These days it’s practically cliché to rant about one’s love for bacon. What’s that t-shirt I’ve seen guys wearing? “I’m a vegetarian except for bacon” or “I put bacon on my bacon.” Yeah, yeah, we get it. Bacon is delicious. I love it, you love it, we all make fun of vegans for pretending there is anything even remotely equivalent in their root vegetables.

Of course I love bacon. It’s not like bacon is Hootie and the Blowfish and I’m in 5th grade, pretending to like “Hold My Hand” trying to get my first kiss. Liking bacon is kind of like asking someone if they like music or sex.. or breathing air.

So I decided to try my hand at making some porky heaven of my own. As usual, I grossly underestimated the amount of work that the process would require. It is a bit of a production so let me put the disclaimer out there that one needs about a month of empty fridge space, a smoking device of some sort, and of course, several pounds of fresh pork belly. And good luck finding a 5 lb slab at Whole Foods, I’ve tried more than once.

Luckily, I was able to talk one of my bosses into ordering me a whole slab of pork belly as well as the freedom help myself to the pantry. The production is a bit of a pain, but the process is pretty simple: Rub meat with a cure mixture and store it in the fridge. Once the liquid has been leached out and the meat nice and firm, soak in warm water to mellow out the saltiness. Finally, and if possible (this I highly recommend to give it that extra flavor and help break down the protein), smoke the cured belly for several hours.

I went about trying to put together one of the more basic recipes out of Micheal Ruhlman’s Charcuterie, using only salt and sugar. The pink salt he recommends is helpful in helping to keep the fat from becoming rancid, but his timeline of 5-7 days in the cure I found to be way off the mark and I gave up on the pink salt after the first week. Granted, this was my first attempt, but I ended up having to cure 11 lbs for a solid 4 weeks , and I could have let it go for longer.

You see, I started off following his method to the letter, weighing all of my ingredients, adding a bit of garlic and crushed peppercorns, but all the liquid that came out just melted my cure right off. After five days I checked the slab and found it swimming in its own liquids. So I re-cured using only salt and sugar, and this time elevating the slab on a wire rack to keep it relatively dry. Again, tons of liquid leached out, the cure mix was soaked. Essentially, I found that every 5-6 days I needed to pull the bacon out of the pan, change out the cure for a fresh rub and regularly check the slab for firmness.

My advice is to keep the slab elevated on a rack of some sort for the first couple weeks until most of the liquid has been removed and then bury it in the cure mix to finish it off and get that nice firmness you want. I also plan to try to work in 5 lbs batches instead of a whole 10 lb slab to help cure more evenly and hopefully more quickly.

Next the slab needs a bath in warm water for about an hour or two. This is a step that I didn’t take and ended up wishing I had. I rinsed the cure off, but the water bath would have gone a long way to mellowing out the overwhelming salty, sweet flavor. The pre-smoked bacon tasted ok, but once you served it with say, eggs, you realized how ridiculously salty the pork was. At this point you can freeze the bacon and it will keep for months or a couple weeks in the fridge, or…

Smoke that sucker. To me bacon isn’t really bacon without that smoky flavor and I found that a hot smoke helped breakdown the meat so that once sliced and in a pan, the bacon just melts in your mouth. I sliced mine to fit in my bullet (about 7 lbs) and smoked it for about 3 hours at around 160 degrees Fahrenheit tossing in soaked wood chips every 30-45 minutes. Keep in mind that in order for the smoke to stick to the meat, the belly needs to be dry, so taking the slab from the bath to the smoker is NOT a good idea. Dry the meat the best you can and let the meat cook under low heat for 30 minutes or so before adding the smoke chips. Ideally letting the slab air-dry for a couple days in the fridge would get you the best results.

Finally, and I know this is extremely tempting after all this effort, don’t slice into the belly right after it’s been smoked! Don’t get me wrong, those bites you slice off will be euphoric orgasims of smoky, salty, fatty porkiness, but then the belly is going to leak out all the juices and fat you’ve been working so hard to create. I sliced small bite off of mine, and almost wept when I saw the fat continue to ooze out 15 minutes later.

In the end, my bacon didn’t really taste like any bacon I’ve ever had before. Still not sure if that’s good or bad. It was however, unquestionably bacon. The salt hits you over the head and then an unexpected sweetness rounds out the flavor. I did get as much smokiness as I wanted, but the post-smoked bacon dissolves on your tongue much better than the pre-smoked slab. Like cotton candy bacon.. now there’s an idea. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the experiment. A new belly has already been ordered. Now it’s time to start all over again.

