Cooking Trotters

Redneckhunter brought home a big bag of pig trotters from Double Brook Farm, so we spent a lazy Saturday cooking them one weekend.  This involved first boiling them -- along with onions, herbs, garlic -- for about 4 hours.  This yielded a delicious pork broth, which we saved of course!  Then smoking with hickory for another 2 1/2 hours.  They were already falling off the bone after the boiling, but the smoking really made all the cartilage nice and gooey and gelatinous.

Adventures in Cheese Making

I got a deal on a cheese-making kit online -- rennet tablets, citric acid, a cheese thermometer and a cheesecloth -- enough to make over 30 pounds of the either mozzarella or ricotta.

One gallon of milk produces around 1 pound of cheese -- the milk is cooked while reacting with the rennet and/or citric acidMy first attempt at mozzarella didn't go so well. There were 2 things I attributed it to: #1 I think I stirred too vigorously (I'm Chinese, when you tell us to stir, we stir -- an integral part of wok cooking), so that I didn't let my curds set up enough. #2 was I don't think I heated up my curds enough to be able to stretch them properly.  So I ended up with something dense and more the texture of cream cheese (without the cream cheese flavor).    

Attempt #2 was better. my curds definitely separated and got stretchy, and formed a nice ball.  Cutting off warm slices, it was quite tasty.  However, put in the fridge overnight, the texture changed and got dense and lost that great springy chewiness.  

So the 3rd time around, I decided to go with the easier ricotta.  I drained a small batch to eat right away (hung in a cheesecloth like a scrotum over my sink).

We had it with grilled tomatoes on semolina.  And I let the rest of the pot of curds drain a bit longer, leading to a nice batch of rich creamy ricotta.

A nice spring mash-up

My brother once called me a great "last day before vacation" cook - meaning I can take whatever happens to be in the fridge and make a meal out of it.  This remark was in response to a meal that my 18-year-old self had made from the contents of his 23-year-old summer sublet bachelor pad fridge.  I can't remember what that meal was, other than I know it included a leftover Hamburger Helper flavor packet. These days my leftover fridge ingredients tend to be higher quality than Hamburger Helper, but I still like to think of myself as pretty good at improvising.  So faced with a new week's re-up of CSA farm share vegetables, I was trying hard to use up our greens, and came up with a surprisingly yummy lunch yesterday. 

I had some garlic scapes and leeks sauteed in butter which were left over that I hadn't put into last night's risotto.  I added this into swiss chard sauteed with pancetta and added some broth to help it cook faster and give it some liquid.  Then tossed in fresh Korean noodles -- these are great jia-jyung-myun-style round wheat noodles that have a great toothsome bite.  And the final ingredient -- the one that really pulled it all together -- was a chopped salted preserved duck egg, homemade by my mom's friend.  I've never made salted eggs, but whatever the Chinese do to preserve it not only infuses a salty flavor throughout the egg, but also does something to the texture.  The egg, including the white, gets a dense grainy creaminess -- almost like a blue cheese.  And that's exactly the kind of thing it added to the noodles -- coating everything with an extra dose of flavor and texture.  It was so good, Redneckhunter even liked it, despite all the green things!

The Professor's Porkporken

My friend Claus had not heard of the Bacon Explosion when he invented his Porkporken. Rather, his inspiration was the Turducken. He wondered what it would be like to have pork inside pork, not a bacon overkill, and I think his end product is actually more edible than the Bacon Explosion.

The main reason is that the Porkporken has a pork tenderloin at it's base, making the end product less salty.
He starts with Italian sausage, pulled from the skin, cooked up in a pan. The sausage is then rolled into the tenderloin, and then the bacon is wrapped around everything, held together by toothpicks.
The whole item is then cooked in the oven, initially wrapped in foil. As it nears completion, the meat is unwrapped, coated with apricot preserves and finished in the oven to crisp up the bacon exterior.
When finished, the Porkporken is a lovely cylinder of bacon and pork. To serve, he slices it into 1" pieces. It was delicious.

Cooking Momofuku pork buns

We were cooking with friends this weekend, so I decided to make David Chang's signature dish - Momofuku pork buns.

First off, I couldn't find pork belly at either Wegman's or Whole Foods, but thank goodness for the Amish market. I got a great thick piece of pork belly there and set it up to brine overnight in a solution of water, salt and sugar.

I followed David Chang's recipe on epicurious, which was actually different than the one in his cookbook. The one online was brined in liquid as opposed to dry-rubbed in the cookbook, and the meat is kept in the juices throughout the whole process, so I figured maybe we'd end up with juicier pork.

After brining for 12 hours, I set to roasting the pork belly - fat side up - in a low temperature oven - 250 degrees for 2 1/2 hours. Then you turn the heat up to 450 and continue baking uncovered for 1/2 hour to crisp the fat.

