Bookshelf: Pitt Cue Co.: The Cookbook

“Can I ask you,” the clerk pressed, “as one American to another, why on Earth would you buy a British barbecue book?” For the past thirty minutes, I’d been pulling down books from the shelves of the Notting Hill bookstore where she worked and had set aside the lurid orange/red cookbook from the local Pitt Cue Co. on my ‘maybe’ stack. “Why waste your money? I mean, how are the Brits going to do barbecue better than anything than we can get back home?”

She had a point. When one thinks of the great barbecue centers of the world, Kansas City comes to mind. Austin. Memphis. Charlotte. American places, all. Pitt Cue, on the other hand, is a thirty-seat joint smack dab in central London; seat of an erstwhile Empire, sure, but cultural backwoods when it comes to barbecue.

Yet here’s the thing; you can find some good ‘cue in the backwoods.

Pickled Hot Dogs

The authors of the book — restaurateurs Tom Adams, Jamie Berger, Simon Anderson and Richard Turner — capture the spirit of barbecue better than some places I’ve sampled it in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and, yes, even places like Texas, Georgia, and Kentucky where they know good ‘cue. The reason the book interested me — and why I bought it a few days later at another store — is that they start with a strong framework and adapt it to local tastes and ingredients. These guys know full well that good barbecue involves smoke and long, low cooking.

Recipes include pulled pig’s head crubeens (normally made only pigs’ trotters and not smoked or nearly so spiced), Buffalo pigs’ tails with Stilton sauce, porger sausage (made with bacon, pork belly, dry-aged beef rib-eye, and pork shoulder), duck giblet sausages, mutton ribs, crumbed pigs’ cheeks, habanero pigs’ ears, mashed potatoes tricked out various ways (with whipped bone marrow, burnt ends, or lardo and rosemary), and plenty of pickles, slaws, and sides.

The recipes in the Pitt Cue Co. cookbook may not be what old-timers expect of smoked meats in the bastions of American barbecue, but many techniques and flavors will be familiar to Americans, even if the details are not quite what we’d expect. Avid eaters will find a lot to like — and you boozers will notice that the boys aren’t shy about lashing whiskey and other spirits around with someone approaching abandon. The drinks chapter alone is 37 pages. Recipes for ‘sweet stuff’ call for bourbon, Pimm’s No. 1 (used both in a sorbet and in a meringue-and-fruit Pimm’s Mess), and Grand Marnier. In a nod to the wine jellies once so popular in the UK — but sticking with the pig and whiskey themes — there’s an old-fashioned jelly, made old-fashioned not with wine but with the ingredients one would find in an Old Fashioned cocktail.

Fennel Cured Scratchings

The only caveat — and this is not a negative, just a bit of a heads up — is that the Pitt Cue Co. book, while drafted for home cooks, is very much a product of a kitchen geared for commercial cooking. Many recipes link to each other and rely on precursor sauces, condiments, or other preparations. What looks like a fairly straightforward recipe may, in fact, call for prunes soaked in whiskey for a month or brine from pomegranate pickles or for chicken, hot sauces, deviled pigs’ trotters, barbecue rubs and sauces, etc.. All it means is that you’ll want to read each recipe all the way through before starting it…but you do that anyway, right?

The next time you tackle a pork shoulder for sausage making, don't you dare toss out that skin. Use it in the sausage, drop chunks of it into baked beans, or season it and roll it into a tight cylinder, cook it, slice it, and deep-fry it for a quick bar snack or appetizer. From Pitt Cue Co.: The Cookbook, here’s crunchy, salted pork skin with the faint Italian-sausage nip of fennel. The only change I'd make it to include a bit of crushed red pepper (such as Aleppo) in the dry cure.

Fennel Cured Scratchings

250 g pork skin, from a whole skinned pork shoulder
15 g Dry Cure (see below)
Oil for deep-frying 

Sprinkle both sides of the skin with the dry cure, then roll up the skin into a sausage (like an Arctic roll) so that the fat side remains on the inside. Place the sausage on a long length of clingfilm and roll it up very tightly. Tie off each end so that the roll is watertight and leave in the fridge for at least 24 hours. 

Bring a medium pan of water to a gentle simmer and add the roll of skin. Weight it down with a heatproof plate and simmer over a low heat for 1 hour, until the roll is squidgy and soft to touch. Remove from the pan and leave to cool, then refrigerate until you are ready to cook. 

Unwrap the skin from the clingfilm and slice the roll of skin into 5mm rings. Heat the oil to 180°C in a deep-fat fryer or large saucepan and fry the rings for 4-5 minutes, or until golden and crispy. The scratchings should not need seasoning.

For the dry rub, the authors suggest a 50:50 mix of Maldon sea salt and smoked Maldon sea salt. While we like using flaky Maldon salt, there’s no particular need to search out that and only that salt if it means paying exorbitant import prices. In the US, plain kosher salt is fine — and if you can get your hands on good smoked salt, do as they say and work it in as half the quantity. This version omits the 150 grams of brown/molasses sugar called for in their regular dry rub.

