Breakfast

Most of the food we've done in class is lunch or dinner or dessert or snacks -- nothing particularly aimed at the first meal of the day. I purposefully excluded eggs because of two reasons: one, the many methods and techniques of cooking eggs can be a class to themselves and two, I absolutely despise eggs as a dish. Probably because my mom made me eat really poorly cooked eggs, but that's a rant for a different kind of blog.

My lecture was short and sweet and about sausage. By taking "off" cuts of meat, cuts of the tougher, less palatable cuts and grinding them up and added spices, the sausage method made previously unusable parts of the animal not only usable, but quite delicious. I showed them the meat grinder and took it apart and explained how it worked, and discussed why it's important to cube the meat into small pieces -- the connective tissue between muscles, or "silver skin", will get caught in the blade and create friction and heat, which will cause the fat in the chilled meat to warm up and run out, creating dry, crumbly sausage.

BREAKFAST SAUSAGE

Yield: 6 servings

Sage 1 tbsp
Salt 1 tbsp
Pepper 1 ½ tsp
Marjoram ½ tsp
Brown sugar 1 tbsp
Red pepper flakes 1/8 tsp
Cloves, ground 1 pinch
Pork butt, chilled 3 lbs
Fatback 1 lb

1. Combine all ingredients except meat in a bowl and mix well. Set aside.
2. Cut meat & fat into 1” cubes, then run through grinder twice – first through the big dye, then through the small dye. Keep meat on iced bowl to keep fat emulsified.
3. Combine spice mix with meat with hands, quickly. Form into equal sized patties. Sauté patties in a large skillet over medium high heat for 5 minutes per side, or until internal pork temperature reaches 160 degrees.

We had a "pork butt", which is actually the shoulder, and the students watched while I broke it down, removing the skin and the center bone. When the ground meat came out of the machine, they were surprised that it looked just like the stuff they bought in the shop.

Toward the end of class we cooked off the sausage in small heaping-tablespoon patties in peanut oil, and the students were impressed how delicious they were -- like real breakfast sausage. I told them they COULD just buy ground pork and mix in spices and make the sausage very simply that way -- and it would be hella more healthful than the Jimmy Dean crap you buy in a freezer case.

Speaking of healthful, the next recipe is probably the healthiest thing I've cooked with this class. This is my riff on the Olive Oil Granola that was made popular by the NY Times.

GRANOLA

Yield: 4 servings

Old-fashioned rolled oats 3 cups
Raw pistachios, hulled 1 ½ cup
Raw pumpkin seeds, hulled 1 cup
Shredded dried coconut 1 cup
Maple syrup ¼ cup
Light brown sugar ½ cup
Extra virgin olive oil ½ cup
Salt 1 tsp
Cinnamon, ground ½ tsp
Cardamom, ground ½ tsp
Vanilla, 1 tbsp
Dried apple, chopped ½ cup
Dried cherries, chopped ½ cup

1. Preheat oven to 300˚. In a bowl, combine all ingredients except the two dried fruits. Spread on a rimmed baking sheet in an even layer and bake for 45 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes, until golden brown and well toasted.
2. Transfer granola to a large bowl and add dried fruit, tossing to combine.

One student was moaning about how she didn't like coconut, but when it came out and she tried it, she loved it -- the coconut was very subtle and was nice and crispy. Staff from the whole building visited the kitchen, as the aromas of the granola got everywhere. Which makes me wonder about ventilation....

The next two recipes were done at the same time, as they both involved frying in a pan. The students had only ever made pancakes from a mix, and the french toast they had made at home was always disappointing because it was leaden and hard, probably due to the kind of bread they were using.

FRENCH TOAST

Yield: 4 servings

Milk 1 quart
Eggs 8 each
Sugar 2 oz
Cinnamon, ground pinch
Nutmeg, ground pinch
Salt pinch
Clarified butter, for frying as needed
Challah bread, sliced 12 slices

1. Combine the milk, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt, and mix them into a smooth batter. Keep this batter refrigerated until ready to use.
2. Heat a sauté pan over moderate heat, add the butter.
3. Dip the slices of bread into the batter, coating the slices evenly. Fry the slices on one side until evenly browned. Turn them and brown the other side.

