It has been a while. Again.

In fact it has been so long since I’ve posted that I was unsure whether my fingers could find their way around the keyboard.

The truth of it is, I’ve been swamped. Family, work, other work, foraging from farm to farm, more family, playing with meat, and that whole baby thing, which has really slowed me down. By the time I post this, my wife and I will be 3 days away from becoming first time parents.

Funny thing it is becoming a parent. Your entire life till that moment you are parented and suddenly one day you are entirely responsible for this one other person. Everything you do becomes important to the development of this one child.

To me, this undoubtedly extends to food as well. I now find myself scanning through the market shelves in total defense mode. “You will not come home with me!” I think, sometimes out loud, when contemplating what to bring home for dinner. I am sure by my newly acclimated shopping approach I have warded off many friendly fellow shoppers.

This is routine: I reach for the item. Read. Obscene language follows as I throw whatever it is back on to the shelf, 3 aisles away.

The search for wholesome food is frustrating. Add in the desire for that food to be grown close to home and the chance of you actually eating dinner is next to none.

A couple of weeks ago I embarked on a new journey to find grass fed, if not organic, beef grown here. By here I mean southwest Louisiana. The part of the state where pastures are at a plenty. I was captain Ahab, and the beef was my great white whale. Let it be known to you that these two stories share the same ending. Minus a couple details.

I woke up with high hopes. I thought for sure I would find a couple of butchers who would lead me to a secret cellar where there hung slabs of pristine grass fed beef. Unaltered by all that other shit the rest of the animals eat. I thought wrong.

I did find the butchers and what they showed me was box beef.

Beef out of a box.

This is a slaughterhouse, what the hell are they doing slaughtering boxes?

It did not get better from this point. I went on to another slaughterhouse with a bit of resentment from the first stop of the day.

Never had I been so disappointed in a butcher.

The man did not even know what grass fed beef was. “Why would we feed them grass when they grow “better” with corn?”

By this point I was beginning to realize one of two things. Either I was surrounded by a bunch of country ass meat packers who have never known good beef, or I was about to wake up for real and start this day over.

The later never happened.

I shouldn’t have made the last stop, but I did. I should have just gone back to the kitchen, but I didn’t.

Instead I visited one last place that morning, where I was laughed at when I asked about properly raised cattle. In fact I was told that there would be no way of knowing where the beef they wanted to sell me originated from. Which brings a question to mind, what the hell happens to all the cattle that graze in the pastures of south Louisiana?

The answer to that makes no sense to me. The big time meat packers buy the cattle and move it all to confinement feed lots. Where each head of cattle lives out the last six months of its life being force-fed corn and corn by-products till it reaches desired weight. Why six months? Because the cattle will not live past that without developing disease.

Say it aint so.

Can it get worst than this?  Why of course. The farmers who make a living by selling this cattle to the big companies gets paid less per head if they do not themselves feed it corn prior to the companies buying their animal.

At the end I, like many others searching for the same thing, had to put in requests with small independent farmers who raise a couple of cattle each year. Luckily they still give us some control over what we bring into our homes.

Disappointment does not even begin to express what I felt from this experience. But the lesson I learned will serve forever as a guide to my approach. I am a big supporter of local. Each week I travel the markets. I shop locally and I am very proud of our local products. But when it comes to the food I prepare whether for guest and especially for family, the quality is mostly important.

Local is secondary to good product. I will not be supportive of product that is not raised with integrity, just to say that it is “local”. As heroic as I like to think this is, I am just one chef. One chef, with the desire to use only what is good. One chef, some say, out of his mind.

I will never even make a dent in the system without help.

That’s where you come in.

I trust that you ask for what is good.

I trust that you believe that the system will change.

I trust that you think outside that box of meat.

Corned Beef Cheek Salad

A couple of weeks ago Brian gave me a pair of beef cheeks (somehow there are only two per animal). Great cut of meat, that lends itself best to long cooking techniques. I am a huge fan of corned beef, so I came up with this version of a chopped beef salad. It is time consuming, but I promise you that patience will pay off.

