two. ate.

The single most greatest thing about making your own sausage is that you get to see exactly what goes into it. No one can say that my sausage is filled with lips and assholes...

We stuffed all of the sausage (that we made yesterday afternoon) into casings this morning using the hand-press sausage stuffer. We had some blowouts (working the sausage down into the casings is tricky business especially if you like a firm pack on the Polish and Brats) which caused some consternation but for the most part it went smoothly. The hand-press stuffer made quick work of each type but it was definitely a two-person operation.

The Brats, Polish and Italian are all "fresh" sausage which means that the meat isn't cooked and only lasts a few days in the fridge. We saved a few of these to eat this coming week but the rest went into the freezer for our big smokeout at the beginning of April.

The French cervelas were stuffed and then tied and poached exactly like a boudin. The Spanish chorizo was baked for 3 hours at 200° and then cooled. These two last about 10 days in the fridge because they're cooked. We froze most of the chorizo and ate the French cervelas tonight. We brought a sample of each to Tom and Carol for lending us the sausage stuffer.

How did they turn out? The French cervelas were very good. We had them semi-cold with some grain mustard and a salad. The pistachios really permeated the meat and lent lots of nuttiness. The one small plate grind seemed to be enough to make that smooth boudin-like texture.

We broke open one of the chorizo and thought they were nice tasting but we'll see when we do tapas mid-month at the next Gourmet Club event.

The Brats, Italian and Polish were all tasted before stuffing (the French and chorizo too) by forming a small patty and frying them. The Polish was the best tasting, the Brats had the best texture and nice flavor and the Italians were pretty good. I was a bit wary of the bulk spices and the Italians proved my fear--I'll do my own blend next time but the Polish were outstanding and I'll use the bulk spice for them next time.

The Brat bulk sausage was very moist (from the milk) and spit a lot in the pan. The texture was near perfect. I'm looking forward to these later in the week.

Posted by wjc at 08:27 PM | Permalink

Late night, time for...soul food. Howard mentioned last week that he was in the mood for fried chicken. I mean real fried chicken. So when he called this afternoon (as I had my hands full of bulk chorizo), I thought that getting out to feed the chickens was right and proper.

Now, I'm sure that there is at least one other good place in the area that makes fried chicken but there's only one place I'll go to *if* I'm not making it myself: The House Of Soul Food in Santa Clara. We were pretty beat from grinding sausage all day and thought it was a better idea to have the nice folks at THOSF make us dinner.

THOSF is a small, side-of-the-road place on Lafayette Street in Santa Clara. This area is mostly industrial buildings and chip-fab plants and so it's a diamond in a rough of silicon and sheet metal.

They have barbecue and greens and cobbler and everything you'd expect from a place that serves soul food (yes, black-eyed peas too...yum...) but the fryer gets all the attention from me...

Between the three of us we got two fried chickens and an order of fried catfish. The chicken is amazing--the catfish even more so (which is why it's my favorite, ranking just above the chicken...). They had hushpuppies tonight (they run out quickly because they're that damn good...) and we got some of those. Sides of beans, macaroni and cheese and slaw made it complete.

Man, what a feast. I'm not supposed to eat quite this much at one meal (can't tax the blood sugar machinery, if you know what I mean and I think you do...) but for tonight it was ok (I brought home leftovers, natch...). The styro-box is calling my name as I write this...

Posted by wjc at 11:09 PM | Permalink

I love charcuterie-based food. Even more, I love making charcuterie-based foods--there's something about working with meat in such a way as to transform it into mixed and/or preserved forms. It's very challanging and rewarding.

This weekend is a sausage-making weekend. This afternoon, we made the start of five kinds of sausage:

  - a French "cervalas aux pistaches" (pork boudin-style with brandy and pistachios)
  - Bratwurst (pork, veal, mace, majoram and milk)
  - Spanish chorizo (smoked pork with lots of spices and red wine)
  - an Italian with bulk spices
  - a Polish with bulk spices

We did roughly two pounds of each. The pork was from both pork butt and pork belly (for fat content). The veal was a bit of veal stew meat. All spices were dried. The "bulk" spices were ones that came in a sausage making kit I ordered online. The kit had a variety of casings plus two plastic containers of pre-made "styled" flavors. The casings were pure pork preserved in salt.

