I always wanted to butcher an animal from scratch and my girlfriend’s first dream job was becoming a butcher, so we couldn’t pass on the chance to butcher a pig with Ryan Farr of 4505 Meats.  His classes are so popular (maybe because of some recent publicity in the NY Times) that we had to wait a month for another class to open before finally getting this opportunity.

I can’t recommend the class highly enough – it is definitely not for the fainthearted, but after a couple minutes starring at the pig, chopping the head off breaks the ice and Ryan was very good at getting everyone involved.  20min into the sessions, everyone is just happily chopping away at their own parts of pork.

The animal

Our hog was 6 months old and raised by Devil’s Gulch in Marin, just above San Francisco.  The hog was raised on milk initially followed by a diet of milk, bread and grains in a free-range environment.  Devil’s Gulch meat is used in restaurants from Chez Panisse (Berkeley) to Manresa (one of my favorite restaurants south of San Francisco in Los Gatos) or Zuni Cafe (San Francisco).  Note to self: must visit someday.

By the stage it arrived for our class, the hog had been killed and bled, with the insides removed.  I was a bit shocked to learn that the blood here in the US is not necessarily used for Boudin Noir (blood sausage) because of strict rules around what facilities need to be able to process blood for humans.  Instead, it is most often used in dog food… such a pity.

Our hog at this stage is pretty much 100% edible except for the bones (which can flavor stocks, soups, etc.).  So everything here can and will be eaten!

Class details: we paid $100 each for a 3h class learning how to butcher a hog from scratch, with sausages and drinks provided (chicharrones sadly unavailable at the time but usually included) and 10-12 Pounds of hog to take home.

How to butcher a hog:

I’m not going to repeat everything we learnt, it would take away from the magic of learning how to do this and there are many how-to manuals available online – even better you can see it for yourself from Ryan Farr himself here.  However, I’ll distill what I learnt:

(1) You don’t need much equipment to butcher a hog – you can pretty much do everything with just one knife: your handy boning knife.  The exceptions are bones, for which we used a combo of saw + a hatchet.

(2) Ryan Farr has a very simple intuitive system for butchering the hog – start with the primal cuts of the hog and then move to smaller pieces.  The primal cuts we divided the pig into were the head, shoulder, legs, ribs, tenderloin, heart, and liver.  Sadly the tail was missing…

(3) Make clean and precise cuts between major muscles – often Ryan would show us where to cut by pointing out that with our hands we could feel the points where one muscle turned into another (you could almost only feel skin – this was true between the head / body but also when looking at cutting off the legs.

(4) Different cuts = different methods of cooking – this one is obvious to me, but was definitely something Ryan highlighted for us, that some parts were for braising, others to roast, and some to flavor (trotters anyone?). So far we:

+ Belly: Probably my favorite cut.  Cured some belly with salt to make bacon over 3-4 days in the fridge, then 2 hours in the oven till it is at 150 degrees F and once very cold thinly sliced to make bacon slices.  One of these we flavored with fennels seeds.  Another use was the Momofuku pork buns which deserve a blog post of their own…

+ Tongue: we cured the tongue with salt overnight then chopped it up in little bits and fried in an Indonesian-style stew (sambal, ginger, garlic and shallots all fried together, add the tongue and some tomatoes + beer)

+ Chops: everyone else’s favorite and probably my least favorite cut of the pig (the belly is my favorite)

+ Shoulder: will be making sausages out of these fatty cuts

The forelegs, cut off from the ribs between rib 5 and 6

A couple hours later...getting there!

More Pictures:

There are some great pictures of the whole process here from another blogger who attended one of Ryan’s classes.

Homemade chorizo & mushroom pizza

After eating, the part about cooking I enjoy the most is the people.  And, that’s not a cannibalistic reference.  I enjoy the interaction you can have with those you cook for, and there nothing more enjoyable than cooking with others.

Unfortunately, most of my friends either don’t have the same amount of free time or, more likely, the same level of interest in spending an entire afternoon cooking.  But pizza is perfect for this.  Easy to cook, takes no time and you can cook and eat all at the same time.

