The Artist Eats

Giant in the Kitchen: Sausagefest!

November 29, 2009 – 6:16 pm

There’s something really invigorating about trying something new in the kitchen. It’s so  easy to get stuck in the same old same old – and I really think that boring eating makes for a boring life. It’s not that standard fare is bad, but if you make it the same way week in and week out, things are going to get a bit monotonous.

One way I’ve found to really mix up a standard dinner is to make from scratch what you would normally purchase premade. This can really apply to anything, and it doesn’t have to be overly complicated, but if you make something from scratch, it’ll taste better and you’ll have a little more personal investment in the meal. I’m thinking of food along the lines of homemade pasta, bread, ice cream and cake, but especially sausage.

I know, I know, sausage doesn’t really fit into that category, but what’s more simple than grinding meat?

My buddy Jason and I have been talking about making sausage for a few weeks now, and finally got around to it on Friday. I’ve never made sausage before, but Jason is an old pro, so it went smoothly and ended up being a real learning experience for me. He has this awesome old French sausage recipe which we used as a starting point, but we ended up coming up with some great mixes of our own.

I’m really lucky to work at Fair Shares, because it gives me access to awesome local meats. We used one of Karlios Hinkebein’s pork shoulders for the sausage. This is sustainably raised, happy meat – you’d be hard pressed to find a better quality product. The pork shoulder was 14.25 pounds and we got a little over 10 pounds of sausage out of it. We decided to make loose sausage, because most casing is too thick and plastic-like for our tastes, and it’s really just easier not to mess with the casing.

I haven’t done much research on meat grinders, but Jason has a KitchenAid stand mixer with a meat grinding attachment and it seemed to work quite well.

There are basically five steps to making good loose sausage:

1. Cut the meat from the bone

2. Slice the meat into strips which will fit into your grinder.

3. Grind the meat.

4. Mix in your spices.

5. Grind the mixture again for thorough distribution of the seasonings and a smoother final sausage.

The whole process is very simple. The double grinding makes for a very smooth and silky sausage (i.e. no big chunks of gristle to get stuck in your teeth).

We split the ground meat into 3rds and made different seasoning mixes for each. It turned out that we made a French style, a Spanish style, and an Italian style, but that wasn’t premeditated. The following recipes are rough guidelines. We didn’t measure the ingredients and neither should you.

One little tip to really get your seasoning just right: In step 5 of the grinding process, grind a little bit and fry it up on the stove. This allows you to taste the sausage and see what, if any, corrections are needed to really get the most flavor into your final product.

The French Recipe is a pistachio-garlic sausage which tastes fantastic. We upped the amounts here by 50% because we had around 3 pounds but the proportions stayed close to the same. We didn’t have truffles, but I gave it a few glugs of truffle oil instead, and I think we use around 6 cloves of garlic rather than 1.5 teaspoons.

2 pounds ground pork shoulder, 20 to 25 percent fat
1/4 cup dry, fruity white wine
1 teaspoon finely chopped garlic
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon Salt
1/3 cup shelled, unsalted pistachios
1/4 cup coarsely chopped black truffle, optional

For the Spanish Recipe, I ground all of the seasonings together in the mortar and pestle. We went heavy on all of the spices here, especially the Paprika. The pork can handle it, why not have a spicy sausage?

Smoked Paprika (I picked this up at Penzeys Spices in Maplewood)

Garlic

Red Pepper Flakes

Salt and freshly ground Peppercorns

The Italian Recipe is straight forward rosemary-fennel sausage.

Fennel seeds, ground

Fresh Rosemary (Locally grown on my balcony)

Roasted Garlic, two heads

Lemon Zest

Salt and freshly ground Peppercorns

Methuselah Cheese (A hard local cheese which would be the result of a tryst between a farm house cheddar and parmesan)

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

I’m Up To My Ears In Fennel!

June 16, 2009 – 12:14 am

Ok, I’m swamped right now. I’m working full time for two weeks at Fair Shares, picking up my aunt Lindy’s hours while she’s out at Telluride. I’m also still doing my Google quality rater gig, so I’m pushing it in terms of hours in the day.

I’m really busy, so I need you to do me a favor. Take a minute. Go to a coffee shop. Enjoy a latte. Play a quick game of scrabble for me. I’m sure you won’t get as many vowels as I did last time. Do it for me?

