Showing posts with label Charcuterie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charcuterie. Show all posts

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Back Bacon

In the States this preparation is called Canadian bacon, but we usually call it back bacon.  It's more or less the same process as regular bacon, only done to a section of the loin instead of the belly.  There's an old style of back bacon from eastern Ontario called peameal bacon, in which a cured section of loin is rolled in peameal (crushed split-peas) before being smoked.  Peameal bacon is still made down east, though nowadays cornmeal is used.

Back bacon is usually made from the eye of loin: the large, round muscle often made into centre-cut pork chops.  You can also use the rib- and sirloin-ends of the loin, which have more fat and flavour than the centre.  I tried the classical eye of loin.

First the loin must be cleaned.  There is a band of meat and fat called the chain (in the top right corner of the picture below) that must be cut out, but can be reserved for ground meat.  There is also some fat and silverskin (top left) that can be removed and discarded.  I cut my cleaned loin into three sections so that it could fit in my curing bucket.



The main procedural difference between back bacon and belly bacon is that back bacon is usually brined instead of dry-cured.  My brine consisted of salt, curing salt, brown sugar, herbs, and a halved, squeezed lemon.  I used a ceramic plate to keep the meat submerged.



After sitting in the brine for a few days, the eye of loin is tied so that it will have a round cross-section.  In the picture below you can see three different colours on the meat: there are brown parts, pink parts, and a light grey part.  The cure, having lots of brown sugar, is responsible for the brown areas.  The pink sections are where the loin sections were either pressed against each other, or resting on the botton of the container.  The grey circle on the bottom is actually a piece of meat that was cooked by the acidity of the halved lemon.

When curing with dry rubs, you have to "overhaul" the meat: rub it down every couple of days to redistribute the cure.  I guess the same should have been done for this brine.  At the very least the loin sections should have been rotated so that the surfaces got even exposure to the brine.  This is mainly an aesthetic issue, as the meat seems to have cured properly.

 


Next the loin is hot-smoked to an internal temperature of 65°C.  This is the most critical part of the procedure.  Since the eye of loin is an extremely lean cut, over-cooking will produce dry meat.



Here is the final product.  The curing salt in the brine has given the meat a rosy colour. 



The most important thing to remember when eating back bacon: it's not belly bacon.  It's not the fatty slab of crazy pleasure that you might be used to.  That being said, back bacon still has its place.  If it's brined and cooked properly it is by no means dry.  The smoke and herbs balance the piquancy of the curing salt.

Friday, October 28, 2011

Bath Chaps, Revisited

The first course of Button Soup's February Pork Dinner was cold-cut Bath chaps: a boned-out pig's head, cured, rolled around the tongue, tied, poached, and sliced.   While I was extremely happy with the look of those Bath chaps, they were pretty bland.  I figure that the cure leached into the poaching liquid.

I had another go at the chaps with this fall's pig.  This time, instead of using a whole head, I used only one jowl, cured, and wrapped around the tongue.

After rolling and tying, I seared the meat over high heat.  Once chilled, I vacuum-packed the chaps and simmered them for two or three hours.  This was not proper sous-vide: though the meat was vacuum-packed, it wasn't cooked in a low-heat, temperature-controlled bath.  A good hunk of fat rendered from the chaps, and some insanely flavourful jus leached out.  The plastic seal definitely helped the meat retain its cure.  The final plate was very flavourful, strong of garlic and herbs and brown sugar and salt.

I think that the vacuum-packing also helped bind the tongue and jowl together.

Obviously the presentation of these chaps isn't as striking as that of the whole-head chaps.  If I try tongue-and-cheek chaps again I'll trim the jowl to a uniform thickness.  You can see that the left side of the chaps, below, is thicker.  Trimming that down would give a more balanced presentation, and maybe even let the jowl wrap all the way around the tongue.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

How to Use Leftover Meat and Charcuterie

This is the single most useful preparation that I learned in Austria.  It's invaluable to establishments that use a lot of cured meat, but also a good trick to have in the home kitchen.

It's called fleischknoedl (approximately: "FL-EYE-SH KNUH-dl").  Fleisch just means meat, while knoedl is a type of dumpling that is popular in Austria and Bavaria.  Fleischknoedl is a fantastic way to use up leftover meat, whether cooked or cured.

