Nice Fatty Pork Shoulder Tied Up in String

Has to be one of my favorite things. So pretty was that piece of Hidden Stream Farm shoulder from Clancey's , it almost put me off my mission, which was sausage. I could see that layer of fat browning, crisping in a slow oven, I could smell the drippings crystalizing in the pan, and I could taste the rich, yielding meat, flavored with nothing more than salt and pepper and its own innate, juicy porkiness....

I should have bought two roasts. Well, I know where to get more. I carried on with the sausage plan. Some people might look at the task of sausage-making and ask, "Why?" I look at a beautiful piece of pork, some hog casing, my KitchenAid meat grinder, and ask, "Why not?"

You see, in keeping with the Alsatian theme introduced in the previous post, I was going to make a choucroute garnie, sauerkraut simmered with wine and aromatics, served with various sausages and smoked meats. I made the sauerkraut myself, and the bacon; it seemed only fitting that I should go whole hog (pun purely intended) and stuff my own sausages.

There is also the matter of what I might call the modern "sausage paradox." To wit: There have probably never been more kinds of sausages available to us, from hot italian to andouille, wild rice bratwurst, sun-dried-tomato-turkey, blueberry-lamb; bangers, merguez, chorizo, boudins blanc et noir, swedish potato; there are fresh, smoked, dried, cured, fermented, natural, organic, free-range, grass-fed, humanely-raised and gently-slaughtered (!) sausages. Sausage, sausage, everywhere!

And yet, I have found it impossible to find the kind of sausage I often crave: a simple fresh pork sausage, with a good aroma of garlic, a side note of shallot, and the slightest wafting atmosphere of spice. Sufficiently fatty; not too salty. Where you taste the meat, exalted by its companionable flavorings, not the sausage-maker's overbearing hand. It comes down to DIY.

(As a side note, I'd like to point out, in this time when "charcuterie" is all the rage, that making fresh sausage is not that. The word comes from the French chair, flesh; and cuit, cooked. So smoked meats, dried and cured sausages, patés, terrines and mousses; rillettes, rillons, grillons, rillauds--these qualify as charcuterie; stuffing ground meat in casing does not. I bring this up spurred by the bitter memory of driving across town some years ago in avid anticipation to a restaurant where there worked, said one food writer, a "master charcutier," turning out exquisite examples of that ancient art. Turned out what they had was a guy with a meat grinder, and not much skill at using it. Anyway....)

The main thing I want to say about sausage is this: It is not at all difficult to make. The only complicated part of making this sausage was getting it in the casing (Clancey's sold me the casing, BTW; a lot of butchers make their own sausage, and will be willing to sell you natural casing). For that you need the pig guts, which might make you a little squeamish--they do me, I admit--and the equipment--the meat grinder and the sausage-stuffing horn. But you don't have to stuff it in casing. You can make patties, just like a hamburger, or those "Jimmy Dean"-type breakfast sausages. You can form a larger sausage by wrapping the ground, seasoned meat in plastic wrap, tying off the ends with kitchen twine. Then you can steam or simmer the whole thing, in the plastic, and either serve it straight away (without the plastic, of course!), slices on a lovely bed of lentils or a big frisée salad; or, let it cool, then slice it and brown the slices, serve aside a French potato salad, whatever.

These turned out just gorgeous, in looks and flavor. There are good sausages out there, from the smaller, artisan-type butchers, but there's nothing like knowing that only the best ingredients have gone into your sausage.

And just think of the foodie street cred you'll get from stuffing your own....

Good Fresh Pork Sausage

2 pounds fatty pork shoulder, or a mix of leaner shoulder and pork belly--it should be at least one-quarter fat
1/4 cup dry fragrant white wine, such as Alsatian "gentil"
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 small shallot, minced (about 2 Tbsp)
1 tsp butter
2 tsp red wine vinegar
1/8 tsp quatre-épices (recipe in this post)
1/8 tsp piment d'espelette
1/2 tsp black peppercorns, crushed (as for mignonette)
2 bay leaves, broken in pieces
a few sprigs fresh thyme

Hog casing

Cut the pork into strips small enough to fit into your meat grinder.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add the shallots and cook for just a minute, to soften slightly and take off the raw taste. Remove from the heat and let cool a few minutes. Add the vinegar and swirl it around. Add to the pork along with the rest of the ingredients. Mix well and let marinate several hours or overnight.

