Raccoon and Lobster

Surfas just sent me an email informing me that one of their January visiting chef classes was Butchering Basics.

Me: I am so there!
The Boyfriend: I think you will like that less than you think.
Me: Why?
The Boyfriend: Butchering Basics? They’ll probably bring in a whole pig and show you how to break it down.
Me: God, I hope so.
The Boyfriend: Oh…maybe you will like it then.

I don’t know why The Boyfriend keeps trying to dissuade me from doing things that are absolutely awesome because they might turn out to be awesome. Later tonight we will have a conversation centered around his belief that being an astronaut sucks because you’d get to go into space.

UPDATE!!!! The class is being taught by Ryan Farr, the guy whose blog introduced me to the greatest and most aptly named charcuterie technique of all time, Cured Rolled Face. If this is any indication, 2010 is going to be pretty damn sweet.

A pork shoulder braise is a pretty easy way to de-clutter your fridge. The shoulder gets cooked until it’s falling apart and everything else is marinated in red wine and pig fat for a few hours.

Onions, potatoes, an apple that’s been sitting around a little too long, some carrots, and a few brussel sprouts, why not? Sadly this brightly colored collection of food ends up getting turned various shades of reddish brown thanks to the red wine but rest assured that the flavor is still there.

Braised Pork Shoulder

1 bone in pork shoulder
olive oil
red wine
3-4 onions
assorted vegetables

Preheat oven to 325°F. Season the pork shoulder with salt and pepper. Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a dutch over over medium high heat, and brown the pork shoulder, about a minute on each side. Remove the pork shoulder and add the onions to the pot. When the onions soften and turn golden, add the other vegetables (and errant fruit) and cook for a few more minutes, allowing the flavors to develop. Deglaze the pot by pouring in about a cup and a half of red wine. Using a wooden spoon, scrape off the delicious browned bits on the bottom. Return the pork shoulder to the pot. Add enough water or broth to cover the vegetables and bring to a boil. Cover the pot and place into the oven to cook until the pork is very tender, 2.5 to 3 hours. Reduce some of the cooking juices in a separate pot until it is thickened into a sauce and serve over the pork and vegetables.

Freshly made pasta is so superior to the store-bought kind that I always feel bad that I don’t do it more often. I managed to pick up the KitchenAid pasta roller set on sale so now I definitely have no excuses.

In fact, take a look at my setup:

That is the power of parallel processing, folks.

Fresh Basil Pasta
serves 4-5

4 large eggs
400 grams flour (14.1 oz)
1 tablespoon olive oil
3-5 leaves of fresh basil, finely chopped
½ teaspoon salt

Combine ingredients and gently knead into a smooth dough. If the dough is too sticky or too dry, adjust with small amounts of flour and water. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 20 minutes. Cut the dough into quarters and run a piece through the rollers at the thickest setting a few times, folding in half lengthwise between each run, dusting lightly with flour to avoid sticking. Then run it through without folding, reducing the thickness setting between each run until you reach the desired noodle thickness. Cut the sheet to a manageable length and run it through the cutter and then hang the noodles up to dry as you finish processing all of your dough.

To serve this, I replicated a recipe from the Old Spaghetti Factory that The Boyfriend was exceptionally fond of back in the day. They claim that Homer—the Greek poet, not the Simpson—lived off of the dish. Always one to fiddle with the classics, I added in some heirloom tomatoes and steak strips to  jazz it up and also to help counteract the saltiness of aged mizithra cheese.

Fettuccine with Mizithra Cheese and Browned Butter
serves 2

3 cups cooked pasta, drained
3 tablespoons of butter
1½-2 cups of hard mizithra cheese, grated
2 large tomatoes, chopped
cooked steak strips or other protein source

Brown the butter in a saucepan and add the pasta. Toss the pasta to coat with butter and mix in most of the cheese. Remove from heat and top with tomatoes and steak strips and season with remaining cheese. Garnish with a little more chopped basil for flash.

The Boyfriend is actually home every day this week so I get to cook for two for a change. Crêpes have been on the list to make for a while, ever since I acquired an honest to goodness crêpe pan at Surfas many moons ago. Strangely, the pan keeps magically de-seasoning itself and moving around in the kitchen, which makes me think the puppies have been up to no good. The Boyfriend denies any involvement. Hopefully your crêpe pan is free of this crazy voodoo curse.

Crêpes!
Makes about 18 crêpes

2 large eggs
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1 cup flour (4.6 oz)
3 tablespoons melted butter
2 tablespoons sugar
splash of vanilla

Optional tweaks:
sprinkle of cinnamon
sprinkle of nutmeg
splash of liqueur

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and whisk until well blended and no longer lumpy. Let rest for at least 5 minutes to let the bubbles to subside. You can even go so far as to make the batter the night before you serve the crêpes. Heat your pan over medium-low heat and melt a small pat of batter to coat. Pour about 1 ounce of batter into the pan and swirl the pan to distribute evenly. Cook 30 seconds or so on each side. Can be served plain with a dusting of sugar, or with jam, lemon curd, nutella, fresh fruit, cream, or whatever else you can think of.

Teasing the dog is purely optional.

The tree has been procured. The presents have been opened. They days are getting longer. The server is no longer dying. There is a giant pile of wrapping paper sitting in the living room and the puppies are asleep on the sofa. We had a fabulous Winter Solstice Boxing Day, and hope you did too.

