I’ll mention right off the hop that this concept is from the brain of Emmanuel (Manu) Thériault. He might have made this when he was at Woodwork, but I’m not sure. He calls it “Butcher’s Cake”. He told me about it and I think it’s one of the most brilliant food ideas I’ve heard in a very long time.
Part of the reason I am so enamored with butcher’s cake is because I work in a sandwich shop. When you work in a sandwich shop, you have at least three significant sources of possible waste. The first is bread. Bread is a problem ingredient because it has such short shelf life. It can be difficult to maintain fresh inventory, and … Continue reading.
In my experience rabbit is usually hatcheted into quarters and saddle, as described (and lamented) in this post.
One year Lisa and I were in Piedmont in northwestern Italy in September, and it seemed that every restaurant was serving rabbit, and all of them had boned-out the entire animal, then rolled it into a cylinder and braised it, usually in Nebbiolo wine. It’s a beautiful, thoughtful way to prepare the animal. At first it didn’t make sense to me: I was hung up on theoretics, asking ridiculous questions like, “Won’t the tiny, slender loin get over-cooked before he belly tenderizes?” This might be true of pork, but I can tell you from empirical study that it is not an … Continue reading.
Originally posted December 15, 2009 (if you can believe that). Re-posted today with some major corrections. I first read about cretons in an article in The Ottawa Citizen by then-food-columnist Ron Eade. He presented cretons as a Quebecois variation on rillette. A while back Emmanuel (Manu) of Pied Cochon, Joe Beef, and Woodwork fame gave me the skinny on cretons, and they really are not like rillettes at all. I am not able to find that original Ron Eade article to expose it. Presumably someone from the lower St. Lawrence forced him to remove it as libel or lies. Anyways.
Cretons is a pork spread made by simmering ground pork and aromatics like onion, bay, and clove in milk or … Continue reading.
This post is about cured fatback, most commonly known by its Italian name lardo.
Fatback is the subcutaneous fat that covers the pork loin. Resist the urge to say “back fat”: it’s called fatback. Industrially-raised pigs are intentionally grown very lean, so the fatback is typically only an inch thick. Heritage pigs can have three inches or more of fatback. These are the animals you need in order to make lardo.
Two autumns ago I got a side of Tamworth pork from Nature’s Green Acres. The fatback was two and a half inches thick in some places. It was the first pig that I ever cut that truly deserved to have … Continue reading.
It recently dawned on me that I don’t have any sausage recipes on this site. Which is crazy. So I’m going to post a bunch. For details on procedure and technique, I have two posts linked below. Also… I happen to be teaching a sausage-making class for Metro Continuing Education on October 19, 2016.
This simple sausage goes by many names in my house, among them “everyday sausage”, “plain Jane”, and occasionally “garlic brat”, though it is not a bratwurst in the strictest sense.[1]
I wanted a relatively neutral sausage that would go well with most of the food I cook at home, which I would describe as North American farmstead with a serious … Continue reading.
It recently dawned on me that I don’t have any sausage recipes on this site. Which is crazy. So I’m going to post a bunch. For details on procedure and technique, I have two posts linked below. Also… I happen to be teaching a sausage-making class for Metro Continuing Education on October 19, 2016.
I wanted to create an artisan version of the little sausages you get at dive-y breakfast institutions like the Commodore. The kind of diners that that pour you bad coffee all morning.
North American breakfast sausage is usually made entirely of pork. It is ground quite fine and mixed to emulsify so that it has a very delicate texture. It is often flavoured … Continue reading.
This summer I had a little burger freak-out. I thought about hamburgers more in the last few months than my entire life previous, and I came to realize that, despite eating them for about twenty five years, I knew very little about them.
The following burger info will be obvious to many of you, but circumstances conspired to stunt my burger knowledge from a very young age. For instance, the burgers I ate growing up were a bit like squished meatballs: they contained bread crumbs and eggs and were mixed to bind the ingredients together. They were tasty and comforting, but they hampered my understanding of proper hamburger flavour and texture for years. To aggravate … Continue reading.
Really you shouldn’t end up with an excess of chicken skin very often. The skin is a delicious and coveted part of fried chicken and roast chicken, and if it’s well-rendered it can also go into some cold, day-after preparations like chicken salad sandwiches.
But if you are shredding leftover chicken to make chicken noodle soup or chicken stew, you may want to set the skin aside for another application.
Here’s how to turn cold, flabby, leftover chicken skin into golden brown, crispy pieces of crackling. Line a sheet tray with parchment and lay out the pieces of chicken skin so they are flat. Place another sheet of parchment on top, and then another sheet tray on … Continue reading.
Last week I went on a hunting trip with Kevin, and I shot and killed my first animal. It was a squirrel.
I know: that’s not very impressive. I’m sure most boys who grow up in the country have done this by age ten. And I know: you think squirrel is something that only hillbillies or starving back-country adventurers eat. Actually it’s pretty tasty.
Once skinned, gutted, and cleaned, the squirrel carcass looked very much like a tiny rabbit. The meat was shockingly dark. I thought that a small critter with such rapid, twitching movements would have light meat.
The cleaned carcass:
I divided the squirrel that same way I would a rabbit: into forequarters, a saddle, and hindquarters.
Unlike beef stew, which I make from fresh cuts of beef, chicken stew is foremost a way of reclaiming and elevating leftover roast chicken.
There’s not much point in stewing chickens these days. Old recipes like coq au vin are from a time when we actually let some of our birds grow old enough to be tough and require stewing to tenderize. Basically all of the chickens that we eat now are less than two months old, so their meat is extremely tender. Stewing these birds only dries them out.
However, if you happen to have leftover roast chicken, shredding the meat and coating it in the sauce of a stew returns some moisture and savour to the meat.
I’ll mention right off the hop that this concept is from the brain of Emmanuel (Manu) Thériault. He might have made this when he was at Woodwork, but I’m not sure. He calls it “Butcher’s Cake”. He told me about it and I think it’s one of the most brilliant food ideas I’ve heard in a very long time.
Unlike beef stew, which I make from fresh cuts of beef, chicken stew is foremost a way of reclaiming and elevating leftover roast chicken.