Remove the bay leaf and any thyme stems. Grind the meat: I like some texture to my sausage, so I use the coarse blade on my KitchenAid grinder. I run all the meat through once, and then run most of it--2/3 to 3/4--through again. For a finer texture run it all through twice; for even finer sausage, switch to the fine blade after the first grinding and run some or all the meat through again.

Work the ground meat with your hand or a spatula for a minute or so, until it is well mixed and starts to stick to your hand.

Remove the blade and the cross-shaped grinding doo-hickey from the mixer. The screw mechanism, the thing that fits into the mixer body and turns to move the meat through the grinder, will be just sort of hanging there. Make sure it's pushed all the way back into the mixer, and tighten the fastening screw very well. Put on the sausage-stuffing horn. Fit the casing over the horn, gently working it on until it's all snugged up to the end of the horn nearest the mixer. Tie a simple knot in the dangling end. Have at hand something to poke little holes in the casing as you stuff, to let air out and get the meat packed tightly in. I used a bamboo skewer.

Now turn the mixer on to 1 or 2, and feed the ground meat into the feed tube, pushing it down with the plunger. Take your time. If you haven't done this before, it might be a good idea to have someone help you. As the meat starts to come out the horn and into the casing, work it to the far end with your hand. Use your skewer to poke out the air pockets. You want the meat in there good and tight. Keep feeding, poking, packing, until all the meat is in the casing. If you still have air pockets, or the meat isn't in as tight as you want, you can still fix it once the sausage is off the machine. Tie off the loose end, squish, push, poke until your sausage is nice and plump, then retie the end to keep it all together.

I did not have good instructions for making the links; it did not matter. I simply decided how big I wanted the sections--five to six inches--and pinched and twisted at intervals. The casing was surprisingly durable. I made several twists at each interval, then set the whole thing on a rack set on a baking sheet.

Now let the sausages sit out at room temperature for a couple of hours, then stick the whole thing in the fridge, uncovered, to dry out a bit overnight. This drying process did the trick in having the links set up and keep their shape. I was then able to cut them into individual sausages.

Keep in the fridge to use within a few days, or freeze for later use.

Text and photos copyright 2009 by Brett Laidlaw

Bienvenue en Alsace

Keeping the northern table interesting through the winter can be a matter of looking at familiar ingredients in different ways, or of looking at different places on the globe. Looking between the 45th and 50th parallels and traveling east across the Atlantic, we find ourselves in...France! Lucky us. Of the regional cuisines we can choose from, we've got Bretonne , Normande, Auvergnate, Tourangelle, Savoyarde, and today's stop, where we'll remain for the next couple of posts, Alsace, in the northeast corner of La Belle France.

The beauty of this approach is not only that we get to try delicious Alsatian "pizza" topped with crème fraîche , onions, and bacon, and succulent simmered sauerkraut served with savory charcuterie; it also gives us a chance to learn about working in imaginative ways with the limited winter larder. The cuisines of these regions are a great deal older and more sophisticated (for all that they might now be labeled "peasant food") than Jell-O salad and hot dish. There's a wealth of knowledge here about making the most of what we've preserved or cellared from last year's harvest.
With its blend of German heartiness and French refinement, Alsatian cooking provides a great template for cooks in the upper midwest, or other northern climes.

We were in Strasbourg a couple of years ago, and picked up a cookbook called La Cuisine Alsacienne Traditionelle. It didn't seem like such a find at the time, a bit "Better-Homes-and-Gardenish," but the more I look into it, the more I like it. This recipe for tarte flambée is a fairly literal translation of the recipe from that book.

