Long Overdue 101 Things Update June 21, 2009
Posted by pinchaque in 101 Things, Cooking, Food.Tags: 101things, goals
add a comment
In spite of not blogging about it, I’ve been steadily chipping away at my 101 Things List. Along the way I’ve also found a few new things I want to do and dropped a couple others. Here are the updates on what I’ve done.
Enter the Bulwer-Lytton contest
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is a tribute to bad writing. It’s an annual contest to see who can write the worst opening sentence to a novel. The contest’s namesake was the author of Paul Clifford, which began, “It was a dark and stormy night…” I guess that was enough to launch a whole contest.
When I was young I got a hold of the early compilations of contest results and could not stop laughing. It was one of the early motivators for my interest in literature. Ever since then I’ve been wanting to force my own atrocious sentences and enter the contest. This year I did just that with the following two entries, emailed in right before the April 15th deadline.
As I lathered my pelt of auburn chest hair with the Asian Pear body wash I found behind my occasional girlfriend’s shaving gel, the fragrance conjured forth a childhood memory of overdosing on pear Jolly Ranchers, eating cookie dough, and spending the night curled up with a stainless steel mixing bowl.
My bride-to-be looked like a hooked spotted bass as she weaved towards me down the church aisle, her legs wobbly from the shots of bourbon, her wedding dress shimmering like iridescent scales, her mouth gaping at the lipstick on my collar.
Two hours after I submitted these I got an email back from contest director Scott Rice:
Only two submissions from a person with your powers of invention?
I guess that’s a good thing?
Finish state quarters map
I always think other countries’ money is so much more interesting than our own, so I’ve been overjoyed (well, as overjoyed as one can be about such things) as the U.S. has introduced colorful $5, $10, and $20 bills, not to mention the state quarters map. Well now that all the quarters are in the wild it was time to buckle down and finish the map.
Zephyr Enjoying the State Quarters Map
I don’t pay cash for much, so really I had to rely on Amanda’s mom who sent us a consistent supply of the quarters over the past few years. But it was tough work pressing the quarters into the map.
Go to a winemaker’s dinner
Amanda and I attended the Reynold’s Family winemaker’s dinner at Wine Vault & Bistro. Everything was excellent: the wine, the food, and the pairing between them. The portions of food are small, but you get a really good variety of dishes. The main critique I have of the venue is that it can get very loud when filled to capacity. But otherwise this is a great experience at a place only a short distance from home.
Make a carne asada burrito at home
Carne Asada Burrito
Carne Asada burritos are my benchmark for Mexican restaurants. I get one at pretty much every new Mexican place I try so that I have some basis for comparison between them. That being said, I had never tried to actually create one at home.
I roughly followed the recipe from Rick Bayless, who is apparently one of the most authentic white-guy-cooking-Mexican-food out there. I used skirt steak (a.k.a. flap meat) from Northgate Gonzales (awesome Mexican grocey store in San Diego) marinated in a combination of lime juice, garlic, ground chile pepper, salt, pepper, and oil. After a couple hours this was grilled up and sliced into bits.
Since I was looking to mimic what I encounter in restaurants, to that I added a simple Salsa Mexicana (tomatoes, onions, cilantro, jalapeno, lime) and guacamole. This got wrapped in that traditional burrito wrapping: the flour tortilla (also from Northgate Gonzales). The result was pure bliss, although my version was a lot less greasy than what you’d find in a restaurant. I think this is because they heat up the meat on the griddle with oil, whereas my skirt steak was merely grilled.
Read a Stephen King novel
I read Stephen King’s It, and now understand why clowns are scary. Actually I found the book to be a mixture of well-written and cheesy plots. Some of the scenes and dialog were cringe-worthy. Others were compelling and addicting. The whole “losing childhood innocence” theme has been done to death (quite literally in the case of Stephen King) so that was somewhat less engaging.
Take a boat ride
When we were in Vancouver at the beginning of May we had to a take a ferry to get to Granville Island. I feel guilty using this as my boat ride but hey, it was floating on water.