Pair of beef cheeks

1 gallon Water

16 oz Kosher Salt

4 oz Sugar

2 tablespoon Pickling Spice

3 Large Cloves Garlic

Six days later:

Head of chicory

Cipollini

Pear

Corned beef has actually nothing to do with corn. The name came from the salt-water mixture, which is also known as brine. The salt originally used to brine meats, was in large pebble form resembling corn kernels. Hence corned beef.

Inspect the beef cheeks, removing any sinew.  Carefully trim them as to get rid of hanging tissue. Place the beef cheeks in a plastic or glass container with a lid, large enough to submerse them in liquid.

In a pot, heat up water. Add spices and whisk often to dissolve. Chop the garlic and add it to the water. Once the salt and sugar have dissolved allow the liquid to cool to room temperature. This is now a brine.

Place the brine in the refrigerator and cool off completely. Add the brine to the beef cheeks and marinate for 6 days. Place a small plate on top of the cheeks, as to keep them completely submersed.

On day 6.

Remove the cheeks from the brine and allow them to rest in the refrigerator for 24 hours.

On day 7.

Place the cheeks in a large pot, with 2 tablespoons of pickling spice and cover with water. You may have to place another plate on top of the beef cheeks as they cook to keep them covered. Simmer for 4 hours. Add water as needed to keep them covered.

Remove the cheeks from the cooking liquid. Be careful as you move them, they’ll be falling apart by this time. Allow them to rest for a bit.

You now have made corned beef. Well, corned beef cheeks to be precise, but this method is also applied to brisket. The natural next step is for you to corn brisket, season it, smoke it and steam it for some badass pastrami. But that’s another post.

Whip up a quick mustard vinaigrette. Dress the chicory, or greens of choice. Just don’t go with a wimpy green like romaine. You want something robust. And don’t use frisse either. It’s considered the awkward lettuce. It’s like eating someone’s fro.

Dress the chicory with thinly sliced cipollini, and sliced pear. Shred the beef cheeks over the salad.

Where to find grass fed and organic local beef:

Gotreaux Family Farm

Brian and Dawn Gotreaux

Gofamilyfarms.com

337.273.0383

Gardner Ranch

Stuart Gardner

Stuartgardner65@gmail.com

337.945.7083

Charcuterie; Taken from the French term for “cooker of meat.” Considered a French culinary art, referring to products of meat, particularly (but not limited to) pork specialties. This according to the Food Lover’s Companion.

I’m on a salt kick! Absolutely mad this time of year about salting and preserving anything fresh I can get my hands on. Perhaps natural instincts of winter coming on, maybe I’m just hungry for salty tad-bits of aged animal products. Once roaming the open range (or at least I hope so), but now hung neatly in a curing box waiting for their début. For the next few issues of H2T I will share recipes mainly dealing with Charcuterie.

But first let’s talk about the elephant in the room.

I’m not going to be the one to claim that American curing practices and understanding of charcuterie is inferior to countries where the products originate, but I am going to state that there is something wrong with the American public’s lack of appreciation for what is good in its natural form. After all this is a country where they tried to breed fatless pigs… pigs, fatless? The only creature who has the right to bask gloriously in its obesity and moreover adored for its fat and they tried to take that from it.

My point being- if one can’t understand the natural being of beasts and all other things food related, one cannot produce products of superior quality.

The over salting of American cured product I have always found a bit suspicious. Is it that something is known about the meat when it goes in for the slaughter? Ashamed that animals don’t taste of pig, beef, sheep, as they should and therefore attempt on making that up with disguises of smoke and over salting- perhaps so. Whatever the case, I’m not expecting my ranting to fix the problem, I just feel obligated by profession to state a disproval of certain practices (mainly all) within the meat industry.

But not all is lost, the good guys are still out there – remember the scary butcher with the lazy eye out to kill anything cute and fluffy?- he’s out there and he is very much on the front lines. Bit by bit the American public is coming around to the idea of meat in its natural form. Perhaps much due to the obsession with the food profession chefs are now able to be heard and people are listening.