Tarte Flambée (Flammekuche)serves 3 to 4

1 cup warm water
1 tsp active dry yeast
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups (approx.) unbleached all-purpose flour
optional-- 1/4 cup whole wheat flour as part of the 3 cups
1 ounce (2Tbsp) softened unsalted butter

Pour the warm water into a large mixing bowl, and sprinkle in the yeast. Let stand five minutes. Add the salt and half the flour, mix. Add the butter in small pieces, mix. Continue adding flour a bit at a time until the dough is too stiff to mix with a spoon. Turn the dough out onto a floured counter and knead, adding flour as required to keep the dough from sticking, for one minute. Even if the dough isn't perfectly smooth, set it aside, dusted with flour, for 10 or 15 minutes.

Knead the dough again for just a couple of minutes. After the dough has rested it shouldn't take much kneading to achieve a smooth, elastic dough. Return the dough to the bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise at room temperature one to two hours; or, place it in the fridge for a longer, slower rise, taking it out an hour or two before you want to bake the tarte.

For the topping:

3 medium onions, chopped
2 tsp butter
2 tsp grapeseed or canola oil
freshly grated nutmeg
4 ounces best quality slab bacon1 cup crème fraîche, or 3/4 cream mixed with 1/4 cup sour cream
1 egg
salt and pepper

Sauté the chopped onions in the butter and oil for a few minutes, until they are soft but not browned.

Slice the bacon into 1/4-inch slices, and then cut the slices into 1/4-inch little sticks, or "lardons."

Mix the crème fraîche with the egg and a good pinch of salt, a few grinds of black pepper, and a few scrapings of nutmeg.

Preheat your oven to 500 F. Prepare the dough: This amount of dough will make three or four tartes--I originally made two larger tartes, but smaller ones would be better. Keep in mind the size of your oven and/or baking stone--you may only be able to bake one or two tartes at a time. For four tarts, divide the dough in four, then stretch and/or roll the dough into roughly 8-by-10-inch rectangles. If you're using a baking stone, place the dough on cornmeal-dusted peels. If you don't have a stone, place the dough on cornmeal-dusted baking sheets.

Spread the cream mixture on the rectangles of dough. Spread the sautéed onions on top of that, and sprinkle the bacon lardons evenly over the top.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until the crust is well browned and the cream bubbling. Serve with a salad, like carrotes rapées , and plenty of cold Alsatian wine, such as riesling or pinot blanc, or the Alsatian blend known as "gentil."


Text and photos copyright 2009 by Brett Laidlaw

The Cheese Course: Marieke Aged Gouda with Blackberry-Apple Compote

We discovered a new cheese (new to us) at our favorite country cheese shop, Bolen Vale Cheese in Connorsville, Wisconsin. It's an aged raw-milk farmstead gouda, "Marieke," from Holland's Family Cheese in Thorp, WI. According to the good old Google Maps, that's exactly 69.7 miles from our Bide-A-Wee, out Wisconsin 29 east of Chippewa Falls.

I'm not sure how much age is on this cheese; it's not so old that it's getting those crystalized salt encrustations, but it has started to develop lovely caramel notes. It's also nicely sharp and rich, definitely a cheese-stands-alone sort of cheese.

To accompany it I made a little apple-blackberry goop--apples from our land and the blackberry preserves also made from our own hand-picked berries. To match the caramel flavors in the cheese (and to fill the cabin with the smell of browning apples), I let the peeled, chopped apples (two quite small ones) brown slowly in a little butter, till they were quite dark in spots. Then I just added a couple tablespoons of the homemade preserves, a pinch of salt, a few grinds of black pepper. Served it with toasted whole-grain sourdough.

It's best if you prepare this on top of a wood-burning stove, while outside the windows the hills are resplendent under a fresh coat of snow. It makes the endless winter a little easier to take....

Our woodstove, from the Four Dog Stove company of St Francis, Minnesota, has a name. It's name is "Haggis" (thanks to Melinda, Bide-A-Wee's official Nomenclature Tsarina).