Visit a new San Diego Brewery
One Saturday after a trip to the Wild Animal Park we made a side trip to Vista to visit Back Street Brewing at Lamppost Pizza. I was quite impressed. The pizza was a delicious example of hand-tossed pie, and the beer selection was good. They didn’t have anything to crazy-exotic, but tasty nevertheless. Definitely recommended if you’re in the area.
Try meat from a new critter
OsTrim - Ostrich Meat
Steven at work was kind enough to share with me a stick of his OsTrim High Protein Snack. Since this has Ostrich in it that I’d never had up until that point, it counts as a new critter!
Play Vikings game
Vikings Game: Lots of Islands and Tokens
This was a board game Amanda had bought me for a gift a little while back so I wanted to finally sit down and play it. The instructions were mildly complicated but once we got a hold of it we had a great time. It had a good mix of luck and strategy. Having multiple ways to score allows the player to develop their own tactics to use.
Wheel of Goodies
Making Kasekrainer Sausage at Home June 7, 2009
Posted by pinchaque in Cooking, Food.Tags: bacon, cheese, kasekrainer, lard, pork, sausage
3 comments
What is Kasekrainer?
A quick google reveals “a.k.a. the ‘pus-filled’ sausage this is similar to a bratwurst but injected with cheese. Careful when eating as the cheese invariably spurts out everywhere – definitely a favourite.” I don’t know about you, but when I think “pus” I think “yum”.
The Meat Team
Why Kasekrainer?
- Everything tastes better when stuffed with cheese
- It’s my favorite sausage that The Linkery makes
- It’s a great next step in my home sausage-making adventure
As I’ve mentioned before, the sausages are my favorite part of the The Linkery, and the best is the Kasekrainer. It’s deliciously spicy and cheesy. And, like everything that I love, I begin a quest to create it at home.
The Recipe
I struggled to find online references as to how to make a Kaserkrainer. The wikipedia page on Kranjska klobasa describes the base recipe for the Kranjska klobasa, and then says to add 10-20% cheese. Nice and specific! But nothing would deter me. I put together a recipe roughly based around this and taking some hints from my Home Sausage Making book, and came up with the following:
- 1.75 lbs pork butt (which of course really isn’t the butt)
- 0.75 lbs beef top sirloin
- 0.25 lbs bacon
- 0.5 lbs lard
- 0.25 cu chopped garlic
- 2 tbsp cracked pepper
- 1 tbsp salt
- 1.5 tbsp ground chile de arbol (cayenne would work fine)
- 0.5 lbs cheddar, diced
- 0.5 tsp liquid smoke
Kasekrainer Ingredients Prepared
The meat and lard was chopped into 1″ chunks and frozen for 30 mins to help it keep temperature while grinding. The cheese I chopped into smaller chunks and also froze.
From there I ground the meat and lard once with the coarse plate on the KitchenAid mixer. Then I added the cheese and ground again on the same plate. After that I added all the seasonings and stuffed into hog casing.
Total yield was about 20 good-sized links. I let these sit in the fridge for a few hours for flavors to meld, and then wrapped them individually before freezing.
Tasting the Results
I decided to make sausage sandwiches with grilled onions and peppers in order to showcase the links, and they turned out really well. The first night I followed the book’s instructions of boiling the links in beer for 10 minutes, and then grilling for 10 minutes. They turned out somewhat overcooked and I was surprised at the lack of spiciness. I thought maybe the beer had leeched the spice right out of them. But the links did look and taste great.
Kasekrainer Sausage Sandwich with Peppers and Onions
The next night I skipped the boiling step and went straight to the grill. This was a mild disaster as the casings immediately stuck to the grate and fat dripped down, igniting and flaring up. The filling oozed from the casings and the sausages were black before they were cooked through. The flavors were more concentrated, however, but still not as spicy as I was expecting.
For cooking the remainder of the links, I think I’ll have them spend time in the beer bath again, but for 5-8 minutes. Then use a similar time on the grill to finish them off.
