wiredfool

In another one of those ‘I can’t believe that it took this long to actually do that’ things, I’ve actually done slow cooking in the bbq. I’ve had the thing since 99 or so, and only ever done quick, highish temperature grilling. But now, I’ve got some big hunks of meat in the freezer, and some of them have made their way onto the grating.

It’s a bit of a challenge, since the bottom air vents are rusted open, and there isn’t actually a thermometer in the thing, so it’s hard to figure out exactly where I am. But now I’ve got a remote oven thermometer, and a couple of binder clips and aluminum foil and I can control the airflow in.

The first thing I tried was a pineapple honey glaze on a pork loin roast. I wasn’t really expecting much from the roast, since when I’ve done them in the oven, they’ve been a little tough due to a lack of extra fat. The outer bits were tough, but has almost turned into a meat candy effect from the smoke and the glaze. Yummy. This one was done for 4 or 5 hours at 250-300 or so.

Next attempt was ribs. I had a hard time controlling the temperature, and they brined a little too long. So the thin bits of the meat weren’t quite where they should have been, and the bigger chunks could have used a higher heat for longer. These went 8 hours or more at somewhere between 175 and 250. The leftovers got steamed, and after 20 minutes being steamed, they were just about right. Falling apart, hot, and tasty.

Today, I’m trying the pineapple honey glaze approach again with a fresh ham roast. It’s running in the 275-325 range, since it’s got some good fat that I want to render off. I’m aiming for 4+ hours. But already, my hair smells like hickory smoke.

I can’t believe that it’s taken so long to think of this. Intentional flat bread, with garlic and olive oil, and a bit of salt. Sort of like fococcia bread, but not as well formed. The basic idea is to take pizza dough, not spread it so thin, and put some basic toppings on.

Dough — basic pizza.

* 1lb 8oz flour, mostly bread, a little white wheat or other.
* 1lb 3.5oz water, plus 1oz olive oil.
* 1tbsp salt, 1.5 tbsp yeast.

Mix, let sit for 20 minutes. Plop out on a oiled counter, fold a few times, put back in oiled bowl. Let rise, split into two balls about an hour before baking. Just before baking, spread out on a floured surface like a pizza, only thicker. Add olive oil, chopped garlic, and salt to the top, then slide into a 500 degree oven on a pizza stone. Bake about 12 minutes.

Last weekend, before the hog arrived, we pulled out a bunch of beef short ribs from the freezer to make a little room. I knew that I wanted to try a braise again, but the last time that we did it, the flavor was a little vinegary. (That was the recipe from Tom Calliuchio’s Think Like a Chef, with sherry vinegar and cherry peppers in it.)

So, taking inspiration from a few recipies in various meat cook books, I wound up with something that could hardly go wrong.

– 7 lbs of short ribs. (It’s what I had, and was more than I needed, but not by that much)
– 1 qt + 1 cup chicken stock — Quantities here were also what I had on hand from making stock a few weeks back. We froze it in quart jars, and there was a cup left over from something a night earlier, and a quart from the freezer.
– 1/2 bottle cheap red wine.
– 2 smallish heads of garlic, with the cloves split out.
– Couple of Carrots, Celery Stalks, and an onion, in big chunks.

Browned the ribs for a cew minutes on each side, then assembled the stock, wine, and veggies and heated that to a boil. Added the ribs back in, and at this point, I needed to have a 12″ fry pan and a 6 qt stockpot to hold everything. Added a little water to nearly cover the ribs, then put in a 350 oven till everything was at a bare simmer. Turned it down to 325 and let it go for a few hours. After a couple, I turned the ribs, after a couple more, I took everything out, separated the ribs from the veggies, strained the liquid, and reduced it by about half. Reheat the ribs in the liquid, and serve.

The liquid was a thick beef stock, with intense beef flavor and only a hint of wine, and no vinegaryiness. The meat was fall apart tender, and very flavorful.

Only 2 short years ago, we were vegetarians. Now there’s 40 lbs of pork in the outside fridge curing into bacon and ham.

We’ve got one ham going, roughly 20 lbs on the bone, which was half of the back leg of the half pig that we got. It’s big. It’s a huge chunk of meat. And it’s curing in the Cider Cure from Hugh Fernley Whittingsworth’s Meat book. It’s likely go go something like 30-40 days in the cider and brine, then it will be hung to dry for a while.

We’re doing 2 different styles of bacon, one is the basic dry cure from Hugh’s book, with mostly salt, a little sugar, and some spice. It needs to be re-rubbed every day or so, so it’s a bit more work. The other one is a wetter, maple, sugar and salt cure Basic fresh Bacon from the Charcouterie book. These will go a week to 10 days — the dry cure one is already looking firmer, the wet one is going a little slower.

The cats were terribly interested in what was going on in the kitchen while this was in progress. Thankfully, no bacon was lost to cats, nor was any bacon taped to them.

I used to make a pretty decent soda farl, but that was a few years back and apparently I never wrote down the recipe. So after a few nights of not having bread ready to bake for the morning, and somehow having buttermilk on hand, I’ve got what I think is a passable but possibly not quite accurate rendition of a soda farl. of corse, if I was over there, it would be a bit easier, seeing as they have bakeries with them ready to take home.