Pitt Cue Co. Dry Cure 

1 kilo/2.2 lbs salt
10g cracked black pepper
1 star anise, finely ground

10 g fennel seeds, toasted and crushed

Mix all ingredients in a bowl until they are thoroughly combined.

Tom Adams, Jamie Berger, Simon Anderson and Richard H. Turner (2013)
Pitt Cue Co.: The Cookbook
288 pages (hardback)
Mitchell Beazley
ISBN: 1845337565
£20.00

Available from Amazon.co.uk, Waterstones, or Books for Cooks.

Sausage Biscuits for a Party

What is that ring? Scroll to the end.

The weather has turned. The ungodly, soul-sucking heat that followed me on travels in the last two months has broken. Finally, the idea of turning on the oven isn’t the suicidal notion it was just a few weeks ago. Sunday, we made cookies. Last night: a side of salmon quickly roasted with Irish butter, a scattering of salt and pepper, and a few dollops of pesto. And then there’re sausage biscuits.

My California friends talk a good game about their gym routines and diets; low-fat, low-carb, gluten-free, and all that. Whatever. If I put out a basket of sausage biscuits at some shindig at the house, they’re gone.

Nothing fancy, little cocktail nibbles like these are common throughout the South and the variations are Legion. Sausage patties tucked into split biscuits are a bit more substantial as breakfast sandwiches nationwide, but these are smaller — just a bit smaller than a table tennis ball — and have nuggets of of crumbled, cooked country sausage throughout. Unlike the little deep-fried bitterballen I like to make at the last minute and serve with mustard, these biscuits can be made days ahead of time and are good just as-is.

John Martin Taylor gives a version in Hoppin' John's Lowcountry Cooking with a rich cheese-and-flour dough a lot like what Southern cooks might use for cheese straws, another party staple. It’s his recipe I use. The sausage you want is pork, the kind with sage, black pepper, and almost too much crushed red chiles. I don't bother with the pecan halves, but you do what you like.

These go well with beer, whiskey, Champagne, more biscuits, and French 75 cocktails. And maybe more beer. And just one more biscuit.

After all, it’s back and shoulders day. Gotta load up on protein.

Sausage Biscuits  

1 pound country sausage
6 ounces (1½ sticks) unsalted butter
1½ cups grated extra-sharp cheddar cheese
¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 tsp salt
1½ cups plus about 2 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour
Perfect pecan halves (optional) 

Fry the sausage over medium-high heat until it is cooked through, drain, and allow to cool. Cream the butter and cheeses together. Sift the salt and flour together over the cheese mixture and blend together with a wooden spoon or spatula. Crumble the sausage and mix it in with your hands. Chill the dough for about 30 minutes. 

Heat the oven to 350°F/175°C. Pinch off small pieces of the dough and roll them into 1-inch balls. Place the balls about an inch apart on baking sheets [use baking parchment or a silicone baking sheet if you like, but they're not strictly necessary]. If desired, top some or all of the balls with perfect pecan halves, pushing the pecan into the dough and flattening the balls. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until they begin to brown. Serve warm or at room temperature. 

Store in airtight containers for no more than 1 week.

~ From Hoppin' John's Lowcountry Cooking: 

Recipes and Ruminations from Charleston and the Carolina Coastal Plain (2012).

While baking, the biscuits will throw off crispy, melty cheesy bits in a sort of crunchy brown halo surrounding each. Throw them out if you want, but canny eaters will toss them into a gratin crust, a sweet potato mash, or a bacon-and-spinach salad. 

Goes well with:

• What else is Hoppin' John up to? Check out his blog or order some of his stone-ground grits.
• A simple pork sausage. If you use this recipe rather than buying pre-made sausage, omit the fennel and Worcestershire sauce, add rubbed sage, and up the quantities of black pepper and red chiles. Grind finely.
• And if you are into making your own sausages, check out Elise Hannemann's Liverwurst, a 1904  German recipe that uses ground bacon in the mix, resulting in what Americans would recognize as homemade Braunschweiger. 
• If pork and homemade charcuterie's not your bag, how about bread? My dad makes a pretty righteous loaf of dense onion rye bread. 
• Lastly, you may still be seeing peaches in the stores. The season's mostly gone for us, but those left will still make good jam, perfect for slathering on non-sausage, plain ol' buttermilk biscuits. 

Salsa de Venas (or Are You Gonna Eat Them Chile Veins, Buddy?)

Detail of Salsa de Venas
by Michel Zabé

Common directions for cooking with chiles — from simple roasted bell peppers to the hundreds of chiles rellenos varieties — call for cutting away and discarding the seeds and ribs or veins that anchor them to the fruit’s interior. The rationale is twofold:

1. Discarding seeds and veins makes a more texturally refined dish
2. Seeds and veins tend to contain larger concentrations of capsaicin, the compound that makes hot chiles hot. Discarding them helps to temper that heat and let the flavor of the flesh become more apparent.

Removing chile veins from some dishes is all well and good, but discarding them? That’s just wasteful. Just as you can save shrimp shells for stock, collect pineapple trimmings for vinegar, or skim delicious cracklin’s from a batch of home-rendered lard, you can put those veins to good use.