Project BACON is a post from: A Moveable Feast

Harold McGee poops on any romantic sentiment you may have ever associated with cooking. All your warm nostalgia about grandma’s mashed potatoes and green bean casserole is silly and juvenile. Grow up. That beautiful pork chop your searing in your backyard, it’s a hot bed of chemical reactions; enzymes breaking down, protein strains reconfiguring. Do you really want to know exactly what has to happen in the production of most dairy ingredients? How about hot dogs? Mmmm, this biology tastes delicious.

McGee’s book, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, (recently republished after a 20 year update) is the definitive examination of the physical, chemical and biological mechanisms that occur in every aspect of the food we grow, prepare and eat today. And it is fantastic. Complete with molecule charts and drawings of cell structures, McGee is not a casual read or source for weeknight dinner ideas. But for anyone interested in becoming a better cook, and that includes those that can barely toast bread, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

These days a cookbook is a tough impulse-buy for me to keep under control (and society in general apparently), despite the fact that many, many cookbooks end up being duds. I’m pretty pleased with most of my library. I have a bunch of the classics: Mastering the Art of French Cooking, La Technique. I have some more contemporary heavy hitters: Fat Duck Cookbook, various Keller and Jean-Georges books, Wakuda’s self titled Tetsuya. I even have a fucking Rachel Ray book (a gift). And if someone where to ask for a recommendation, I’d probably ask a few questions about interests and effort before suggesting something. But On Food and Cooking is different. Everyone should have access to this book.

Whether you’re just generally curious about food or trying to figure out a specific technique, McGee gives it to you with cold, rational, unwavering science cover to cover. I know some guys that just refer to it as their Bible. It’s ridiculous how much ground the book covers without skimping on the details.

Not sure why your Hollandaise sauce was perfect yesterday, but shit today? Flip to the chapter on emulsions and read about continuous vs. dispersion liquids. Curious why blanched veggies look great until they don’t? Skim the section on vegetable cooking methods. Did you know there is a difference between caramelization and something called a Maillard reaction? It’s true. Caramelization only occurs with sugar (mostly sucrose molecules), whereas Maillard occurs with the the browning of all other, sugar-free foods (a reaction beginning with carbohydrate molecules) and are chemically more complex than the reactions in sugar.

And yes, I am fully aware of how much a geek musing about these excerpts makes me. I don’t care. Next time you’re feeling that impulse-buy creeping up on you when you’re flipping through Mario Batali’s latest cookie cutter coloring book, just ask yourself if you’re really getting your twenty bucks worth. Don’t be scared off or apathetic about On Food and Cooking. Welcome a little science into your recipes. Cooking is all about love, but it ain’t the love that’s going to actually cook your salmon. Not to mention, cooking is a lot more fun when you know what’s going on in the pot.

Science And Lore is a post from: A Moveable Feast

Drew Long over at DC Foodies recently pointed out that most tomatoes we know and eat today are bastardized, genetically selected versions of their heirloom brethren. In fact, most fruits like the tomato and peppers looked like deformed abnormalities, twisted with rigor before the days of mass production agriculture we know today. Not surprisingly, most stock bread for mass production is distinctive only for their lack of taste and flavor. So maybe I had just never had a good tomato in my life. It’s possible I suppose, but I wasn’t convinced my mind would be changed.

You know who loves tomatoes? My good friend Doug. When Doug heard of my lack of enthusiasm for his favorite fruit, he and his wife insisted on having me over for dinner (Even though his wife Joan, admits she really doesn’t like tomatoes that much either). Did I mention Doug annually plants a gigantic patch of heirloom tomatoes usually ranging from 10-15 different breeds? No joke. These wonderful people have herbs and veggies growing all over the place. Oh right, also, Doug is an avid wine collector. You see where this is going? Maybe better just to show you..

So in the end Doug made me a believer. It could have just been all the wine, but I really enjoyed the variety and texture of the heirloom patch. Flavorful and ripe, the tomato salad we had was bright and well balanced. Maybe I could see myself playing around with some heirloom cherry tomatoes in the near future. But not all habits die so easily. I’m still going to rip out that shitty piece of fruit from my sandwich every time.

