The Fumbling Foodie

Pork Tenderloin Cordon-Bleu With Mustard-Mushroom Creme Sauce

I discovered the recipe at Serious Eats last week and decided to make if for Mother's Day dinner. It was a winner.  Even my son, who is not a big pork fan, loved it. Here is my version, slightly altered from the original (You will need a roasting pan big enough to hold the tenderloin AND is safe for the stovetop):

Pork tenerloin, approximately 2.5 pounds, trimmed of fat and silver-skin
Several slices black forest ham
Several slices Swiss cheese
3 tablespoons stone-ground Dijon mustard
4 ounces cream cheese
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup flour
1 cup breadcrumbs
2 eggs, lightly beaten
8 ounces button mushrooms, thinly sliced
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

Preheat the oven to 350 Degrees If you haven't done so already, trim the fat and silver skin from the tenderloin.

Butterfly the tenderloin. When I did so, I didn't simply slice the tenderloin in half. I cut at a slight angle, making gradual cuts so as to 'unroll it into a sheet about an inch thick. Cover the tenderloin with a layer of swiss cheese slices.  Repeat with a layer of ham slices. Mix the cream cheese with 1-1/2 tablespoons of the mustard and spread the mixture over the ham slices.

Carefully roll the tenderloin up, rolling it into a thick cylinder. Tie it in several places with string to keep it from unrolling.

Put the flour in one large flat dish. Beat the eggs lightly and put them in a second large flat dish.  Put the breadcrumbs in a third large flat dish. Dredge the tenderloin in the flour and shake off the excess. Dredge it in the egg, taking care to coat all surfaces. Finally, roll it in the breadcrumbs.

Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large, stove top-safe roasting pan over medium-high heat. When oil is shimmering, sear tenderloins on all sides. Don't try to turn the meat too early ot the crust will stick to the pan instead of the tenderloin. Add mushrooms on either side of meat. Drizzle meat and mushrooms with remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil and transfer to oven to cook until it reaches an internal temperature of 145 degrees. Remove pork from oven, transfer to a platter and tent with foil.

Place roasting pan on the stove top over medium-high heat. Add the wine and deglaze the pan. Add remaining 1 1/2 tablespoons mustard, along with the cream and Worcestershire sauce. Season with salt and pepper, if needed. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium and reduce slightly until sauce just coats the back of a spoon but a swiped finger leaves a clean line.

Remove the strings from the tenderloin. Slice it and put it on the plate.  Drizzle a little of the sauce over it.

Serves 4

Homemade Whole Whet Flour Tortillas

I've never made tortilas before, but with a small batch (about 2 cups) of freshly ground whole wheat flour leftover from breadmaking, I was itching to try it.

Three things I learned today from making this batch:

- Use a little more shortening
- Roll them out thinner
- The flavor is fantastic

When I get the recipe perfected I'll publish it here.

Pork Scaloppine with Marsala-Porcini Sauce

My occasional dinner guests ask me, "How did you learn to cook like this?" The answer is simple: I am blessed with a Sweet Lady Wife who is a willing Guinea pig. For every dish that is a 'keeper' there are dozens I never prepare again.

This is one of those dishes that is not only good-tasting, it is also photogenic. It is from Rustic Italian by Domenica Marchetti, a Williams-Sonoma book. Several recipes in it have made it to my 'keeper list'.

Pork Scaloppine with Marsala-Porcini Sauce

1 oz dried porcini mushrooms
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 garlic clove
1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
1 pork tenderloin, approximately 1.5 pounds
1 medium red onion
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup Marsala wine
1/2 cup chicken broth

 Soak the porcini mushrooms in boiling water for 30 minutes. Drain the mushrooms over a fine-meshed sieve lined with a paper towel or coffee filter, reserving the liquid. Chop the mushrooms and set them aside. Crush the garlic clove in a garlic press.

Combine the garlic, 1 teaspoon salt, and the chopped rosemary in a small bowl. Cut the pork tenderloin crosswise into pieces about 3/4 inch thick.

Add the butter and olive oil to a saute pan over medium-low heat and melt the butter. When the butter begins to sizzle add the garlic-salt-rosemary mixture..  Stir and cook about 2 minutes until the garlic is fragrant. 

Arrange the pork tenderloin pieces in the pan, add a few grinds of pepper, raise the heat to medium-high and cook until lightly browned on the bottom side. Turn and cook until lightly browned on the other side and cooked through.  Remove them from the pan and keep them warm.