Patricia Quintana does just that. In her 2005 book, Mulli: el libro de los moles, she details about a hundred salsas, moles, adobos, and pipianes that draw on Mexico’s culinary history from pre-Colombian times. From the Valle de Toluca (an area west and slightly south of Mexico City), she pulls a roasted tomato table salsa that’s heavily laced with those veins we’re supposed to throw away.

This isn’t an incendiary salsa, but neither is it for milquetoasts. Don’t spring it on your family or friends if they don’t like a bit of heat. Here’ s my translation of Quintana:

Toluca Valley-style Salsa de Venas

1 cup of veins from pasilla, negro, guajillo, or ancho chiles cleaned and dry-roasted
4 medium garlic cloves, peeled, roasted
½ medium onion, roasted
4 medium tomatoes, roasted
½ cup of water or to taste
1 ½ teaspoons coarse salt or to taste

To prepare the salsa:

Rinse and dry the chile veins. Preheat a comal or skillet and cook until toasted, but not burned. Roast the garlic too, onion, and tomatoes in the same pan until they turn dark. Allow to cool. In a molcajete or food processor, grind the chile veins with the salt and garlic, regrinding it all well. Add the onion and continue grinding. Add the tomatoes and grind until the sauce thickens,then add the water and re-season.

Presentation:

Serve in a mortar and pestle or in a sauce boat. Serve with fried charales [tiny, tiny fish] and freshly made tortillas.

Quintana's original directions:

Salsa de venas estilo Valle de Toluca

1 taza de venas de chile pasilla, negro o guajillo, o de chile ancho limpias, secas, tostadas
4 dientes de ajo medianos, sin piel, asados
½ cebolla mediana, asada
4 jitomates medianos, asados
½ taza de agua o al gusto
1½ cucharaditas de sal gruesa o al gusto

para preparar la salsa:

Lave las venas de los chiles y séquelas. Precaliente un comal o una sartén y aselas hasta que estén tostadas, sin quemarlas. Ase también los dientes de ajo, la cebolla y los jitomates hasta que tomen un color oscuro. Deje enfriar. En un molcajete o procesador, muela las venas de los chiles con la sal y el ajo, remuela bien. Incorpore la cebolla y continúe moliéndolas. Anada los jitomates y muelalos hasta que quede una salsa semiespesa; incorpore el agua y vuelva a sazonar.

presentation:

Sírvala en un molcajete o en una salsera. Acompane con charales fritos y tortillas recien hechas.

Patricia Quintana (2005)
Photos by Michel Zabé
Mulli: el libro de los moles
Editorial Oceano de Mexico
288 pages (paperback)
ISBN: 9707770953
$47.99

Goes well with:

• A batch of salsa de chile de arbol, a garlic-heavy coarse table salsa we like to make around here. 

Bookshelf: Odd Bits (and Brain Fritters)

I have licked the inside of a dead man’s skull, yet cannot bring myself to eat brains.

Brains don’t disgust me; it’s not that they are icky, yucky, or gross. After all, I dote on sweetbreads, said to be of similar consistency. No, it’s that, of all an animal’s odd bits, the brain is so clearly the seat of cognition. It’s not for nothing that a German word hammers this point; the brain, the human one, anyway, is das Denkorgan, the “thinking organ.”

Surely, I have eaten brains, given all the scrapple, brawn, and brei I’ve downed since childhood, but I’ve never actively pursued a hot platter of grey matter. I could chalk up my eschewing brain to mere caution. After all, transmissible encephalopathies such as mad cow disease and other pernicious, degenerative brain disorders, no matter their rarity, can be traced to a heady diet. But the truth is that I hesitate at the idea of devouring thoughts — even a lamb’s.

I’ll eat livers, lungs, trotters, and tongues, but no one — not Fergus Henderson, not Mrs. Beeton, not Charles Ranhoffer of Delmonico’s, or even Escoffier himself — has come as close as has Jennifer McLagan to convincing me that my thoughts about brains ought to be reconsidered.

McLagan’s new book Odd Bits covers brains as well as beef cheeks, liver, tongue, heart, Bath chaps, guanciale, pig ears, haggis, kidneys, sweetbreads, testicles, ribs, lungs, marrow, and more. After writing about the culinary use of bones and fat in two earlier well-received books, her latest subtitle (How to Cook the Rest of the Animal) pretty much sums it up. In this troika of titles, McLagan has firmly established her expertise in converting cast-off bits of mammalian anatomy into tasty dishes. Hair, I suppose, or eyeballs may remain unaddressed, but when she’s covered even toenails, her expertise in offal is unassailable (really, now, what is blood orange calves’ foot jelly but quivering red essence of toenail?).

Continuing hard times and a growing taste for stronger flavors means you’re going to be seeing a lot of what polite company once referred to as "variety meats" on menus. You could do a lot worse than sitting down with Odd Bits and reading up to understand what you’re seeing when you’re out — and how to make some of those toothsome morsels at home.