A word of warning: if Stacy comes to visit you, in addition to looking at mammoth fossils and browsing farmer’s markets, she will encourage you to try on unbelievably shiny gold shoes and drink champagne late into the night. The next morning, you might find yourself suffering from a hangover and reading an email with the tracking information for a pair of awesomely ridiculous shoes that are en route to your house.

I present to you the newest contender for Most Ridiculous Shoe:

Apparently champagne brings out my inner raccoon. My inner tough, spikey raccoon.

Stacy came up to Los Angeles to visit for a few days, so we went to look at some mammoths and mastodons today.

A reconstruction of a mammoth.

A mother mastodon and her baby.

Bison. Not a buffalo.

It is a law that saber-toothed tiger cat skeletons be displayed with the mouth open.

See?

There is a wall of  404 dire wolf skulls excavated from the tar pits. Over 1600 dire wolf remains have been uncovered in the tar pits so far.

And here is a dire wolf leaping gracefully after some prey.

Unfortunately, we were not able to see any work at the excavation site, but there were several volunteers working inside the museum.

Even the tiniest pieces of bone are carefully cleaned and sorted.

Down to the teeniest little mouse toe bone.

Apparently the museum will train volunteers to sort and clean fossil bones, and you can eventually assist in the summer dig as well. Next year, everyone will be getting Ice Age mouse toe bones on Boxing Day.

I saw this recipe on Steamy Kitchen a while ago and it was one of the main things that inspired me to buy a mandoline. The recipe itself is simple enough, but the presentation is gorgeous and sometimes food just tastes better with a little bit of flash. Not being one to leave well enough alone, I jazzed it up a little, the basic recipe is just potatoes, salt, and butter. I drizzled the potatoes with garlic-infused olive oil and layered in some slices of gruyère. Unfortunately, all that time in the oven caused the gruyère to separate, so next time I will be adding the cheese after it comes out of the oven. A light sprinkling of herbs would also be nice for future attempts. There are a lot of ways you can play with this recipe, and being such a big fan of potatoes, I will probably try them all eventually. Since you have to cut the potatoes into bricks before you slice them, you will also have ready made chunks for breakfast potatoes the next morning. Or mashed potatoes. Or potato salad. It’s twice the potato-y goodness.

Potato Dominoes adapated from Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way

4 large baking potatoes
3-4 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, smashed and chopped
salt
2-3 ounces gruyère cheese

Preheat your oven to 400°F. In a small bowl, combine the garlic and the olive oil and set aside. Trim the potatoes until you have a long rectangular box, roughly the size of a stick of butter. Using the mandoline, slice the sticks into thin cards, about 1/8 inch thick. Jaden at Steamy Kitchen sliced her potatoes a little thinner than that, and they look extra fancy. Toss the cards with salt and roughly stack them again into rows in a baking pan. Keep the stacks a little loose and leave them a little disheveled so they cook through and brown unevenly on the edges.

Drizzle the potatoes with the garlicky olive oil (I left the actual garlic out for presentation’s sake). When I made this, I sliced the cheese using the mandoline and buried the slices between sheets of potatoes. They blend in so perfectly they’re almost impossible to see but the effect was a little ruined by the cheese separating during the cooking. Far better, I think, to simply keep the slices and scatter them on top of the potatoes when they come out of the oven and form a cheesy layer on top of the crunchy browned edges.

Bake for about 40 minutes or until the edges are golden brown and the center is tender when jabbed with a skewer or fork. Serve immediately.

Many faiths and cultures have holiday celebrations in the coming weeks, but the truly faithful know that December is when a very important figure was born. And although he came from humble beginnings, word of his miraculous birth spread quickly and he grew to be a moral and spiritual leader with followers all over the world. Every year, the anniversary of his birth is celebrated with great fanfare involving the gathering of families, sharing of food, and gifting of presents.

I speak, of course, of the birth of Rocky Raccoon.

‘Twas the night of his birthday, and all through the house

All the puppies were squeaking, with toys in their mouths.

Foul beasties are shaken.

And shaken some more.

Until piles of toy carcasses cover the floor.

This poem I am ending, because it’s a struggle to write,
So Happy Pupmas, to all, and to all, a good night!

It’s been over two weeks since my last recipe posting, and you would not be remiss for thinking that I have given up eating. The truth is that I just haven’t been any baking, and most of my cooking doesn’t seem blog-worthy. Lacking in anything else to blog about, however, I am resigned to posting these pseudo-recipes. I’ve been eating a lot of udon lately, it’s a great way to get a quick, hot, and healthy meal after a chilly late night run. I thought I was quite a genius for my time saving trick of using bacon instead of the traditional slices of roast pork, but Google cruelly informs me that many a chef has already made this discovery.

This should be regarded as a very rough guide to making your own udon bowl. Sprouts, green onion, egg, bok choy, and wakame are all common ingredients in udon, and you can also make a more traditional udon broth with dashi, soy sauce, and mirin.

Miso Udon with Mushrooms, Spinach, Tofu and Bacon

4 cups water
3 tablespoons miso paste
1 serving dried udon noodles
½ cup dried wood ear mushrooms
½ cup enoki mushrooms
2-4 ounces tofu (I use tofu cutlet, aka atsuage tofu)
3 large handfuls of spinach
1 slice of thick cut bacon, chopped into large pieces

Boil the water, add the miso paste and udon noodles, and reduce the heat to a low boil. Typical cooking time for dried noodles is 12 minutes, so after 5-6 minutes, throw in the mushrooms and tofu. When the noodles are almost done, add the spinach and bacon. When the bacon is done (approx 1 minute or less), you are ready to eat.