Next the whole thing is chilled. This let me skim off the fat from the juices, plus it makes the pork much easier to slice.


After cutting into slices, you keep the slices in the juice, then right before serving, reheat covered in the oven.

Chang also had a recipe for the steamed buns, but I wasn't ambitious enough to try those yet. Instead, I bought buns from the Asian market, and steamed them while the pork was reheating.

Finally last step is assembling - hoisin sauce, pork, cucumbers and scallions. Delicious!


Post by fougoo, photos by 1000yregg

Cooking Morels

Right now is the season for morel mushrooms. I have several friends in the Midwest who have their own secret spots to find these delicious mushrooms, but since they are not as easy to find here on the East Coast, we have to order them. Thanks to Gubeen who ordered a batch from Wisconsin, I got a small share of morels for myself.



After cleaning the morels of dirt and some critters like ants, I love how easy they are to prepare. I tried a recipe using bacon that was really good.
My preference is still using just butter to cook up the morels, followed by a splash of white wine. The flavor is just so good in these morels, that you don't need to do a whole lot to enjoy them.

Lambfest at the Slackhaus

This year, after the Maryland Sheep & Wool festival, Gubeen and Olironstomach invited us over for a Lambfest dinner. Our friend, Jake, also lent a hand in cooking as well as supplying us with amazing drinks.
It was a fantastic and ambitious dinner using 6 different cuts of lamb.
We started with Gubeen's tasty quinoa dish served with Jake's dish of lamb tongue, fennel and oranges. The tongue was so tender- more so than beef.

Our second lamb dish was loin chops roasted on the infrared grill. They came out a perfect medium rare and were just amazing with really no other prep beforehand.

It was served with homemade persillade, a side made of chopped parsley, garlic, oil, & vinegar, that went perfect with the lamb.

Redneckhunter was thrilled to have the next course- white beans cooked with lamb necks.



It was so good- the meat from the lamb neck actually had a really nice sweetness to it. Fougoo and I both cleaned the bones clean. I'm pretty sure I ate all the cartilage, too.

Inspired by what they had at the festival, they also made a pit lamb for us. Just to kick it up a little, the meat had a glaze of sriracha sauce. It was so much better than any pit beef I've had because of the lamb's incredible flavor.

Our last courses were grilled lamb leg and shoulder pieces. The best part was the shoulder because Jake had marinated them in Dolin vermouth. I think the shoulder was my favorite piece, or pieces rather, of lamb I had that evening.

Jake brought some bottles of Dolin vermouth- the rouge, blanc, & dry. I tried all three and really loved the flavor of each of them.



My favorite drink of the evening was an aperitif, the Cocchi Americano. I finished the evening with this fine digestif.
I should also note that after crashing in the living room that night, we had more Cocchi the next morning to kickstart the day.

Girls Cooking Night: Winter

With a few members moving out of town, and new babies, it's been hard getting the girls together for cooking, but we managed to do it last month. No real theme was set, but with winter finally here, it ended up being a good night for cold weather comfort food.

I made Kenny Shopsin's chicken, tortilla and avocado soup from his "Eat Me" book. Brownie made a papaya, avocado, and mache salad; Melissa made David Chang's brussel sprouts with mint and spicy toasted Rice Krispies.

Debbie and Marian supplied the hearty main dishes: a whole roast chicken by Deb, and traditional Italian Sunday gravy by Marian -- super rich sauce slow-cooked all day long with homemade meatballs, sausage, and baby back ribs falling off the bone -- guy food as she put it.

Girls Cooking Night: July

For last month's girls cooking night, we decided to each pick a recipe from the July issue of Bon Appetit. Here with links to the recipes:

Watermelon, feta, and arugula salad with balsamic glaze

Grilled nectarines with feta.

Sweet potato and poblano salad with honey and rosemary


Shrimp and green onion pancakes (pa jeon)

Grilled shrimp with fiery lemongrass-chile sambal






Chocolate cake with ganache and praline topping

The Bacon Explosion

So we jumped on the bandwagon last month and made the Bacon Explosion. Smoked it with hickory, along with a whole chicken.

I have to say that I think the recipe needs some work - there's nothing revelatory - it tastes like you'd expect bacon, sausage, and bbq sauce to taste. And it was really salty.

I feel like some element of starch needs to be added - like stuffing in mashed potatoes, or making it en croute - just something. Perhaps further experimentation is necessary...

Happy Chinese New Year!

In honor of this week's New Year's celebrations, I thought I'd recap our last family holiday meal which was Christmas dinner.

Among the many delicious courses were braised pork knuckles, chicken steamed with five-spice rice powder, marinated pigs ears, cold jellyfish salad with onions, daikon and beef stew, steamed duck stuffed with eight-treasure sticky rice, egg dumplings and more.