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Kimchi Soup For What Ails You

22 Jan 2013

5 Comments

Last week I started coming down with a good old-fashioned head cold. On Saturday I started to get really sick, despite herbs, an acupuncture treatment, and rest. I wanted soup, the most nourishing, immune-building, virus-killing soup I could come up with. There was 1/4 jar of kimchi left over from the batch I made in November, nice and sour and perfect for kimchi jigae- old kimchi soup. “Jigae” means soup or stew in Korean. This isn’t quite traditional kimchi jigae, more a WAPF/paleo version with bone broth for an extra mineral boost. I ate nothing but kimchi soup and tangerines for the next two days and by Monday I was feeling better.

Spicy Kimchi Soup

1 unsmoked, uncured ham hock, or any cut with lots of connective tissue and some meat
2 tsp salt
4 cloves of garlic
2 leeks, white part only
1 tbl coconut aminos (or soy sauce)
1 tbl honey
1 tbl toasted sesame oil
1 tbl fish sauce
6 c water

2 c old kimchi, with plenty of juices
1/4 lb shiitake mushrooms, sliced

1 bunch of green onions, chopped
2 big handfuls bean sprouts
1 lb left over roast pork or meat of any kind, sliced thin

In a deep dutch oven or wok with a tight lid, add ham hock through water. Bring to a boil, then turn the heat down to a simmer, cover, and cook for 2 hours. Check the broth. It should be milky from dissolved collagen. This is the goodness! When the ham hock is falling apart, take it out of the broth with tongs and set aside to cool.

Add the kimchi and shiitake mushrooms to the broth. Bring to a boil again, then cover and turn down to a simmer. Cook for another hour.

Strip the meat off the ham hock and shred or chop. Add to the soup along with the green onions, bean sprouts, and roast pork. Stir and simmer for another 10-15 minutes, until the green onions are wilted.

Serve extra hot in big bowls.

By: Andi Houston Category: Cow Pooling, Recipes! Tags: , , , , ,

Our Christmas Pig Roast

27 Dec 2012

1 Comment

Well I guess technically it was a Christmas pig steam, since the pig in question had no skin and therefore could not be roasted. After watching eleventy million videos on cooking pigs outdoors in every conceivable way but the exact combination of materials and ingredients I had, I ended up winging it.

And it turned out just fine. Pretty damn good in fact, for my first time cooking a pig like this. A testament to cooking as a process, a collection of skills and experience, not just following a recipe.

The pig was thawed in the (sparkling clean) bathtub overnight with a cup of kosher salt. Then I folded it into a cooler and doused it in two bottles of mojo criollo and covered it with ice for the morning. Mmm, mojo slushie. Then we got the coals going- two bags of natural wood charcoal in my backyard brick firepit, with long concrete edgers making a diamaond in the center to rest two oven racks on.  Then I pleated sheets of heavy-duty aluminum foil into a big sheet, covered that with rinsed banana leaves, and laid out the pig.

The choice of aluminum foil was probably the biggest mistake. Do not let anyone tell you that there is no difference between the “heavy duty” aluminum foil available in grocery store and the restaurant-brand “heavy duty” aluminum foil available at Sam’s Club and restaurant supply stores. Restaurant grade aluminum foil is much sturdier and less prone to tearing. We ended up having to take the pig completely off the fire twice and re-wrapping it- once when the flames burned through the foil and once when the foil tore when my husband was turning the pig.

The menfolk were nervous about the fire and kept adding hot coals. I finally convinced them to stop messing with everything after a few hours and we went inside and left the pig entirely alone to cook for another hour. When I went outside to check the internal temp, the needle went all the way around- over 190°. After only four hours and lots of fiddling, moving the pig off and on the fire, and poking at coals, the pig was apparently done and possibly overdone.  We pulled the foil-wrapped package off the fire and I tentatively opened up a corner to test the temperature again, to make sure I hadn’t hit a bone or a thin muscle. Stuck right in the haunch the temperature was 190°. Not only was the meat done, it was literally falling off the bones.