Now that that’s out, let us get on with Pancetta- bacon with an attitude.

She’s totally stuck up and frankly why shouldn’t she be. Made from only pork belly, pancetta is dry cured and spiced with anything from nutmeg to garlic and beyond, each region in the Italian country side clinging to their own version. Unlike the English and American bacon which are smoked for enhanced aroma, pancetta is often rolled and hung, gently developing flavor over the course of a few months.

The smell of this stuff hanging in a cold cellar is fantastic, reeking of cracked peppercorns and herbs. My mother’s father would hang it next to his fermenting wine, giving the meat a musky yet wonderful almost wine settlement like taste. Once fully cured, its uses are limitless.

Luckily, I had enough pork belly to make two separate batches. The first I decided to keep old school, seasoned with peppercorns and herbs such as parsley and sage (just so happened that was what I had on hand). The second batch, featured below, is a port and crushed chili pancetta which I first brined in port wine and later cured with the dried chili – I used dry as to not introduce any more moisture to the pork belly as it attempted to cure.

Port and Chili Pancetta

3 lbs. pork belly

For the brine:
¼ c kosher salt
¼ c brown sugar
3 qt port wine (don’t waste the top shelf stuff on this)

For the dry cure:
1 tablespoon kosher salt
2 tablespoon brown sugar
2 teaspoon pink salt (curing agent)
¼ – ½ cup crushed red chili

To prepare the pork belly, trim access meat and fat slabs that are hanging on, and square it off into a neatly trimmed rectangle.

Combine the port, sugar and salt into a pot and at medium heat stir until all the sugar and salt have dissolved completely. Keep cooking until the port begins to simmer. At this point with a great deal of caution, ignite the port to evaporate all the alcohol out of the wine. The reason I ask you to do this is because alcohol goes sour and over time will affect the pork belly. By igniting it and getting rid of the actual alcohol you are left with only pure port, all the alcohol has burned out when the flame subsides.

Remove the brine from the heat and allow for it to cool to room temperature, this is especially important as you don’t want to place the meat into hot brine, essentially cooking it.

Submerge the pork belly entirely into the brine in a container large enough to hold it. Place in the refrigerator and allow if to mingle for 24 hours. Meanwhile you may mix all of the dry cure ingredients together. When the brining is complete, remove the pork belly and discard the liquid (I am not a fan of using brines more than once, the brine gets cloudy with meat settlement and I find that they’re concentration weakens to a point where you’ll never get the same results) pat dry and evenly spread the dry cure over the whole thing on both sides.

Place in a non reactive container with a lid (one big enough for the belly to lay flat with the flesh side up) and store in the refrigerator for about a week or until the flesh feels firm throughout. Rinse the belly under cold water removing as much of the dry cure as possible, don’t worry you will not be able to remove every speck of seasoning and the belly will be stained from the brine and spice rub. Pat dry.

Now comes the hard part- Lay the pork belly flat and as tightly as you can roll into a cylinder, fat side out, securing it with kitchen twine. Hang it in a cool dry spot with a relatively good amount of humidity (Louisiana’s winter is great for this) for no less than 3 weeks and up to 3 months. The humidity level is important so that as your pancetta cures it does not become dry and brittle, but moist and firm.

I use an old restaurant wine chiller as a curing box, which I have gutted out and set on its highest temperature, but your refrigerator should work as well if you’re not feeling comfortable having cured meats hanging in your guest bedroom closet.

Enjoy.

The craft of curing and aging protein and vegetables alike has been around for thousands of years. You begin to gather a sense of accomplishment, a feeling of ‘look at what I have created’, patiently waiting as salt and humidity magically preserve as time would on a well kept bottle of vino. Curing does the same thing a hot flame would – the process of searing, locking in the flavor and preserving. The difference being that it is a much longer practice but in turn stabilizes food for much longer then simply cooking it.