Taking her inspiration from Australian chefs and food writers Greg and Lucy Malouf, McLagan presents a cocktail menu snack: cheese and brain fritters. She writes:

Frying and the addition of cheese often help persuade people to try something they think they don't like. I serve these as appetizers with drinks—that way guests only have to try one, but I'm pretty sure you won't have any left. The recipe is very straightforward; just make sure the cheeses are very finely grated, a microplane is the ideal tool.

Cheese and Just a Little Brain Fritters

3 eggs
½ cup/¾ oz/25 g very finely grated Gruyere, packed
¼ cup/⅓ oz/10 g very finely grated Parmesan, packed
2 Tbl finely chopped chives
Finely grated zest of 1 orange
½ tsp fine sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
3 sets poached lamb's brains (see below)
1 Tbl cornstarch
1 cup/7 oz/200 g lard

Preheat the oven to 200°F/100°C. Place a baking sheet lined with paper towels in the oven.

In a bowl, whisk the eggs, then slowly whisk in both the cheeses and the chives, orange zest, and salt, and season with pepper.

Slice each brain lobe into ½ -inch/1-cm slices and toss them in the cornstarch to coat. Transfer them to the batter and stir to mix; you will have something resembling a lumpy pancake batter.

Melt the lard in a heavy frying pan over medium heat; you should have about into ½ -inch/1-cm of fat. When hot, drop a little batter into the oil, it should sizzle and rise to the surface. Now add a few spoonfuls of brain batter mixture to the fat; don't overcrowd the pan and adjust the heat so the fritters bubble gently. Cook the fritters about 3 minutes, or until set and golden on the underside. Using a slotted spoon, gently turn them over and cook for about another 3 minutes. As they finish cooking, transfer the fritters to the baking sheet in the oven to keep warm. Serve right away.

Cleaning Brains

The general method for cleaning brains involves removing any remaining skull fragments, then soaking them in a light brine (about 1 teaspoon of salt per cup of cool water) both to draw out blood and to help firm the lobes. After soaking, the membrane is removed and then the cleaned brains often poached in water or stock.

Jennifer McLagan (2011)
Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal
256 pages (hardcover)
Ten Speed Press
ISBN: 158008334X
$35.00

Goes well with:

• McLagan's blog where she's got some behind the scenes materials and roundups of what others are saying and writing about her books. 
• Feasting on Bones

Salsa de Chile de Arbol

The weekend is nearly on us. Given the current heat wave and our local drinking habits, that means beers, margaritas, chips, and salsa. Anything that keeps the kitchen from getting needlessly hot.

We're loaded up on fresh limes, Cointreau, Combier, and Grand Marnier, so the margaritas are under control. Beers are cooling and chips acquired. I just tossed a double handful of green tomatillos on the grill and made a batch of green salsa with tomatillos and dried chiles de arbol, those pencil-thin, long red chiles so common once you know to look for them.

Tomatillos, also called tomates verdes, resemble hard green tomatoes in husks, but the resemblance ends there. Though the tart little fruits can be used raw, I like them best cooked and have been known to give them a quick boil or to char them a bit on the grill. I'm particularly fond of the tomatillo/chipotle combination and have made quick stews of little more than chicken, squash, roasted tomatillos, lime, salt, chicken stock, and smoked peppers.

The idea for this salsa came from Patricia van Rhijn's La cocina del chile. This isn't as smoky as chipotle versions, but packs a pleasant heat. If you don't like tart tastes, you won't dig this, but if you do — tuck in. Want a stronger garlic kick? Don't roast it with the other ingredients. Make sure everyone eats some, though; you don't want to be the only one with superhuman garlic breath.

My interpretation and quantity tweaks are below. Her original follows that in case you'd like to double check my imperfect Spanish.

Salsa de chile de arbol

8 dried chiles de arbol
8 tomatillos
6 cloves garlic
1 tsp (cider or pineapple) vinegar
Dash of salt 

Clean and wash the tomatillos. Grill them with the chiles and garlic.

Once the ingredients are roasted, remove and discard the hard core of the tomatillos, grind everything in a blender with vinegar and add salt to taste. I like to leave discernible chunks of garlic and chile in mine.

And here's van Rhijn's original directions:

Salsa de chile de arbol

Ingredientes (para 1 taza)

6 chiles de arbol secos
6 tomates verdes
3 dientes de ajo
1 cucharadita de vinagre

Preparacion:

Los tomates se limpian y lavan. Se ponen a asar junto con los chiles y los ajos. 

Una vez que los ingredientes esten asados, se muelen con el vinagre y se agrega sal al gusto.

Patricia van Rhijn (2003)
La cocina del chile
Introduction by Laura Esquivel, photos by Ignacio Urguiza
Editorial Planeta Mexicana
Hardback (191 pages)
ISBN 9706908684

Bookshelf: Izakaya: The Japanese Pub Cookbook

Ever since Japan’s triple disasters earlier this year, I’ve been getting in as much as I can about Japanese cuisine; this new direction is reflected, predictably, in a growing accretion of books and bottles.

To my pile of books, I recently added Mark Robinson’s Izakaya. It’s a few years old now, but the book is so engrossing that I read it cover-to-cover on a flight to Salt Lake City. The future of Japanese whisky in the wake of this year’s tsunami originally sparked my interest in that country’s distilleries. That initial concern has grown into a broader interest in Japanese eating and drinking habits — in which I am far from expert.