Add the onion to the pan. Cook, stirring often until the onions begin to soften, 3-4 minutes. Add the reserved mushrooms. Raise the heat to high and pour in the wine.  Deglaze the pan.  Let the wine reduce for a minute or so then add the mushroom broth and chicken broth. Let the reduce by about half.

Spoon the sauce over the pork and serve.

 

Breadmania: My New Breadmaking Blog

I've started a new blog called Breadmania, dedicated to the idea that you CAN make heathy great-tasting whole wheat, whole grain, and multi-grain bread in your breadmaker.

I have a Zojirushi breadmaker, and like everyone else I made several of the recipes in the instruction manual. And like everyone else, when I tried to make whole wheat bread I ended up with a bitter-tasting brick. I gave up on making whole wheat and went back to making only white bread in the breadmaker.

My wife and I have started trying to eat healthier and as a result I challenged myself to learn to make great-tasting multi-gran bread in the breadmaker. There was a lot of trial-and-error (I made a loaf once that was so bad even the birds would not eat it) but I've cracked the code and now make bread that we love.  My wife recently said that the Orowheat that she used to buy now tastes like cardboard compared to my bread.

If you want to make great-tasting whole grain or multi-grain bread in your breadmaker then go check out Breadmania.

Ooey Gooey Pumpkin Bars

These were a big hit at Thanksgiving. The recipe is from the Williams-Sonoma website.

Whole Wheat Bread

In the past couple of months, I've managed to lose that 20 pound spare tire I was carrying around my middle. Sweet Lady Wife and I have been focusing on eating healthier and as a result I've taken up the challenge to be able to make healthy tasty whole grain bread in my Zojirushi breadmaker.

Making white bread in the breadmaker is easy.  Making whole grain bread in the breadmaker is harder.  Making whole grain bread in the breadmaker that is tasty enough that you want to east it is harder yet.

You may have been told that baking is chemistry and that you must not deviate from the recipe.  nope. I've got news for you. When it comes to making whole grained bread, the recipe is just the starting point. For example, here in the Arizona desert the humidity is very low, and as a result I need to add more liquid than the recipe calls for.  How much? the only way to find out is trial and error. In the past couple of weeks, I've made several whole wheat loaves.  Some have been 'meh', some ok, and one was so bad that even the birds wouldn't eat it.

The loaf you see here is my latest effort and the best so far. This bread is tasty enough that I would choose it over store-bought white bread. The lesson learned from making this loaf: The flour must be fresh. Unlike white flour, whole wheat flour contains everything that was present in the wheat grain, including minuscule amounts of oil. If whole wheat flour sits for an extended time, the oil turns rancid and the result is a bitter tasting loaf of bread.

All of the reading I've done tells me that the very best whole grain breads come from flour you grind yourself. Wheat grains go into the mill. When the flour comes out it goes straight into the mixing bowl.  You can't get any fresher.

I did a lot of research into flour mills and picked the Nutrimill shown here.  I bought it from Pleasant Hill Grain, a bunch of absolutely fantastic people.  I have a feeling I'm going to be spending a lot of money with them in the future.

The nutrimill sounds like a vacuum cleaner when it's running, but it will turn out 3 cups of flour in about 90 seconds. I am very pleased with it.

I've found a local source for hard red wheat. A 25 pound bag was $20. Between Whole Foods and other local specialty markets it appears that I can get the other grains I'll be using in small quantities for a reasonable price.

The recipe that produced the loaf above still needs a little tweaking, but each loaf I make is a little better. Once I have the basic whole wheat recipe perfected, then it will be time to add small quantities of other grains (oats, rice, millet, quinoa, etc) to achieve multi-grain.

Whole Wheat Pumpkin Bread

The Nutrimill flour mill arrived yesterday. Ten minutes later I'd ground enough flour to make this.

This recipe is straight out of King Arthur Flour's Whole Grain Baking. The freshly-ground flour made a huge difference in taste. 

While processed white flour can be stored indefinitely, the same is not true of whole wheat flour. The oils in it turn rancid and impart a bitterness to the taste. (Whole wheat flours from good companies have a 'Best if used by' date stamped on the package.) 

All my research however shows that the best flour is that which was wheat just one or two days ago, and this recipe proves it, I think. 

First Attempt at Making British Bangers

A long time ago, on my first business trip to the UK, I stumbled down the hotel stairs that first morning still suffering from jet lag. Fortunately the breakfast buffet was wel stocked. That was my first introduction to British Bangers. I'd never tasted a sausage quite like them before. Instant addiction.