This is how it works: salt drains protein of water (moisture) therefore slowing down the growth of harmful bacteria.

Ingenious process in an era when your refrigerator was winter. Astonishingly delicious however when curing is not what may or may not keep you alive till the spring.

I deeply enjoy putting in time and effort into curing, whether it is fish, meat, or preserving fruits and vegetables. It’s a craft that demands respect, demands understanding and above all patience, a virtue that I am not too familiar with 12 hours each day. The rules are simple yet they must be followed thoroughly, and frankly if they’re not or you decide to skip a step somewhere along the way just remember you may kill someone with your E. coli spiked salami.

Invest in a jar of pink curing salt (fairly inexpensive and available on-line) cheese cloth, some strong kitchen twine, lots of kosher salt and whatever other flavorings you’re absolutely mad about. Raw protein is an excellent vessel for flavor so remember to use herbs and spices wisely, but most importantly have fun with it.

For ideas, recipes and guidance on everything about curing I strongly recommend Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing, by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn, I keep a copy above my butcher block at all times.

Horseradish and Gin Cured Salmon

6 oz brown sugar (dark or light, depending on preference)
6 oz kosher salt
2 – 3 pound fresh salmon with skin removed
¼ c gin
¾ c horseradish, freshly grated

In a bowl mix sugar, salt, horseradish and gin into a well incorporated paste. Place the skinless salmon in a pan that is just large enough to hold it. When curing meat most instructions will advise not to use a stainless steel pan to minimize chemical reaction. However, because curing fish takes days and not months using a stainless steel pan is quite fine. Rub the paste on both sides of the salmon making sure there is an even coating throughout.

I simply slice it and serve it with good crusty bread and cracked pepper vinaigrette. But you may treat as you would smoked salmon, perhaps on a bagel with some good champagne for brunch.

Enjoy.

This has by far been the hardest Item to get hold of so far on Hunt2Table.

Squid Ink is one of those things that although it may not look appetizing at all, once you taste it you realize it’s one of the most delectable delicacies you have ever enjoyed. The highest quality of which comes from the Mediterranean Sea, because of the water’s rich complexity.

Yes, it looks like crude oil in a jar but there’s a little more to this stuff than meets the eye. The ink’s delicate nature during harvest is what makes it incredibly hard to find, unless you know where to look.

I tried a couple of different stores and what I found did not even come close to comparing to the stuff I remember from my childhood. My father would go to the local fish market on holidays and buy the freshest whole squid he could find. I remember watching, barely able to look onto the counter without standing on a stool, as he gently pulled out the squid’s guts and with the precision of a neurosurgeon carefully sniped out the ink sacks without breaking them open. The dark, tar like substance smelling rich of salt from the sea that was squeezed out of those tiny sacks holds some of my dearest memories of summer from my younger years in Sicily.

The hunt was full of disappointment as I ventured from place to place in search of the ink. I found canned squid in “ink sauce”, a pathetic combination of sodium, food coloring and fish stock. I came across ink that although looked promising with all the content written in Portuguese, the back label stated in proud bold letters “made in china” – no thank you!

Even specialty markets did not seem to have any leads on where to find the stuff.

Realizing the impossibility of finding a local source for the ingredient, without going through a restaurant food purveyor, I decided to order it online. Let me tell you this stuff does not come cheap. A 500gram jar (just over 17 ounces), with shipping cashes in at about 70 dollars, but it’ll last you for a very, very long time due to its potency.

I guess the lesson here is that if you do ever come across it stop being such a mindless and pretentious numnut when it comes to food and try it. If it wasn’t good or edible they wouldn’t charge so damn much for it.

This is one of my favorite recipes using squid ink. If you ever get your hands on some I hope that you’ll enjoy making it as much as I do.