________________________________________

The local foods* tally for this cheese course:

Marieke gouda from Thorp, WI, 69.7 miles from Bide-A-Wee
Apple-Blackberry Compote, Our Land
Homemade whole-grain sourdough, all Minnesota flours, from Whole Grain Milling and Natural Way Mills
Hope Creamery butter, Hope, MN

Non-local ingredients: salt, pepper. The sugar in the preserves is beet sugar from Crystal Sugar HQed in Moorhead, MN; so, while industrial, it's more local than, say, C & H.

This is a pretty dang local cheese course, in my opinion.

* I am swearing off the term "locavore." It is a dumb and awkward-sounding word. It would seem to designate someone who feeds on the locals, or on places. I've gone along with it in the past because it is in fairly common usage, but I've decided we need some standards, and not just any old thing will do. If someone comes up with a better term for the philosophy and practice of local, seasonal eating, I'll be happy to consider it. I'm still mulling the pros and cons of my own coinage, terroirista.

Text and photos copyright 2009 by Brett Laidlaw

Leeks Vinaigrette, Steak-Frites How-To

It's Tuesday again; in fact, it's Mardi Gras. If you're not being treated to a crepes dinner prepared by a French friend who's a superb cook (we are!), you could do worse than this Tuesday Night Bistro menu. The details:

Leeks Vinaigrette
serves two

4 small or 2 larger leeks

1 heaping tsp mustard (grain or Dijon)
2 tsp white wine vinegar
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 small clove garlic, very finely minced
2 Tbsp leek cooking liquid
pinch salt
freshly ground black pepper

2 eggs, poached (or "hard-boiled" to medium doneness)

Trim and clean the leeks: Remove tough outer layers (with large leeks you may need to remove three or four layers; save for stock). Remove darker greens, leaving the tender light green parts.

With small leeks, slice each leek up the center, leaving them attached at the root end. With larger leeks, cut the leeks in half the long way, then slice each half up the center. Wash well under running water, separating the leaves to remove any dirt.

Put about an inch of water and a pinch of salt in a large saucepan or skillet. Bring to a boil, and add the leeks--they may not seem to fit at first, but the tops will quickly wilt to allow you to fit them all in. Cover and simmer briskly for 5 to 8 minutes, until they are very tender.

Mix together all the dressing ingredients. When the leeks are tender remove them to a bowl. Add 2 Tbsp cooking liquid to the dressing. Pour over the leeks and toss gently.

To serve, place a portion of leeks in a small plate (a little gratin dish makes a nice presentation). Top with the poached egg, or chopped boiled egg, and a grind of fresh pepper. Serve with crusty bread or a piece of toast.

Some chopped fresh herbs, like chives, parsley, tarragon, or chervil make an attractive additional garnish, optional.

Steak-Frites with Shallot-Red Wine Sauce
serves two

2 "bistro" steaks, 6 to 7 ounces each, about 3/4-inch thick
salt and pepper
butter and oil (grapeseed or canola)

1 small shallot, chopped fine
couple sprigs fresh thyme
1/4 cup red wine
1/4 cup chicken stock
2 tsp butter

for the oven fries:

2 large organic russet potatoes, peeled, cut to french-fry shape, rinsed and patted dry
2 Tbsp grapeseed, canola, or olive oil
salt and pepper
equipment: a large cast iron skillet

Start the fries: preheat your oven to 400 F. When it is hot, place the skillet in the oven for about five minutes. Remove the skillet from the oven (REMEMBER IT IS HOT!!), add the oil and swirl it around, add the potatoes and toss gently to coat with oil. Return the skillet to the oven and roast for 20 minutes. Turn the fries so they brown evenly. Cook for another 15 to 20 minutes. Salt only after cooking so they stay crisp.
Note: If the fries are sticking to the pan after 20 minutes, don't force it in trying to turn them. Leave them a few more minutes; they will release from the pan as they start to brown. Also: if you have a convection oven, you can put the fan on towards the end of cooking to really crisp the fries.