Most cooks are familiar with how to use scraps of raw meat.  When butchering a side of pork, for instance, you reserve the miscellaneous bits of meat and fat so they can be ground and used in sausages and forcemeat.

There's also leftover trim when cutting cooked and cured meat.  Whether you're using a commercial meat-slicer or just a knife, there is usually an end piece that is not served.  This might be the slightly over-cooked end of a roast, or a dry end of salami.  Or perhaps the meat is just a few days old and you want to bring in fresh product.

Thankfully the Austrians have developed a way to use these leftovers.  They will keep the nubbins from roasts like schweinsbraten and kuemmelbraten, fresh sausages, and even dried sausages like kantwurst or hauswurstel. The meat is mixed with cooked onions, then ground, shaped into balls, surrounded with dumpling dough, and cooked.

While most North American homes will not go through as much cooked and cured meat as an Austrian bed and breakfast, there are still times when this preparation can be a life-saver.  I'm thinking especially of ham leftover from Christmas or Easter.

I recently made fleischknoedl from the roasts leftover after the Button Soup Canning Bee: a cured, roast pork shoulder, roast pork belly, and roast beef.  The recipe follows.



Fleischknoedl (Meat Dumplings)

Ingredients
adapted from Looshaus
  • 1 kg leftover meat (see Note 1, below), cut into 1" cubes
  • 250 g onion, small dice, cooked in a little oil until transluscent
  • 2 kg cooked potatoes, milled and chilled
  • 100 g all purpse flour
  • 330 g rice flour (see Note 2, below)
  • 4 eggs
  • 400 g melted butter
Note 1: A good mixture would be 3/4 cured, cooked meat such as ham, and 1/4 dry-cured sausages.  Fresh (un-cured) cooked meat like pork chops and roast beef give the mixture a mushy texture and should be used in moderation.

Note 2: The actual ingredient here is grieß, which most German-English dictionaries translate as "semolina."  The grieß they use at Looshaus is made from corn, though it doesn't have nearly as strong a corn flavour as the corn flour available in North America.  Any mild-tasting, low-gluten flour will suffice as a grieß substitute.


Procedure

Combine the meat and onions and grind using a small die.




Shape the meat and onion mixture into little balls about an inch across.  Put the balls on a sheet pan lined with parchment and freeze.



Combine all remaining ingredients and knead until a soft, tacky dough forms.  Do not over-knead.  Shape the dough into a log.

Remove the frozen meat balls from the freezer.  Cut a round from the dough and press a meat ball into it.  Work the dough around the ball to cover it evenly.  Repeat until all the balls are covered in dough.

You can now freeze these dumplings.





Traditionally fleischknoedl are boiled and served with warm cabbage salad.  They can also be breaded and fried for some textural contrast that (to speak like Guy Fieri) puts the dish over the top.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Cold-Smoking Pickerel

Cold-smoking pickerel in my barbecueI recently picked up some pickerel from Rebekah's Fish at the Strathcona Market and took my first stab at cold-smoking on my barbecue.

To hot-smoke on my barbecue I just remove the grate from the righthand side and put foil packets of wood chips directly onto the flames.  I put the meat on the left side, which remains off.  This way the meat isn't over direct heat and will cook evenly.  With the right burner on a medium-low setting, the wood chips smolder and the average temperature inside the barbecue stays around 250°F.

The point of cold-smoking is to impart the flavour of the smoke without cooking the meat.  Examples of food that you might want to keep raw are cured fish, jerky, and certain types of cured meat like salami or speck.  To keep the meats from cooking the temperature has to stay below 100°F.  Barbecue burners are so large that no matter how low you set them, they will always produce enough heat to raise the temperature of the barbecue above 100°F.

The solution is simple enough.  I ignited my wood chips in a stainless steel pan on my stove top, then put the pan in the barbecue, where I usually rest the packets.  The barbecue remained off, and functioned only as a chamber to hold the smoke.

The major disadvantage of the pan method is that, without any active heat source, the chips only smoulder for about five minutes before they have to be re-ignited.

Properly curing cold-smoked meats is very important because they usually stay in the temperature "danger zone" for several hours.  The danger zone, between 39°F and 140°F, represents the temperatures at which microbes grow best.  Below this range they are inactive, and above this range they die.  In professional kitchens they say that any food that stays in the danger zone for more than two hours is unfit to serve.  When we cure meat we make the flesh inhospitable to microbes, and we can therefore keep it in the danger zone for extended periods.