Since that day, I've eaten bangers every time the opportunity arose. Unfortunately, here is Phoeniz, AZ that opportunity does not often arise. We havce a couple restaurants that server great bangers and mash.  We have a specialty supermarket and some specialty sausage-makers that claim to offer bangers. Unfortunately they are bangers in name only and taste nothing like authentic bangers. I did manage to find a company on the Internet who offers real authentic bangers. But at $9 per pound they are just to expensive to eat on a regular basis.

I decided to learn to make my own. With some searching, I found this article from The Paupered Chef and this video by Heston Blumenthal to be very helpful.  Essentially everything I know about making bangers comes from these two sources. I bought a meat grinder and a sausage stuffer, and made a bunch of traditional American pork breakfast sausage links in order to learn how to make sausage. Finally, last weekend I felt I was ready to make Bangers.

A Few Words About Rusk

Normally, you want sausage with no filler. Not true with bangers. A ground bread product called Rusk is an essentiall ingredient to bangers. Rusk is a dry cracker-like thing normally given to toddlers when they are teething. If you google 'rusk' you'll see lot's of references and even several recipes. The Indian and South African variations of rusk use buttermilk as the liquid. British rusk uses water. I made the rusk using The Paupered Chef's recipe:

• 1 pound flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 5 teaspoons baking powder
• 7+ ounces of water

A few quick words about the amount of water:

If you are already a breadmaker then you already know this.  If not I'm about to save you some frustration. The amount of water in any recipe is just a starting point. The actual amount required depends upon temperature, humidity, and a bunch of other factors. Start out with the recommended amount. If the ingredients remain dry and crumbly then add a little water. I live in Arizona.  It's really dry here. When I added water to this rusk recipe, I did so a tablespoon at a time.

I rolled the dough out to about a half-inch thick and placed it on a non-stick baking pan and baked it at 450F for ten minutes. I pulled it out of the oven, cut it into half-inch thick strips, put each strip on it's side and put it back in the oven for another 10 minutes. After that I flipped each strip over and gave it another 5 minutes in the oven. Then pull it out of the oven, let the strips cool, and then let them sit on the counter for a day.  Yes, you want them to be stale. The next step was to run the rusk strips through the food processor until they are the consistency of course meal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sausage-Making TIme

After grinding the pork shoulder, I added the rusk, chicken stock, salt, pepper, ginger, mace, nutmeg, and sage according to The Paupered Chef's recipe. Into the sausage stuffer it went and out came these beautiful links:

My Sweet Lady WIfe thinks they are fantastic.  I think they are good but need a little tweaking of the ingredients. In a few weeks I'll make another batch and report back.

 

On the Road to Better Food Photography

The first step to fixing the problem is admiting it, right? My food photography sucks. There. I admitted it. I've made a committment to creating better photos in this blog.

My second step was to start reading and educating myself about food photography techniques. The third step was to dump the lousy little point-and-shoot camera I was using. I got a great deal from B&H Photo on this used Nikon D5100 and the exact pair of lenses I need.

The third step is practice, starting today.

Bacon Butty

No, not 'buddy', 'butty'. 

A bacon butty is a British bacon sandwich, and is one of those simple pleasures in life that everyone should experience at least once.

The Bacon

British bacon, not American bacon. My British friends practically go on a rant when the subject of bacon comes up. Now I know why: There is a world of difference between American bacon and British bacon.

American bacon comes from the belly of the hog, is sliced thin, and is very fatty.  It's also typically fried until it is crisp.

British bacon comes from the back of the hog (That's why it is also called 'back bacon'), it's sliced thicker and is much less fatty. It s normally fried until it is just brown around the edges and not until it's crisp. Another back bacon is Canadian bacon, so if you want to make a bacon butty without hunting down British bacon you could use Canadian bacon. 

I ordered my bacon from Balson Butchers. It's too expensive for daily consumption ($14/pound) but for an occasional treat it is wonderful.

The Bread

Traditionally, the bread is thick slices of a coarse English bread and not the light thin (almost air) sort of stuff we buy in an American supermarket. I used a toasted English muffin, not because the English muffin is English but because of the flavor and texture.

The Condiments

Butter only. when they smother the bacon in a sauce (usually a brown sauce) it's to mask the fact that they used poor quality bacon. Use high-quality bacon and a little butter is all you need.

The Eating

Whoever originally said that British food is boring and the British cannot cook does not know what they are talking about.  A bacon butty tastes a bit like a ham sandwich that's been taken up a couple of levels.  The ham flavor is there, but it's not been overpowered by the saltiness you normally get from salt-cured ham. Combined with the sweet taste of the butter and the crunchiness of the English muffin and you have a really delightful meal.