So for the past two weekends, we have been hosting groups of friends to cook home-made pizza, where each guests makes their own.

The key to group cooking is preparation.  In this case you just need to prepare in advance the pizza tomato sauce, the pizza dough and the ingredients that your guests can use when making their pizza (we let each guest choose exactly what flavors they wanted).

Pizza

Prosciutto and arugula pizza

Ingredients we had: pizza sauce (see recipe below), mozzarella (thinly sliced), rocket/arugula, chorizo (pan-fried briefly ahead of time), prosciutto, mushrooms (chopped roughly), anchovies, kalamata olives, capers, red onion (sliced).  Obviously the combinations are endless.

Oven broiler on high.

(1) Pick a handful of pizza dough, smack it on the table on some wholewheat or white flour or polenta (you get my drift, this is a forgiving part of the recipe, you just want to avoid it sticking too much)

(2) Re-knead very slightly to give it life and then roll out the dough in the pizza shape you like.  I don’t have a rolling pin in my new place yet so we used a wine bottle for this.

(3) Put the dough on a flat oven tray (i use parchment paper as well to make this easy) and then add ingredients, typical order is: tomato sauce, cheese, toppings and then something fresh like basil or arugula when it comes out of the oven

(4) Put in the middle tray of your oven under broiler, for around 5min until the pizza base is crispy.

(5) Enjoy a glass of wine, time for the next guest to make their pizza.

Pizza Dough (for 6 hungry people), 1 hour ahead

Ingredients: 525g of white flour, 3 TSP salt, 3 TBSP easy-blend dried yeast, 1 and 1/2 TSP sugar, 3 TBSP olive oil, 360ml or 12oz very warm water

(1) In a bowl, mix the flour with salt, yeast and sugar (some recipes recommend heating the flour briefly in an oven).   Make a well in the center of the mixture.

(2) Add the olive oil and then the warm water.  Mix together with a wooden spoon and then your hands.

(3) Pick the dough out of the bowl and continue kneading it for around 3min.  I usually try and get as much air into it as possible, so knead air pockets into the dough and it should get quite elastic by the end.

(4) Leave to rise back in the mixing bowl, with cling film or a cloth covering the bowl, for about 1 hour.  It should roughly double in volume.

Pizza tomato sauce (for 6 hungry people), do this whilst pizza dough is rising

(Inspired by http://www.recipezaar.com/Ultimate-Pizza-Sauce-114392)

Tomato sauce for our homemade pizza

Ingredients: 1 large white onion, 2 sticks celery, 2 cloves garlic, 2 cans of vine tomatoes, 2 TBSP tomato paste, 1 TSP fennel seeds, 2 TSP dried oregano, pinch of chili flakes, salt & pepper

(1) A medium heat,  fry the onion, celery and garlic together in olive oil until they begin to color

(2) Add the chili flakes, fennel seeds, tomatoes and tomato paste.  Bring up to boil and then reduce the heat

(3) Blend together and keep cooking for ~1hour, add the dried oregano towards the end.

Deconstructed Mango strawberry daikiri

The following set of recipes comes from a cooking competition I did last year with JC, RA and GM.

The competition was modeled after Iron Chef, with one secret ingredient that needs to fit into a cocktail, starter, main and dessert.  2 hours to cook once you receive the ingredient.

Our secret ingredient was mango, so super versatile and easy to pair with many things.

We focused on giving a californian tint to all the recipes and we made:

Decontructed mango and strawberry daiquiri

Mango and scallop tiradito

Rack of lamb with cactus, mango and truffle risotto

Lemon tart with mango coulis and mango baklava

Mango & scallop tiradito

Starter: Mango and Scallop Tiradito

Three components to this dish, a californian take on a tiradito, the Peruvian cousin of ceviche.  The key to this dish was eating the mango and scallop together, the textures worked very well and having it be thinly sliced was a great touch.

(1) Marinade very thinly sliced scallops in lime juice with salt, hot pepper sauce, garlic, coriander and a very small amount of sliced shallots.