The first time we made sausage, we made 15 bloody (literally) pounds of it. Believe me, that was a PITA. Doing two pounds of each was much more, well...manageable.

The Kitchen Aid mixer got a full workout with grinding being its primary task. I drove to Tom's house to pick up my American Charcuterie book and he asked me to test his newest kitchen toy: a hand-press sausage stuffer. The genesis of this was one particularly grueling day that Tom spent putting finely ground sausage meat back into his Kitchen Aid mixer (w/sausage attachment). Finely ground sausage sticks to everything that it touches and jamming that back into the mixer was too much. Time for some old fashioned technology.

The stuffer looks like cross between a medieval torture device and a Viking horn. You can quickly see its one and only use...getting meat into the big hole and forcing it through the small hole. Elegant.

We just worked through the batches of meat and spices doing these grinds:

  - French cervelas: small plate grind, mix
  - Bratwurst: medium plate grind, mix, small plate grind
  - Chorizo: small plate grind, mix, small plate grind
  - Italian: medium plate grind, mix
  - Polish: medium plate grind, mix, small plate grind

Most of the base recipies were from The Savory Sausage by Linda Merinoff. Additions to (or subtractions from) were all done by cooking and tasting the mixed sausage. All sausage meat was put into the fridge to sit overnight for development and distribution of flavors.

More tomorrow...

Posted by wjc at 06:16 PM | Permalink

Inspired by an Oliver's Twist episode about curry, we wanted curry but we wanted something other than our usual Pasand bowls of curry, naan, pappad and masala dosa. And we didn't want to have to drive very far either...so, Chowhounds to the rescue.

Lots of people recommended The Udupi Palace but several were raving about Dasaprakash in Santa Clara. So, after reading about what we might expect, we pulled the trigger and decided on Dasaprakash.

The restaurant is in an ages-old strip mall in Santa Clara across from where the Santa Clara Main library used to be. In fact, it's right next door to Stan's Donuts which I'm sure I'll be writing about some day.

Dasaprakash has South Indian cuisine which means very few bowls of curry (bonus for our quest) and lots of dosai (crepes filled with vegetable curry), vedus and, my favorite, bajhis.

From the time we sat down, the seemed to be very concerned about whether or not we liked spices. We told them "yes" and that we loved spicy food. They also steered us toward the Thali dinners and combinations but since we both eat moderate amounts of food, we didn't want to be saddled with full dinners. We basically wanted to graze with a dish from here and there.

It actually got kind of annoying until we said we wanted to order from different sections of the menu and that the best thing the waiter could do was to tell us what was missing from the selection of dishes we chose. They still seemed reluctant to do that but, in the end, agreed.

We ordered:

  a bowl of rassam
  an order of onion bajhis
  a mixed lentil (masala) vedu
  a masala dosai
  a bowl of bisebelebath lentils and rice

The rice was their suggestion...

Everything we ordered was dead-on excellent with spices in complex combinations that it would make your head spin. This is no ordinary Indian food. Well, "ordinary" as far as what we're used to.

The rassam was thin but had substance and not just throat-scorching heat. The bajhis were delicious little disks of onion and lentil batter that went well with all three sauces (tamarind, cilantro, coconut). The mixed vedu were a variety of lentils packed together in small, falafel-like disks which were a bit too crunchy which detracted from their flavor. They were good but not great. The masala doasi was one of the best I have ever tasted. The filling of onion, spice and potato was complex and flavorful and not at all like other renditions which employ frozen (!) vegetables and bland spicing. The bisebele rice was a pleasant surprise as it was a rice/lentil mixture with a very rich and complex set of spices running a thread through every mouthful. It was hot (spicy) at times and fragrant at others. I would order this again.

After our meal, we talked with the owner of this branch of the small chain and he told us that they were very cautious in making sure that people who had never been to the restaurant or that were unfamiliar with the style of food were prepared for the spice level. That's why we were asked so many times before the meal if we were "ok" with spices. They had apparently lost customers who expectations were firmly in the northern Indian food camp with pungent curries and good but not adventurous spices.