For the steak: Salt and pepper the steaks on both sides. Heat a 10-inch heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add about a teaspoon of butter and a teaspoon of oil. Add the steaks and cook till brown but still rare to medium-rare, 2 to 3 minutes per side (if your steaks are thicker than the suggested 3/4-inch, they will, of course, take longer). Remove the steaks to a warm plate and let rest while you prepare the sauce.

Add 1 tsp butter to the skillet, and the shallots. Cook over medium-low until the shallots are softened, about 3 minutes. Add the wine and deglaze the pan, scraping the bottom with a wooden spatula. Reduce the wine by half, then add the stock and the thyme, and reduce the sauce by half, or to desired thickness. Pour in any juices that have come off the steaks. Swirl in a teaspoon of butter, and serve.

Great bistro wines: A cru beaujolais, like a brouilly or julienas; an inexpensive bordeaux--cotes de bourg, cotes de blaye, cotes de castillon, montagne st. emilion; or of course, cotes du rhone. In a "locavore" mood, I would happily pour Nan Bailly's Voyageur .

Happy bistro, one and all.

Text and photos copyright 2009 by Brett Laidlaw

Tuesday Night Bistro

February calls for desperate measures. Thomas Stearns Eliot opined, poetically, that April is the cruelest month.

On what planet? February, while technically the shortest month, often feels the longest, but not in a long-lingering-lazy-days-of-late-summer sort of way. More of a clench-your-fists, grit-your-teeth, can-we-please-get-on-with-this-already-I'm-at-the-end-of-my-rope-I'm-going-to-climb-in-the-bathtub-with-a-bottle-of-vodka-a-really-big-bottle-of-vodka-and-not-come-out-'til-May sort of way.

A little mid-week luxury, a nice glass of wine, that can make for a pleasant escape from the wearying late-winter drearies. Put on some interesting music. We shuffled these albums:

Joni Mitchell, Blue ("Wish I had a river I could skate away on....")

Les Nubians, One Step Forward ("Why no music? Music, please!")

Pink Martini, Hang On Little Tomato ("Hang on, hang on to the vine, stay on, soon you'll be divine....")

Leonard Cohen, New Skin for the Old Ceremony ("Is this what you wanted? To live in a house that is haunted....")

Paris Combo, Paris Combo ("On n'a pas besoin, de chercher si loin....")

And we prepared really quite a simple meal of bistro classics: poached leeks in mustard-garlic vinaigrette topped with a poached egg; "bistro steak" pan-fried, with a simple red wine and shallot sauce and oven frites. Affordable, local, delicious.

The steak was cut from a piece of chuck--$4.99 a pound Hill and Vale Farm naturally raised beef from the wonderful new Seward Co-op store. I show below how to trim out these flavorful, bargain steaks.

Fin.
“You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on.”

Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable.

We'll get there, just, you know, hang on to the vine, little tomato....

_______________________________________________

By "bistro steak" I mean a cheap, flavorful, often a bit chewy, cut of beef, such as is often served in the bistro classic steak-frites. With good quality T-bones, ribeyes, and New York strips running $12 a pound and up, it's worthwhile to use a little ingenuity in your meat shopping. Some butchers, especially those promoting local product, are now offering less expensive steaks like flat-iron, "charcoal," and hanger steaks.

I noticed a few years ago that beef chuck roasts, which cut across several muscle groups, often contain a nice solid chunk of well-marbled beef. I wondered what that meat would be like simply fried in the bistro steak manner. I tried it. It's now one of our favorite meals. Not every chuck roast contains such a piece, so you have to shuffle through the offerings in the meat case.
Above is the whole roast--about two pounds--and the part we're interested in, steak-wise, is the upper left section. (The rest of it I'll grind for burgers or chili, sliver for stir-fry, or chunk up for stew.) Trimming the outside fat and sinew, and separating along the natural line of the different muscle groups, we get this:

That piece was about 14 ounces--perfect. It was about an inch-and-a-half thick, and I butterflied it, cutting all the way through. The result:

Two lovely "faux onglets"--an onglet is a hanger steak, or "hanging tender".