(2) You know it is ready when it is takes on a “cooked” appearance, transforming from translucent to white.  In this case, the scallop was very thinly sliced and so the process only took just over an hour.

(3) Serve with very thinly sliced mango and a very simple avocado salad (we had avocados, red onion and coriander).

Rack of lamb

Main: Rack of Lamb with cactus, mango and truffle risotto

This was an interesting dish to put together.  Mango and lamb? Easy.  Pairing it with a truffle risotto? Strange.  The result: super tasty.

(1) Rack of lamb: Cooked this as a whole rack in the oven with a rub made from a hot pepper paste, some olive oil and salt+pepper.  Then chopped into individual portions.

(2) Cactus leaf: this was primarily for presentation purposes but actually ended up working well in terms of flavor.  We got hold of some Nopales or Prickly Pear cactus from WholeFoods and then scrubbed it to get rid of the last remaining prickly bits.  Then grilled it under the oven for 5min per side.  It gets very sticky, so you have to remove some of the sticky liquid that comes out.

(3) Mango/cactus salsa: chopped some pieces of cactus (cooked as per step 2), mango, tomatoes, salt and pepper. Super simple.

(4) Truffle risotto: made a plain risotto and added white truffle oil.  Risotto deserves its own topic, to be covered another day…

(5) Parsley sauce: to complement the lamb, also made a small portion of parsley sauce, blending together parsley, anchovies and capers.

Dessert: River Cafe’s Torta di Limone with Mango coulis

Unfortunately, no picture!  This is my favorite dessert recipe, this tart is extremely “tart” from the bitter lemon flavor.  Simple flavors, delicious results.

Crust: 350g (12 oz) flour, 175g (8 oz) butter, 100g (4 oz) icing sugar, 3 egg yolks, a pinch of salt.

(1) Combine (in a food processor will be the easiest) the flour, salt and butter until it becomes the consistency of breadcrumbs.

(2) Add sugar and egg yolks and mix together.  Mixture will combine and stick together.  Form into a ball and wrap, place in the fridge for 1hour minimum.

(3) Grate (this is a River Cafe suggestion) into a buttered pastry shell and press evenly into the shell.  Blind bake for 20min until light brown.

Lemon curd/filling: juice and zest of 7 lemons, 350g (12 oz) icing sugar, 6 whole eggs, 9 egg yolks, 300g (10 oz) butter

(1) Whisk all the ingredients except for the butter over a low heat

(2) Add half the butter and continue to whisk over medium heat.  When the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon add the remaining butter.  Continue whisking throughout to prevent curdling or making a very sweet scrambled eggs!! Once you have added the second half of the butter, take off the heat and continue whisking.

(3) once the mixture has cooled down, pour into the pastry shell and bake at 450 degrees C.  Bake until top is brown, about 10min.

A couple other websites wrote about this extremely special tart: Urban Foodie has some good pictures of the process.

Making carrot caviar

Sometimes it is worth turning upside down our perceptions of food and what works well together.

This week, we had our second attempt at experimenting with tastes and textures after taking delivery of sodium alginate, calcium chloride and a syringe from Le Sanctuaire in San Francisco.

Armed with bags of white powder, we set about trying to change textures and experiment with tastes using a brilliant website to find interesting foodpairings.

On the menu:

Mango martini with duck/basil/rosewater stick

Carrot caviar with lavender

Sardines on toast

Quail, carrot and lavender

Untraditional steak & mushroom pie

White chocolate souffle…with caviar!

(1) Mango martini (mango & gin with a Duck Pate, Basil and Rosewater Jelly stick)

Mango Martini

Mango and pine flavor apparently fit well together, so our idea was to do a mango/gin martini and experiment on the “olive”.

Instead of an olive, we had a stick with the winning combination of Duck/Basil/RosewaterJelly.

Make a mango martini with blended mangos.  We couldn’t quite get the texture right (it was too thick) so would recommend trying apple juice to cut down the thickness.  Make the stick with a cube of rosewater jelly, a cut of duck foie pate and a leaf of basil.

