps, but no matter. The food sings louder than the speakers.

I had the salmon tartare, (I did want oysters but they’d had a run on them and they were out) a fabulous thick pink dollop of finely chopped salmon, capers and parsley with extra capers and red onion on the side.Casimir serves this with gaufrette potatoes, which I scoffed before I even thought about the salmon. They were homemade and I could have eaten a basket of the damn things. The salmon was, as usual, beautifully fresh and creamy and those salty little capers seasoned it well. My companions ate salads and soups, I must have been so interested in my dish that I paid their first courses little attention.For my main, I always choose a signature dish of Casimir’s - A rich and spicy boudin noir, with apples and mash. What a classic! I have forever been a fan of these blood sausages, and each time I eat them I am reminded of my first taste when I was a kid – It blows me away - Meaty, spicy, succulent, and full of artery-clogging goodness. 

Aleesha had chef special almond-crusted seared tuna with potato salad and a sort of Asian-soy sauce. We all looked very stuffed and happy by the time the desserts arrived. Casimir’s pastry chef knows their stuff. Apple tarte tatin, a stunning crème brulee and a rich chocolate tart arrived at our table with 5 spoons, courtesy of Eric (the owner) and the staff.  With aching bellies and salivating mouths there was no way we were seeing this stuff go unattended and even those poor souls on diets grabbed some silverware and got stuck in. A fine finish.

Sure, we had some preferential treatment that night because of who we were with, but I do believe Casimir to be a solid neighbourhood eatery with really decent food to offer, whoever you may be. It is affordable too, and they thoroughly deserve such loyal clientele.

 

 

Kraken

You've all heard the stories about whole fleets of whaling ships taken down by the mythological Kraken - a tentacle-wielding Neptunian monster who swallows ships whole, and eats young sailors like mere bar nuts? No? Go read some books. Yes? Well you know what I had on my hands. I came face to face with own Kraken last week. God knows what he was doing in my kitchen, but I managed to tame the bastard with red wine, fish stock and some shallots. I did originally intend him for the silly season, but my freezer went on the blink and I had no choice but to cook him a la moment. First, I needed a sharp sword to slice him up.

The nice chaps at Ocean Fresh (Park Slope) removed eyes, ink sac, beak and those nasty bits. They even put Kraken to a deep sleep in their massive freezer, the sharp growing ice crystals tenderising the succulent flesh. (I hear that putting a wine cork into your pot while cooking Kraken helps the process - either that or spend a few hours flailing the bugger against a rock, while Sirens sing to you). Next step is to sear and dehydrate. There does seems to be a lot of the Kraken before I lower him into a hot Dutch oven, then I hear hissing and a crackle and within a few seconds, the pot is filled with octo-juice and some vastly shrunken pieces of cephalopod. They must dissolve, I deduce. I maintained the high heat until the OJ had vanished and the Kraken turned an appetizing pink colour.

Next comes a slug of olive oil, a handful of roughly chopped shallots. 2 crushed garlic cloves, about a cup of red wine, some rather cheerful-looking fish stock (half cup), a cup of tomato sauce, or crushed tomatoes and some herbs, whatever you have (I had thyme, some bay leaves, a bit of parsley). I stewed for about an hour, maybe thirty minutes longer, I just kept testing.

I reckon it should have the al-dente quality of just-cooked pasta, but of course it's a very personal thing. I did deviate somewhat from the traditional Greek recipe, some cooks even add orange juice. Just keep it really simple....the Kraken has a delicate flavour which you'll need to preserve as best you can. We ate Kraken with some bread and a green salad. We enjoyed it hugely, and I was surprised at the missus to be honest. She's not normally one for scoffing strange creatures, but she couldn't get enough of this beasty. She didn't even stop eating to say "Thanks, Doll" or wipe the great swaithes of braising sauce from her face. Bless.

Circus of Meat

When we heard that our IT guru and champion scoffer 'Helsinki' Erik Thomasson, aka The Flying Finn, was coming to New York, we booked a table at Midtown meat emporium, Bobby Van's. I've been going to this place for years, and being a bit of a meat lover myself I have to say their steaks are truly excellent. I have much to compare with, although I have never been permitted a reservation at Williamsburg's steaktastic Peter Luger's. I hear it is THE place to go for a nice juicy rib eye or porterhouse. It's all in the dry-aging process, I believe. Muscle will keep respiring for some time after death, and in the absence of oxygen, it produces lactic acid. These acid compounds 'tenderise' the meat. All it needs is a little heating or blackening on either side, and there you have it. Well enough of the science.