Attack of the Heirloom Tomatoes is a post from: A Moveable Feast

A year ago, I would come home from work with a six pack of Tecate or a bottle of red or pour myself a nip of Maker’s and sit and type for this blog and play around in my kitchen. It was productive and it was habit. Blend cooking and drinking with a bit of writing seemed sensible, even mature. I didn’t feel so bad about waking up Wednesday morning with a hangover and a messy kitchen if I had a blogpost to show for it the next day. And a post required a considerable amount of work. I liked being able to see the fruits of my labor take shape. So in many ways this blog, AMF, became an outlet, a way for me to try to fulfill a few regrets that had been eating away at me these past few years. But alas, there was no great creative awakening, no grand sense of satisfaction, no salvation from my bourbon soaked day-to-day. The venture went south. I was bored. I was very anxious. I was unhappy.

The dayjob was a good paycheck, nothing more, nothing less. Just paying my dues and riding a career of sorts, like most everyone else I knew. There were never any problems rounding up a few good friends for a happy hour or to check out a show at a good venue or drop by someone’s party on a Saturday night. I dated and had had a few girlfriends. When I planned a dinner, everyone showed up.. and thensome. In short, my life seemed pretty well in order. I wasn’t lonely or inactive or stuck somewhere I didn’t want to be. I was doing everything a happy yuppie should do. My parents were happy. I was happy that they were happy.

It was this whole cooking thing, you see? Having the interest, money and time, putting a dinner together for the gang became routine. But there was just no ceiling to it. As someone who has gone through a lot of different side-interests, cooking never grew old to me. It never burnt me out. There was always something else to learn. I simply couldn’t expose myself to enough of it. The most mundane and unappealing task in a kitchen held my attention. I fantasized of trying to work at the local marina as a fish monger; shucking fish guts, peeling scales, grabbing live crustaceans and sending them to their doom all so I could get the most basic foundation of knowledge.

I never got that far, but no other effort was good enough. Reading Child or Pepin cover to cover, putting together four course meals for friends with recipes that had been on Top Chef the night before, writing about my own trials and tribulations in the kitchen on the blog, none of this felt good enough. I was learning, but did I actually know anything? Did I understand anything? I was flying blind most of the time. I didn’t know how to settle for anything less than unfiltered immersion, to utterly surround myself with culinary knowledge. And it made me testy.

Sometimes when a friend would complement a dish I had made, I secretly wanted to tear into them: “You think that was good?! Fuck that, that was shit! I hated everything. Why the fuck are you bullshitting me with this garbage?! X was undercooked, Y tasted like shit, and Z.. how the fuck was Z your favorite part?!?! You know dick. Get the fuck out of my house!” Wisely, I always said “thank you” instead and for the record, I can never thank my friends enough for their willingness to be subject to my trials. They’ll eat for free at any shop I ever run.

So I started seeking out like-minded individuals, other food bloggers mostly, in an effort to find the momentum I was looking for, but with exception of a rare few, the pool of knowledge about our shared interests was often scattered and full of half-truths. No Holy Grail. No clan of blogger monks to bestow their sacred food wisdom on us. Good people absolutely, but mostly aspiring writers. There was a lack of intensity. None of us were experts after all, just hobbyists dreaming of getting paid and published.

And our label, Jesus, our god awful, abhorrent, slander of a description that screamed at me ’snobbish fucktard’ had nothing to do with the immersion I was seeking out. They called us “foodies,” a title that as I type this still makes my skin crawl. I know it’s just semantics, but it’s such an obnoxious and annoying word. ‘Oh hi, yes, I’m a foodie, would you like to try this balsamic vinegar, grapes crushed with real Italian feet, aged in a 400 year old oak barrel and stolen by the Nazi Army during German occupation and stored the barrel at exactly 67 degrees Fahrenheit for the last 32 years?’ Fuck that, I hope Jim Harrison punches the guy that calls him a foodie in the head. [Let me stress here that I am in no way calling self-proclaimed foodies snobbish fucktards, even if on occasion that name does fit, I just hate the generalization.]

So last summer I signed up for a cooking class that billed itself as ‘Beyond Basics’ in the what felt like a desperate and final attempt to uncover the knowledge I was hoping to find. Again, I was disappointed. It was a good, informative class I would recommend to friends, but it was still a hobby shop, a craft expo taught by instructors that would always be more familiar and more comfortable with food than we could ever be simply taking recreational classes. And that unspoken frustration lead to a conversation with my instructor, a woman I very much respected for her 15 year tenure in the industry, about what it would take to know, really know, what she knew.

