Schweinsbraten literally means “roasted pork”. If you order it in an Austrian restaurant, you will get a slice of greyish meat, usually but not always from the shoulder of the animal. If you order it in an Austrian Heuriger, you will get something a bit different.
All the food at a Heuriger is served cold, and meat is typically cured. Schweinsbraten at a Heuriger is cured, like ham. What makes this particular ham so special is the cut of meat it is made from: the Schopf.
The Schopf extends forward from the loin of the pig, into the shoulder primal. It has the same round cross-section as the loin, only it also has a very healthy amount of … Continue reading.
When I first had Blunz’n at a tavern in Austria I had a very narrow idea of what blood sausage was. Most of the blood sausage I had eaten before this moment I had made myself, following recipes in Ruhlman’s Charcuterie and the Au Pied de Cochon cookbook. These versions are simply pork blood studded with cubes of pork fat and onion. The Austrian Blunz’n before me was radically different: it was soft and moist, but closer in texture to a dumpling then boudin noir, and it was burgundy, not black.
Before I left Austria I got a Blunz’n recipe from one of my chaperones. I read through the recipe and thought there must have been some kind of … Continue reading.
Leberkäse is an emulsified sausage mixture that is shaped into a block, baked, and sliced to order. Picture hot dog filling, only instead of stuffed into casings it’s packed into a loaf pan.
Yes: a hot dog terrine.
For the record the name literally means “liver cheese,” but usually contains neither liver nor cheese. There is, however, a preparation called Käseleberkäse, which is Leberkäse studded with cubes of cheese in the style of a Käsekrainer.
Where would you eat Leberkäse? Austria and Bavaria, for starters. More specifically sausage stands, beer gardens, grocery stores, and any other place that might hot-hold food for quick service. The loaves are baked till they have a … Continue reading.
This post was originally published on December 3, 2010. Re-posted today for Eat Alberta. I chose buffalo jerky for this year’s Eat Alberta tasting board because of the significant role that similar preparations played in the history of this province. Please read The Story of the Buffalo for more information.
Jerky is my nominee for best representation of southern Alberta by a single food preparation. This is partly because of its historical connection to the buffalo hunt and ranching, but also because it takes advantage of the arid landscape. In dry regions jerky can safely be made on hot days, when the temperature is around 30°C, simply by leaving the sliced meat to hang outside.[1]
In the summer of 2012 I spent a lot of time thinking about meatballs. Mostly I thought about them as I was making them, which took several hours every other week.
They are a labour of love for certain.
Once you’ve mixed up the meat and the eggs and the milk and bread crumbs and whatever else you like, you could just press it into a loaf pan, call it meatloaf, and be done with it. But you won’t do that, because you want meatballs. Even though they’re awkward, and they roll around on your plate, and don’t quite fit into a submarine sandwich, you want them, because they’re fun.
As I mentioned in the Cutting Poultry post, one of the chief pleasures of buying whole birds from the market is that you get a bunch of bones with which to make stock.
You can make a small amount of light stock with one chicken carcass, or you can freeze the bones and collect a few carcasses so that you can make a whole pot. You can cut up your chicken, raw, into largely boneless pieces, and save the raw bones for stock. Or, if you roast the whole bird and pull the meat off at the table, you can save the cooked carcass for stock.
All the bones of the bird can go in the stock. The neck and … Continue reading.
Pork tenderloin quickly roasted, sliced into blushing medallions, and served as a meal for two: this may be as intimate and elegant as fresh pork gets.
Every pig has two tenderloins that run under either side of the lower backbone. Each tenderloin has a blunt end tucked into the pelvis, a roughly cylindrical cross-section through most of its length, and then a tapered end at the forward end of the pig. (See this post on pork-cutting for more details and photos.)
As the name tells us, this cut is very tender. It is also very lean – almost perfectly lean – so it doesn’t have much distinct pork flavour.
There is a band of silverskin on the tenderloin which … Continue reading.
I think that no cut of pork is as mistreated as ribs. In kitchens across the country, in homes and restaurants alike, folks are boiling, stewing, steaming, and baking pork ribs into mushy oblivion.
A shame, as there is nothing quite like a properly smoke-roasted pork rib glazed with zingy barbecue sauce.
There was a time when this was considered a poorman’s dish. Perhaps it still is, but smoked pork ribs are a delicacy in my home. We buy our pork by the side, and currently one side of pork lasts us about one year. This means that we get at most one full slab of side ribs and one full slab of back ribs for every 365 days. As … Continue reading.
The brisket is a special cut of meat: I think it’s the toughest, fattiest cut of meat in common usage in western cooking.
The brisket is actually a pair of muscles, called the flat and the point in common parlance, on the breast of the cow, between the two forelegs. These muscles sustain a good deal of the weight of the standing cow, and therefore contain a remarkable amount of connective tissue.
It takes ages to cook brisket. Don’t get upset about this. On the plus side, it is a low-effort process.
Even if you’ve never had brisket before, you will know when it is done cooking and ready to eat. If you poke the meat it yields to your … Continue reading.
I love creating plates that feature different components of the same ingredient: roasted beets with wilted beet greens, for instance, or pork loin and pork belly side by side. The truth is that no creature is capable of offering more variety at the dinner table than the triffid.
About Triffids
Triffids are interesting creatures. They are genetic hybrids, part animal, part plant. The precise intentions behind their development is uncertain, but researchers soon discovered that their oil is extremely useful and relatively cheap. Triffid oil has many industrial applications. It is also edible, and delicious.
As they are part animal and part plant, we can harvest a shockingly diverse set of food from triffids. Let’s talk anatomy.
All the food at a Heuriger is served cold, and meat is typically cured. Schweinsbraten at a Heuriger is cured, like ham. What makes this particular ham so special is the cut of meat it is made from: the Schopf.