It’s not that I am wholly unfamiliar with Japanese food. After all, friends live in Japan and we have a handful of Japanese markets nearby. But I lean to big, bold flavors and would rather eat any number of Vietnamese, Thai, Lao, or regional Chinese dishes than yet another Southern California sushi roll. Of course, Japanese cuisine is more than sushi, sake, and Sapporo — but it’s a pity we don’t have more authentic izakaya to help us understand the bigger picture.

Robinson is an Australian journalist based in Tokyo. He clearly has spent considerable time in izakaya (pronounced roughly ee-ZAH-ka-ya), small Japanese pubs that are as much about food as they are drink. In fact, he offers “pub” only hesitantly as a translation. Here he sets the scene for one of his favorites and the first of eight profiled in the book:

Every neighborhood deserves a Horoyoi.

Amid the babble of nighttime Ebisu, in southwestern Tokyo, among the mind-numbing array of flashy restaurants dueling for customers, their touts playing the streets, this diminutive semi-basement izakaya has been a fixture in my life since the early 1990s.

I never consciously made it so. Indeed, it was years before I realized that Horoyoi had grown on me — or I had grown into it — to the extent that I relied on it as much as the average Japanese might his or her own “local”: as a modest, welcoming place that came instantly to mind whenever I was arranging to eat and drink with friends and colleagues; to casually celebrate birthdays and New Year’s; to entertain relatives; or to introduce newcomers to izakaya. Over time, I found that it had transcended its status as an occasional destination to become a regular venue for marking some of my life’s milestones: a personal repository of good memories. With minimal décor, reliable, simply seasoned food and cool-headed service, it was a place where I felt at the same time comfortably well known and sufficiently anonymous to be completely myself. I could bring whomever I please, stay as long or short as I wanted, ask questions about the menu, be gregarious, or simply sit and observe. And that’s what the best neighborhood izakaya should be.

He goes on to give about a dozen recipes from Horoyoi and about as many again from each of seven other spots. The recipes range from almost down-home comfort food to a handful of more complex dishes. It would be a mistake, however, to describe any of the recipes as particularly complicated. Pork, noodles, clams, tofu, and potato salad (yes, potato salad) are almost old hat to Western eaters. For ingredients that may not be so familiar, Robinson includes photos and descriptions — wood ear mushrooms, gardenia fruit, yuzu, daikon radish sprouts, wagarashi (Japanese hot mustard), shichimi spice powder, lotus root, and more.

Some of the highlights include asparagus and pork tempura rolls, soy-flavored spareribs, chicken gizzards, cucumber pickles, duck breast with ponzu sauce, miso-cured tofu, steamed and grilled pork with salt, deep-fried tilefish, and the bizarre —but no less intriguing — Raclette-stuffed deep-fried tofu. There’s not one single thing in this book I wouldn’t eat.

This year’s tight travel budget means I have no immediate plans to visit Japan, but I am laying plans to come drinking and learning what to eat with those cocktails I’ve been hearing so much about the past few years.

From the Tokyo izakaya Buchi, sweetened glazed walnuts take on the fermented tenor of the esteemed aged Chinese tea, pu-erh. No pu-erh? Robinson suggests substituting Earl Grey.

Pu-erh-Glazed Walnuts

8 oz. (230g) walnut halves
5½ oz. (155g) granulated sugar
⅓ oz. (8g) pu-erh tea
Vegetable oil for deep-frying

In a sauté pan, lightly toast the tea over low heat until fragrant. Pulse to a powder in a food processor. Bring water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Blanch the walnuts for one minute and strain. Toss with sugar while hot.

In a large saucepan, heat the oil to 430ºF. Have ready a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Deep fry the walnuts until the sugar caramelizes, about 4-5 minutes, then transfer to the baking sheet. While hot, sprinkle with the tea powder and toss well. Separate the walnuts and let them cool completely. Store in an airtight container.

Mark Robinson (2008)
Izakaya: The Japanese Pub Cookbook
160 pages (paperback)
Kodansha USA
ISBN: 4770030657
$25.00

Bar Food: Spanish Fig Cake

With San Diego temperatures plummeting to the mid-60’s, I can’t help but recall our decade in Philadelphia where—to make it through the harsh winters—I guzzled hot tea by the liter. Occasionally bits of Spanish fig cake helped. But it isn’t just for tea. As a bar snack or part of an appetizer spread, fig cake complements Manchego cheese, a slice of membrillo, and a small bowl of olives. It doesn’t hate a glass of sherry or port if you roll that way.

Now fig cake isn’t your typical baked cake like red velvet or a pound cake; it’s a dense little drum of dried figs mixed with Marcona almonds or sometimes hazelnuts. Done properly, it’s not overly sweet since there’s little more than figs and nuts in it. Mitica makes a popular version and Zingerman’s sells chucks of the stuff.

But there’s also a way to make it at home with no cooking at all.