Food safety aside, properly curing the fish makes the flesh firm, dense, and pleasantly salty.  Below is the recipe I used to cure my pickerel, though I have to caution that I've found fish-curing to be a fickle business.  I've tried the same recipe on different pieces of fish and had wildly different results.


Smoked Pickerel
adapted from Charcuterie

Ingredients
  • 850 g pickerel fillet in one piece, skin on, bones removed
  • 157 g kosher salt
  • 63 g dark brown sugar
  • 13 g crushed juniper berries
  • 20 mL whiskey
Procedure
  1. Mix the salt, sugar, and juniper. Spread half the dry cure in a container that will just fit the fish. Lay the fish, skin side down, on the cure. Pour the whiskey over the fish, then sprinkle the remaining cure over the fish. Try to get more cure on the thicker parts of the fillet.
  2. Cover with plastic wrap. Rest a flat board for pan on the fish, and top with a 500 g weight. Refrigerate for 20 hours.
  3. Rinse the cure from the fish. Pat dry with paper towel and let rest, uncovered, on a wire rack in the fridge for at least an hour.
  4. Cold-smoke with maple chips until desired flavour is achieved.

I served my smoked pickerel with green pea and wild rice crepes, and celery root slaw with grainy mustard dressing.

 Smoked pickerel with green pea and wild rice crepes

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Austrian Sausage Stands

Würstlstände are sausage stands.  They punctuate the sidewalks of every city in Austria.  People from all walks of life crowd around these kiosks for, say, a quick lunch, or a post-bar snack: a sausage, fried or steamed, served with some manner of bread, mustard, and beer or pop.

While certain types of sausage appear on almost every würstlstand menu, it can be frustrating trying to pin down their characteristics, as a huge variety of sausages can go by the same name.  Bratwurst, for instance, is sometimes based on pork, sometimes on veal, sometimes stuffed into slender lamb casings, sometimes into wider hogs...

Here are some very general descriptions of the most common würste:
  • Burenwurst - Apparently a corruption of "boerwurst," a hearty South African sausage distinguished by its coarse texture.
  • Debreziner - Debrec is a city in Hungary.  The only characteristic that seems to unite all debreziners is the liberal use of paprika.
  • Waldviertler - The Waldviertel (literally "forest quarter,") is a region in Lower Austria, famous for rustic cuisine.  This sausage is lightly smoked and made of pork.
  • Frankfurter - A very long, slender, boiled sausage, with an extremely fine interior similar to most North American hot dogs.  In Frankfurt these sausages are called Wieners.  Go figure.
  • Sacherwurst - In my experience, these are indistinguishable from frankfurters.
  • Bratwurst - The familiar "brat," a frying sausage.
  • Bernerwurst - More common in cafeterias and restaurants than sausages stands, this is a sausage stuffed with cheese and wrapped with bacon.
  • Weisswurst - One of the few sausages that always takes a very specific form.  Literally "white sausage," though it is usually more grey than white.  Made from veal and pork fat which are very finely ground and emulsified.  A delicate sausage, it is boiled and taken out of its skin before being served.  It is very much a Bavarian sausage.  Within Austria it is only commonly found in Salzburg, which is right by the Bavarian border. Traditionally eaten before noon, with a brezel (pretzel), sweet mustard, and white beer.

In North America the term "hot dog" refers to both the dish (ie. a wiener in a bun), and the style of wiener itself (ie. an emulsified link flavoured with garlic and smoke).  In Austria a "hot dog" is a sausage shoved into a long, crusty roll.  You can therefore have, for instance, a bratwurst hot dog, or a burenwurst hot dog.  If you don't specify "hot dog," your sausage will probably be served with a round crusty bun on the side, as below.  Note the ceramic plate.



Käsekrainer

While outsiders recognize wiener schnitzel as the national dish of Austria, I think most Austrians acknowledge a special sausage called käsekrainer ("KAY-zeh KREYE-ner") as their greatest culinary achievement.

"Käse" means cheese.  I have no idea what "krainer" means, and neither do any Austrians.   Käsekrainer is a sausage with a finely ground interior that is riddled with cubes of cheese that melt when the sausage is cooked.  It is the crown jewel of Austrian streetfood.

Within twenty four hours of returning to Canada I had procured the ingredients for a käsekrainer test batch.