Posted by wjc at 10:32 PM | Permalink

One rainy Mardi Gras night, my friend Amy said that it would be great if her husband Don and I had a home-Iron Chef competition. Bring it on, I said. We never did but the whole concept turned into something that she called "The Gourmet Club".

So now, my wife and I, Amy and Don and three other couples get together on a monthly basis and we cook to a specific theme. It's great fun actually and we hosted the February 2003 edition with the theme "Comfort Food".

Several days before this event, I realized that lots of comfort food (well, at least with this group) was made up of starch and cheese. So, I wouldn't call this the most balanced of dinners. We made an extra dish (chicken pot pie) to give some sanity...the dish we did plan to make was good old fashioned (sort of) macaroni and cheese.

Before last weekend, I had never made this from scratch. I didn't eat much of the boxed kind either except when I was camping. So, it was an education or sorts.

Tom clued me into what turned out to be the key to really tasty mac and cheese: don't pre-cook the macaroni. Yes, I know it sounds insane but it really works. Here's what'cha do:

  - 9-10 oz of your favorite macaroni or pasta
  - 2 cups white sauce (2 TBSP flour, 3 TBSP butter, make a white roux with the flour and butter, add 2 cups of heated milk to pan offheat, return to heat to just simmering)
  a bunch of your favorite cheeses (fresh asiago, cotswold, cheddar, gruyere are a few I use) about 1/2 cup to 1 1/2 cups depending on your cheese needs
  - butter
  - white pepper, salt for seasoning
  - some sort of topping that will crisp up (optional), I used fresh bread crumbs whizzed up with a bit of butter to make (duh) buttered bread crumbs

  0. Heat oven to 375°.
  1. Buttter a baking dish (I use a ceramic high-sided oval casserole dish)
  2. Grate/crumble the cheese
  3. Make the white sauce.
  4. Stir in cheese into the white sauce (save some for the top at the end) until sauce is smooth and cheese is melted. Then add about 1/2 cup of milk to thin the sauce slightly. Taste and season as necessary.
  5. Pour pasta/macaroni into baking dish.
  6. Pour cheese sauce over pasta and stir until pasta is coated.
  7. Smooth the top and evenly spread the remaining grated cheese over the top.
  8. If you made a crispy topping, put that on now.

Bake for 20-45 minutes, depending on if the dish looks cooked or not. How can you tell? Dig in a grab some and taste it. If the pasta appears to be "cooked", it's probably done. Don't want to ruin your masterpiece? Look for a thin dark brown ring around the top of the baking dish where the cheese sauce has shrunk away--it you see that then it's probably done.

Posted by wjc at 05:19 PM | Permalink

This blog was originally called "food porn". That name was inspired by my friend Carol who once used that term to describe my cooking. Well, not excatly my cooking alone...

You see, I cook. A lot. And sometimes with my friend Tom (see his link on this page). Carol is his s.o. and she commented once that Tom and I (as well as the other guys who cook with us) don't merely cook food, we create "food porn".

Nice compliment. Most of the time, I'd rather look at food than porn anyway.

However...after thinking about it, I decided having the name "porn" in the title was too easy and way too joke-y for a subject that I take great pride in. I thought at length what cooking terms are my favorites.

"Charcuterie" is my absolute favorite cooking term and indeed, making sausage and other items in that realm is one of my favorite things to do but I couldn't come up with something ultra clever using that word.

Then I flashed upon the one thing any chef ends up setting up when cooking: a "mise en place" (say 'meez-ahn-plass'). "Mise en place" is a French term for "put in place" and refers the various bits of starter, garnish, and often-used items while cooking. Mine often looks like olive oil, kosher salt, chopped shallot, garlic, black pepper (in a grinder of course) and other stuff to make my life easier when either prepping or cooking off a dish. It's stuuf that is either at my immediate left or right so that I can stay centered and in front of the task at hand...

So I had it. The writing here is a collection of items that are hopefully and ultimately useful to whoever is reading them. Hopefully, one of the "meeeez" you use will be this one. Cheers.

Posted by wjc at 04:53 PM | Permalink