New Year, New Ventures

I must admit, the past year has gone extremely fast. There were many short days, many long days; busy days and slow days. I was able to do some things that I wanted to, but not everything. I hope to be really busy this year with curing meats, making sausages, pickling, preserving, etc. (That's the plan anyways).

The first project that I have begun is some preserved meyer lemons that we got in from Hammock Hollows. The citrus they have been sending us is ridiculous. The Honey Oranges are super sweet, the tangerines are sweet and tart, and the meyer lemons are HUGE!!! They are the size of oranges. I will cure them with a mixture of sugar, salt, some spices and bay leaf. I am also going to be curing some fat back for Lardo starting tomorrow. I am going to try a few different ways of curing, and plan on posting that adventure, so stay tuned......

But for now Happy New Year!!!!

Service

The Holidays are getting closer, but I will try to also snap some shots of what we do at the restaurant when I can (when my charcuterie is at a standstill) in order to have topics to post about. It is slowly starting to pick back up with the families starting to trickle in(Disney World is a busy time during the holidays), so don't know what I'll be able snap shots of. Nevertheless I will try my best.

Tonight the Sous Chef, Danny (a.k.a. Richard) was brainstorming and came up with this pasta which allowed us to utilize product we had lying around the kitchen. We get crazy amounts of organic produce from Hammock Hollows Herb Farm based out of Gainesville, Fl, but never know what he is going to send us. Today we had 8 cases of organic greens come in consisting of Red Romaine, Arugula, Carolina Mustard Greens, Blue Tuscan Cale, Baby Collard Greens, Mizuna, and also cases of Sunburst Tangerines and HUGE!!! Meyer Lemons (I have to try to remember to snap a shot of them... they are seriously bigger than naval oranges). We also get beautiful root vegetables, such as turnips, watermelon radishes, and kohlrabi from them. But back to the pasta....

So the Chef's pasta special tonight was 'Confit Chicken Thigh, House Pappardelle, Truffle Cream, Fall Mushrooms, Wilted Arugula, and Glazed Turnips.' It came out really nice. The great thing about running the Chef's Pasta special is that with the amount of great produce we get in, the possibilities are endless.

Pickle Crazy

It was a few months back for my third wedding anniversary that my wife and I traveled up to Charleston, South Carolina. We stayed in a hotel just outside of town, but spent most of our time in downtown.

The first day we were there, we were lucky enough to have been greeted by the Sunday morning Farmer's Market. It was awesome!!! There was great food, crafts, produce.... I mean, what an experience. Later that night we had dinner at McCrady's restaurant, and it was a wonderful meal prepared by Chef Sean Brock's staff(if your ever in the Charleston area you must go). But one thing that I had noticed while at the farmers market, and that stood out to me while dining at McCrady's was all of the different pickled items. What a great way to add contrast and/or balance to a dish. You can have salty, sweet, sour or fermented pickles.

So, needless to say, the next day when my wife and I went shopping I bought a couple of old southern pickling books and have been at it ever since. If there is anything lying around the restaurant unspoken for, you better believe I'll take it in a heartbeat. Here are some of the things that we have done. Once again, most of these pictures were taken with my cell phone, so apologies for the quality.


From left to right:
Balsamic/Port Cherries, Spicy Vanilla Cherries, Gooseberry Preserves, Pickled Sunchokes.


From left to right:
Spicy Mango Vinegar, Hasta la Pasta Squash Preserves, More Gooseberry's, Longpepper Cherries.


From left to right:
Sweet Pickle Chips, Chef Windus' Schichimi Carrots.


Pickled Organic Okra


Pickled Hot Peppers

FARMING

So Chef Windus told me the other day that he is planning on clearing off some land he has. I'm pretty stoked about it. He told me that he plans on raising pigs at first, and then seeing how it goes from there. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of farm to table and buying local produce, however am a bigger fan of MEAT. So, I will be helping him clear off the land and hopefully will be able to have my hand in a good bit of learning how to raise the pigs and will be able to help as well. I'll probably do some mini posts about it, but it can be followed to the full extent @bluechef. Here is picture that Chef took of the land.

suckling prosciutto

Here is a picture of my suckling prosciutto. It has been hanging for a couple of months now. This is based off of len poli's recipe for the traditional way to make prosciutto. After about a month of curing it was rubbed down with a mixture of semolina, black pepper and lard and will hang at 60 degrees with 65% RH for a total of about 6 months. It could probably go a little less, due to the fact that it is a rather small suckling ham. Hope it turns out!!! Here are some pictures of it drying.






Sorry the photos are poor quality, they were taken on my cell phone.

LONG time, NO updates

WOW!! So, it has been quite a while since i've posted anything, or done much of anything extra while at work. The busy season is upon us and I quite frankly haven't had the time to get to mess around with much. EXCEPT!!!!.... A suckling prosciutto that I cured for about a month and have recently hung, but more on that much later.

Here are the updates on my Salami and Merguez (and no I didn't wait this long to taste them..ha). I will start with the Merguez. I didn't think the flavor was that bad for my first attempt. There was a nice heat and salt level, however the recipe said to dry it for at least 18 days, (which was thoroughly bashed by one of the sous chefs of the resort, and I agrre with) which was probably about 15 days too long. Nevertheless, I was still able to get a nice mold growth, which I was stoked about.

The Lamb Salami I was very pleased with, except for 1 minor error... I cut the fat way too big, and do to my lack of inexperience thought that it would shrink with the meat. If it did, it wasn't by much. However, the flavor turned out really well I thought. It could have used more heat, but had a nice salami flavor with a nice hint of fennel, and then the SUPER creaminess of the fat wasn't bad with some crackers. Overall I was pleased and look forward to new adventures hopefully in the near future.




These are some of the really fatty pieces. There were others which turned out nice with a better meat to fat ratio.

Kimchi

So, the other day Chef Windus showed me a lexan full of brussel sprouts and said "kimchi." I had already written down a recipe a week or so before, because I was talking with the junior sous chef about stuff in our walk-in that we could try the flavors with. So sure enough, I pulled out my notebook and said "I got this." Chef cleaned them and quartered them, and I soaked them for 4 hours at room temp in a salt brine. Then I made a paste from fish sauce (didn't have any shrimp paste), red pepper flakes (no Korean pepper either), garlic, ginger, scallions, sesame seeds and sesame oil. This paste would actually be a delicious dip for a crudite (in my opinion) if you can handle the heat. Next I grated some black radish over the drained and rinsed brussels, threw in some chopped scallions, and mixed everything together. We only fermented it for 3 days (according to the recipe), but I would like to try again and move to the fridge at different intervals and see how far we could take it. The true test comes Tuesday when we'll taste it. I know that it continues to ferment, but am nevertheless excited to taste it as soon as i can.


Here is a quick updated shot of the Merguez after 2 weeks of drying...


And here is a shot of my only spot to store the products for now...

From Left to Right: american honey bacon, smoked merguez, mole lonzino, lamb salami, and the dried merguez.