Käsekrainer: A First Attempt

Ingredients
  • 1000 g pork shoulder
  • 200 g Sylvan Star Gruyère, rind removed, diced into 3/16" cubes
  • 16 g kosher salt
  • 1/2 tbsp light corn syrup
  • 1 pinch sodium nitrite
  • 2 cloves garlic (the Austrians call them "toes," which I thought was cute...), minced
  • 1 bay leaf, ground
  • 1/4 tsp smoked paprika
  • 1/4 tsp mustard powder
  • 1/4 tsp freshly ground, toasted coriander
  • 1 pinch cayenne
  • fresh ground black pepper
  • 5' hog casings, soaked and rinsed

Procedure

I chose to experiment with Gruyère because of its famous melting properties (it is the go-to cheese for fondue and raclette).  To my surprise, Sylvan Star has their own version of the alpine cheese:





Cut the pork into 1" cubes.  Spread on a tray lined with wax paper and keep in the freezer until "crunchy" but not frozen solid.  Grind the meat through a 1/4" plate.  Add the salt and spices to the ground meat.

Spread the ground meat onto a tray lined with wax paper and return to the freezer for about 15 minutes.  Regrind the mixture using a 3/16" plate.

Using the paddle attachment of a stand mixer, slowly mix the forcemeat while adding the corn syrup.  When the force binds and becomes tacky, fold in the cubed cheese.



Fry a small piece of the mixture and taste.  Adjust the seasoning as necessary.

Stuff the mixture into the hog casings and twist into 6" links.  Hang on a wooden dowel to dry for an hour.


On Cooking Käsekrainer

On the streets of Vienna there are actually two types of käsekrainer.  They result not from different methods of manufacture, but from different methods of cooking.

The first, when passed through the würstlstand window, looks like any other sausage; it is only upon biting into the link that you discover the cheese.  The second has a crunchy crust of cheese fried onto the exterior of the sausage.  I don't think I need to spend much time explaining why the latter is superior (the nutty-tangy taste of browned cheese, the accentuation of the textural contrast between sausage skin and interior...)

Having only cooked a couple of käsekrainer links myself, I am still working on my crust development.

Inevitably (and especially in homemade links) some cheese will leak out the ends during cooking.  My working theory on crust development is that the sausage must be rolled through this cheese while it is still gooey, so that the cheese adheres to the skin.  Otherwise the cheese will brown and stick to the pan, instead of the sausage.  As a rule of thumb, move the käsekrainer frequently while cooking.

The sausage must be eaten very hot, or the cheese will re-congeal.





This recipe and cooking process result in an acceptable approximation of an Austrian käsekrainer.  I think that most of the versions I had there were lightly smoked.  While the smoked paprika in my recipe goes some distance to capturing that flavour, I think the next test batch will have to be cold-smoked before frying.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Austrian Charcuterie

For starters let me say that Austrians don't use the word "charcuterie."  To some of you that may seem obvious, as Austrians speak German.  Yet for some reason most of the English-speaking world uses the French term "charcuterie."

While French words do weasel their way onto fine dining menus in Austria, they are nowhere to be found in descriptions of butchery or cured meat.  For these, Austrians have their own, precise way of speaking, belying the strength and individuality of their traditions.

In contrast, the charcuterie renaissance in North America uses of grab-bag-blend of terms from across Europe.  Bresaola (northern Italian), is mentioned in the same breath as saucisson sec (French), and jerky (Plains Indian).

Despite all this, I still use the term "Austrian charcuterie," in the hope that North Americans curious about Austrian cured meat will be more likely to stumble across this page.

Anyways.

Charcuterie has a very special place in the Austrian diet.  Breakfast, for instance, invariably consists of bread, cheese, coffee, and some form of cured meat or pâté.  The larger cities are dotted with würstlstände (sausage stands, which will be discussed in a future post).  To my mind, the greatest place to sample Austrian charcuterie is at certain taverns called heurigen.


Heurigen ("HOY-ree-gen," singular heuriger)

Austria produces a lot of wine.  Most of this wine is consumed within the country while it is relatively young, (which is why Austrian wines are very rare in this part of the world).  The word heuriger literally means young wine, but the term usually refers to a special kind of tavern.  Winemakers will open up shop for a couple of weeks so that guests can come to drink the young wine, which is served with plates of cold food such as cheese, spreads, bread, and charcuterie.  The word for these savoury accompaniments is brettljause ("BRET-tel YOW-ze").  Brett means board, as the food is usually spread out on a wooden board.  Brettl, I think, is some kind of dimunitive form, though I'm not entirely sure. Jause means snack.

