T-Day Prep continues

Last night I made a Charcutepalooz-ish appetizer. It is a bunch of grilled vegetables wrapped around some goat cheese. I think it will taste good. Might not end up looking pretty or slicing well, but it should taste good. First up, prep the vegetables. Sliced some eggplant, zucchini and yellow squash. The red pepper gets roasted whole. Then I made a vinaigrette with the stick blender. Stick blenders are fantastic and everyone should have one.

Lit up a chimney of coals and roasted the pepper first. Then I grilled the rest of the sliced vegetables. It was kind of chilly out last night, but surprisingly comfortable next to the grill.

I bloomed some gelatin and added that to the vinaigrette. I put it in a warm water bath so it would set up too fast.

I lined a little loaf pan with plastic wrap and started layering. Each layer got brushed with the vinaigrette.

On top of the squash, I put in the red pepper and then goat cheese. I ended up with goat cheese all over my hands so the next picture is what it looked like when I put it in the fridge.

We'll see what it looks like on Thursday. Tonight is make the gluten free cheesecake night. Seven (yes 7, VII, siete, sept) blocks of Philly cream cheese go in this bad boy. I start by preparing the crust. The gluten free crust is just pulverized gluten free cookies. Depending on the cookie, the crumbs may need a little sugar or butter. This time I went with Liz Lovely snickerdoodles I found in the health food store. They pressed together pretty well. Hopefully the cinnamon isn't overpowering. Plus, the name made me think of Liz Lemon and that show is great. Le crust:

The obscene amount of cream cheese is whipped with sugar and vanilla.

Then 4 eggs go in one at a time. After each addition, the bowl gets scrapped down to make sure everything is combined.

This is egg 3 going in...

Once the eggs are combined, some sour cream gets gently stirred in.

Here it is just before going into the oven . The foil is my work around for not having a lover walled roasting pan. If the cheesecake pan walls are lower than the roasting pan walls, stem will screw up the top of the cheesecake. I make a foil sling that keeps the steam from hitting the top of the cheesecake.

After about 1:45 in the oven, I put the broiler on for about a minute, and voila:

Only 1 small crack that no one will see. The other news from tonight, I gave the kids some of the Tuscan Salami and they inhaled it. So much for making the same thing twice. It is pretty good, but nothing like the last batch. Maybe next time...

Still in "piece of cake" mode. I'm even taking some time out to go into my daughter's kindergarten class tomorrow. I guess we'll see how confident I am at this time tomorrow.

Have you not heard?

Well uh bird bird bird. Bird is the word.is the word.

I changed plans today and picked up the turkey. I thought I'd give a Fresh Market turkey a try this year. While the turkey looks great, smells great and will hopefully taste great, I am glad I got it today for two reasons. The first is a change in my pre-cooking method. I have brined birds and also skipped brining in favor of a kosher turkey (both fresh and frozen). Earlier today I remembered that last year I read about a dry rub combination of salt and sugar. You can also read about the method at the LA Times and probably a few other places as well. Takes a few days though and I would needed to start tonight to be ready for Thursday.

The second reason I'm glad I got the turkey today is that the giblets and neck were frozen solid. It took a little bit of work to get them out as well as some ice stuck to the ribs. So much for fresh. According to a Good Eats episode I saw awhile ago, fresh turkeys can be stored at temperatures below freezing. For the center of the turkey to be this solid, this turkey had to be frozen solid. I dodged a bullet here. I doubt the center would have completely thawed in the cold storage at the store by Wednesday and if I had first seen this ice at 9 AM Thursday morning, I would have freaked. Shame on you, Fresh Market. I think I'm going to call and complain tomorrow.

Back to more fun Thanksgiving stuff. Based on some of the discussion over at the Hunger Artist, I stuck to the ratios per 1000 grams of turkey - 14 grams of salt and 7 grams of sugar. The sticker on the turkey said 19.25 pounds. I weighed what I took out of the turkey: giblets, neck, some fat, plastic pop up timer, plastic thing holding the legs and some ice. This brought my weight down to 18 pounds or about 8200 grams. So I weighed out 115 grams (8.2x14) of salt. There was some discussion on fine salt versus kosher salt. I split the difference and used half kosher and half fine sea salt. Then I added 57 grams of sugar (8.2*7). Here's the bird washed and dried.

I covered it inside and out with the salt/sugar mixture.

This turkey wasn't going to fit in any bag I had, so I covered my new super awesome huge stainless steel bowl with plastic wrap. Put the turkey in the bowl and finish the see through mummification with a little more wrap. That should do it. 

If I have some time tomorrow, I might make something charcutepalooza-ish. Most of the Thanksgiving shopping is done. House is mostly clean. Very much on pace. Still in "piece of cake" mode.