Eat one of these and you'll never be happy with an Egg McMuffin again.

We Have Sausage!

After stuffing one sleeve of hog casings, we had exactly enough sausage left over for a patty, which I promptly fried up. I served half to my Sweet Lady Wife who said, "Oh I don't want all that, I want just one little bit." Three nanoseconds after popping that little bit in her mouth she said, "I've changed my mind, I do want all this." We pronounced our first sausage-making experiment a success.

My wife's sister loaned us the little manual meat grinder (shown on the left side of the photo). I bought this sausage stuffer. (Shown in the photo behind and to the right of the pork). The pork shoulder was $1.75/pound for 15 pounds of it at Costco. The spices were from Spice Barn.(If you need large quantities of fresh spices then Spice Barn is the place. And finally, hog casings were bought from Syracuse Casing Company.

There is the wonderful website named Sausage Mania that tells you everything you need to know.  You can download an Excel spreadsheet with recipes for many different types of sausage. (That's how I knew what spices to order).

The Gory Details

While there is a famous quote about not being present when sausages are made, that certainly doesn't hold true in this case.  I started by cutting the port shoulder into cubes, about 1-2 inches square. Drop the pork cubes into the grinder and turn the crank. About 15 minutes later I had a big bowl of ground pork.

While grinding 5 pounds of pork by hand was actually pretty easy, I can see myself making 30 pounds of sausage at a time and so based upon what I've learned, I think that this electric grinder would be a good choice. I also think that the meat grinder attachment for a Kitchen Aid or Viking mixer would work just fine as well.

Next come the spices.  Sausage Mania's Excel spreadsheet provides the exact amounts of spices to add to the ground pork. Then it's just a matter of getting in there with your hands and making sure that the spices and the pork are evenly mixed.  This is a job that turned out to be much easier than I thought it would.

 

 

The Actual Stuffing Part

This is the part of the job where you are cramming actual ground pork into actual intestines formerly residing in a hog. I had visions of exploding hog casings, a balky stuffing machine, and much language from the plumber's dictionary. No So.

This job really does take two people though: one to turn the crank on the stuffing machine and one to guide the hog casings off the little tube at the correct rate. 

This small stuffer turned out to be perfectly fine for the task at hand. Even though I can see myself making larger batches of sausage in the future, I don't see a need for something bigger. If I had to make sausage alone or needed to make large quantities, I'd want one that was electrically-driven with a foot switch.

The other thing I learned is that before we use this machine again, I am going to mount it on a board so that I can clamp it to the counter during use. Turning the crank is an easy job.  Turning the crank while wrestling with the whole machine to keep it in place is a whole 'nother story.

So with my Sweet Lady Wife turning the crank and me guiding the casings off the little tube at just the right rate (which turned out to be a no-brainer), we managed to stuff that five pounds of pork into hog casings in about ten minutes.

The End Result

My sausage links are not all uniform in thickness or length but I certainly wasn't worrying about that this time.  After a couple more sessions I think I'll have that part down pat. 

 So: The question has been answered.  Yes, we can make sausages without much effort (and certainly for significantly less that it would cost to buy them). THe other thing about this is that we know exactly what's in the sausage: ground pork shoulder and some spices.  That's it.  No filer and no ingredients with names that are unpronounceable and 157 letters long.

And they are scruptous!

 

 

 

Sausage. In Kit Form.

With authentic-tasting British bangers costing $8-$10 per pound plus shipping, and the main ingredient (pork shoulder) costing only $1.75lb in bulk, I've decised to try to make my own.

I'm going to start by trying to make about 5 pounds of simple breakfast sausage.

(I have the hog casings, I just forgot to put them in the photo)

Smoked Chick and Broccoli Salad

Last weekend I roasted a whole chicken in the smoker.  My wife and I ate part of it (one breast half and the wings). I carved the rest and put it in the refrigerator.

My wife then made a chicken and broccoli dish with it.  Small florets of broccoli mixed with some shredded pieces of the chicken.  THe smoked flavor of the chicken really added a lot to the dish.

I am seriously thinking of buying some boneless skinless chicken breasts, smoking them, and then just keeping them on hand for use in various dishes.

Smoked Whole Chicken

Confession: by the time I remembered to take this photo it was almost too late.

I roasted a checkin in the Bradley Smoker today and it culd not have been simpler or better tasting! I brined it for 2 hours, put it on one of thse 'beer can chicken' things so it sat upright, and then put it in the smoker for five hours at about 200 degrees.