After a few carefully chosen apperitifs, we descended on the place. It's always the same smell when I walk in through the door - the smell of charred blood, with a faint whiff of Shiraz and cigar in the air. It gets the juices going, like a decent martini. After a quick visit to a well stocked and effiecient bar, we are seated. I need no menu. I know exactly what I want. Medium rare rib eye, hashed potatoes, and zucchini sticks fried in a 'parmesan' tempura batter. I watched the Finn eye the menu, like a big cat stalking his next meal. We had been trying to persuade him to eat a porterhouse for two himself, to really test his mettle, and we must have done a great job. Erik ordered it rare.

We didn't know quite what to think when it turned up - 3lbs of slightly warmed cow on a burnt plate. The waiters will carve the bugger up too, so you don't have to worry about expending energy cutting your food - You're gonna need that to digest it.

Being a marathon runner rather than sprint finisher, Erik starts off nice and slow and builds speed gradually until he hits a 'wall' after about half an hour of non-stop chewing.

With some advice on avoiding potatoes and zucchini and encouragement from us all, he manages to polish the thing off. He did look like he might struggle at a couple of key points in the meal but my faith was strong.

God knows how he felt the morning after, or how his guts felt to be more precise. I did remember the ground rumbling in Brooklyn on Saturday morning, no doubt aftershocks from some seismic event on Manhattan's west side...

A trip to Japan

                  

With Uncle Boogie as our Asian grub correspondent, we've recently been to Korea, Vietnam. This last week he introduced us to Japan, a country with simple, fresh cuisines. Perhaps it was the simplicity in their preparations that Boogie wanted to demonstrate this week.

Miso soup - Fried tofu with dipping sauces - Wonton-wrapped shrimp with dipping sauce - Eel donburi - Green tea ice cream.

Miso soup is an easy peasy broth made by dissolving miso (fermented soy bean paste) in 'dashi', a stock made from dried fish (sardine or tuna) kelp or mushroom. It's a traditional Japanese soup eaten mainly for breakfast with some rice in it, although everybody in Japan eats miso soup at least once a day at some point. I suspect our boy used instant miso soup which is only sold outside Japan. It has all the elements in powder form and one simply adds hot water to form the soup. We gulped ours from his posh Japanese bowls, chewing on the nori garnish. A traditional start to the meal then.

The tofu was rolled in panko and it hit the hot oil with a splatter. Jason did have serious issues keeping the breadcrumbs on the tofu. We discussed the possibility of rolling it in seasoned flour, whipped egg and then the panko, but he took a short cut. It came out OK, but the lack of seasoning made it bland. About as bland as tofu can get. Personally, unless it gets some proper treatment, I hate the stuff. Luckily, he had an industrial size jar of duck sauce on hand and we swiped each silky nugget through it to add some much needed flavour.

Next up, and for me the best course, were his handmade shrimp wontons. He blitzed the shrimp with green onion and seasonings and then spooned the mixture into a moist wonton wrapper. The edges are dotted with egg to make a seal. These hit the hot oil too. Perhaps it was too hot, and the little triangles crisped up faster than you can say Tonkatsu. I don't mind a good black or golden brown surface on anything, the Maillard reaction adds flavour. I will willingly eat burned toast. These wontons were great, black at the edges with morsels of moist shrimp and onion inside. Good job.

Next up, the eel donburi. I like this stuff a lot. Donburi means 'rice bowl dish' in Japanese. This one consisted of eel grilled with a sweet sauce. The eels had already been 'spatchcocked' or halved and spread flat. With a paintbrush and a Tony Hart glint in his eye, he painted the fishy canvas with sweet sauce. A dab here. A dab there. Et voila! Under the grill they went for some heat treatment. He made some rice and sliced some cucumber and we were good to go. I knew what to expect. Eel donburi features regularly in my lunch options. I work near 'Little Japan' on Manhattan's 41st Street and the mighty Zaiya do a great version. Boogie's was pretty good too.

Green tea ice cream? You're having a laugh. Well first off, why put something 'healthy' with something so 'unhealthy'. I know balance is important, but this is getting silly. Secondly, he just bought a tub of it. I'd have been impressed had he made some from scratch and no doubt I'd have pretended to enjoy it. I think it's quite possibly the worst flavour in the world. Ice cream should be fruity or sweet, surely? I do have a certain respect for those Japanese pioneers on FujiTV's 'Iron Chef', who make ice cream out of practically anything. Wasabi. Fish. And I'm sure you've seen Food Network's 'Iron Chef America' advert, where using the secret ingredient, trout, Morimoto suggests he can make "trout ice cream, with eyeball." A fucking eyeball. Testament to the brave Japanese palate. Mine is just not ready for these exotic variations yet. Gimme time. I'm certain I'll come round.