Saturday, September 07, 2002

A few years ago, when I was making serious pickles, "MAP" at the Farmers' Market was the only source for cukes small enough for cornichons. She also had great cukes in the 4-6 inch range for making sours and half-sours. She has since retired from the pickle business, but Three Waters Farm still has a presence, providing wool and mohair products, yarns, hats, felt, handwovens, and goat's milk soap. I picked up 3 bars of the fragrant soap and had a nice chat with "MAP" about supermarket checkouts and tabloid covers. Tomatoes are dwindling, those remaining are priced about $1.50 a pound, but I got some beefsteaks for $2.00. These will also be roasted and mixed with garlic then baked atop some of the olive focaccia, which will be taken out for an afternoon beer. I'll be meeting some friends who want a couple old vinyl albums burned onto CDs. I use Cool Edit 2000 to remove clicks, pops, and surface noise. An RCA turntable with a built-in preamp plugs directly into the front bay breakout box of my SoundBlaster Audigy. Albums are nice, readable print and substantial cover art, there's more than sound to vinyl. What's especially nice is turning them over after only 20 to 25 minutes per side, an easily digestible moment of music. CDs go on and on, up to 74 minutes, but they are convenient. Picked up some backribs, but they have to cure in brine for 2 days before smoking, so that won't happen this weekend. The Kutas brine uses 2 1/2 gallons of water, 1 pound salt, 8 ounces powdered dextrose, and 4 ounces Prague Powder #1 (also called Instacure #1, it's the nitrite cure for short term products. Longer term curing also requires nitrates, which break down into nitrites for continous protection). Rather simple...dark brown sugar could be subsituted for the dextrose. That's a recipe for 25 pounds, which would be about 10 slabs of baby backs. I've also used a more convenient cure - just use 1/2 teaspoon of the curing salt mixed with a 1/4 cup of kosher salt and 1/2 cup brown sugar. Cut slashes to the bone of the slab on both sides, coat it with the sugar mixture, then seal it up in a FoodSaver bag. A lot of moisture will be drawn out of the meat. After a couple of days, take it out of the bag (whatever you do, don't forget this step!), rinse, pat dry, and let it air dry for a couple of hours. My preference is about 12 hours in the smoker at 132F, then apply smoke for a couple of hours and bring the internal temperature of the pork up to 152F. Rinse and let it "bloom" (color develops) at room temperature overnight, a day or so of chilling (more drying in the low humidity of a refrigerator), then seal it up again until it's time to cook it - grill according to taste or bake. Mmmmm...serve with some mustard greens - with the dark red ribs it'll make you think about Christmas.   8:40:37 AM    comment []

Been up early, not cooking, but making a CD-copy of an unspecified Mozart Requiem for Liz. One of the less publicized 911 memorial events will be 8:46am performances of this in each time zone. Day of Wrath, The Trumpet Mighty Blast, When Sentence On The Damned, A Day Of Tears, Sacrifices - these are not just sentiments, but titles of movements from this mass. That copy, and a bag of baby red creamer potatoes, I'll hang on her doorknob so she finds it when she wakes up. She's staying at home today and I like to leave her a bag of goodies. Having grown up (like Alfred Hitchcock), upstairs from her Brit father's grocerery store, she has an appreciation for potatoes that we yanks can only imagine. I was once told, erroneously it turned out, that the creases in a chef's toque represented potato dishes she could prepare. Maybe for an Irish chef, like (Certified Master Chef) John Kinsella, who has written an entire book of potato recipes! He also wrote my second favorite sausage-making book, Professional Charcuterie and, from reading it, I'm convinced his choice for number one would be the immortal Rytek Kutas' Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing. That man did for wurst what the Wright Brothers did for aviation. For a free 138 page book of sausage recipes, go to www.stuffers.com and get this PDF. Potatoes and sausage, looks like a paragraph to me. I'm going over to HT now to get Liz's potatoes and maybe some baby backs, then an early jump on the Farmers' Market. Get there at 7am and the selection is best and parking is easy... 6:36:28 AM    comment []