While heuriger usually implies wine, there are also most heurigenMost is a type of cider, usually made from apples, though sometimes pears are used.  Most is quite different from the commercial ciders we know.  It has a pronounced sourness, and in my brief experience it is usually not heavily carbonated.  Sometimes it's straight up flat.

Since heurigen are open irregularly for short periods throughout the year, the owners will hang an evergreen bough (busch "BOOSH") over their door or signpost so that passersby will know when they are open.  For this reason, in the province of Styria, heurigen are called buschenschänken (singular buschenschank).  Schank means bar, as in the place where the bartender stands.  The implication is that the wine, intended to be drank young, is stored in barrels and poured from the bar, instead of being bottled for long storage.

I suppose the star of the heuriger show is supposed to be the wine or most, but for me the main attraction was always the charcuterie.  So, without further warbling I would like to introduce you to the main players of Austrian charcuterie, as they are served in traditional heurigen.


Blunz'n ("BLOON-tsin") - Blood Sausage

This is the infamous blood sausage, which we have toyed around with a couple times here on Button Soup.  In Germany it is called blutwurst.  In Austria it is called blunz'nAustrian blunz'n is a very different creature to English black pudding or French boudin noir.

I attribute the success of my last attempt at blood sausage to the inclusion of a panada, a mixture of milk and bread.  Austrian blunz'n is very heavy on the bread content.  In fact, the first piece I ever had was riddled with white cubes that I assumed were pork fat, but turned out to be bread.  While English black pudding has a pronounced blood taste, and a pastey texture, blunz'n is subtle and light, somtimes more like a dumpling than a sausage.



My favourite blunz'n so far had a pleasant acidity to it.  I'm not sure whether this was from added vinegar, or if maybe rye sourdough was used in the panada.



Besides being sliced for cold platters, blunz'n is surprisingly common in the kitchen.  There is a traditional dish called blunz'n gröstl, which is a blood sausage hash.  We also had blunz'n baked into an eggy bread:



Grammel ("GRAM-mel", plural grammeln) - no translation

This is a weird one, as you may have guessed by the fact that there is no satisfactory English translation.

The first time I had grammel was in a dish called grammelschmaltzbrot.  It appeared to be rendered pork fat spread on rye bread, with tiny, crunchy flakes that resembled bacon bits, only much smaller, maybe the size of kosher salt crystals.  I asked a handy Austrian what exactly I was eating.  She said, approximately, that when pork fat is rendered and then "pressed" (strained?) you are left with grammel.  I wondered aloud. Bits of skin?  Bits of meat?  She wasn't sure.

When searching the internet, I came across this explanation, which is well-written, but I think entirely inaccurate.  The author says that grammeln are mineral deposits in the fat of Mangalitzas, an Austro-Hungarian heritage pork breed renouned for its eating quality.  I don't buy this, simply because I ate plenty of grammel that was not from Mangalitzas.

By Occam's razor I'm more inclined to believe the sources that say grammel is a form of connective tissue in the fat that cooks out in the rendering process.  Whatever it is, it's crisp, golden brown, and sinfully savoury.  Its existence is all the more surprising to me because I have rendered a lot of pork fat in the last couple years, but hadn't thought to skim through the residue to look for something as small and delicous as grammel.



Grammel is also used in the kitchen.  When there is a bit of residual lard on the grammel, it binds to form a paste, which can then be rolled into a knödel (roughly, "KNUH-del," a dumpling).



Hauswürstel - ("HOWS-voors-tel", literally "house sausage," in fact just dried sausage)

Similar to French saucisson sec, this is an essential component to any heuriger spread.  The most interesting version I had contained the delicious green pumpkin seeds common in Styria.




Preßwurst - ("PRESS-voorst," headcheese)

Austrian preßwurst is very similar to our headcheese, though I would say the meat is packed much more densely (ie. there is less jelly between the pieces of meat).  Even so, it holds together extremely well, and can be sliced very thin.  It's usually doused in vinegar, then called "saure preßwurst."



Kümmelbraten (roughly "KOOM-mel-BRAT-en," literally, "caraway roast," roast pork belly)

This was a pleasant surprise: pork belly, usually lightly cured, roasted with caraway seeds, and served with the skin on.  A fantastic crunch from the crackling, which splinters into little nuggets during the slicing.



