Lamb, Meat

Lamb Cutting: Loin and Flank

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The loin primal is divided into two sections.  The forward part, from the thoracic section of the spine, contains ribs, and is usually trimmed to make rack of lamb.  The back part, from the lumbar section, contains no ribs, and is usually broken into lamb chops.

 

Dividing the Loin Primal into the Rib and Loin Subprimals

This is the whole loin primal, with the fell still attached.

The whole lamb loin

Here is the underside of the loin primal.  You can see the rib section on the left, and the loin subprimal on the right.

The underside of the whole lamb loin

We divide the two by cutting after the last rib bone, then cleaving through the backbone.

Separating the loin primal into the rack and loin subprimal

 

How to make a Frenched Rack of Lamb

Frenched lamb rack … Continue reading.

Christmas, Dairy, Drink, Eggs, Spirits

Eggnog

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Some jarred nog, agingHow to Incorporate the Eggs.  There are several different ways to put the “egg” into “eggnog.”  For a few years I used this method:

  • whisk egg yolks with some sugar until pale and foamy
  • whisk egg whites with some sugar until soft peaks form
  • fold the two egg foams together and stir into milk and cream
  • add rum and nutmeg

The problem with this method, first of all, is that if it sits for even five minutes, the eggy foams separate from the milk and cream. I wouldn’t mind a bit of head on the nog, but the foams make up about 90% of the volume.  Even during the brief moments in which all the ingredients are properly incorporated, … Continue reading.

Lamb, Meat

Lamb Cutting: Leg

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This post is about preparing a whole lamb leg for a classic roasted leg of lamb, or gigot.  This is the whole leg, straight from the animal.

A whole lamb leg

First remove the tail bone, which you can see running along the top of the leg primal.  On the forward end of the tailbone (to the left in the picture below) is the connection to the pelvis.  Since lambs are so young, you should be able to easily break this adhesion.

The exposed tailbone on a leg of lamb

The leg, tailbone removed:

Lamb leg, tailbone removed

Next remove the pelvis.  This is a complicated little bone.  Follow it as closely as you can, making small, exploratory cuts with a boning knife.

Now we can turn the leg over and remove the fell, … Continue reading.

Cake and Cookies, Drink, Fruit, Seasonal

Bulletin: Exciting Developments in the Field of Fruitcake

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Fruitcake, soon to be saturated with Sailor JerryI know I already posted today, but I wanted to quickly tell you about some cutting-edge developments in the composition and aging of the 2012 fruitcake.

Hazelnuts lose their spot to almonds.  For three years now my fruitcake has been poundcake flavoured with orange zest, garnished with glacé Evans cherries, candied Navel orange peel, and roasted hazelnuts.  The cherries are the star.  They bring loads of flavour, acidity to balance the buttery luxury of the cake, plus they’re from Lisa’s dad’s backyard.

Working with Evans cherries over the past couple years, we’ve noticed that their aroma has a distinct note of almond extract.  For some reason this aroma is especially evident in the single-varietal rumpots we’ve made.  This … Continue reading.

Lamb, Meat

Lamb Cutting: Breaking a Lamb into Primals

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This is a whole lamb from Tangle Ridge Ranch.  Notice that, unlike pork and beef, the lamb has not been cut in two down the spine.  The carcass is easy to handle (typically 40-60 lbs, maybe a bit smaller for grass-finished varieties like Tangle Ridge).  It’s traditionally broken into four primals:

  • front,
  • leg,
  • loin, and
  • flank.

A whole lamb from Tangle Ridge Ranch

 

Removing the front.  The first primal to be removed is the front, which is separated from the rest of the animal by cutting between the sixth and seventh ribs.  You can count the ribs by putting your hand inside the cavity.  Slide a knife between the sixth and seventh ribs and cut all the way up to the backbone, and all the … Continue reading.

Meat

Intro to Meat Cutting at Home

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A whole lamb from Tangle Ridge RanchWhy buy whole animals and practice meat cutting at home?

It’s the cheapest way to get the highest quality, local meat into your kitchen.

It’s also a rewarding hobby, and if you’re sincerely interested in food and cooking, it’s the best way to learn the different cuts of meat, where they come from, and how they’re best prepared.

Buying whole animals is easy: find a producer that you trust, call them up, and they’ll most likely deliver the animal to your door.  This post is about how to process that animal once it’s at your house.  It covers basic safety principles, the equipment you’ll need, and some tips on managing time and space.

Temperature and Food Safety

Meat needs to … Continue reading.

Bread, Starch, Whole Grains and Legumes

Cornbread

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Measuring out homemade cornmeal for cornbreadCornbread has developed a regional connotation in North America: the mere mention of the dish awakens borrowed images of the American south.  I resent this, because I know that my dad ate cornbread growing up in eastern Ontario.  They called it johnnycake, which is a very old, eastern North American term derived (we think) from “journey cake,” referring to the dry bread’s portability.[1]

The bulk of the transcendent cornmeal we made this fall was baked into cornbread and consumed with butter and maple syrup.  Below is my go-to recipe.  It makes a moist bread (mostly on account of the several types of fat in the recipe: full-fat milk and buttermilk, sour cream, canola oil…) with a fine texture and … Continue reading.

Preserves, Vegetables, Whole Grains and Legumes

Homemade Cornmeal

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Dried cobs of cornMy bid for Bartlett’s: “Culinary invention has two mothers: scarcity and excess.”

I think everybody understands how scarcity can encourage adventurous eating.  We often say that the first man to eat a lobster, or an oyster, was a brave one, indeed.  But it’s when you find yourself with an overwhelming surfeit of food that you can start doing really interesting things.  The first person to press grapes to make wine must have had a lot of grapes, more than he could have eaten before they started rotting.  And the first person to distill wine to make brandy must have had an awful lot of awful wine.

I wrote earlier in the fall of our bountiful corn harvest, and of … Continue reading.

General

Quick Breads

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Quick breads are breads made with chemical leaveners, instead of yeast.  They’re quick in that they don’t have to ferment.

Chemical leaveners are interesting concoctions.  They were originally byproducts of salt-making.  Most salt is made by boiling or slowly evaporating a brine.  This brine could be seawater, or it could be water that was flushed through an underground deposit to dissolve the salt and ease its extraction.  Either way, once the brine is reduced to a certain concentration, sodium chloride, table salt, precipitates and is easily harvested.  The remaining liquid, called bittern, is still rich in all kinds of other compounds: Epsom salt, for instance, and magnesium. In 1792 sodium carbonate, or soda, was extracted from bittern for the first … Continue reading.

The personal website of Edmonton chef Allan Suddaby