* 1 3/4 cups flour
* 1 cup buttermilk
* 1 1/2 tsp salt
* 2 tsp baking soda
* 1/2 tsp baking powder
* Pinch or two sugar

Preheat the cast iron pan on 5 for 5 minutes or so. Mix the dry, make sure that the soda is well mixed in with no lumps. Mix in the buttermilk, don’t mix too much. Pat to round, cut into farls, and cook for 8 min on one side, 5 on the other, then a bit on the cut sides.

This may be a bit of a shock for those that knew us as vegetarians. That story may be told some other time. Saturday I spent about 5 hours with a recipe from Tom Colicchio’s Think like a Chef — Braised Short Ribs. I missed one little 10 minute browning step due to kiddo freakout, but other than that, it was perfect. Back in the dark ages of my cooking, I’d done ribs. These were nothing like those ribs. These fell apart. They were devoured. My only regret is that I didn’t get more of the fat poured off. The general outline is: Brown the meat. Brown veggies. Add vinegar and stock, and cook in the oven at a low simmer for 2-3 hours. Then pull the chunks out, skim the fat, reduce the liquid, and heat the rest back up. And yeah, I’d do that again, even though I started right after lunch and ran to a normal 6ish dinner.

In Progress:

Out of the Oven:

This time as rolls. Revisiting this a year later, with more experience, new processing, and awesome results. Good top and bottom crusts, nice flavor, good rosemary and salt, and nicely light texture. So, in detail so I don’t forget it this time.

- 5c flour (King Arthur, All purpose), + probably close to another 1/2 cup over all the working.
- 1 2/3 c water
- 1/2 c milk
- 1/3 c olive oil
- 1 tsp yeast, dissolved in some of the water.

Mix this till it’s wet an ragged, less than a minute or so. Let it autolyse for 15 minutes.

Add 2 tsp salt, 3 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary. Knead in the mixer for 4-5 minutes or so. Pull it out and knead a little by hand/bench scraper. It’s wet and sticky, so it’s going to take scraping and flour. It will be pretty elastic and stretchy, but still sticky.

Let it rise in a floured bowl for a couple of hours in a cool kitchen, then fold over and let rise overnight @ 58 degrees or so. In the morning, bring back into the warm room, then an hour later, divide and shape into rolls. This is about my normal 2 loaf quantity or 32 rolls. Divide in half, making quick boules at each division till you’ve got the right number. As the rolls are rolled, add them to an oiled pan with sides — I used a metal 9×13 and a loaf tin. They should be nearly touching before proofing, and they should proof into each other, and then support each other in the oven.

Proof for 45 minutes in a just warmd oven(~100 degrees at the start, maybe), then 30-40 minutes on the counter while the oven was heating to 500.

Bake, pans on the stone at 500 for 10 minutes, with boiling water in a hot pan on the lower rack for steam. Take out of the oven, and invert to remove them from the pan onto a cookie sheet. Turn the oven down to 400 Break apart the rolls so that they all stand individually. Wash the tops with a beaten egg, then sprinkle kosher salt on the tops. Bake at 400 for another 15-20 minutes till the color looks nice and brown.

They were good, but now they’re gone. Unfortunately, before pictures were obtained.

This is a mix of the old recipe, some techniques for a couple different books around here, and the latest Cook’s Illustrated where they talk about perfect rustic dinner rolls.

I baked a new type of bread today, a Rosemary Diamante, which I got a basic recipe from here but modified to fit my preferred timings. The dough turned out to have a very elastic texture, beautiful rise and oven spring, with a very soft interior and crisp crust. It was very tasty, with a good hit of rosemary, a touch of olive oil, and the bite of the salt on the crust.

It had nearly a light white bread weight on the inside, probably due to the 1/2 water, 1/2 milk proportions on the liquids. I’ll probably try to make it a bit more hearty the next time around, most likely by cutting down the milk, leaving the olive oil, and processing it nearly like my other white breads. I’ll also boost it to 5+ cups of flour per 2 loaves, rather than the 3 1/2, since the loaf turned out really small, small enough that it didn’t seem out of place to devour one when it got mostly cooled.

So, for the next time:

- 2+ cups liquid, maybe 1/2 cup milk in that.
- 1/3 c olive oil
- 1+ tsp yeast
- 5 c flour
- 4 T chopped fresh rosemary.
- 2 tsp salt in the dough, 1 tsp sprinkled on top before baking.

Boy decided that we were going to have dinner made of what he dug out of the cabinets today, so I started with a can of corn and a can of chick peas. It came out as a very monochromatic yellow, somewhat different Indian dish.

- Mustard seeds, some, in the oil at first.
- one block tofu, small cubes, fried for a little while till I got sick of it sticking.
- Before adding liquid, some tumeric, maybe 1/4-1/2 tsp. it needs the higher heat of frying.
- Add drained chick peas.
- Added corn liquid, and some extra water (1/4 cup extra?). And some butter. Butter makes everything better. Ghee would work too.
- Salt and Cayenne need to be in there too.
- Added the corn near the end, essentially to heat it up without cooking it to mush.
- At the end, put ground coriander, fenugreek, a bit of cardamom, a couple ground black peppercorns in hot oil and fry for 30 seconds to release the aromas, then mix in with the rest of it.
- A tsp of lemon juice at the end for a little brightness.

I served it over couscous, but any grain would work.

This surprised me for a 15 minute too tired to cook anything night, especially since I didn’t really know what I was going to make until I was about halfway through. Good enough to write it down so that I have a chance of doing it again.