Schweinsbraten - ("SHVINES-brat-en," roasted pork shoulder)

A simple roast, sliced and served cold, is a very common brettljause.  Sometimes the meat is cured, sometimes not.  Somehow the only picture I got of a cold pork roast was this haggard slice below, which I had already prodded with my fork.




Bratlfettnbrot - ("BRAT-tel FET-en-brot," approximately "roast drippings, with bread")

One of the fantastic byproducts of roasting meat is the drippings.  They are comprised of two parts.  First is the highly gelatinous meat juices.  Second is the fat rendered from the meat.  There was a time not so long ago when every housewife would pour the hot pan drippings from a roast into a jar and keep them for later use.  The fat can been scraped off and used to sear meat.  The juices, which solidify when refrigerated, can be used to fortify pan sauces.

In Austria the whole mix, that is, the partially solidified meat juices and the rendered fat, are served as a spread.  It is called bratlfettnbrot, which is possibly the most amusing word in the Austrian language.  Or any language.

In the picture below you can see the bratlfettnbrot in the plastic jar on the right, with the spoon sticking out.  The picture is not from a heuriger, but rather at Dominik's house.  Dominik was the student Lisa and I hosted last summer.  You may remember him from the fantastic Austrian dinner he and his friends cooked for us while staying in Edmonton.



Some photos.



Heuriger meals are finished with mehlspeisen ("MAYL-shpeye-zen," literally "flour food," baked desserts) and schnapps.  Austrian baking and distilling will be covered in future posts.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Button Soup Easter Dinner

The April installment of the Button Soup Supper Club was an Easter Dinner with Lisa's family, featuring some of the traditional, symbolic ingredients and dishes discussed earlier.  The menu:


Hot Cross Buns

Potted Rabbit, Crackers, and Cheese

Young Spinach with Bacon and Quail Egg

Smoked Ham with Scallop Potatoes

Oat Cake in Maple Syrup


Hot Cross Buns



Potted Rabbit, Crackers, and Cheese

Butchering Rabbits: a "break" from tradition

Rabbits are not usually butchered by neatly separating the joints, as you would a chicken.  They are broken into forequarters, hindquarters, and a saddle by cleaving right through the bones.  Chefs often bitch about how tedious butchering rabbits is, "especially since there's practically no meat on them."  Their words.  Not mine.

The problem with cleaving is that you're bound to splinter the bones.  I've bitten down on a fragment of rabbit bone in restaurants more than once.  Taking the time to properly butcher the rabbit by cutting through the joints and not breaking the bones minimizes the chances of choking someone.  It also shows that you care about your ingredients and take your job seriously.  Anyways...

Below, from top left: hindlegs, caul fat, kidney, heart, liver, tenderloins, forelegs, loin with belly attached.


The meat was confited and pulled...


..then potted.


I hope that the lady who invented Raincoast Crisps has made her fortune, because imitations are now everywhere I look: supermarket shelves, online recipes, restaurant cheese plates, as well as my kitchen.
Raincoast Crisps are made by baking a loaf flavoured with dried fruit, nuts, and herbs, then thinly slicing that loaf and baking it for a second time to make crackers.  Like I said, recipes abound online.  This one is my favourite.


The finsihed plate: potted rabbit, dried fruit crackers, Sylvan Star smoked gouda, and Smoky Valley Valencay.

 


Salad

Quail eggs!

 

A very fatty slab of bacon

 

Young spinach (which costs a fortune at the market at this time of year, but can be got...), hard-boiled quail eggs, bacon, onion, and vinaigrette.

 


Smoked Ham with Scalloped Potatoes

Problems with Brine Penetration

Even working from Ruhlman's recipes for ham, I always (always!) have problems with brine penetration.  With any ham larger than a hock, it seems that no matter how long I leave the meat in the brine, the brine can't reach the middle of the cut, closest to the bone. I might have to start injecting the brine deep into the meat...







Oatcake in Maple Syrup

This dish showcased this year's maple syrup.  A simple oatcake was baked, then cut into squares and cooled.  The baking dish was then filled with hot maple syrup, which the cake soaked up like a sponge.  Essentially a lazy man's pouding chômeur (a lazy man's poor man's pudding?)

Served with ice cream.