I love a parade

After a day of cleaning the house so it is nice and neat before we trash it later this week, we took in the Schenectady parade. I had never been before. Smurf-ette coming at you....

We got there just after the parade started and State Street was packed. I was pretty surprised how many people showed up. This was the original view from a kids perspective:

Pretty crappy. After a little roaming we found a decent spot near the Subway next door to Proctor's. I got the girls up onto a traffic signal cabinet. The girls were much happier.

We only got a few dirty looks from "The Man" for being up there but no one said anything. Seriously, the place was packed.

All in all, a very nice night. We had a good time. Well done, Schenectady.

And now a PSA for Albany Jane: Target has Hello Kitty gloves. The kind of gloves that have a little flap (in this case a Hello Kitty) that can expose your finger tips. Casey loves hers and was very excited to pose for you. Hope they have your size.

And so it begins

If I am counting correctly, this is the 10th year we are hosting some Thanksgiving festivities. Last year, I fell behind in the prep work and never really caught up. This year is going to be different. I've already looked and updated the all powerful Thanksgiving spreadsheet. Still have a few tweaks, but the preparations have already begun. First thing on the prep list was making more stock. I hit the Asian Market on Central up for two packages of chicken feet. Let them simmer in some water for 3 hours or so then I added onion and a lot of carrots.

I skipped the celery this time around. I was recently flipping through the French Laundry cookbook (which by the way is full of things I would love to eat but will never cook for myself), and Thomas Keller thinks the celery adds bitterness to the stock. It could be the lack of celery or it could be the overload of carrots and I suppose it could be both, but this stock was very sweet. Although it is probably closer to an aspic than a stock. Once it chilled it was chicken flavored jello.

I could have held this bowl upside down and nothing would have happened. The chicken jello was scooped into 2 bags and frozen. The larger bag is for gravy and the smaller bag will get a little water added to it before going in the dressing. Tomorrow, I have to try the Tuscan Salami and Saturday I'll hit the Troy Farmer's Market. I think I might want to try and smoke a chicken in the smoker before I do the turkey. Or at least fire it up and try to manage the heat. This year's cooker is different than in years past. I bought this one with the winning from a good day at the track.The last time I used this smoker...it was before I hosted a Thanksgiving. It has been resting in a garage in Rotterdam for over a decade. Through the magic of my brother-in-laws pickup truck, it made the trip to our house.

I also have to come up with one more dish featuring Chacutepalooza techniques. The final challenge is to host a meal featuring at least 3 of the techniques practiced during Charcutepalooza. I've got the smoked turkey and Tuscan Salami lined up. I've got to come up with one more. Right now, I'm leaning towards a grilled kielbasa appetizer. I'm going to think that one over. A week is still plenty of time. Plenty.

For now, I am enjoying the euphoric, totally ready for preparing Thanksgiving buzz. I am seriously so far ahead of last year it is sick. I'll let you know how I feel Wednesday night. But for right now, piece of cake.

Pierogi Making

The fall pierogi making seems to happen on Veteran's Day each year. At about 10, we show up at Aunt Carol & Uncle Lou's house. Then we eat a little something. Around 10:30 the filling gets made - Farmer's cheese, eggs, cottage cheese, scallions(green part only), salt, pepper and garlic powder. Then the first batch of dough gets made - flour, salt, oil, water and garlic powder.

The batches of dough get rolled out and circles get cut with and old can that has been cutting circles for pierogi for decades. The rolling and cutting is my job. The circles get filled with the cheese mixture and pinched shut. This goes on until there is no more filling. The pierogi get boiled in batches until they float. When they float, they are put on racks to dry. Later in the day, Carol wraps packages of 6 pierogi in wax paper and then re-wraps the bundle with aluminum foil. From here, the bundles are frozen until Christmas Eve when they are fried to a golden brown and inhaled by the family.

I didn't get any pictures of the process this year, but I snapped a few of the end result.

But wait, there are more....

I counted 125 pierogi made today. Not too shabby. When we were done, there was pizza for lunch. This is turning into a very nice Veteran's Day tradition. And if you have enough hands, these are pretty easy to make. We should probably do it more often.