I can’t remember most of what I asked, just that age (pushing it at 27) and inexperience were holding me back from what I wanted. Culinary school was discussed. Work ethic. What. It. Takes. Maybe she took pity seeing me visibly frazzled and discontent. Maybe she saw something she had seen in other cooks throughout her career. Maybe she just wanted to get rid of me and go back to prepping for her next class, but I will never forget her parting words to me: “I don’t usually recommend this in most of my classes.. [me holding my breath in anticipation] but I think you can probably do it, you seem like you could handle it.. if you’re willing to work for nothing..”

And like that the light bulb went on. That tiny, forgettable endorsement was all it took. The “it” she was referring to was the idea of me becoming a real cook, in a real restaurant, as a real career. And that’s when everything else started to fade into the background. Everything after that point was dedicated to getting into one of my favorite restaurants in the city. That was the goal. Preparations were made. Nothing else mattered.

So AMF… died. I literally killed it in the middle of a two-part post, without ceremony or nostalgia. I put her on an iceberg and pushed her out to sea. All the time and energy I had put into the blog and pretty much overnight the interest faded. I still wrote, still snapped pictures, still had stories to tell, but it all felt pointless until I had something to say. What recipe or technique could I write about if I hadn’t done it 100 times myself? Half the time I did something well I wasn’t even sure how it had happened. Until I had something I knew in my bones to be true about food and cooking and about the people that are apart of that magic, there just wasn’t anything I wanted to contribute.

So fast-forward one year today, you’ll still see me at the occasional bar or friend’s party, but I’ll probably be the one drinking water, maybe munching on a late night snack. You see, I’ve just gotten done with dinner service at my restaurant, having finished another 10-12 hour shift. I’m tired and a bit drained from the fury of prepping, cooking for 300 covers and breakdown my station. I’m fucking thirsty and getting ripped isn’t a good idea since tomorrow I have to wake up early and do it all over again. I rarely make it to the happy hours now. Haven’t seen a live show in months. And as I mentioned, if I can make it to the party at all, it’s at the tail end.

I am happy.

Happier than I know how to describe. My hands are littered with various size oil burns, I can feel the arthritis in my finger joints when I make a fist, my back aches badly after a long shift, but I will catch myself smiling involuntarily at the little things I see everyday on my station. And there are so many beautiful little details to savor in my new line of work. The food, the people, the fury of it all. My life is a good one.. as a real cook.. in my aforementioned favorite restaurant.. cooking as a career.

I’m still green. I still get panicked and angry during a tough service. I still have no idea how to do many, many things that my peers can do in their sleep. But I can hold my own. No one is worried I’ll go down in the middle of service, whether I’ll be adequately prepared for the madness that can and will occur every, single night. I’m subject to the pranks and name calling from my peers, not because I’m the dumb gringo, but because I can keep up, and because my fellow cooks know I can be trusted. The little respect I have has been earned over time. And most importantly, about my daily routine I have an intimate knowledge. The type of knowledge I’ve been looking for. I’m here, for better or for worse.

So maybe I have a nugget or two of wisdom to share after all, AMF isn’t dead yet.

(Photo by Alexey05)

Death of a Food Blog is a post from: A Moveable Feast

It’s arguably long overdo. About three years now I’ve been tinkering around in kitchens doing my best to follow a recipe or practice a technique, but like any independent study, without a syllabus to help guide my direction, it’s safe to say that I’ve been all over the place with my culinary exploits.

I can’t help but smile when I think back to the absurdly ambitious dinners I’ve tried to put together, using recipes from Top Chef, thinking it was perfectly normal to have 12-15 different ingredients in an appetizer. Risotto? How hard could that be? Hollandaise sauce? Just whisking egg yolks right? Completely overconfident and blind to what I was getting myself into. But over the years, I’ve learned enough to know that despite my familiarity in a kitchen these days, I am very, very far away from having a handle on this cooking hobby of mine. So when Drew Long over at DC Foodies posted about how the local DC recreational cooking school, CulinAerie, was doing a Beyond Basics class, I spit my coffee out all over my deskmate, signed up for the class and then offered a belated apology for the mess.