I had a remote meat thermometer in the thigh so when the bird hit 170 degrees I knew it was done.

When I pulled it out of the smoker the skin was a deep dark read but I had been warned about that. I carved the chicken up and it was just about the tenderest most juicy chicken I'd ever prepared.

And the flavor.  Oh.MyGod. It was WONDERFUL. I really like roasting chicken this way.  It's easy and relaxing. (Much easier than roasting a chicken in the oven) The fact that it's done at the low temperature means that the cooking is slower and less hectic.  15 minutes more or less isn't going to make a difference, so if you are in the middle of something else when the thermometer hits 170 do sweat it. You've got all the time in the world.

Oh, and did I mention the flavor was orgsmicly good.

Bangers : The Winner Is...

Many years ago, I made my first business trip to Britain. I remember that first morning - still in a jet-ag induced mental fog - stumbling down to the hotel's  breakfast buffet. I piled my plate high with eggs and potatoes and sausages. The sausages were Bangers. They had a different flavor than the normal pork breakfast sausage I was used to.  I loved them.

I later learned they were called bangers. Recently, I found myself craving the flavor of bangers. There are a couple of English pubs in my city that serve a pretty good bangers and mash, but finding a store than sells authentic-tasting bangers has been impossible. The local high-end specialty grocer sells bangers but believe me, they taste nothing like a real banger.

You can find anything on the INternet these days. Typeing 'British Bangers' into google revealed a handful of specialty butchers and shops  proclaiming to offer authentic-tasting British Bangers. I put them to the test and today I present the winners.

Note: I received no compensation for any of this.  None of the retailers was aware that I was taste-testing and all products were paid for with my own funds.

Balson Butchers

Balson Butchers is a British company in business since 1535.  (yes, 1535!) They have a presence in the USA, specifically Asheville, NC from which US web-based orders are shipped.

Their bangers arrived in one-pound packages, with 5 sausages per pound. Authentic.  Yummy. 

You might think that getting something cold or frozen to me here in Arizona during the summer would be an expensive task, but no. The bangers arrived in a styrofoam cooler packed in ice packs. The best news is that this shipping is not overly expensive. Their small cooler holds 10 pounds and adds just $15 to the price of your order.  There are no other shipping charges.

Harold Woods Pork Bangers

Goodwoods British Market is in The Woodlands, Texas and is an importer of a wide variety of British foods (Have a craving for Marmite? You can get it as Goodwoods.) 

Goodwoods offers several variations of bangers and I tried them all. The have Cumberland Bangers, Lincolnshire Bangers, Beef Bangers, and just plan Pork Bangers. I'm sure they are all authentic representations of the bangers available in their respective regions. The plain Pork Bangers taste like the bangers I used to get on my trips.

The downside is that shipping is expensive. Your order is shipped Fed-Ex Second Day Air and there is a surcharge for the handling, dry ice, and the styrofoam box.

Expensive, Unfortunately

Unfortunately, both of these alternatives are expensive ($9-$10 per pound). The folks at Balnsons tell me that I should be able to find their product at Costco during the Christmas season at a much better price. Otherwise they are too expensive to eat every morning, but great for an occasional treat.

Hickory Smoked New York Strips

You would page large sums of money in a restaurant for a steak that tastes like this.

I used my Bradley Smoker and a technique called 'Cold Smoking'. Essentially, I ran the smoke generator but not the heating element, putting th cold steaks into the smoker and letting them smoke for about an hour. Then I grilled them in the normal manner.

Some background science:

Bacteria grows on meat when it is in the temperature range of 40-140F, but the really dangerous range is about 80-140F. You really want to keep food out of this temperature range.

The idea of cold smoking is to impregnate the meat with the smoke while keeping it out of the dangerous temperature range. I suppose if you are doing this in Minnesota in the winter it's not a problem. I however am in Arizona where we occasionally have actual contests in which we fry actual eggs on actual sidewalks.

So how did I cold smoke in Arizona in the summer?

1. I got up at 5am to do the smoking.
2. I took the steaks straight from the refrigerator and put them in the smoker while they were still cold.
3. I included some ice packs in the smoker along with the steaks. (Those ice packs still smell like hickory, btw)

After smoking for an hour, I pulled the still-cold steaks out of the smoker, wrapped then in plastic wrap and put them back into the refrigerator to be grilled that evening.

So how did it work? The steaks were fantastic. The result was a flavor that you rarely get in restaurants and never experience at home (unless you have a smoker).