Sunday, June 22, 2003

I have been rode hard and put up wet.  Paul Z, friend from the dark ages, was in New York for the weekend, as he often is, because he’s an independently wealthy auditor with too much cash and time on his hands, and after incapacitating my trusty devil-on-my-shoulder Em Friday night, he proceeded to do the honors for me on Saturday.  In the course of preparing our dinner of Jambon Farci et Braise (Braised Ham with Mushroom Stuffing) and braised spinach, eating it, and letting it digest, I drank a river of vodka tonics, smoked a forest of Marlboro Lights, not to mention eating half a loaf of bread with half a hunk of robiola cheese.  And then of course there was the Jambon Farci et Braise itself.   This is ham – a half a bone-in ham, bought at Fairway, the real thing at last – sliced, and layered with a mixture of sautéed mushrooms and Mousse de foie gras, though it actually wound up being mousse du canard foie gras, because mousse du canard foie gras is twelve dollars and mousse de foie gras is sixty-four dollars, and I’ve decided that the liver of a tortured goose simply cannot be that much more delicious than the liver of a tortured duck.  I started pretty early in the afternoon.  First I would make up a Terrine de Porc, Veau, et Jambon.  This is a pate of pork and veal and pork fat back layered with strips of ham and veal round that’s been marinated in cognac.  I could have used canned truffles, too, and I almost did, but at the last minute simply could not make myself buy a one-ounce can of black truffle for fifty buck.  Simply could not do it. Making up a Terrine de Porc, Veau et Jambon is a pleasant sort of task, a mud-pie like thing to do.   You sauté some minced onions in butter until translucent, scrape them into a bowl.  Boil down some Madeira in the same skillet until reduced by half; scrape that into the bowl as well.  Mix in ¾ lb each of ground pork and ground veal and ½ lb ground fresh pork fat back, all of which I got at Ottamanelli’s, actually, and I love those men so much, these days I only manage to get there a few times a year, but they always, ALWAYS remember me, and they have fresh pork fat back.  Also mix in two beaten eggs, salt, pepper, allspice, thyme, and a mashed clove of garlic. Slice half a pound of veal round into quarter-inch strips, and let it marinate a few minutes in cognac, salt, pepper, thyme, allspice and minced shallots.  Slice half a pound of ham – I used a slice off my big nine-pounder – also into quarter-inch strips.  Line a loaf pan with more of the fat back, slice into sheets an eighth of an inch thick.  This, as you can imagine, is a guesstimate.  Drain the veal and mix the marinade in with the pate mixture; layer a third of said mixture into the loaf pan.  On top of that lay alternating strips of veal and ham.  If I were going to use a fifty-dollar truffle, I’d do it here.  But I’m not.  Layer in another third of the pate mixture, another layer of veal and ham, and the last layer of pate.  Put a bay leaf on top, and then lay a last sheet of fat back on top.  Wrap it tightly in foil and back, in a pan of water, for an hour and a half.  When it comes out, weigh it down with something – I used another loaf pan filled with cans of corn and artichoke bottoms – and let it cool to room temperature.  Then chill it. While the pate was baking I started right in on the filling for the Jambon Farci et Braise.  I started by cleaning and trimming two pounds of mushrooms, and then, because I am no longer quite the moron I once was, mincing them in the Cuisinart.  These I then sautéed with half a cup of shallots, also Cuisinart-minced, in butter and oil.  Once they were sautéed pretty well, I added a quarter cup of Madeira, and let that boil until evaporated.  Then all I did was scrape them into a bowl and mix them with the mousse du canard foie gras, and some thyme and allspice.  Pretty easy actually. The next step was to “cut the upper two thirds of the ham into neat, thin, horizontal serving slices, piling them to one side in the order in which you slice them.”  This, as you can certainly imagine, is not quite as easy as it sounds.  I had two problems.  The first was that ham, of it’s very nature, simply isn’t overly neat.  It didn’t want to stay in nice solid sliced.  It wanted to separate and fall apart.  Secondly, the way this ham was with the big bone and all, the only way to slice two thirds of the ham with any kind of efficiency was to cut it not horizontally but on a slant.  I could foresee that this might cause reassembly problems, but there was nothing to be done.  So I did this, and started slapping on the mushroom and foie gras filling and sticking the slabs of ham back on.  Actually, it worked out alright.  Not the prettiest thing in the world, but the filling sort of adhered the ham to itself.  Just to make sure, I tied it up with some twine.  This was when Paul arrived.  We sat around and shot the shit while I sliced up some onions and carrots and sautéed them in butter and oil in a big casserole, then lowered the ham in, and added 2 cups of Madeira, three cups of beef broth, parsley, thyme and bay leaf.  I got that boiling, and stuck it in the oven, where it was to bake for two and a half hours.  Two and a half hours is, as it turns out, too much time to sit around in a kitchen smoking cigarettes and drinking.  But it wasn’t until we decided, when the ham was about half an hour from done, that we really must go out and get more cigarettes and another bottle of Smirnoff that things really went awry.  What do I remember about the rest of the evening?  Waylon Jennings.  Some overdone, but still good, spinach.  Ashtrays.  Limes.  The bloated sensation of having eaten ham with mushrooms and foie gras.  “3:06” blinking on the digital clock.  And today I am conveniently enough far too lethargic to clean the house.  You could stuff a ham with a mousse of my liver, if it weren’t for the whole cirrhosis thing.  I’m sorry to say it, Em, but as a shoulder-devil, Paul has got you well beat. And I had been doing so well.  Friday night I had spent an extremely moderate evening with my “Sex and the City” shoulder-angel Helen, eating broiled fish with Beurre d’Anchois (Anchovy Butter) and a salad of mixed greens, mushrooms and pecorino with a simple dressing of lemon juice, olive oil, garlic and mustard, drinking a very civilized bottle of Reisling, and watching romantic comedy about straight girls kissing.  Helen, as always, a source of endlessly delightful conversation and meta-comments (HELEN!!  I can’t remember the metacomments, help!  Mind… turning to… fermented… mush….)  I felt so clean and healthy and mature.  And now with the help of Paul Z, it’s all gone to shit.  Thanks, Paul.  Thanks a lot. Oh, so speaking of Sex and the City, here’s an amusing little anecdote.  After nearly a decade of living in New York, I have finally been anointed in the blood of the lamb.  I was walking down Eighth Street in the village when it happened.  There I am walking along, minding my own business, when this lone cab drives through a puddle and splashes me.  And I’m not talking a little water on the pants leg here.  It was a head-to-toe drenching.  My hair was soaked, the wool sweater that I always wear on my late-June treks was soaked.  And it wasn’t raining at the time, hadn’t rained for probably almost twenty-four hours, so the water had lots of time to get good and oily and scummy and stinky. There were about four or five people around who saw it, one woman and three men.  The woman was absolutely horrified, the men thought it was hilarious.  What could I do but laugh like a maniac and thank god I wasn’t wearing my Gaultier tutu?          3:53:08 PM    comment []