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Giant in the Kitchen:Quick Strawberry Jam

June 5, 2009 – 12:00 pm

So I’ve been absent for a week, but I promise you that I haven’t stopped eating – or thinking about eating. Arianna and I moved to St. Louis this past weekend, and what with packing, loading and cleaning, I never got around to posting. It’s okay though, I can’t imagine that you’d be all that interested in hearing about the chicken sandwich I had in West Virginia last Friday night. I will say that even though I’m not much of a fast food eater, I will miss Chick-Fil-A

It was surreal and kind of scary to move cross-country without my parents. I think I was expecting it to be like when I moved away for college or something, but it was so much more work than I anticipated. There were times where I couldn’t see an end to the process, but fortunately we made it through in one piece. Now I’m sitting in my mother’s basement, looking for an apartment on craigslist and trying to find a church that will hire me to sing.

I do think that it is strange that U-Haul is willing to put me behind the wheel of a 26 foot truck with an attached 12 foot car trailer, but that as a 24-year-old I can’t rent a car. I’m sure there is an actuary somewhere that can explain it to me.

We’re coming to the end of the strawberry season, but I’ve got this jam that I want you to try while the berries are still fresh. It’s one of the most delicious things that I’ve ever made – and so damn simple! It is basically Jamie Oliver’s recipe, found here. I used less sugar than him, but the less you use, the more it will be like a sauce.

Take about 4 pounds of strawberries, washed and trimmed, and squish them up in a bowl with ¾ cup of sugar. Throw it in a big pot and simmer for 30 minutes. As it cooks, a pink foam will rise to the top that you  should skim off. That’s it. Easy.

If you have a smaller amount of strawberries, like a few pints, just use a couple  tablespoons of sugar and follow the recipe above.

This stuff is awesome on toast with butter or cream cheese, poured over hot oatmeal or pancakes, and especially mixed in warm with yogurt. It is basically just strawberries, so you can eat it with abandon!

Posted in Recipe | No Comments »

The Artist Roasts: Garlic

May 22, 2009 – 1:51 pm

I bake weekly. I haven’t bought bread in close to a year and my cheap pizza stone has taken up permanent residence on the lower rack of my oven. I don’t say this as a judgment of people who buy bread, I just really like baking. I’m fortunate to have a flexible schedule as a freelancer, (my new, positive self-descriptor replacing slacker and layabout) so I regularly incorporate bread making into the day’s routine. I love the process of baking bread, and am reassured by the fact that I can control every ingredient that goes into the final product. I might be a little OCD.

As the weather has warmed over the course of the past few weeks I’ve gotten to thinking more about the economy of heating the oven. A hot oven is a lovely thing in the winter, making the kitchen a warm and inviting place, but in the summer it makes my thighs stick together and produces beads of sweat on my upper lip. I’m not willing to stop baking when the weather is hot, but I have been thinking of ways to get the most out of the time that I do have the oven running.

What I’ve started to do lately is roast garlic while I bake my bread. Roasted garlic is super useful to have around. It doesn’t have the harsh burn of fresh garlic but is amazingly mellow and creamy and versatile. It is great thrown in with eggs, tossed in pasta with fresh basil and red pepper, spread over toast with a bit of cheese or used as a topping for pizza. It is especially awesome in homemade hummus. Try replacing 3-4 cloves of roasted garlic for every clove of fresh garlic that you would normally use.

Roasting garlic is simple. Whack off the top of the head of garlic so that the cloves are exposed. Give it a healthy glug of olive oil over the top, wrap it tightly in tinfoil and toss it in a 400°F oven. Bake it for 35 minutes. The cloves should be a rich brown and fantastically creamy. If you baked bread during the process, you now have something to put the garlic on. Bonus!

Posted in Recipe | No Comments »

Giant in the Kitchen: Sweet Potato Griddlecakes with Field Greens and Poached Eggs

May 14, 2009 – 11:36 pm

For me, the one unifying trait shared by all great food writers is their ability to inspire culinary creativity in their readers. I’ve found that reading stuff by Molly Wizenberg or Francis Lam can really help me to get out of my everyday cooking ruts. It’s easy for me to get stuck futzing with a specific dish and never actually getting around to making a well-rounded meal. This past winter, I was completely focused on baking breads and sort of skimped on cooking real meals. Arianna is patient with me experimenting in the kitchen, but for some reason she doesn’t seem to think that bread and cheese is a meal. Maybe I need to throw in a box of wine to round things out?

My point here is that I was reading the aforementioned writers the other day when I suddenly got a wild hair to abandon the computer for a pint of seltzer and the company of my cast-iron skillet. As I sipped my fizzy drink, the muse of culinary inspiration struck me across the head with her magic wooden spoon, and before I knew it I had created a pretty kick-ass, well-rounded lunch.