Along the way we tried green tea jelly and thyme, but green tea was overwhelmed by the gin as well as the duck pate.  The rosewater/duck combo was spectacular, marrying very well with the mango martini.

(2) Carrot caviar and lavender

Carrot caviar with lavender

Caveat: this recipe didn’t work in practice, we need a lot more practice at the sodium alginate / calcium chloride combination for it to work…

Caveat to the caveat: the flavors work, the concept looks beautiful, well worth trying again.

Working with sodium alginate (SA) and calcium chloride (CC) allows one to turn a liquid solution into one with a thin film around it (where SA and CC react), thus creating bubbles that burst when put in your mouth.  This is reminiscent to me of salmon roe which always has a very refreshing “pop”.

I first had this at El Bulli in 2005 with Ferran Adria’s famous Olivas Sféricas (spherical olives).  And in general you have to pick very strong flavors/tastes to go with this technique because the SA and CC do impact the taste (as we discovered).

We used the guide on khymos.org as a referecence and used 0.5% CC in the “water bath” and 0.8% SA in the carrot juice blend.

The “carrot caviar” came out well but it tasted of algae (from the SA) and not sufficiently of carrots.  Two learnings:  (1) start with a lower % of SA next time and ramp it up to find desired texture (2) use strong flavors when making these types of caviar.  Actually, the mixture worked well once we started making olive sized versions, but these were hard to handle.

(3) Sardine On Toast (sardines, heirloom tomatoes, basil, bread)

Sardines on toast

This attempt was inspired by a dish I ate a couple years ago at L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon in Paris.  He had a dish with marinated sardines combined with tomatoes and toast which was incredible.

The process was relatively simple: toast bread under a broil, turn over and lather on a basil/tomato/garlic/olive oil paste, add a slice of heirloom tomato and return to the broil for a couple minutes until the tomato softens.  The sardines were gutted + filleted and then barbequed.  Add the sardines and some crushed green peppercorns.

Very simple clean flavors and textures from the crusty bread to the soft tomato and the slightly charred sardine.

(4) Quail Egg “Sandwich” (quail eggs, cumin, carrot, lavender)

Quail Egg Sandwich

This was a very serendipitous combination.  We had some lavender which I paired with carrots by pickling them in white wine vinegar, a syrup, shallots and the lavender.  The pickled carrots sat unused as we progressed with the meal.

We ended up pairing them with quail eggs boiled and then toasted in oil with cumin.  The combination of a soft and warm egg with the crunchy and cold clear taste of the carrots was great.

Potential improvements may be to have less cumin, as this somewhat over-powered the lavender.  Also, just poaching the eggs would probably have worked better.

(5) A take on steak/mushroom pie (steak, mushroom, potatoes, cheese)

Untraditional Steak&Mushroom Pie

This was an ambitious experiment by a fellow co-chef.  First, barbequeing steak and frying mushrooms.  Second, trying to liquify it to pair it with some mashed potatoes (Joel Robuchon style)

Stop here.  Liquify steak and mushrooms?!?  Yes we tried but even with the help of a great blender this didn’t quite work out.

Luckily if the dish didn’t work in its original form it certainly turned out great!  It was a modern take on steak&mushroom pie with a combination of mash, blended steak and mushrooms and a sprinkle of cheese all melted together under high heat.  Delicious.

(6) White Chocolate Souffle…with Caviar!

White Chocolate Souffle with Caviar

Ok, now we’re getting to the ridiculous.  But it turns out that white chocolate and caviar are a good fit.

The concept is simple, salt brings out flavors and this is also true in desserts.  Heston Blumenthal wrote about this discovery back in 2002 of his experiments trying to find salty ingredients to match with chocolate.

This ambitious recipe from khymos.org was attempted by another co-chef (I can’t do souffles…too much attention to detail required).

The result was a soft chocolate souffle with distinct caviar undertones.  It actually worked best with shavings of white chocolate on top as the taste of the chocolate didn’t quite come through.