I covered it all back up and let it rest while we hurriedly got everything else ready and set the table. The whole feast was potluck- each member of the family chose a dish to contribute and cooked it themselves.  Ripe plantain tostones, black beans and yellow rice, corn spoonbread, turnip greens with plenty of ham, my husband’s pineapple and sweet potato curry, mashed sweet potatoes, and plenty of red wine. After all the dishes were placed on the sideboard I realized there was no room for the pig or to carve it, so we just slid the whole pig onto my largest platter and set it whole in the middle of the table. The meat was so tender we just stuck our forks in it and pulled off what we wanted. Excellent Christmas dinner.

Some changes for next time/advice:

  • If I get another wild hog, I will need to lard the meat before cooking it. This was a lean hog and some of the meat turned out too dry, despite the moist cooking method.
  • Spend the few extra dollars and purchase restaurant-grade heavy duty aluminum foil
  • Use an oven thermometer to gauge the temperature of the barbeque pit
  • Check the internal temperature of the meat once an hour
  • Have a plan for turning the animal before you put it on the coals
  • If your pig has no skin (sometimes small butchers don’t have the correct machinery to de-bristle pigs, so they just skin them) banana leaves are available frozen at Latin grocery stores and make an excellent “skin” to protect the meat from the direct heat.

Will I do this again? I’ll be cooking another pig as soon as we finish eating the leftover meat from this one! I had a blast and look forward to refining my technique. I’d love to do the next one with the skin, but that’s more difficult to get.

By: Andi Houston Category: Cow Pooling, Recipes! Tags: , , ,

Split Personality Pork Posole

31 Oct 2012

2 Comments

Yes, yes I know. Posole is supposed to be one of those cook-all-day dishes. And this is one. Sort of. It kind of has a split personality.

I am a cook-from-scratch kind of woman, through and through. But both my work schedule and my husband’s work schedule have changed recently and we’re not getting home until much later in the evenings, but the times of our weeknight classes and meetings haven’t changed. Twice a week I have approximately 45 minutes to get dinner ready and all of us to eat before we rush back out the door. I must adapt.

Enter the slow cooker. I love slow cookers/crockpots and I have been using them my entire adult life. Slow cookers are one of the few necessary kitchen “gadgets” for me. I use mine several times a week to make chicken stock, soak and cook beans, or cook meat. This winter I’ll be taking many of our family’s favorite meals and adapting them to cook in stages, so I only have a few minutes’ prepping and cooking or seasoning to do when I get home, or my husband or kids to do on nights when I don’t get home until late.

This posole recipe is one of my first trials and it came out wonderfully. It’s hot and hearty and the kids asked that it enter “regular rotation” on our weekly meal plan. I’m calling this “Split Personality” because it’s not “quick”- the meat is slow-cooked and you start it the night before- but the final stage of cooking only takes about 30 minutes.

Split Personality Pork Posole

2 lb wild hog boston butt, bone-in
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp mild ground chile (not chili powder!)
1 tsp salt
1/2 c water
olive oil
1 large red pepper, diced
3 red-skinned potatoes, diced
1 large carrot, diced
1 jar of good quality salsa verde, preferably homemade (We like Herdez brand, no added sugar)
1 large can of white hominy, drained and rinsed

The night before, take the pork out to thaw if necessary. I do this overnight in a sink full of cold water because I’m a rebel.  Then chop the carrot and peppers and put them in the fridge. In the morning before you go to work, put the pork in the slow cooker with the cumin, chile, salt, and water. Turn on to LOW. If possible, have your kids unplug the slow cooker when they get home in the mid-afternoon so the pork can cool slightly before you get there.

If not, unplug the slow cooker as soon as you get home. Lift out the meat with tongs and set it in a bowl to cool.