Enoy~

Risotto al Nero di Seppia

2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (or 1 fresh red chili)
1 tablespoon chopped shallot
1 teaspoon fresh chopped garlic
3 oz squid, cleaned and sliced (preferably fresh)
1 10oz can tomato filets
½ cup tomato sauce
1/8 teaspoon squid ink
2 cups cooked Aborrio rice (which is nice and creamy, but not too thick – because you followed cooking instructions, RIGHT?)
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a small heavy bottomed pot, allowing it to get really hot without reaching smoke point. Add the red pepper flakes and shallots, stirring with a wooden spoon as to not let them stick. Once the shallots begin to sweat and become a bit translucent add the garlic and the squid. Allow the flavors to mingle for about 3 to 4 minutes on medium heat, add the tomato filet along with the tomato sauce and bring to a simmer. Add the squid ink, and being careful not to splash any out your pot (as it will stain), gently fold the sauce till the ink is fully incorporated. Taste and season with salt and pepper, it is important not to salt your sauce before you add the squid ink as it packs a good bit of salt. Once you have seasoned your sauce, fold in your aborrio and allow it to rest for a few minutes.

When I first began writing this issue of Hunt2Table a week and half ago there were two things I wanted to stress the importance of: a close relationship with one’s butcher, and the role of offal on our table.

What exactly is offal? It is what as chefs we are very careful of keeping secret. We guard it as best we can and try not to let you know just how good it all can be. Think: foie gras, monk fish livers, skate wings, sweet breads… as soon as you (the customer) begins to crave it the price shoots through the roof and we are no longer capable of keeping it in house.

I’m talking about all the wonderful nasty bits, the entrails, organs, and outer extremities that most of us turn up our nose at. We tend to shy away from offal as food, while in other cultures it has become delicacy, as it once was here too part of standard American fare.

In every profession kitchen this is what is sought of after as treasure; treasure which although absolutely inexpensive we take great pleasure in charging you a week’s wages for what would otherwise be processed, canned and fed to your pet poodle.

But what if I told you that you did not have to pay what we charge for it. There is an easier way to obtain these little packages of joy and happiness… become friends with your butcher!

I know, he can be a rather frightening character at times. Covered in blood, holding a clever, perhaps sporting a lazy eye, with the look of a somewhat deranged man out to kill anything fluffy and cuddly. But the truth of it is that butchers are just pissed off.

No, not at you!

At the big companies who have turned their art and passion into a mindless assembly line operation where at some point someone inserts a needle into your meat and pumps it full of chemicals so that it may look fresh and appetizing till the next ice age.

The few who have been able to hang on to their nearly extinct profession are looking for you; a sensible and adventurous seeker of what is still good about meat. At first he might be a bit defensive, slightly arrogant but if you insist upon demanding the good stuff he will respect you and who knows you might even get a little smile out of him.Think of the butcher as your friendly neighborhood bartender. He’ll remember your name, he’ll memorize what you like, and when something good comes along he will stash it away just for you.

Back to the offal thing: God knows I love the stuff, and in my opinion no beast is the greatest provider of it than the noble pig. The belly, hocks, hears, snout, tongue, liver, heart, cheek, and by far my favorite – the tail.

Enjoy! –

Pork Tails Confit

Dry cure per # of pork

4 c pork fat
4 cloves garlic
1 shallot
6 sprigs thyme
3 tbsp salt
2 bay leaves
Gentle alcohol to cover (optional)
Pepper to taste

Grind all dry cure ingredients, and toss pork to cover evenly. Place in a non reactive container (plastic will do) and submerge with gentle alcohol such as vermouth. Store for 24-36 hrs. Rinse and pat dry. Cover in fat, and place in 225 degree oven for approximately 3 to 4 hours. Store covered in the same fat for up to 2 months.

Pork Tails Rilletes

Confit pork tails
Pork fat
Whole grain mustard
Radishes
Kosher salt
Good crusty bread

Take your confit pork tails and debone them. Place all meat in food processor and pulse to an almost smooth mixture, adding a bit of pork fat from the confit if needed. Spread on good crusty bread with a touch of mustard. Slice up the radishes and sprinkle a bit of salt on them as an accompaniment.