Definitely the ultimate in decadence.  Next when some caviar is to hand, will definitely be trying the caviar and chocolate disks that Heston recommends…

Double Cooked Pork

I fell in love with Sichuanese food in Bar Shu one of my favorite restaurants in London. I would continuously invent excuses to take my friends to this great restaurant and watch the look on their face as they discovered the fiery and mouth-numbing spice of Sichuan pepper in dishes such as Man and Wife Offal Slices, Mouthwatering Sichuan Chicken or Mouth-Numbing Beef.

Below are some recipes from a dinner with two Sichuan students, He Bofei and his apt sous-chef Anna Fang, who taught us how to cook some real Sichuan food.  Enjoy!

Shopping:

You can find lots of the ingredients at Ranch 99 in Cupertino (http://www.yelp.com/biz/99-ranch-market-cupertino) but He Bofei really recommends trying Marina in Cupertino to find more genuine Chinese ingredients (http://www.yelp.com/biz/marina-food-cupertino).

Some of the ingredients we bought:

Sichuan Hot Paste

Chianking Vinegar

Taiwanese (!) noodles

Pot Stickers:

Ingredients: Wei-Chuan brand pot-stickers (we had Pork, Chive, Celery and Shrimp dumplings)

Potstickers presented by our lovely assistant

(1) Heat up oil and add potstickers, fry for 2-3 minutes

(2) Add water to just below the rim of the potstickers, turn heat to medium/high

(3) Boil off all the water until only the oil is left, turn heat down to LOW

(4) Make a dipping sauce out of [vinegar, sesame oil and hot sauce]

HE BOFEI’S TIP: the aim is to have a crispy bottom to the pot-stickers but a soft body

Prawns Sauteed with Scallions

Ingredients: shrimp, spring onions, ginger, ricewine or beer, premium soy sauce (less salty than regular)

Prawns sauteed with scallions

(1) Salt shrimp to draw out the moisture and dry them somewhat. Set aside for 15mins

(2) Heat oil till very hot (smoking). Fry sliced ginger, spring onion for about 30 seconds and then shrimp.

(3) Add a little of rice wine or beer (some form of alcohol) and Premium Soy Sauce (see picture) liberally after 1 minute

(4) Add fresh spring onions and cover to steam

(5) Serve when shrimp are cooked

HE BOFEI’S TIP: add a small amount of alcohol (e.g. rice wine preferably or beer) to seafood like shrimp to cut the very fishy taste that can develop

Braised Chicken Wings

Ingredients: chicken drums, ginger, spring onions, Sichuan pepper, Sichuan hot paste, soy sauce

Braised chicken wings

(1) Heat the chicken in water with a block of ginger and some sichuan peppers until the water comes to a boil. Skim the muck and continue boiling until 70% ready. Remove the chicken and reserve the flavored water.

(2) Fry the chicken in HOT oil and then add the Sichuan hot paste (see picture), ginger and a splash of soy sauce

(3) Serve with a sprinkle of chopped spring onion

Spicy Sour Cabbage

Ingredients: dried chilli, cabagge, sugar, ChinKiang vinegar (black rice vinegar)

(1) Fry dried chilli (broken up) for a minute or two

(2) Add cabbage and a dash of sugar, continue frying until cabbage softens

(3) Add ChinKiang vinegar and serve

Double Cooked Pork

Ingredients: five flower pork*, a teaspoon bean curd [DOSHU?], Sichuan peppers, spring onion, ginger, tablespoon Sichuan hot paste, and green pepper

Double cooked pork

(1) Boil the pork till 70% done in water with sichuan pepper, put aside and discard liquid

(2) Heat oil until smoking, fry spring onion, ginger, pork, bean paste and sichuan hot paste

(3) Add green pepper when the pork is well coated with the mixture above, fry briefly and serve hot

* Pork belly, refered to as “five-flower” because of its alternating layers of meat, fat and connective tissue, with a lining of skin (rind) on one side

Ground Pork Mix (base used in recipes below)

Ingredients: ground pork, Sichuan peppers

(1) Fry the pork with the other ingredients and stir well. Fry until the pork is cooked and brown.