Heat a dutch oven over medium heat. Dice the potatoes. Add the peppers, carrots, and potato to the dutch oven with a little olive oil and saute just until softened. Add the salsa verde, hominy, and the pork stock from the slow cooker. Add just enough water to barely cover the vegetables. Shred the pork and remove any bones and gristle. Add the pork to the pot, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes.

Taste a potato to make sure it’s cooked. Add salt, pepper, powdered chile, or cumin if necessary. I like serving this with cheese quesadillas that I make while the posole is simmering, and plenty of sour cream and fresh limes to squeeze over the top.

By: Andi Houston Category: Recipes! Tags: , , , ,

Homemade Chorizo

26 Sep 2012

8 Comments

One of the restrictions in this diet we’re trying is “no nitrates or nitrites”. When I read this recipe for a paleo breakfast casserole using chorizo I knew I wanted to try it, but every brand of chorizo I could find had nitrites added. So what’s a girl to do? Make her own chorizo, of course!

The first place I look for charcuterie recipes now is Punk Domestics. I read every recipe on there for making fresh chorizo and then combined them to use what I had on hand and our taste preferences (all the oregano!). Several recipes called for spices like cloves and cinnamon. I substituted allspice, which is native to the New World and goes very well with chiles and achiote.

Fresh chorizo was a revelation. I usually buy dried chorizo but the fresh is spicy and heady in a completely different way. My homemade chorizo has much less fat than store-bought, also. Usually recipes call for frying the chorizo and then using the fat rendered out of the sausage to cook the vegetables that come after. I actually had to add some home-rendered lard to the pan afterwards.

Fresh Chorizo

I can’t wait to make another, much larger batch of this to hoard in the freezer!

4 guajillo chiles
2 ancho chiles
1 fresh ripe (red) jalapeno
1 bunch of green onions, chopped
3 cloves of garlic
2 tbl fresh Mexican oregano, minced, or 2 tsp dried
1 heaping tsp black peppercorns
2 tsp roasted cumin seeds
1 tbl achiote seeds
1 heaping tsp whole allspice berries
1 tbl sea salt
1/2 c apple cider vinegar
1 pound of ground wild hog meat, or any ground pork

Bring 3 cups of water to a boil and set aside. Heat a cast iron skillet over medium-low. Toast the guajillo and ancho chiles until the skin is slightly darker and they are more pliable and maybe puff up a little. Put them into a jar or a glass bowl and pour the boiling water over them. Leave alone for 20-30 minutes.

Drain the chiles. (Chile soaking water is excellent for poaching chicken, if you’re feeling thrifty.) Lay them on a plate with a lip. Tear off the stems, then tear them open lengthwise. Scrape out the seeds with a butterknife and discard the seeds and stems. Put the cleaned chiles in a blender or food processor. Then clean the fresh jalapenos the same way. Add the jalapenos, onions, garlic and oregano to the blender with the rehydrated chiles. Add the 1/2 c apple cider vinegar and puree.

Put all of the dry spices in a spice grinder or mortar (or molcajete!) and grind until they form a coarse powder. Add to the blender with the salt and blend again. Put the mixture into the fridge for at least an hour or until cold. Taste and adjust any seasonings if necessary. Try not to eat it all.

Put the cold ground pork and the cold spice paste in a bowl and combine the mixture thoroughly by hand. Put the meat mixture back in the fridge in a non-reactive bowl and chill for at least 2 days before using. I split mine into small portions and froze the portions in waxed paper, but I think parchment paper would work better.

By: Andi Houston Category: Charcuterie, Cow Pooling, Recipes! Tags: , , ,

Pear Cider Braised Ham

24 Sep 2012

4 Comments

On Friday I went and picked up three wild pigs’ worth of meat for our first Gainesville Cow Pool shares of the season. Last night I cooked the first cut of my share- a small fresh ham roast. These are possibly the best pigs we’ve yet received. There was no gamey flavor or smell at all, just rich dark pork. It’s hard to describe pork from wild pigs to someone who’s never eaten game meat, because meat from a wild hog is to farm park what venison is to beef. It’s less marbled but darker and much more richly flavored.