While researching sweetened whiskeys this morning, I came across a recipe for A Spanish Dessert Treat in a 1904 English candy-making manual. Yeah, I said candy-making manual. I like sugar work and collect old candy books. You wanna make something of it?

The little brown tome bearing Alan Davidson’s fishy bookplate I picked up for a measly $30 from Bonnie Slotnik*. The Treat inside it was a dead ringer for the fig cake I knew back East.

This recipe calls for fresh bay leaves to be inserted between layers of the cake. It’s not just a matter of taste. Old importer guides and grocer manuals report that bay leaves packed in bundles of imported figs helped prevent insect infestation. Layer some in if you have access to fresh bay and like the taste. Dried sounds…unappetizing. Ignore Mrs. Rattray’s suggestions of gilding this particular lily with sugar.

A Spanish Dessert Treat

Split some fresh-dried figs of the best quality, “pulled figs” [see below] by preference, and arrange in each three or four split blanched almonds; close the fruit and put it in layers in a screw tin, such as a small brawn tin, or into a jar in which increasingly heavy weights can be put; between each layer put a few fresh bay-leaves; when the whole mass is perfectly solid, the pressure having been daily increased, lift it out and cut into slices with a sharp knife. These may be formed into the basis of a sweet, dusted with icing sugar, and decorated with royal icing.

Mrs. M. E. Rattray (1904)
Sweetmeat-Making at Home.
C. Arthur Pearson, London.

Pulled figs note: Since this is (at least) a 105-year old recipe from a British source, I hit the shelves to see what the Brits would have meant by “pulled figs” just as the 20th century was getting its sea legs. According to The British Pharmaceutical Codex (1907),

“Natural" figs are those which are packed loose and retain to some extent their original shape. “Pulled" figs have been kneaded and pulled to make them supple; these are usually packed into small boxes for exportation, and are considered to be the best variety. "Pressed” figs have been closely packed in boxes so that they are compressed into discs.

Snip off any remaining stems regardless of which kind of dried figs used.

*I’ve scored a few of Andy Smith’s discards from Bonnie as well. Few trips to New York are complete without a stop in her little used cookbook store. At least not when you’re a book geek like me.

Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks
163 West Tenth Street
New York, New York 10014-3116
phone: 212-989-8962
fax: 212-989-8102
bonnieslotnickbooks@earthlink.net

Bread and Butter Bar Eggs

This Spring, my bread and butter pickles took a hard left turn. Bread and butters, after kosher-style dills, are arguably the most well-known cucumber pickle in the US. My recipe is pretty consistent from batch to batch, but this time I couldn’t leave well enough alone and got chickens involved.

As I’ve mentioned before, pickled bar eggs are a particular favorite of mine, even if they are a bit old fashioned (or just plain divey). Here and there, you still find bars that have a large glass jug with pickled eggs bobbing around in vinegar and bay leaves. Whether they really rise and fall with changes in the barometric pressure—as some flannel-mouthed bartenders claim—is a question for another day.

Some of my pickled egg experiments don’t turn out as well as hoped (the Cape Malay masala version needs work). Overall, though, eggs make great spiced pickles, exactly the kind I’d like to see more often grace back bars for hungry drinkers. The smack and tang of vinegar also make them a good mid-day snack when I’m peckish, but don’t want to eat a whole meal. A pinch of salt, maybe some Sriracha hot sauce, and I'm good.

When the latest batch of bread and butter cukes was down to just a few slices, the jar still held nearly a quart of pickle juice flavored with seeds of celery and mustard and the ubiquitous turmeric (the rhizome that turns ballpark mustard yellow). Rather than pitch it, I cooked a batch of eggs, slipped them into the spiced liquid, and pushed the jug to the back of the fridge. After two weeks, the eggs firmed, turned a luminous turmeric yellow, and took on the definite sweet-and-sour tang of the original pickle.

Here’s the shortcut to make them without the cucumber prelude. Remember, hardboiled eggs are a mistake. If you’re boiling them, you’re doing it wrong. See here for easy instructions on cooking eggs without that sulfurous, stanky green ring.

Bread and Butter Bar Eggs

2 dozen hard-cooked eggs, peeled
1 lb onion
1 ½ Tbl kosher or sea salt
1 ½ tsp celery seed
1 tsp powdered turmeric
¼ tsp cracked allspice (or 1 tsp pimento dram)
1 Tbl each brown and yellow mustard seeds
4 cups cider vinegar
3 ½ cups light brown sugar

Peel and slice the onions into half-moons, about ¼” wide. Toss with the salt in a nonreactive bowl and set aside for an hour. Rinse and drain.

In a nonreactive pot, add the remaining ingredients (except the eggs) and bring to a boil. Stir as needed to dissolve the sugar. Reduce the heat and simmer 3-5 minutes. Remove from the heat, cover, and let cool to room temperature.

Place the eggs in a nonreactive container, such as a big glass preserving jar or food-grade plastic, and pour the liquid over them. Cover and refrigerate. The eggs should be fully pickled in two weeks, but even a few days will make a dramatic difference.

Serve with beer, whiskey, boilermakers, a pinch of salt, and a grind of pepper. Get all fancy if you like and slice them into quarters lengthwise for adding to salads. Toss them in a picnic basket or a shoebox lunch.