Mc Rib - a tasting

Before Tuesday, I had never had a McRib from McDonald's. The people that like them, love them. Really love them and look forward to limited McRib times of the year - which coincidentally correspond to dips in pork prices. I was on the road for work this week. My co-worker and I were supposed to meet another group of engineers in Salamaca (a 325 mile ride from Albany). But while we were cruising down I-88, one of our tires blew out. By the time that was taken care of, we were running pretty late.  For a quick lunch we stopped at a McDonald's in Elmira. I gave the menu a once over, debated about trying the McRib sandwich but decided I'd be good and went back out to our truck and and a Balance bar I had brought and just keep drinking my seltzer. Well, my partner had told the cashier that I had never tried a McRib and was on the fence about trying one. She gave him one for free so I could taste one. I was already driving when I found this out. I handed him my phone so I could document my McRib tasting. Here it is in all it's glory:

He cut me off about a third of the sandwich. I didn't like it. The bun was kind of soggy. The actual rib portion was a steamed, salty but flavorless crappy sausage patty. The barbecue sauce was not good. I thought the pickle chip was the best part. About 10 minutes after eating it I had a stomach ache that went away pretty quickly.  Granted I'm not the biggest McDonald's fan, but I have no idea how someone could eat the whole thing. In terms of the McRib, I'm one and done. Well, one third and done. The quick lunch on the way back was at a mom and pop sub shop in Vestal. Much better.

Charcutepalooza Project #11

Curing

Well, the Charcutepalooza Challenge is winding down. And this isn't a project you can finish at the last minute so when I had a little time, I got started. Normally, I grind and stuff sausage on the same night. Unfortunately, I usually start these projects at 9 after everyone has gone to bed. The grinding and stuffing don't take that long. It's the cleaning up that is really the pain in the ass. And with this project you have to add making all kinds of bastardized knots. Sure the knots probably aren't supposed to be bastardized versions of real knots, but I was never in the scouts. I excel at shoe laces and if the situation called for it, I think I could remember how to tie off a line to a cleat on a sailboat. That's about it. Instead of grinding, stuffing and than playing with twine on the same evening (which in the past has ended close to 2 am), I split the work up.  On Saturday, I cut up the pork butt I purchased from Sweet Tree Farm and mixed it with all the Tuscan Salami ingredients. On Sunday, I ground the meat and mixed everything together. On Monday, after my trick or treaters were passed out in their sugar induced comas, I stuff the salami, tied it all up and hung it in the basement. Here's the play by play.

I brought out the pork butt and cut up the meat. The ratio of pork to fat looked good to me so I didn't supplement the mix with any back fat.

Once the meat/fat was cut up, it was weighed (1711 grams for those of you keeping score at home).

This particular formulation was created by Chef Bob del Gross over at the Hunger Artist. For the record, I am not sucking up to a judge. Instead of trying something new, I wanted to try and repeat a previous success. As far as curing salami goes, I have always tried something new and had success as well as a few failures. Therefore, in a roundabout faulty logic kind of way, I am trying something new by attempting to repeat previous results. That's my rationalization and I'm sticking to it.

Armed with this weight, I was able to calculate how much of the rest of the ingredients I needed. Starting from the top left corner and working clockwise you have: a glass with a little over 3 grams of Bactoferm F-RM-52 dispersed 28 grams of distilled water, a bowl with 37 grams of Kosher salt and 5 grams of Instacure #2, a bowl with 23 grams of dextrose, a bow with 9 grams of toasted fennel (left half of bowl) and 9 grams of coarsely cracked black pepper (right half of bowl), a small glass bowl with 6 grams of minced garlic, and finally 137 grams of red wine.

Every thing got mixed together and went back into the fridge for a good soak. Then I drank the remaining 600 or so grams of wine. Pretty tasty. See, the metric system can be fun. That was all on Saturday.

On Sunday, I ran everything through the grinder.

Once the meat was ground, I mixed in any remaining liquid (kind of in the left of the photo) and stirred to combine. Here's what went into the fridge on Sunday.

After Halloween came to an end on Monday, I put the meat into hog casings. This isn't the easiest thing to photograph when working by yourself. As a general rule, my wife prefers our digital camera to remain sausage free. Here's the set up. I put the canister of the vertical stuffer in the freezer for a while to get cold. That's why it is frosty.

Got the casings ready to go and the meat in the stuffer.

A few minutes later, all of the salami are stuffed and ready to be tied.

With a new episode of Beavis and Butthead on in the background, I sat down at the table and began to tie up the salami. The show had a few smiles but it was funnier in 1995 when drinking a beer 1:30 in the morning with your roommates while winding down from finishing an engineering assignment in college. When Beavis and Butthead was over I turned on an episode of Community and kept making knots. The lesson I took away from this 45 minutes or so of playing with twine: next time, turn on the radio. Here are the salami in bondage.

Each string of salami was weighed so I can keep track of moisture loss. The weight was written on a piece of masking tape and stuck to the bottom. The ambient humidity in the basement is pretty much right in the salami's wheelhouse. The humidity, measure by the little white box at the top/center of the picture  moves between 60 and 65%. The air temperature is also in the low 60s. I took down the plastic drop cloth I have used in the past and I'm just going to let the salami hang out down there. They will probably come down in another week or so. I hope they taste as good as they currently smell.