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Wednesday, January 29, 2003

This, then, is how the goetta appears after being scooped into the loaf pans. Doesn't look very pretty, does it? Not to worry. Fry it up and have it on a cold morning with some pancakes or eggs, brown the thin slices until the fat bubbles around the edges. Think of it as oatmeal with a "little kick". 8:48:11 PM    comment []

While the oatmeal simmers in the meat stock, you should try to write a really bad affected poem. Here's mine: Bobby Darin unexpectedly surfed in On a tropical heat wave late last light Easy for a dead man to do To wrap his toes 'round cumulus He wanted to sing Runaround Sue But the seagulls wouldn't let him No, no, that was Dion's song For Bobby Darin, it would be wrong Bobby curled his upper lip, say "attitude" Danced a black and white shoo-wop-a-bop Singin' a snappy finger bowtie song With a 3-octave piano plinkin' Brill All the way to Rockefeller Center Bone-eye daddy fingers Live at the Copa On the jumping black keys May I have a bell tone. Give her the real thing We'll meet, I know we'll meet Beyond the shore He shuffled around the sawdust floor High above parkway traffic Oh, the shark they watched his feet, babe Spun on a toe and then let go Somewhere, beyond the sea Somewhere, he sang for me So long, sailin' Bye, bye, cap'n Discussion: To be truly bad, it must have Roget pretensions. The "cumulus" line was my fulfillment of that mandatory. After that it kinda lost direction, as it should, but kept the cumulus suckers, hopin' for more, hangin' on tight right until "upper lip". After that, they're likely to stick around and see how incredibly bad it can get! I let mine degenerate into a dartboard of obscure Darin references until the oatmeal had cooked about 35 minutes, then it was done. I would have liked to have used more seagull references, but the time was up. Between the lines, I had time to grind the pressure-cooked meat mixture. The recipe says to discard the bay leaves but I say "Hogwash". Bay leaves don't really do anything anyway, they look the same after you've cooked as they did before. Hell, I've used the same bay leaf over and over for nearly 30 years and I dare anyone to tell the difference!  Then you mix the oatmeal with the ground meat, grind some tellicherry pepper on top, mix some more, and put it into loaf pans. That's where I am now. 8:23:05 PM    comment []

I just posted this comment over The Raven's in response to his brilliant SOTU analysis and then decided I wanted to say it here too: This will be the last SOTU with real actors. The next one will use animated computer generated characters and great sci-fi effects from Industrial Light & Magic. It is no longer necessary for humans to participate in this event in any manner, even the television audience will be replaced by enthusiastic hamsters! Hey, Raven, put on your master sommelier cap and tell us what wine best accompanies a Presidential address! 6:17:53 PM    comment []

I'm serious about this goetta, but I'm doing an experiment while making it - I'm using the pressure cooker. The starter pistol for this idea was, like the 16-bean soup over the weekend, the article about pressure cookers in the January 20 issue of The Rosengarten Report. Almost as a throwaway line, he states "And, of course, if you've got the time to make home-made stock, you'd better schedule at least . . . 30 minutes . . . to reach the finish line." That got me thinking about Goetta - III, one of the links I posted this morning, the recipe that had the bones. It was immediately appealing because, as Brit Liz keeps reminding me, there's nothing like the bones to add depth of flavor to meat dishes. They're loaded with collagen as well, which certainly won't hurt the process of setting for the goetta. Sounds like a natural to me. My instincts tell me to pressure cook it an hour, since Goetta- III calls for 3 hours of simmering the pork, beef, onions, celery, and seasonings. However, after some thought, remembering that Louisiana boudin only boils an hour in the Bruce Aidell recipe, I decided to go with the 30 minutes Mr. Rosengarten says is adequate for stock. The dried beans came out perfect in the time (20 minutes) he suggested, but I set the Polder timer for 35 minutes simply to satisfy my inner need to fiddle with time and ingredients. The latter urge has been satisfied with my choice of meats, carefully selected at Harris Teeter with an eye on price and the bones. The normally inexpensive, tougher cuts of beef round were hiseously overpriced - about $3.50 a pound. I found some beef short ribs with a dollar off instant coupon amd supplemented them with some boneless beef short ribs. Pork butt was on sale at $1.49/lb. A whole 4-5 pork butt was a bit too much meat, though I could always use the remainder to make sausage this weekend, so I glanced up to the next shelf and picked up two pork butt steaks bone-in at the same cost. That looked just about right. I cut them up and now they have about 25 minutes left in the pressure cooker. Next part is cooking the McCann's Irish Oatmeal for an hour or more in the stock from the pressure cooker. Then grind the meat, mix it all together, and let it chill out in pans overnight in the fridge. You can buy McCann's here. If you prefer Hamlyn's Scottish Oatmeal, you can buy it online here or here. 5:14:13 PM    comment []

Time to make some goetta. Famous in Cincinnati, where they even have a Goettafest, it's a boiled pork/beef sausage allowed to cool and set in pans, similar to more commonly known Pennsylvanian scrapple, but made with pinhead oatmeal (like haggis!) instead of cornmeal. Like Louisiana boudin, the meat is boiled with onions, but no red pepper flakes are added. Also, like boudin, liver is an optional ingredient. Other variations of meat boiled with grain include Amish panhaus (pork with buckwheat groats) and gritze (popular in northwest Ohio - I believe it also uses buckwheat, but can find no references...). You can read about the history of goetta if you like, but let's make some first: Goetta - I 1 pound ground pork and 1 pound ground beef 8 cups water 2 1/2 cups pinhead oatmeal (we used steel cut) 1 large onion, sliced * 1 to 4 bay leaves, optional * 2 teaspoons salt Pinch of pepper In a large pot with a lid, boil the water, add salt, pepper and oatmeal. Cover and let cook for two hours, stirring often. Add the meat, onion and bay leaves. Mix well. Cook for another hour, stirring often. Remove bay leaf. Pour into bread pans (size doesn't matter) and Refrigerate overnight To serve: Slice the goetta and fry it until crispy or just until heated through. Goetta may be served with pancakes and eggs, on sandwiches or in place of meat at dinner. Goetta - II - use the link This one has sage and thyme. Goetta - III - This one advises boiling the bones too, like boudin, and grinding after the meat has cooled. It will take more time, but the flavor payoff makes it worth it. 6:06:25 AM    comment []