PANCAKES

Yield: 4 servings

AP flour 24 oz
Sugar 3 oz
Baking powder 1 tbsp
Salt 2 tsp
Baking soda ½ tsp
Milk 24 floz
Eggs, lightly beaten 3 each
Butter, melted 2 oz
Canola oil as needed

1. Sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda into a large mixing bowl.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk, eggs and melted butter.
3. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the milk and egg mixture.
4. Lightly whisk the dry ingredients into the wet, stirring until just combines.
5. Heat a large sauté pan or the flat side of a griddle over medium heat.
6. Brush lightly with the canola oil.
7. Ladle the batter into the center of the pan using a 4 ounce ladle
8. Cook the pancake until the underside is brown, the edges begin to dray and bubbles begin to break the surface of the batter.
9. Turn the pancake and cook until the second side is brown.

Both turned out great. The french toast was light, fluffy, creamy, crunchy, all at once. The pancakes will rich and pillowy. We had real maple syrup on hand, but one student insisted on going into the school supplies to get some "pancake syrup", and insisted that it tasted better. Both my supervisor (pictured above) and myself were a bit horrified and amazed, and had to take a picture. You can lead a horse to water....

Not sure what we're cooking next week, but I'm leaning to Italian...

Sausage Preparation (Grinding the Day Away)

Ah, sausage. It seems like a simple thing -- grind up some meat and spices, jam it into a casing. It is a simple thing, but like the best simple things, the more you look at it, the more varied and complex it becomes. I guess that is why the so-called simple things in life are so satisfying.

Sausage traditionally uses the tougher cuts of meat -- it ain't so tough once it's ground, but you still get all the extra meat flavor you don't get with the milder tender cuts.

Once ground, meat becomes 'forcemeat', as it is forced through a rotating blade and then a die of varying-sized holes. Grinding meat comes in different styles of texture, from country-style (once through a large-holed die for a coarse texture) to a progressive grind (sending the meat through several times, each time with a progressively smaller die-hole for a finer texture).

Simply sending the meat through a grind results in a basic grind sausage. Emulsion forcemeat has a formula of 5 parts trimmed meat, 4 parts fat, and 3 parts water in the form of ice. As these elements are combined in the grinding, the temperature is lowered from 50 degrees to 30. This results in a very fine and even texture, like the American hot dog.

Our group got two sausages to make, a Szechuan-style and a Braunschweiger. The first is all pork and a basic grind, while the latter is an emulsion forcemeat primarily of pork liver— liverwurst. Dora the Explorer and 2LG took on the liver, while Squarehead and I went to Szechuan.

Simply put, you must cube the meat to less than a 1" square. I had 15 pounds of pork butt (shoulder, silly!) to cube, and being that the shoulder ain't no tenderloin, it was full of gristle and silverskin and other stuff that got caught in the rotating blade and jammed up the space between the blade and the die in the Kitchen Aid mixer. Once cubed, all the seasonings were added: salt, prague powder (a pink salt curing agent, frightening stuff), sugar, chili powder, white pepper, Chinese five-spice powder, Szechuan peppercorn, soy sauce, and a healthy shot of vodka.

All this was done over a salted ice bath -- in sausage making, EVERYTHING must be kept as cold as possible, as solid fat will result in a better grind, fat distribution (thus flavor distribution), and easier handling. But the Kitchen Aide kept jamming, despite going over the meat again to make it into smaller cubes. Norbert, somewhat experienced in sausage-making, jumped in and put our remaining 13 pounds through the Hobart. This is basically an industrial mixer, with an industrial grinding attachment -- literally 5x the size of the Kitchen Aide. We sent it through twice, first through the big die then the small, and it tore through the meat cubes like it was slush.