Sweet Potato Griddlecakes with Field Greens and Poached Eggs

What you’ll need:

For the Griddlecakes:

1 sweet potato

1 cup white flour

1 cup coarse cornmeal

Pinch of salt

1 tsp dried basil

½ tbsp baking powder

¼ tsp cayenne pepper

1 egg, lightly beaten

2 cups milk (roughly)

For the Field Greens:

This is just an estimate, but let’s say 2 cups of field greens per person.

For the Eggs:

1 or 2 poached eggs per person, whatever is right for you.

Give your skillet a healthy swig of olive oil and preheat it over medium-low heat.

Slice the sweet potato into 1 inch cubes and nuke for 8 or 9 minutes, until soft (Slow Cooking Option: roast them in a 400° oven with a good coat of olive oil until soft and caramelized).

Mix your dry ingredients while the potato is cooking. Mash the potato thoroughly and add to your dry mix (I left the skin on the potato, but if you aren’t a fan of skin, it should come off easily when you mash the potato).  Stir in the egg and add the milk ½ a cup at a time. The amount of milk you use depends on the size and moistness of your sweet potato. You’re going for a thick, fairly chunky batter. Spoon the batter onto your skillet making cakes 5 or 6 inches across. Brown on both sides, and top with the greens and a poached egg. Give it a drizzle of your best olive oil (or truffle oil if you’re feeling adventurous) and you’re good to go!

Posted in Recipe | 3 Comments »

The Artist Forages: Strawberries

May 8, 2009 – 5:15 pm

Strawberries are one of my favorite fruits, but the store-bought ones are always so bitter and flavorless that I never really want to eat them. My mom has this awesome strawberry shortcake recipe that’s been passed down the line of moms for generations, but it’s more sugar than strawberry. It tastes great, but it’s kind of a lie because it doesn’t matter if the strawberries are fresh, or in season. I think this is really what strawberries have become for most people. We’ve lost sight of the fact that fresh strawberries function perfectly as a fruit and don’t inherently need sugar to be enjoyed.

In our ongoing quest to eat food that actually tastes good, Arianna and I took the morning off yesterday and went strawberry picking. She found this awesome fruit farm online that’s near Raleigh called Whitted Bowers Farm. Rob and Cheri Bowers follow organic and biodynamic practices and have created a unique place in the state of North Carolina. I really got a kick out of talking to them about their approach to farming – it’s refreshing to find people who have a true philosophy behind their work. Check out their site, and if you can, pay their farm a visit. It is well worth the effort.

I’d never picked strawberries before, only blueberries and apples, but it turned out to be really easy. They had the plants set up in raised rows, and it sort of felt like strawberry picking for dummies. We were picky about getting the perfect berries that were a deep, rich red on all sides. The kind that likes to hide behind big green leaves. In an hour and a half we picked close to 8 pounds of strawberries.

Driving home along the country roads I almost squashed a huge turtle that was slowly crossing the road. It must have been 4 inches from the car as I sped by. I guess sometimes it’s good to not be able to dart – if it were a squirrel it would have probably jumped under my wheels at the last minute. I pulled the car into the grass along the side of the road and hopped out to move the turtle out of the way. It definitely hissed at me when I picked it up. I feel like we shared a moment.

I have a bunch of ideas for strawberry recipes, but I haven’t gotten around to making them all yet. Arianna and I are making a pinwheel strawberry tart right now and if it works out I’ll post pictures and the recipe next week. For now here’s a go-to strawberry salad.

Strawberry Walnut Salad with Orange Hazelnut dressing

I’ve been eating tons of salad lately. I can’t seem to get enough greens in me after the long season of hearty winter vegetables. This is a simple salad without a lot of ingredients – that’s the point.

The toasted walnuts can be turned into caramelized walnuts without any extra work. The trick to toasting walnuts in a skillet is to not ever leave the stove! Seriously, they’re toasting along, you go to open a beer and suddenly you have a skillet full of burnt nuts…

What you’ll need:

8 cups field greens

10-15 strawberries, sliced

2 cups walnuts

2 tbsp butter (optional)

2 heaping tbsp brown sugar (optional)

1 cup hazelnut oil

¾ cup orange juice

1 lime

Preheat dry cast iron skillet over medium heat while you slice up the strawberries.

Toss the walnuts into the skillet (with the butter and sugar if you are going that route) and toast for about 5 minutes, stirring regularly. They’re done when the smell is so awesome that you can’t resist popping one in your mouth and burning your tongue. Remove to a plate and let cool.

Make the dressing by whisking together the hazelnut oil and o.j. with the zest and juice of 1 lime. Taste it and see what you think. O.J. really varies in sweetness and acidity so you might need to futz with proportions a bit.

