Category Archives: Meat

Charcuterie, Ham, Meat, Pork

How to Make “Spam”

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Spam is what this country is all about, two cars in every garage and a pig in every can. Spam tastes like America.

-Jonathan Gold[1]

'Spam and Eggs' - two slices of homemade Spam, fried and served with white rice and eggs.
Homemade ‘Spam’ with fried eggs and white rice.

My name is Allan, I am a very serious chef, and this post is about making Spam-style luncheon meat from scratch.

I didn’t grow up eating Spam, but I have friends for whom it is a powerful piece of childhood nostalgia.

Spam is a pork forcemeat that is packed and cooked in a can. The overall effect is rather like a terrine, especially reminiscent of the cured pork meatloaves of Europe, like leberkäse. There is some speculation about the origin of the moniker. Is … Continue reading.

Charcuterie, Pork

Sausage Rolls

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A sausage roll served with mustard and a spring salad
Sausage Roll with mustard and Spring Salad

This post is about making sausage rolls from scratch.

In theory any style of sausage meat can be used, but I think this English banger sausage mix is most like the rolls I ate growing up. It is made from pork, simple seasonings (pepper, mace, nutmeg), and a good quantity of rusk or toasted breadcrumb. The breadcrumb gives the sausage a distinct texture, slightly less springy than, say, fresh bratwurst or breakfast sausage.

As for the dough, most sources say to use puff pastry. I tend to disagree. High quality puff might be acceptable, but poor quality produces an airy, insipid texture. I prefer my standard pie dough with a touch of baking … Continue reading.

Sausages

Emulsified Sausages

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A cross-section display of an emulsified sausage vs a coarsely ground sausage
An emulsifed sausage (top) compared to a coarsely ground sausage (bottom).

This post is about making emulsified sausages like hot dogs, wieners, and mortadella at home, using a grinder and food processor. Emulsifed sausages are those in which the meat and fat have been so finely comminuted that you can no longer visually distinguish them in the cross-section of the sliced sausages: they have become a completely uniform, homogenous paste.

This is a style of sausage for which several of my trusted recipe sources often get the procedure wrong. The most common error is putting the ground meat and fat in the processor at the same time, and then trying desparately to keep the mixture below 4°C. This … Continue reading.

Beef, Charcuterie, Sausages

Better Beef Sausages

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Sliced, smoked, beef sausage served with vegetables and mustard
Smoked Beef Sausage with vegetables and mustard.

This post is about making better beef sausages, without the use of pork or pork fat. We’re after an all-beef link that has the cohesive, juicy texture of a pork sausage.

To make a simple, fresh pork sausage we start with pork butt, ensure it contains about 25% fat (adding fatback as necessary), cube it, chill it, grind it, add 1.5% salt and 5% water by weight of pork, then mix until it binds. This yields a cohesive, juicy sausage. If we do the exact same thing with beef, say, bottom blade, which is analogous to pork butt, the final sausage will be fine, but it will not have the same, well-bound, juicy … Continue reading.

Duck, Meat

Dry-Aging Duck

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Dry-aged duck breast served with buttered grains, beets, and sour cherries.
Dry-Aged Duck Breast with buttered grains, beets, and sour cherries. Served at Ernest’s Dining Room Winter 2024.

It was the dry-aged duck at The Naramata Inn (RIP) that inspired me to start dry-aging at Ernest’s.

When properly scored, seared, rendered, and cooked, fresh duck breast is good. But the dry-aged duck at the Inn was excellent: the skin brittle and crisp, and the meat brawny and tender, in a way I hadn’t experienced before. The Inn was buying dry-aged crowns from Yarrow Meadows,[1] but one of the chefs, Macia, gave me some tips on doing it myself.

Crowns are duck carcasses that have had the wing tips, wingettes, legs, and the lower portion of the spine removed. At … Continue reading.

Fish, General

“Tuna Sandwich” Hors d’Oeuvre

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A "Tuna Sandwich" hors d'oeuvre inspired by Eleven Madison Park

Another variation of an Eleven Madison Park offering, one I call the “Tuna Sandwich” hors d’oeuvre. In the EMP cookbook there is an hors d’oeuvre comprised of a “tuna coin” sandwiched between two rounds of fennel. Like these galettes, it is a very striking presentation that caught my eye immediately. The EMP version has the tuna brushed with lemon oil and the fennel garnished with pollen.

My simple variation uses lightly pickled daikon rounds as the “bread” in this sandwich. The tuna is brushed with sesame oil. Each piece is garnished with cilantro, serrano, and cilantro blossoms.

I’m curious to know how stable the EMP version is. I found that a small amount of oil or mayonnaise helped the … Continue reading.

Charcuterie, Meat, Pâtés and Terrines

Duck Rillette with Gelée and Crackling

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Duck rillette with gelée and crackling

There are a few terrines and pâtés in the Eleven Madison Park cookbook that are capped with gelée. One that especially interested me is rabbit rillette topped with violet mustard gelée. I had only ever seen rillette topped with rendered lard, not a gelatin-rich liquid. Also I had only seen rillette presented in a ramekin, or perhaps shaped into quenelles, or spread on toast; I had never seen it treated more like a terrine, sliced into tidy rectangles. It’s a great example of the finesse that distinguishes these dishes from ones you would get in a bistro or brasserie. I set out to make my own version of terrine de rillette with gelée.

This past week we made a large … Continue reading.

Lamb, Meat

Lamb Shank with Panisse, Tomato, Peppers

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Lamb Shank with panisse, yogurt, warm tomato and green pepper salad.

This is a dish of ancho-braised lamb shank with panisse, squash, yogurt, and a warm salad of tomato, charred green pepper, cilantro, and pumpkinseeds.

While the components are compatible and well-integrated, there were many disparate inspirations.

Core Elements and Inspirations

  • I like to have one braised item on every menu. It is an essential technique for my students to learn, it’s a good balance to the many lean pan-roasted or grilled proteins on our menu, and it helps simplify service as it can be hot-held. I decided lamb shank would be this season’s braise.
  • I was eager to serve panisse with lamb.
  • I love lamb and yogurt.
  • I was also keen to feature the peeled cherry tomatoes discussed in this
… Continue reading.
Dumplings, Fish

Salmon Wontons

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Salmon wontons with gai choi, scallion, soy dipping sauce, and chili.

This dish featuring salmon wontons checked a lot of boxes for me. We have a salmon entrée on our menu and we accumulate a lot of trim from cleaning and portioning the fillets. I challenged myself to make a dish that could use up this trim so it doesn’t go to waste. I also wanted to make a dish that used a mousseline, partly because it’s a fantastic classic technique, but also because it is a required element in the CCC practical exam.

Most importantly I wanted to make a dish that would be an example of how to adapt a simple traditional preparation for service as a composed dish in a fine-dining setting. To give a specific example, this … Continue reading.

Charcuterie, Meat, Pâtés and Terrines, Poultry

All-Turkey Pâté

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Turkey liver pâté with cranberry walnut sourdough

No matter the type of liver – pork, veal, chicken, duck – I generally use this recipe, which combines liver with equal parts pork shoulder by weight.

Because I am typically working with the giblets from only one bird, I’ve never had enough turkey liver on hand to do anything more than sauté it with onions and mushrooms and eat it on toast. This past week at work we were running a holiday menu and ended up with the giblets from several birds, so I set aside a pound of turkey livers to make a terrine.

I decided to try an all-turkey pâté (ie. no pork) using the technique discussed in this post. The trick is using poultry … Continue reading.