The thing about cooking classes that has always put me off was simply the reliance on recipes and the limited involvement in a real kitchen. Sure I could sign up for a sauce class, a knife skills class, a taco class, a butter class. No doubt all offering insight and knowledge I didn’t have before, but then again.. couldn’t I just dig up any number of cookbooks I own to figure out the same thing? Wasn’t there something out there that embraced fundamentals and focused on theory?

The beauty of Susan Watterson’s Beyond Basics class is that it has wiggle room. There was a set schedule and someone somewhere was watching a clock, but when Susan got on “stage” it was just her uncorking her brain and unloading 16 years of experience on the rest of us. The recipes were fine. Some dishes I’ll probably never cook again, others were definite keepers. But the real reward of making your way into Watterson’s professionally equipped kitchen were the tidbits about her personal cooking philosophy or the demonstrations on technique, complete with dry erase board tutorial, personal anecdotes, and the occasional expletive.  To me, that is some money well spent.

The recipes and techniques from our first day of class are far to detailed to try to squeeze into one post, not to mention I wouldn’t want to be poach all of the instruction from my class. But I did pick up quite a few little nuggets of information that you’d be hard pressed to find in most  cookbooks these days while we were going over our two major topics on day one: Poultry and Shellfish.

• Collagen (from chicken boens) + water = gelatin. Good stock needs gelatin to coat your mouth
• A stock should use cold water because it helps leach flavor out, but starting with hot water will push flavor back in
• When breaking down a chicken, try to use long, fluid cuts and try to get your hands on a flexible, boning knife
• Tumeric is heavily used in most cheap curry powders which is why the cheap versions are more bitter than the higher quality stuff
• Never add wine after the last 1/3 of cooking time. Not enough time for the wine to cook off
• Shrimp heads have an enzyme that decomposes the body faster. Removing head preserves body longer
• The best months to buy bivalves (scallops, clams, oysters, mussels) end in “R“
• Vinaigrette = acid + emulsifier + aromatics + oil

Each session consisted of a short lecture followed by Susan actually showing the rest of us how to put the dish together, which included a sample taste of each sauce she assembled, and then we were on our own. We had the option to  do one or all of the dishes she had demonstrated. We could ask for extra ingredients if we wanted to experiment. Volunteer chefs were constantly at hand to answer questions, clear scraps or relight our little table burners.

For lunch we made Chicken with Peas and Prosciutto in a cream sauce as well as a Curried Chicken Salad with homemade Vinaigrette and rice pilaf. The curry used the dark meat while the peas dish used the white meat from the whole chicken we had broken down earlier that morning.

A little wine and a bit of hard work, we all ate well, and I enjoyed the conversations I was able to have with my fellow amateur homecooks. Apologies to anyone that became bored when Drew and I started geeking out about photography and camera equipment.

The afternoon session was a bit lighter and my partner and I found that we were both happy to just eat our dishes as they became finished instead of having to wait until all the dishes had been assembled. Seared Sea Scallops and Saffron cream sauce, a basic Crabcake with an Orange Remoulade, Mussels in White Wine, and Shrimp Dumplings. We were busy to say the least.

It was a long day, but just to get a small taste of what it was like to be in a busy kitchen again, running around and tweeking a dish reminded me of how much I miss the adrenaline rush of my resturant days. I had a lot of fun and met some good people. And we still had Fish and Meat to look forward to the next day.

AMF Goes Back To School is a post from: A Moveable Feast

The salmon burger isn’t exactly the most original idea these days. Most establishments that bill themselves as seafood or above average dining have some variation of a fish burger. My experiences have been lack luster. More often than not, the fish is dry and chewy, the tartar sauce doesn’t add much flavor or completely overwhelms the fish, the bun is too hard. In short: not worth my $15.

But a little while back I had lunch at Michelle Richard’s Central and spotted their tuna burger on the menu. My mind flashed all the failed executions and disappointed burgers I had had up to that point. I hesitated. “How is the tuna burger?” I asked our server. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, a tiny smile curled her lips pausing just a second longer than she normally would have before saying,  ”It’s excellent.” Sold. Have to trust in involuntary reaction like that. The burger was indeed heaven. Soft, buttery brioche buns encasing a delicate and tender tuna pattie with a rich, tangy sauce to complement. My faith was renewed. This little burger would be a new project. But I’d still need to figure out a good recipe.