Mix the greens, berries and nuts, and toss with the dressing until well coated. Serve immediately.

Posted in Recipe | No Comments »

Giant in the Kitchen: Whole Wheat Rosemary Crackers

April 30, 2009 – 10:37 pm

For some time now I have been struggling with a personal admission of guilt. I go back and forth in my head on how to admit – no, come to terms with – what I have become.

I am a thief.

On dark nights I slink around my neighborhood, sifting through other peoples’ property and taking things which do not belong to me. Oh, it was easy to rationalize at first: a bit here, a bit there – “This house is enormous, they’re rich and won’t miss it” or “It’s their own fault for leaving things lying about” or “They’re growing it as a shrubbery – they aren’t even using it as an herb”. Once you get into this frame of mind, there’s no turning back. At this point it’s been about 8 months, and I can’t imagine not going out late at night and snipping sprigs of other people’s rosemary.

Now, hear me out, the quantities here in Winston-Salem are really quite staggering. In my small neighborhood, I can think of at least 15 rosemary bushes the size of Smart Cars. So who’s really going to care if I take a bit of rosemary for a batch of crackers? (There I go, rationalizing again…)

Whole Wheat Rosemary Crackers

The challenge with having so much rosemary at hand is finding ways to use it. I’ve really focused on baking this past year and have come to enjoy strong flavors like rosemary and chive in my savory baked goods. These whole wheat rosemary crackers are great with runny cheese (St. Andre, anyone?) and the dough is firm enough to cut into shapes with cookie cutters. I picked up some killer animal-shaped ones at Ikea last week, but I’m not a huge fan of sugar cookies, so they’re now officially cracker cutters. Who doesn’t want to eat cheese off of a rosemary-flavored moose?

What you’ll need:

1½ cups whole wheat flour

1½ cups whole white flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons minced rosemary

½ cup olive oil

1 cup water at room temperature

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Give a cookie sheet a light coat of spray oil.

In a mixing bowl combine your dry ingredients and the rosemary. Make a well in the center of the mixture and poor in the oil. Using a sturdy spoon, stir the oil into the flour. Slowly stir in the water a little bit at a time until the dry and wet ingredients are incorporated and you have a somewhat floury dough. You’ll probably only need ¾ of a cup of water, but measure out a full cup just in case things are especially dry.

Dump your dough onto a counter and knead it for 8-10 minutes. This is a tough dough to knead, so if you aren’t breathing hard after about 5 minutes, you’re either totally buff or not kneading hard enough. The dough should be firm and not at all sticky.

Take a quarter of the dough and using a rolling pin, roll it into an amoeba-like shape. The dough should be the thickness of two nickels (do you even use nickels anymore? I do…to measure my cracker dough). If the dough is not rolling out well, try flipping it over and rolling the other side.

When the dough is rolled out, you have options. You can either make shapes with cookie cutters or go for the standard one inch square shape using a pizza cutter. If you are going for squares, transfer the dough to the greased cookie sheet and then cut a grid of lines into it with the pizza cutter. The squares will separate easily after they are baked. If you are opting for the awesome animal shapes, cut them on the counter and place them on the pan ½ an inch apart.

Bake the crackers for around 12 minutes, rotating the cookie sheet 180° after 6 minutes. The crackers should be just slightly browned on their outside edges.

Remove the crackers to a wire rack and enjoy when they’re cool enough to eat. The crackers should keep for a few weeks in an airtight container.

Posted in Recipe | No Comments »

The Artist Arts: The Blacksmith

December 5, 2008 – 2:15 am

I’ve been playing around with Irish music lately. This is my simple interpretation of  The Blacksmith. It was made popular by Planxty in the early 70’s and their version is definitely worth checking out. My vocals are a little flat at the top and I’m thinking that I should redo it in a different key to see if it sits easier. But whatever it’s a demo, done is beautiful. Punto e basta.

The Blacksmith (demo)

Posted in Art, Recordings | No Comments »

Here Is An Apple – Discuss Amongst Yourselves

October 6, 2008 – 12:07 am

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

The Artist Arts:Walk On Boy

September 23, 2008 – 12:56 am

Ok, so I’ve been playing around with some home recording. I’m still fiddling a bit, but here’s a cut of the Walk On Boy. I learned this one from an old Doc Watson instructional video. This is really his version of the song, except that it’s very slow – ’cause, you know, I don’t have Doc’s chops. Something to aspire towards, eh? Maybe I’ll try to record it faster and post it later this week.

Posted in Art, Recordings | 2 Comments »