These are not "silver butter knife" steaks; they are chewy, and must not be over-cooked--rare to medium-rare is best. But the meat is wonderfully flavorful, especially when napped with a little red wine sauce. I'll discuss the details of cooking this meal in my next post.

Get your fry pan and corkscrew ready.

_____________________________________

The "locavore" tally:

"Our garden" leeks

Schultz Organic Eggs (Owatonna, MN)

Hope Creamery butter (Hope, MN)
Garlic (Midtown Farmers' Market )

Steak, Hill & Vale Farm (Wykoff, MN)

Shallots ( Sylvan Hills Organic Farm , Menomonie, WI)

Chicken stock, homemade from Wild Acres chicken frames

Potatoes (Midtown Farmers' Market )

Duck fat (from Au Bon Canard ducks, Caledonia, MN)

Bread, homemade, natural leaven, all organic Minnesota flours--whole wheat bread & rye from Whole Grain Milling; Gold n White, Natural Way Mills

Non-local ingredients: olive oil, mustard, champagne vinegar, salt, pepper, wine, canola oil

I'll give it a B+. I could have used one of Nan's wines from ABV , but I didn't have any in the house. Also, I considered the mustardy, garlicky leek dressing too strong for the subtle Leatherwood Vinegary apple wine vinegar I had in the cupboard.

Text and photos copyright 2009 by Brett Laidlaw

Toast Again

A key factor in any experiment's success is replicability. I was pretty pleased with the Apple-Maple-Yogurt Toast , from my previous post, a sort of...I was going to say poor man's french toast (all the poor should eat so well), but really it's more of a lazy man's, or better yet, clever man's (if I do say so myself) french toast. But I needed independent confirmation of its deliciousness, so I made it again for my valentine this past Saturday. I'm not going to say that Mary is the toughest audience in the world when it comes to food, but she doesn't always react like this:



This dish relies on the best ingredients, simple as it is. No point making it with spongey grocery-store bread or fake syrup. If you've got an honest country loaf, light or dark, and real maple syrup, you're all set. If you've grown the apples and made the yogurt yourself, well, you're a bit of a fanatic, aren't you? Not that there's anything wrong with that....

It was a delightful Valentine's Day weekend. The sun shone, filling the cabin with pleasant light, and shadow. The bird feeder was the site of an incursion of redpolls, first time we've seen them this winter.

The south-facing slopes are actually clear of snow. We saw mud, glorious mud!

Greetings from Bide-A-Wee. Wish we were there.

Text and photos copyright 2009 by Brett Laidlaw

The Breakfast Club

Wasn't Ally Sheedy the cutest thing in that movie? Just sayin'....

After that little trip down Memory Lane, you probably wouldn't mind a bite to eat. If you have an apple around, and some good bread and good yogurt (just look back one post) and real maple syrup, this is a treat and a snap to make.

Apple-Maple-Yogurt Toast

Core and peel a smallish apple per person, and cut into eighths. Put a little butter in a skillet and brown the apple over medium-high heat. Toast a slice of bread (I had two rounds from a smallish batard). Butter said bread. Top with apples, yogurt and real maple syrup to taste. Eat while making yummy noises (you won't be able to help yourself).

With brioche or maybe a slice of toasted pound cake in place of the bread, you've got dessert. I would eat that.

__________________________________________________

The "locavore" tally:

Homemade bread

Apples from our land in Wisconsin

Homemade yogurt from Cedar Summit Farm organic whole milk

Wisconsin maple syrup, a homemade product from a friend of my friend Mike N. (aka "The Northman") over near Appleton

Hope Creamery butter, Hope, Minnesota

I'm actually only going to give this an A-, because the flours in the bread were from North Dakota Mills, and I could have used Minnesota flours; I was trying out a "nearly-no-knead" recipe and wanted to use readily available flour. Nothing wrong with that flour, we use it all the time, but it could have been a wee tad more local. Gotta walk the talk on this stuff....

Text and photos copyright 2009 by Brett Laidlaw