Nothing like another established French chef exploring American cuisine to point me in the right direction. Did you know Hubert Keller has a PBS show? I didn’t either until one Saturday morning, after my 2nd cup of coffee, 3rd asprin and 1st bowl of cereal, I stumbled on his little show. Nothing fancy, just standard PBS programing, but it took me a few seconds to process what he mentioned he would be cooking that day. Did he say salmon burgers?! I must still be drunk. No effing way.

Way.

So here’s an interpretation of Keller’s recipe as I scribbled quick notes on the back of my bank statement. The burgers were excellent with the crisp apple julienne being a perfect counter point to the soft pattie texture. I used regular hamburger buns but next time I’d splurge for some brioche.  I switched out Keller’s little pickles for banana peppers which I very much stand by as being a great substitute.

The only tools you need is a little food pulser to blend up the patties. $10 at Target or chop the salmon finer and mix ingredients with hands.

Ingredients for 2 burgers:

Patties (about 2/3 fresh, 1/3 smoked):
1/2 lbs of fresh salmon (ideally wild) cubed
2-3 strips of smoked salmon
1 Tbsp capers
1 medium shallot
1 handful of jarred banana peppers
2-3 Tbsp tartar sauce (see below)
chopped fresh tarragon and parsley (big pinch each)
big pinch salt

Tartar sauce:
1 cup mayo
big dash Tabasco sauce
1 Tbsp spicy mustard
1 Tbsp ketchup
big dash Worscester sauce

Additional:
hamburger buns
Julienned green apple slices for garnish
tomato slices
watercrest or other small greens

Kitchen Soundtrack: Bob Dylan – Blood on the Tracks

(Tutorial photos will be soon)

Mix your tartar sauce adjusting for seasonings. Shouldn’t have to add salt, but if you think it needs it go nuts.

Prep your salmon, roughly chop your shallots. Working in batches if you have to, pulse the pattie ingredients together until well mixed (about 3-4 big pulses). Remove and set aside.

The pattie making part can be a little tricky. To keep the meat from sticking to your hands, rinse them in cool water. Place the pattie mix on a plastic cutting board and gingerly form the sides of the pattie like you’re forming a vertical cylinder.

Then slap the pattie down firmly to give it the pattie shape. You’re trying to do this quickly so it won’t stick, but you want to be sure the pattie is firmly formed about the size of the bun. Please in fridge for at least 30 minutes to set.

Once patties are ready, toast your buns and place a pan on medium heat with a big splash of olive oil. Gently place patties in the oil and cook for about 2 minutes on each side until a nice browned crust has formed and just cooked through.

Julienne 1/2 an apple for garnish.

A little tartar sauce on the bottom of the bun, slice tomato and greens, place burger on top. Then top with apple slices and another coating of the sauce. Delicate, rich, smokey and devoured before you know it.

Salmon Burgers for America is a post from: A Moveable Feast

With a vegetable like asparagus I want her to sing. There’s so many things you can do with this little ingredient, but I like them most when they’re natural sweetness, firm texture and moist bite is the centerpiece of the place, maybe just touched with a few extra ingredients to add different textures and flavors. So a little brie and a few fried breadcrumbs it is. Honestly, this dish wins. She’s like the sexy, unassuming woman that just radiates grace and elegance without having to prove anything to anyone. I love this dish. It deserves more than 15 seconds, take a look. You will not be disappointed.

Ingredients:

10-12 thin asparagus spears (ends snapped off)
brie cheese (or good melting, soft cheese) – enough to drap over the spears
1/2 shallot minced
1 piece toasted white bread
cayenne pepper
olive oil
Pot of salted boiling water

Kitchen Soundtrack: Creedance Clearwater – Suzie Q live on repeat.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Toss your spears into salted boiling water just to blanch them. Remove after about a minute after they start to become a bright green. Set in bowl of cold water or put under cold running water to stop cooking.

Place on roasting tray and slice cheese in thin strips to mostly cover the ‘gus. Set aside and set up your bread crumbs.

Oil in medium hot pan, chop up your bread to smallish pieces. Add minced shallots and cook for about 30 seconds, then add your bread crumbs. Pinch of salt/pepper/cayenne pepper at this point.

Toast/fry in oil until crispy, remove to paper towel to dry.

Back to the asparagus and cheese: Into the oven for about 5 minutes or until cheese has melted.

Plate your cheesy asparagus, sprinkle with bread crumbs. Sexy as hell.