In terms of the recipe, there are two things I’d do differently next time:
- Don’t grind the cheese. Although the sausages had good cheese flavor, it was not the dangerous pus-filled deliciousness that I had experienced at The Linkery. It needs larger cheese chunks.
- More chile pepper! The sausages were mildly spicy, but I was aiming for more. Actually I was really worried the sausages would be over-spiced when I saw everything I put in, but the beer did mitigate that somewhat.
My Sausage-Making Adventure Begins February 1, 2009
Posted by pinchaque in 101 Things, Cooking, Food.Tags: lard, pork, sausage
1 comment so far
Sausage Ingredients and Recipe
Breakfast Sausage. It’s not just a good way to begin the day, but also a good way to begin my sausage-making career. Or so says my Home Sausage Making book.
I think my desire to make sausage came out of trips to The Linkery, a San Diego restaurant that specializes in having local, fresh, ingredients. While the food there is generally good (despite the small portions and sometimes questionable service), what really has stood out to me are the sausages: every one I’ve had there has been excellent, with my favorite being the Kasekrainer in all its cheesy-spicy glory. (As an aside, perhaps the Linkery should open a new restaurant that really does focus on its namesake.)
My first step on the path to Kasekrainer home reproduction is to follow the beginning sausage recipe in the book: Breakfast Sausage. Not knowing where I could source intestines locally, I turned to The Sausage Source on the internets. There I found sheep casings (smaller, used for breakfast sausage), hog casings (larger, for italian sausage), and curing salts (needed for pepperoni).
I knew exactly where to find the pork butt and lard: Northgate Gonzalez Market! This is an Hispanic grocery store in San Diego (“south of the 94″) that has an awesome meat counter with an appetite-inspiring panoply of pork products.
Cubed Pork and Lard with Spices
The sausage adventure began auspiciously enough with breaking down the pork into 3/4″ chunks. About 20% of the sausage is the lard, also cut into chunks. These are then frozen so they maintain their texture through the grinding process. I got out about 4 feet of sheep casing use. The casing is packed in salt to keep it “fresh”, and taking it out caused a blizzard of intestine-scented salt to overtake the counter. Yummy.
Initial Grinding of Sausage Meat
The initial grinding went well, as did the spicing of the sausage. Of course it was a bit messy mixing it all together.
Mixing Spices into the Sausage
The process really slowed down on the second griding, because the sausage mixture was so finely ground that it stuck to everything, including the tool I was using to push it into the grinder.
After that I had to figure out how to open up the casings and slide them over the stuffing shoot. This was at once tricky, slimey, and smelly.
Slipping the Intestines onto the Sausage Stuffer
Once that was done then the stuffing began. Amanda helped hold the links as I operated the Kitchenaid. It also went slow at first because of the stickiness of the mixture. But once I got angry and started shoving things into the machine with more force then it was smooth sailing.
The Start of the Links
Finished Sausage (Looks Like a Snake)
Most of the way through I ran out of casings. This is because I failed to realize that 4 feet of casings from the package will make less than 4 feet of links because when it expands to accept the meat then it shrinks in length. Oh well! Then I ended up with some sausage patties.
Sausage Twisted Into Links
I twisted the sausage into links, which caused a couple of them to burst. Then I cut the twist points which caused further leakage from the end of the links (contrary to what I was led to believe by my trusty book!).
Sausage: The Finished Product
But none of that matters because the taste was excellent. We made breakfast tacos with the sausage to start things off. It had a great rich flavor. The spicing was perhaps too heavy–I had used a heavy hand when making the sausage because I was worried it wasn’t enough, but this was one place where I should have followed the recipe.
This past weekend we also had breakfast sausage in a more traditional setting, alongside eggs and english muffins. That was also excellent, and portends well for my future sausagemaking endeavors.
And what might those be you may ask? Well I’m gearing up for my fully homemade pizza, which would include italian sausage and pepperoni. Pepperoni needs to age in the fridge for months, so Amanda will love that. Lard and intestines have never brought me so much joy…