I bookmarked a recipe a long time ago for a dish called chicken normandy, but never actually made the dish. When I saw our local knobbly pears for sale at the farmer’s market on Saturday, I knew I had to try making pork with the same technique, braising meat  slowly in cider and then finishing the sauce with cream. I’m so glad I did! I love finding new ways to use our local pears. Now if only there was someone making hard pear cider with them!

Pear Cider Braised Ham with Pears and Leeks

I served this with steamed rutabaga mashed with butter and rich chicken stock. The earthiness of the rutabaga was perfect for the rich sauce, but I think potatoes would be pretty good too. Shoe leather would be pretty good with this sauce!

2-3 lb fresh ham, rinsed and patted dry
1/2 of a 22oz. bottle of pear cider, or apple if you can’t find pear
5 sand pears, cored, peeled and quartered
1 large leek, cleaned and cut into 1″ half-moons
Plenty of salt and pepper
1/4 c whole heavy cream or creme fraiche

Place the ham, fat side up, in a large dutch oven with a tight-fitting lid. Pour the cider over the ham and place in the cold oven. Turn the oven on to 325. Bake for 1 1/2 hours without opening.

Pull the dutch oven out and carefully open the lid. Add the pears and leeks and stir them carefully in the cider juices at the bottom of the dutch oven. You want to coat each piece with the ham/cider juices. The salt and pepper liberally, cover, and put the dutch oven back in the oven and cook for another hour.

Game meats like wild pork must be thoroughly cooked. You can use a meat thermometer and test for 165 and you can wiggle the bone sticking out of the roast. If the bone wiggles freely and the meat is falling apart and it tests at 165, then it’s cooked.

Remove the ham and vegetables from the dutch oven and put them on a platter, leaving the ham/pear broth behind. Put the dutch oven over a medium flame on the stovetop. When the liquid starts steaming, add the cream and stir to bring up any of the browned juices on the bottom. Let reduce until slightly thickened, taste for salt and pepper, and serve.

By: Andi Houston Category: Cow Pooling, Recipes! Tags: , , , ,

Rosemary-Mustard Crusted Pork Rib Roast

19 Sep 2012

5 Comments

I’m picking up three wild hogs on Friday for the Gainesville Cow Pool, so this week is all about cleaning out the chest freezer to make room for the influx of fresh pork. About a month ago my husband cleaned out and inventoried the freezer to find out what was actually in there. He made a list and taped it to the top of the freezer so we wouldn’t have to go on a treasure hunting expedition every time we opened it and it’s worked wonderfully. One of the surprises he found buried at the bottom was a small standing rib roast of pork. I’ve never cooked a standing rib roast in my life, but I pulled it out to thaw on Sunday and decided last night to just jump in and give it a try.

It was a halfway success. The meat itself was delicious, perfectly cooked and moist. The strong herb-mustard paste really complemented the stronger flavor of the wild pork. The major benefit to cooking a whole rib roast is that the loin, which is in the middle, is protected from drying out by the surrounding ribs and outer layer of fat. The bed of parsley root and leeks, on the other hand, was burned and swimming in melted pig fat. I underestimated how much fat a rib roast from a wild hog would have on it. I’ve changed the recipe below to roasting the meat on a broiler pan or a roasting pan, so the extra fat can drip away from the meat. If you want to roast vegetables in the oven at the same time, I suggest doing it in a separate pan.