Asparagus and Melted Brie’s 15 Seconds is a post from: A Moveable Feast

If you’re really looking for some top notch photography around NY, the blue hour has quickly become one of my favorite photo blogs. Brian has a great eye for capturing shots that are a smaller part of the whole and he knows how to make the most of his light. Based out of Brooklyn, his pics make you feel like your walking the streets of his neighborhood, which is a lot harder to do than you would imagine.

So until my skills improve, here’s a sliver of what I saw while visiting the big apple..

Photo lyrics:

“A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not fergit
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to”

– It’s Alright Ma

A Taste of New York.. is a post from: A Moveable Feast

Thank you.

I’m not sure I will get sick of posting about lobster… ever. So may as well let the lobster stock usages post when they come. Since I have enough stock to last me until Christmas, there’s a good chance this wonderful trend won’t be ending any time soon.

Lobster Stock Usage #1: Risotto (I know, shocking)

Using the basic risotto recipe in the Nuts and Bolts section, the dish is really straight forward. If you somehow manged to save some lobster meat from you lobster bake, go ahead and chop it up coarsly and add once risotto is finished cooking. Fake crab meat, shrimp or even white fish can be added if you like. You can finish it with some chopped chives or basil if you want.

That’s pretty much it. No real need to make a big post on this. Any leftover risotto can be stored over night and slowly reheated the next day in the oven coverd with foil. I actually thing it tastes better the next day. The stock just makes the rice so flavorful.

Lobster Risotto Please is a post from: A Moveable Feast

As excited as I get about making a proper dish or trying a new technique, lately I’ve really been getting amped up when given an opportunity to make a cooking staple from scratch that I can save andreuse as I see fit. And given how much stock I was able to make with the already cooked shells, I can’t recommend enough how fantastic it is take advantage of crafting up this wonderfully deceadant treat.

Lobster stock, like most seafood stocks, is much easier to make than the fattier chicken/beef cousins. The cook time requires only a fraction of the overnight low simmer techniques expected for beef and chicken stocks.  My favorite part is how little skimming was involved. Nurse out a little scum that floats to the top and presto, you have a galleon of amazing stock that can turn an average seafood dish into something tranporting. Two words: lobster risotto. Do I really need to go on about whether or not this is worth it?

Ingredients:

4-6 “used” lobster cavities (mouth part and roe sack removed) broken into useable chunks
1 carrot per 3-4 lobsters
1 yellow onion per 3-4 lobsters
3-4 fresh sprigs of thyme
10-12 cups of cold water (or enough to completely cover the lobster shells in the pot)

I ended up using two of my biggest pots since I had alot of shells. About 20 cups in size each.

Kitchen Soundtrack:  Radiohead – In Rainbows

This is quick and painless. Prep your onions and carrots with a rough chop. One celery stock could go in too, but I didn’t have any handy. Toss in your pot on medium heat with some olive oil and saute  until tender – about 10 minutes.

Take a pile of lobster shells and break them down by removing any roe sack you find in the head cavity. Remove the “face” since there’s only some impurties in there and you’re not losing anything. See all that stuff in the below picture? All good. Use it. Once broken down,  into the pot with the veg. Breaking the shell parts down should have allowed you to cram more lobster in there than if you had just used large pieces.

Fill pot with cold water and turn up the heat to medium and cover.  You do NOT want to crank the heat up, the water should heat gradually otherwise you’ll lose flavor. Once water comes to a strong simmer, turn down to low and let simmer for 1 – 1.5 hours

After about 45 – 60 minutes you’ll start to see scuzy foam float to the top. Using the edge of a spatual skim the foam and any other funk off. This is an annoying and tedious part of stock making but nessisary to create clarity and get rid of the nasty bits.

After 1.5 hours and fragrant but not overpowering, strain into a colainder/fine mesh strainer reserving the stock in a seperate bowl.

Rinse out you pot and return the stock leaving it on low heat and give it 10 more minutes for scum to foat to the top and skim away. At this point you could let it simmer and reduce to concetrate the flavors or just start packaging the stock for long term use. With veg stock I would conentrate the stock more and put it into ice cub trays to add to water later, but this time around I wanted whole cups of straight stock in baggies.

When you’re ready and stock has cooled, get out a bunch of zip lock bags and a cup of some sort. Ziplock bag in cup. Ladle stock in bag. Seal. Repeat.

Place bags on tray, into freezer for 48 hours. Now you have lobster stock on a whim. Get ready for some seriously good meals.

When Life Gives You Lobsters, Make Lobster Stock is a post from: A Moveable Feast