Bar Food: Rowley's Bitterballen

Bitterballen are the quintessential Dutch bar food. Hot, crunchy, salty, meaty; they are tastier (and more appetizing) than dried little bar pretzels that everyone at the bar has been pawing at before you. The size of small meatballs, these snappy little hors d'oeuvres are miniature croquettes (kroketten in Dutch) which are, in and of themselves, particularly beloved by the cloggies. Plus, a bar manager’s delight—they drive you to drink, hence spend, more.

If you’ve been taken with Genevieve, Anchor Distilling’s take on genever, but aren’t quite sure what to do with it, the most approachable way to introduce it to your guests is with a batch of these little buggers. A dollop of hot mustard (Dijon, for instance) is standard.

Rowley’s Bitterballen

Béchamel/White Sauce
2 Tbl unsalted butter (30g/1oz)
3 Tbl flour (1.25 oz/35g)

1 cup milk or stock (250ml) (I like to use a 1:1 mixture of the two)
Salt, pepper, and whole nutmeg freshly ground to taste
2 eggs, lightly beaten

Make a very light roux by melting the butter in a saucepan, then adding the flour. Cook the roux, stirring until it just starts to turn golden.

Add the liquid, bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, stirring the sauce until it’s smooth, using a whisk if necessary. Simmer for 10-15 minutes, stirring often, until the mass is thickened.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

Stir several ounces of the sauce into the beaten eggs to temper them, then add the new mix back to the remaining sauce. Cook the whole thing just to the boiling point, stirring all the while.

Take off the heat, add several gratings of fresh nutmeg, correct the seasonings, and set this sauce aside while making the filling.

Filling
½ c minced onion (60g)
2 Tbl. unsalted butter (30g/1oz)
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1.5 cup ham, minced or ground (180g/6oz)
1 cup cooked chicken or veal, minced or ground (120g/4oz)
1 Tbl flat-leaf (aka Italian) parsley, finely chopped
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp dried thyme
¼ tsp hot sauce such as Tabasco, Crystal, or Texas Pete’s
Salt and pepper to taste

Dried bread crumbs (or panko for greater crunchiness)
2 eggs, beaten

Melt the butter in a skillet, and sauté the onion until it’s soft. Add the garlic and sauté until it’s fragrant, but not browned. Add the meats and heat through. Add remaining ingredients, including the roux, but excluding the eggs and bread crumbs, and set aside to chill.

Scoop about a rounded tablespoon of filling and shape each into a ball about an inch across. Repeat until the filling is used, setting each aside. Roll the entire batch in breadcrumbs, then dip the balls into the beaten eggs and roll once more in breadcrumbs. Allow to rest 30-45 minutes for the breading to dry some and adhere better once they are fried. Freeze any you don’t intend to use within the next day, then deep-fry the rest in vegetable oil at 350°F/177°C until they are a deep golden color. Serve piping hot with mustard and ice-cold shots of genever.

Makes around two dozen.

Goes well with:

• Het Jenever Museum
• Het volkomen krokettenboek, a comprehensive book of croquette recipes (in Dutch) by culinary journalist Johannes van Dam. Van Dam may contradict me, but many croquette recipes may be converted to bitterballen simply by making the shape smaller and round. Lobster bitterballen, anyone? Country ham?
• Chef John Folse is a juggernaut of Cajun cookery. His recipe for boudin balls isn't all that dissimilar to bitterballen and would fit in just fine in a bar food snack-off.

I gotta go. I'm hungry.

.

Bar Food: Pennsylvania Dutch Pickled Eggs

(Pickled eggs after one day: note the the pink color hasn't yet penetrated the entire white.)





Luke: I can eat fifty eggs.

Dragline: Nobody can eat fifty eggs.

~ Cool Hand Luke (1967)

It’s a bit disingenuous to call the startlingly scarlet pickled hens’ eggs of Pennsylvania “bar food.” After all, these are more home-style cooking typical of Amish country than the pickled eggs Charles Bukowski might’ve wolfed down in nameless demi-fictional California watering holes.

But, man alive, I’d love to see ‘em in more real bars. That is, assuming the kind of joints that serve pickled eggs don’t fade into memory under an onslaught of appletinis, Jäger bombs, and vodka whatevers. You can tart them up if you want to with chichi toppings or fancy presentation, but the plain fact is that pickled eggs have been drinkers’ fodder for centuries and they don’t need fancification. These are a particularly delicious example.

The Linkery, one of my favorite neighborhood restaurants, has a small bar where you can plop down, order some of the house-made sausages and local beers and wines (keep in mind that “local” in these parts might well include wines from Baja California’s Valle de Guadalupe) and—if the night is right—you can order an egg from a big-ass jar of brine behind the bar. Now if only they were beet-pickled…

Growing up in Kansas City, I knew about foods such as Lebanon bologna and scrapple that weren’t indigenous to the land of steaks and barbecue because my father’s family hailed from Philadelphia and he brought a taste for Philly food with him. Beet-pickled eggs were one of those odd things my dad made that nobody else ever brought in their school lunches.

