Spring pasta

We have recently received our first batch of spring vegetables including spring onion, spring garlic, fiddlehead ferns, favas, english peas, and some flambeau radishes. I love spring vegetables the best out of all of the seasons. The flavors are so fresh, the colors are so bright, and you can use pretty much every part of each vegetable(and even though some of the vegetables are a bit tedious to clean, they are sooooo worth it).

So the other day the Chef de Cuisine, Aaron told me to come up with the idea for the pasta that would work with parsley root puree, (our first batch of) soft shell crabs and house made tagliatelle. So, I looked through the walk in and picked through some of the vegetables. I wanted to keep it as fresh and bright as possible. Simple, clean flavors.

What I came up with was spring onion used 4 different ways. Puree, Grilled, Braised bulbs (along with cippolinis), and burnt. I also cleaned and pickled the roots, but they're not done yet.
Then I took some flambeau radishes and compressed them with some meyer lemon zest, fleur de sel, and J. Leblanc Olive Oil.
I finished the plate with cherry tomatoes, arugula and meyer lemon vinaigrette, and the pasta is tossed in some butter, meyer lemon and herbs.

I tried to have one of the guys snap pictures of the plating process so you could see the bright, fresh colors.








this was for a vegetarian

Wild Boars

I recently received some Florida wild boar from one of the servers at work. I deboned the shoulder, ground it with a 3/8" die and let it marinate over night with some garlic, red wine, dextrose, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, cardamom, ginger, and some piment d'espelette. I then reground the meat and then the fat through the 1/4" die. Stuffed it into hog casings, fermented for about 36 hours at 74 degrees and the hung in the curing chamber. Since they were so small, they cured quick. This one had 45% weight loss after just 12 days. The boar is super gamey, but the "wintery spices" if you will, come through nicely. My only problem is that there are some minor air pockets in areas, and I didn't really get much heat from the piment d'espelette.

Mangalitsa

I apologize now for the lenght of this post, but without further ado....

The other day we went to Ocala to visit Torm Siverson of Pasture Prime Wagyu and the first ever Florida raised and killed Mangalitsa pig. It was awesome to actually get to see the slaughter process from start to finish seeing as its been about 14 years since I last saw a pig slaughtered and 8 or so since my calf experience. I snapped a lot of photos, however I will try to keep the blood to a minimum.


the pig weighed around 300 pounds before the slaughter
and about 225 after cleaning


here he is rolling around in the mud


here is Torm with him before they took him in to slaughter


the pig is bled and prepared for removing the hair


the water bath the pig is placed in


removal of the hair


the pig after removing the innards


me and my march mustache admiring the size of the jowls



Since this was the first pig, we only received sample parts which consisted of the head, a shoulder, the loin and a belly. I was able to get my hand on some lardo, the belly, some jowl and the ears. This is what I came up with.....

Bacon


The jowl and ears were sous vide for 24 hours and then pressed.


And then it is seared and crisped up, it was pretty good

there are some cracklings too.....

Unfortunately.....

Like I said I was planning on showing my trials, hopeful successes and errors. Unfortunately this is an error. Well, maybe not so much of an error, but an unsuccessful attempt none the less. In the previous post I believe that I talked about the fact that the casings were wayyyyyy too big for the loins. So after talking to a couple of different chefs, and Scott from sausage debauchery I decided to remove them from the casings, wipe down with a vinegar solution and hang bare. Well, as you can see in the following pictures I lost a couple to mold (which was my main concern from the beginning. It all started under the casing). I was however able to save three that were covered with white mold, thankfully.




this was actually two loins I cased together, originally there was no separation, but I pulled it apart to see how the inside smelled and of there was any mold. They smelled great actually, but the outside is whats scary. I am looking forward to cutting into the others though.

On a brighter note, I took a trip to Ocala to see the first ever Florida raised and killed mangalitsa pig from Pasture Prime Wagyu. I will post more on that soon, but for now you can check it out Bluechefs or Wooly Pigs.

Lonzino

The other day I was lucky enough to receive some kurobuta pork loins from the banquet kitchen. I cured the loin with some cure 2, black pepper, salt, garlic, etc. I kept the flavors simple and straight forward (even though I was pleased with my Cocoa rubbed lonzino last time around) hoping not to hide too much of the natural pork flavor, especially since it's kurobuta. My only worries this time around are that a) I have never used synthetic casings (not very stoked about it) and b) they were too big for the loins after curing, so I had trouble getting a lot of the air out. I used my probing needle to poke holes and tied them as tight as I could, but don't know what is going to happen.

I am expecting these to take about 3 weeks, maybe a bit less since they aren't very big. After curing for about 10 days they were cased, hung to dry at 75' for about 16 hours and will cure in my chamber between 58 - 65' with an RH of about 75 - 80% (after the first couple of days. The humidity always gets jacked up when I first hang fresh batches in it). Here are some pictures of the loins before going into the chamber.


after curing




here you can see the one that most of the air didn't come out of

STOVE MONKEYS!!!

The other day I received my Prosciutto T from stove monkeys. If you haven't checked out the website or any of the products you have to. The owners Matt Mytro and Anthony Lynch created a clothing line for chefs (as young chefs) that could be worn on an everyday basis. The shirts are super comfortable and the designs are SIC!!! They have a new line coming out soon and have been working with chefs to create shirts that best represent and support them.

You can check them out at their website Stovemonkeys.com, Twitter, and Facebook. You won't be dissappointed.

Preserved Cherries

My parents are coming in this weekend for dinner, so I am messing around with a couple of ideas so they can taste some of the things that I've been making over the past year. This is the dessert that I am planning on sending them. It needs a bit of tweaking, but for the most part this is how it will be. I plan on sending this after the entrees as a semi-savory transition into the sweeter desserts.

Long Pepper Preserved Cherries, Frangipan, Brown Butter Powder, Amaretto Meringue, Tonka Been Ice cream