This was my first time cooking beef heart. My logic was this: “Heart, while offal, is a muscle, not a gland. A hard working muscle, at that. I guess I’ll braise it.”
In hindsight, probably not the best way to cook beef heart. The final dish was okay: it was tender, but a bit dry. This makes sense, as heart has no intramuscular fat, and I trimmed away what little fat there was on the outside.
The heart’s texture really surprised me. Raw heart has no visible grain, almost as if it were a very firm, nebulous liver. A few people had told me that heart is not a very “organy” meat. Michael Ruhlman goes so far as to say … Continue reading.
Crisp, delicate, golden skin. Moist, tender, well-seasoned flesh. A whole bird, brought to the table and broken into pieces, distributed amongst the diners according to their personal preferences. This is the beauty and simplicity of the ideal roast chicken dinner.
You can go to ridiculous lengths to roast the perfect chicken – (see the In Search of Perfection episode on roast chicken, which involves brining, soaking in water, scalding three times, cooking in the oven for five hours, then searing on the stove top…) – but with a fraction of the effort you can have mostly the same results as the most complicated procedures.
The following process results in by far the highest ratio of eating quality to effort. All … Continue reading.
At this time of year we usually have about a dozen unripe tomatoes in their cages in the backyard. Their days outdoors are numbered: this week saw the season’s first frost warning. I could pick the green orbs and let them sit on the kitchen counter. They do ripen, eventually, but this isn’t a very dignified existence for a tomato. Instead, they can be sliced, breaded, and fried.
Green tomatoes are firm, slightly mealy, and tart. Actually the flesh of the green tomato tastes like cardboard; it’s the jelly that holds the seeds that has all the sour, vegetal flavour. Frying tenderizes them, and breading tempers their acidity. Once they’re cooked the tomato looses its ghost-green colour and takes the … Continue reading.
The tongue is one of those cuts that sounds way, way weirder than it really is.
The tongue has two sections. There’s the part that we usually think of when we consider an animal’s tongue: the part at the front that can move freely around the mouth. Then there’s the base, at the back of the mouth. The meat from these two sections is different.
The tip meat has a very close, dense texture, and is lean. The base meat has a coarser texture, and is a bit fatty.
The meat from both sections is very tough in its raw state. As you can imagine, the tongue is a highly exercised muscle, and requires extensive cooking at low temperatures, usually … Continue reading.
There are two types of brine: seasoning and curing. Each will be discussed in turn.
Part One: Seasoning Brine
Seasoning brine typically contains three ingredients: water, salt, and sugar. But why do we season-brine meat to begin with? There are at least three reasons:
Flavour. The first reason we season-brine meat is to evenly distribute flavour-enhancing salt throughout its mass, instead of simply on the outer surface. We can also impart the flavour of herbs and spices to the meat.
Increased Tenderness. As Harold McGee writes in On Food and Cooking, “salt disrupts the structure of the muscle filaments [and] dissolves parts of the the protein structure that supports the contracting filaments.” A strong enough brine … Continue reading.
We’ve been getting some great corn from Tipi Creek over the past few weeks. Then the ever-resourceful Judy came across a farmer who was about to till under an entire field of corn. Needless to say, many an ear has been husked and devoured in the past while.
Corn on the cob is one of my favourite things to eat in late summer – especially grilled so that some of the kernels are black, and of course slathered with butter – but with this much corn around, I’ve been trying some other classic preparations.
Flavourful Broth from Leftover Corn Cobs
With all due reverence to corn on the cob, I often find myself cutting off the kernels: it’s a … Continue reading.
Until recently, the only creamed corn I was familiar with was the runny gruel that came in a can. I don’t remember ever eating it as a child, and actually the only reason I’m even familiar with it is because “canned creamed corn” is used to describe one of the aromas that a corked bottle of wine can have. I bought a can just so I could have a whiff and understand what my gastronomy instructor was talking about.
Despite a bad first impression, last week I made some from fresh corn and found it sweet, velvety, and agreeable.
If you have a chinois, which is a very fine-meshed wire strainer, you can simply cut the kernels from the cob … Continue reading.
The batter is very runny. I mix the ingredients with a stick blender to make sure there are no clumps of flour and the batter is very smooth.
Being so thin, crêpes take on the flavour of their cooking fat readily. For instance, to flavour your crêpes with butter, you need only quickly rub the surface of the hot pan with a stick of butter so there is a very thin, uniform layer. Lard is a good cooking fat for savoury applications.
Crêpes look and taste best when they are golden brown. This means cooking over medium-high heat. The side of the crêpe that cooked first will have a uniform, golden brown surface, while … Continue reading.
I have a certain old friend. Technically we went to high school together, but I first got to know him in Lister Hall, then at the Kappa Alpha house on university row. He studied philosophy, and after graduation he followed a girl to Montreal. There he fell victim to many of the city’s seductions: strong beer, girls, and cocaine, yes, but above all these, smoked meat.
For a while he lived only a few blocks from Schwartz’s, that Mecca of Montreal smoked meat. For a while he ate there every day: a sandwich, a pickle, and a cherry coke.
Montreal smoked meat is that city’s answer to New York’s pastrami: beef, cured with a concoction of spices similar to those … Continue reading.
It’s always confused me that Americans call back bacon “Canadian bacon,” when it’s much more associated with Britain than Canada. To my knowledge the only uniquely Canadian form of bacon is peameal bacon: cured pork loin rolled in ground split peas, which keeps the surface of the meat dry and inhibits microbial growth. Sometime over the past century cornmeal has taken the place of peameal, but the name hasn’t changed.
This week I made two forms of peameal bacon: the contemporary favourite – lean, centre-cut pork loin, fat trimmed down, brined and rolled in cornmeal – and a rustic recontruction, inspired by the fantastic book The Art of Living According to Joe Beef. I left an inch or two … Continue reading.
The personal website of Edmonton chef Allan Suddaby
This was my first time cooking beef heart. My logic was this: “Heart, while offal, is a muscle, not a gland. A hard working muscle, at that. I guess I’ll braise it.”
The tongue is one of those cuts that sounds way, way weirder than it really is.