Rosemary-Mustard Crusted Pork Rib Roast

1 3-4 lb pork standing rib roast, or any other bone-in pork roast
3 heaping tbl Creole mustard, or any spicy brown mustard
2 heaping tbl horseradish
1 heaping tbl ground rosemary, freshly ground if possible, or 2 tbl minced fresh rosemary
3 fat cloves of garlic
1 heaping tsp of salt
1/2 tsp of pepper, freshly ground if possible

Start the prep the morning of the day you want to serve the roast. Rinse the roast under cold water and carefully dry with paper towels. Crush the garlic cloves with the salt in a mortar or in on a cutting board with the flat of a heavy knife. Mix the salt/garlic paste in a bowl with the mustard, horseradish, rosemary, and pepper. Carefully smear the paste over all of the surfaces of the roast. Set it on a plate in the fridge uncovered. This will allow the roast and the mustard herb crust to dry, which will help everything brown up nicely in the oven.

When you get home, take the roast out and carefully slide it onto a roasting pan with a rack or a broiler pan. Turn the oven on to 425•. Let the roast sit at room temperature while the oven comes to temperature, then put in the oven for 45 minutes. At 45 minutes, check the internal temperature by sticking a meat thermometer into the center of the roast between the rib bones. If the temperature does not read 165, put it back for another 10-15 minutes until it reads the correct temperature. Let rest out of the oven for at least 10 minutes before slicing.

To serve, hold the roast with a pair of sturdy tongs or a meat fork and slice between each rib to the backbone. Then carefully cut each chop away from the rib bone, cutting along the bone and then cutting the chop away from the spine. I served this with pureed cauliflower with plenty of butter and goat cheese. Delicious!

By: Andi Houston Category: Cow Pooling, Recipes! Tags: , , ,

Molasses & Moonshine-Cured Ham

26 Jun 2012

7 Comments

The charcuterie bug has bitten me again, inspired by my friend Beth’s adventures in sausage-making and finding my copy of Charcuterie by Rulman & Poleyn after the move. I had this beautiful miniature wild-hog picnic ham and a couple of pork steaks in the deep freeze, just calling to me. The last ham was a partial success and I was itching to try it again. I made sure I had all the ingredients and just dived in.

This is my quick & dirty version of the Blackstrap Molasses Country Ham, page 198-199. I’m ashamed to say I’m just not comfortable hanging meat to cure outside of the fridge. My kitchen hovers around 82 degrees during the day and around 76 at night. The ideal temp for curing meat is 60. Until I can rig a special curing box, it’s fridge-curing for me. If you’re leery of hanging meat outside of the fridge to cure like I am, this isn’t a true “country” ham, but it’s damn tasty. It’s also a smaller piece of meat if you’re a little nervous buying a 15-pound fresh ham to try this for the first time.

Molasses & Moonshine-Cured Ham

2 1/2 lb bone-in fresh “picnic ham” and 1 lb fresh ham steaks
1 1/2 c kosher salt
2 tbl pink salt/Insta-Cure #1
1/2 c raw sugar
3/4 c molasses, blackstrap if you have it
1/2 c Apple Pie Moonshine
1 tbl ground ginger
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp coriander seeds, toasted
1 tbl juniper berries

Combine salt, pink salt, sugar, and spices in the goblet of a sturdy blender. Add moonshine and molasses and puree until the mixture becomes a smooth paste. This method works very well if you don’t have a way to grind spices. Pour 1/4 of the mixture in the bottom of a glass dish, then add the meat, spooning more cure over and under each piece. The dish should be a fairly tight fit so the meat is mostly submerged in the cure paste. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and put in the back bottom shelf of your fridge. Leave for 2-3 days, turning the meat in the curing paste each day to make sure all surfaces are evenly coated.

On the 2nd or 3rd day remove the meat from the curing paste. Rinse off as much of the brine as you can. The meat should be firm to the touch. Cover the meat with cold water in a large glass or plastic container and soak for at least 6 hours. Then take the meat out and place it on a rack over a rimmed baking sheet and let it dry for another 4-6 hours in the fridge, or overnight.