Ma Po Dou Fu

Ingredients: soft tofu, spring onion, Sichuan hot sauce

(1) Chop tofu in small cubes

(2) Heat in water with spring onion, salt. Stop once the water has boiled, discard the water.

(3) Heat oil until smoking, fry ground pork mix and add some Sichuan hot sauce

Ants Climb Up the Tree

Ingredients: spring onion, ginger, ground pork mix, bean noodles

Ants climb up a tree

(1) Fry spring onion, ginger and ground pork mix

(2) Add noodles and mix

Dan Dan Noodles

Ingredients: Taiwanese noodles (see picture), ground pork mix, spring onions.

(1) Boil noodles in water

(2) Separately fry ground pork mix.

(3) Add noodles to bowl with a tablespoon of the boiling broth

(4) Serve with fried ground pork mix and chopped spring onions.

Pea soup with parmesan

Last weekend a friend and I took out our entire Saturday and decided to feed some guests food where we focused on unusual flavor combinations and textural contrast.  On the menu: silky smooth pea soup, oysters with kiwi, mash & steak, and strawberry burgers.

INGREDIENTS: I went shopping at Le Sanctuaire to buy some ingredients to allow us to mess with the texture of some of the food.  I picked up: Agar Agar (a gelatin/thickener), Lecithin (an emulsifier), Tapioca Maltodextrin (which helps turn fats into powders), Ultratex 3 (a thickener), Carrageenan Kappa (thickener) and Pure Cote.  We picked up some oysters at Swan Oyster Depot, a favorite of my mate in San Francisco as well as a number of ingredients from the supermarket to mess around with…results below!

Cold soup, smooth texture, unbelievable flavor combination

Seaweed and Rosemary Parmesan Crisps

TEXTURE 1: French Laundry’s Pea Soup with Seaweed and Rosemary Parmesan Crisps

A delicious classic.  Pea Soup made with just frozen peas, vegetable stock, white pepper and white truffle oil.  The key here is to blend the peas after boiling AND put them through a tamis.  This creates a very smooth texture which really complements this cold soup.  Parmesan crisps modified from the French Laundry recipe by adding some seaweed and rosemary.

Oysters with Kiwi; Oyster & Mango wrap

FLAVOR 1: Oysters with Kiwi Agar Agar / Oysters Mango Wrap

We found an unusual combo in oysters and kiwi from a very interesting list on Khymos.org.  Made a variant of jelly by mixing kiwi juice with a sugar syrup and Agar Agar.  Oyster&Mango wrap made with a thin slice of Mango, a coriander coulis and some smoke paprika.  Experimented with some other flavors, including parmesan and mango coulis but these two seemed the best combos.  The oyster/kiwi in particular worked really well, with the kiwi complementing the flavor of the sea from the oyster without overpowering it.

Endives, Seaweed, Beetroot Powder, Umebochi Vinegar, Parmesan

FLAVOR 2: Endive Salad

We experimented with a number of ingredients to try to make an endive salad and came up with the following winning combination: chopped endive, seaweed, beetroot powder, a vinaigrette from umbebochi vinegar.  All topped with parmesan shavings.

Joel Robuchon's mashed potatoes with some barbequed steak

TEXTURE 2: Joel Robuchon’s mash and barbequed steak

A fancy way of making use both of a newly bought food mill for the mash recipe and a remote thermometer for the meat.  Joel Robuchon’s puree potato recipe is a truly amazing recipe for mash and relies on two key characteristics: (1) a high proportion of butter to potatoes and (2) a food mill to achieve a very smooth consistency.  Probably my favorite potato mash recipe ever.

Strawberry Coriander Burger

FLAVOR 3: Strawberry Coriander Burger

After a short cheese course (bitter endives, with sweet and juicy pineapple matched with creamy and pungent blue cheese) we moved to dessert, another unusual combination, little burgers of strawberry and coriander.  Need to work on our presentation but the flavor combination was fantastic.  To some we added grated parmesan, but personally my favorite was just the strawberry/coriander combo.