The ground flavored meat mix was again on ice, and I chilled the Hobart bowl and mixing paddle. I mixed the meat mush for about a minute until the consistency of the ground meat became a bit sticky and bound to itself. Now, casing.

We had long ropes of pig intestine to work with -- natural casing. First run through with water, because, well, it's intestine, then delicately spooled onto a hollow plastic tube with a flanged end. Once loaded, this tube is secured to a cylindrical tub with a plunger on top that is forced slowly down by a turning motion. Loaded up with the meat mush, the meat comes out in an even tube while you pull the casing. Every 6 inches or so, the tube is twisted to make links. Getting the rhythm down with the 2nd person was a bit tricky, creating bulbous shaped sausages and a few burst links. Air pockets would form, which would be pricked gingerly. Eventually we got through the fifteen pounds, getting 6 links in a string without a burst. This style of sausage is to be hung and air-dried for three days, but since the school doesn't have the facilities for this sort of thing, these Asian porky tubes went into the fridge to age.

At the end of class, we quickly reviewed what hors d'oeuvres everyone will be cooking up. My two ideas passed initial muster, so this is what looks will be my final swan song in c-school:

• Indian Vegetable Pakora fritters with tamarind dipping sauce
  


• Mini Margarita Pizzas with Fresh Tomato, Fresh Moz, House Made Italian Sausage and basil chiffonade

The first we made just last Friday, and on top of being the best pakora I've ever eaten (here and the UK) with real flavor of the vegetables, it's also vegan. Vegan without tofu, mock-meat, or the feeling of absence.

The pizza will be a bit challenging -- tonight I am assembling an experimental run to see how long topped round of dough can sit in the fridge before hitting the hot oven.

Tomorrow, we go on with forcemeat and replace intestine with aspic -- terrines.

ADDENDA:
After class, I attended a chocolate tasting of new and emerging brands from South America and Africa (though a solid half of them were from Ecuador.) It was a bit like a wine tasting, with all the chocolate dark and around 70% cocoa. The first chocolate was used as a standard barer, to judge the rest against, which was the French Valrhona. It was really good, maybe an 8 out of 10. All the other chocolate varied wildly, and all were pretty inferior, going from mild and innocuous to burnt, artificial tasting and unpleasantly bitter. Funny, I was expecting something fine, but the hype around being organic and socially just just does not add up to a more pleasurable chocolate. Once Wholefoods and the like starts stocking all these chocolates, it'll probably be the ones with the best marketing and packaging that'll survive -- it's just too much very a consumer to try everyone. Of the brands, the best one was the Grenada Chocolate Company, but the lecturer warned due to the super small batches that are made and the undependable supply of beans, the quality of the chocolate varies greatly from bar to bar.

BREAKFAST: 6:45am, good yogurt with raw cashews, honey, vanilla, .25 bowl, hunger 2/5

Again not very hungry at all, but didn't want to feel ill with the dirt pill.

AM TASTING: 11:45am, 4 different small sausage patties (including a chicken vegetable, Italian, and green chile, pommes Parisian, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

As today was prep and not cooking, some of the extra meat mush was fried up in patties and served with golden cubes of buttery taters. NOT a low sodium meal.

PM TASTING: 1-3:30pm, a variety of South American and African chocolate, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5

Full of sausage and chocolate, somehow lusting after salad.

DINNER: 8pm, pizza with fresh moz and fresh tomato, large green salad, half a pint of ben & jerrys, 2 bowl, hunger 4/5
Double 00 crust came out perfectly, nice and thin, crisp, nice wheaty taste. Made a round of 1.5" pizzas, stuck them in the fridge till B got home.

EVENING SNACK: 10:30pm, 20 mini pizzas, .75 bowl, hunger 3/5
The experiment worked -- I held the topped pizzas (pizzettes?) in the fridge for 3 hours, did not suffer too much quality wise. The dough didn't rise that much, very cracker-like, but still had that nice pizza chew. Topped with just fresh moz and a single thin round of tomato, the real thing will have a small morsel of sausage to kick up the salt bang, and some basil chiffonade to make it come together.