The recipe below is derived from my father’s and that of Fritz Blank, a former microbiologist turned chef who ran Deux Cheminees for many years in Philly. From Fritz I learned a simple method of cooking eggs to get them to just the right point.

A common—hell, nearly ubiquitous—problem with hard-boiled eggs in the US is that they are, in fact, boiled. We shouldn’t boil eggs—it’s too easy to overcook them, giving that characteristic dark green mantle to the yolk and a sulfurous stank “like dog farts,” Blank says.

Hard “cooked” is another way to put it. In French, it’s oeufs dur (“hard” eggs). Just taking away the word “boiled” could do wonders for improving the cooking methods of cooks everywhere. The easy way is to bring the eggs to a boil from cool tap water, then pull them off the heat, let them sit in the hot water until cooked through at just the right texture, and plunge them in an ice bath. See the bottom for the full skinny on Fritz’s hard cooked eggs method. Since I started making eggs that way, I’ve never overcooked a single one.

Serving

If you’re serving the pickled eggs home-style, cut them into quarters lengthwise and scatter among salad leaves for a purple and yellow, but tasty, protein boost.

Fancy bar style? Impale one all the way through with a bamboo toothpick, suspend it in a large crystal shot glass, or precious raku dish, then sprinkle the top with freshly-cracked Tellicherry black pepper and coarse fleur de sel, hand-harvested from the saline pools of the Breton coast. Charge $1.50. Better make it $3.

Dive bar style? Serve on a paper napkin, maybe a clean shot glass. Salt shaker on the side. Charge no more than six bits.

Bachelor pad style? Sprinkle with salt and eat out of hand, or squirt it with Sriracha or another hot sauce that won’t overwhelm the taste of the pickle and eat them over the sink when nobody’s looking.

Pennsylvania Dutch Pickled Eggs

You can switch this recipe up by swapping out the rice vinegar for malt, sherry, or raspberry vinegars, throwing in a habanero pepper to the solution, adding bruised lemongrass, strong tea, star anise, garlic, etc. Those may or may not be delicious contributions to the art of pickling eggs—but they don’t make Pennsylvania Dutch Pickled Eggs. For those, this is the method to use.

Peel and place two dozen “hard-cooked” eggs made according to the directions below in a large jar covered with water ~ keeps them from drying while you prepare the pickling solution. Procede with the pickle.

Pickling solution

14-16 oz jar of sliced beets—beets and all
2 cups white wine vinegar (I’ll use Marukan rice vinegar or Champagne vinegar)
1.5 cups water
2 three-inch sticks of cinnamon
4 or 5 whole cloves
3 bay leaves
1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns roughly cracked into 2-3 pieces each
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar (optional)
5-6 peeled small red shallots (optional)

Place all the ingredients except optional raw shallots in a nonreactive pot, bring to a boil, cover, and reduce heat to simmer for five minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool to bloodwarm. Drain the eggs and add the crimson liquid and shallots (if using) to the jar with the eggs. Refrigerate.

Eggs are ready to eat after full day and keep refrigerated up to three weeks, during which time the reddish color will more deeply penetrate the white. After that, they’ll grow kinda rubbery and too firm.

Once pickled, the shallots are tasty with a piece of decent cheddar cheese and a chunk of good bread. Bit of a ploughman’s lunch as a treat for the cook.

Hard-Cooked Eggs—Notes by Chef Fritz Blank

1. Place the fresh whole “extra large” chicken eggs in an accommodating sauce pan and cover with cold water exactly one-inch above the tops of the eggs.
2. Place the pan over HIGH heat and bring quickly to a full rolling boil.
3. Remove the pan from the heat and cover it with a lid.
4. Set a timer for 10 minutes (NB below). Prepare an ice slurry bath using plenty of ice and just enough cold water to allow the ice to move freely.
5. After the eggs have steeped for ten minutes, remove them quickly from the hot water with a large slotted spoon or a “spider,” and immediately plunge them into the ice bath.
6. Keep in ice water until ready to peel.

NB: The size of the eggs will determine the steeping time.

USDA “Jumbo” = 12 minutes
USDA “Extra Large” = 10 minutes
USDA “Large” = 8 minutes
USDA “Medium” = 7 minutes
USDA “small” (aka “pullet eggs”) = 6 minutes

Helpful Hints Regarding Hard Cooking Eggs:

If the number of hard cooked eggs wanted is 12, start with 13, and subtract one minute from the steeping time. So for example, when cooking USDA “extra-large” eggs, set the timer for nine minutes rather than ten. When the timer goes off, quickly remove ONE egg and place it onto a carving board, and deftly cleve it in half, shell and all - Wack!! This will serve as a test to determine whether to remove and plunge the remaining 12 into the ice bath, and immediately stir them about, so that the ice bath shock is quick and complete.

If the yolk of the test egg is still runny, allow the remaining 12 to steep in the hot water for another minute, before proceedng with the ice bath shock.

Eat the hot test egg with a pinch of salt and some freshly ground black pepper - an epicurian pleasure reserved exclusively for cooks!