Hot-smoke the meat for 3 hours at 200-250 degrees. I used applewood chips, but any fruit wood would be nice. At the end, the meat should have a strong smoky smell and be firm to the touch. Let cool all the way to room temperature, then wrap and freeze or refrigerate. To serve the picnic ham, let it come to room temperature, then braise the picnic gently in a small amount of water for an hour. You can do this on the stovetop on low or in the oven. Check the internal temperature before serving.

The ham steaks have the consistency of country ham and I’m using them like country ham, in small amounts for flavoring. The strong smoky-salty-sweet flavor is excellent for cooking with fresh lima beans.

Next up: More bacon! Happy curing!

By: Andi Houston Category: Charcuterie, Cow Pooling, Recipes! Tags: , , , ,

Pig Pool and Guest Photographer

16 Dec 2011

2 Comments

My sister, Erin Thomas of Erin Thomas Photography, is here visiting for the week! She came out to Crawford’s Custom Meats with me to pick up the wild hog shares for the Cow Pool. I am especially excited about this share, because it included the half-ham I’m curing for our Christmas dinner.

One of these cows is ours, but I don't know which one.

Here's the meat before it's sorted, all in a big basket

Then I sort the cuts into bags and weigh each bag

This time the shares were 5 and 10 pounds, most of the time everyone gets the same amount of meat.

I’m so thankful we’re getting so many opportunities for pools over the winter. Our brand new deep freezer is filling up nicely. The venison a few weeks ago was a nice change from all the pork we’ve been eating, but I’m really looking forward to the grass-fed beef pool in a few short weeks. All the money we’re laying out for shares of meat this winter will hopefully mean smaller grocery bills all spring and summer… we just have to reduce our weekly budget instead of spending the money each week on something else!

By: Andi Houston Category: Cow Pooling Tags: ,

December Sausage Workshop

23 Nov 2011

2 Comments

What sausage do you want to make?

Crawford’s Custom Meats has decided that this sausage-making workshop thing was pretty fun, so we’ve decided to do one more this year.

Custom Sausage Workshop

Saturday, December 3rd, from noon to 2:30pm at Crawford’s Custom Meats in Worthington Springs/Lake Butler.

Registration is $45 per person. We will be observing the hog butchering process from carcass to sausage using a local wild hog. Each person will assist in cutting up the meat. You will bring home between five and ten pounds of your own custom sausage by the end of the workshop.

If you want to make your own custom sausage, bring enough seasonings for ten pounds of meat. There are several recipes in Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing by Ruhlman & Polcyn, and you can search online.

The class is limited to 8 participants and I already have three registered. Please email me ASAP to register.

By: Andi Houston Category: Charcuterie, Cow Pooling Tags: , , , ,

Behold! Pancetta!

22 Nov 2011

1 Comment

The pancetta that we started has been hanging in my parents’ fridge for 2 weeks. It was looking good, not too dried out, so we decided to sample some last night.

The small end. We didn't get the meat wrapped quite tightly enough, there were definite air pockets. Made us doubly glad we decided to air-cure this in the fridge.

Here you can clearly see the air pockets inside of the rolled meat. Maybe next time we'll butterfly the belly piece to get it thinner so it will wrap tighter? There must be a better way to do this.

I love the swirls of white fat and pink meat here. The pink meat all the way through to the center shows that the cure penetrated the meat.

We finally screwed our courage to the sticking place and fried up a thin slice. Right now it is intensely porky and salty, with a strong resinous flavor from the juniper berries, garlic, and other herbs and spices in the initial cure, and a strong peppery bite at the end. This is definitely not something you'd want to eat a chunk of like bacon, it's definitely something to use as a flavoring ingredient. It was delicious and complex and I can't wait to cook with some!

After poking it, prodding it, slicing off some, and tasting it, we decided to let it hang for another week. It’s not drying out like the book cautions against but it’s also not firm all the way through, so I think some more air-drying needs to happen.

Thanks to Mike Thomas, my dad, today’s guest photographer!

By: Andi Houston Category: Charcuterie Tags: , , , , ,
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