A Mothers Life Lesson.

As my Mother gets older, she has the curse of watching all of her friends pass on.  One of my Mothers closest friends has been ill for quite some time and was nearing the end of her life.  I called my Mom to see if she was going to go see her friend in the ICU at the St. Cloud hospital as I felt the end was near.  She seemed a little reluctant to visit until I asked her if she would like me to drive her there.  She gladly excepted my offer and off we went to visit her good friend.
When we arrived at the ICU we went to the room where I met my RN wife, Mom’s friend was on a ventilator, sleeping, and looked to be at the end of her life.  I asked Mom if she was going to stay in the room as we where going to find the children as our families have been close for years and we wanted to be able to support them in their time of need.  We left my mother in the room and went on our search for the family.  After finding the family and talking for a little about the situation, we headed back to the room to find my Mom holding the hand and comforting this dieing woman who she had spent so much time with.  I was moved to tears seeing my mother comforting her good friend who was about to pass on.  We all had a good cry and stood around as two families grieving and telling stories about all of the good times we had shared in the past.
When I woke up this morning I heard that our family friend had past away just hours after we left and was happy my mother could go to the hospital to see her friend before she went to heaven.
Watching my Mother comfort her friend in her final moments in was a very significant moment in my life and really made me rethink what is really important in life.  Being close and helping friends and family is really something that you can’t take for granted, and I need to learn how to cherish the significant people in my life as I move on in life.
Thanks for another life lesson Mom.

The Greatest Invention Ever.

     So what do you think I consider the greatest invention ever, or a really good invention?  It's the Vacuum Sealer.  Why do I say this? As a family we have been making from scratch food forever in our household, and buying food in bulk, which gives us the ability to save food in a manner which preserves it without oxygen, or reduced oxygen.
     Another thing we use the almighty vacuum sealer for is to preserve food in our restaurant.  We would smoke beef briskets, cut them into thicker slices, smoke them again, then dice the thick slices, add them to a vacuum sealer bag with some BBQ sauce and that was our recipe for burnt ends.  When a customer would order burnt ends, we would pull a bag out of the refrigerator, warm it up, throw it on a plate, and out the door.
     Let's talk about marinading.  The fastest and most effective way to marinade something, is to pour your marinade into the vacuum bag, add what you want marinaded, set the vacuum sealer on "moist" then hit the vacuum/seal button.  As soon as you see the liquid started to move to the top of the bag, just hit the seal button.  In a short time, your meat, or whatever you are marinading will be ready.
     How about Cheese?  After you open cheese, did you ever notice how fast it get's moldy?  If you vacuum seal the cheese after use, your cheese will last much longer.  We also cold smoke cheese quite often and then vacuum seal it after it is out of the smoker.
     Another trick you can use is to leave the bags extra long, and after you use some product out of the bag you can reseal the bag if you have enough bag left.  That's why you leave it extra long when you are doing your original packaging.

Let's Make some bacon

Hey everyone.  It's bacon time.  Let's get started.

    First I bought pork bellies, Rind off, I think we paid like $2.50 a pound, so for these 3 pork bellies, it cost around $60 dollars and I got from our local Coborns grocery store from the butcher, his name is Steve and he's the man.  This is off the subject, but my buddy Rick got pissed (kiddingly) that I did not get them from Cash Wise as he is in charge of like 5 of them.  I did not trim them because I smoke the whole thing, and use the trimming for bacon bits and things like that.

Rind Off Pork Bellies

     The next thing I do is Cure the pork bellies, I use equal parts iodized salt and brown sugar.  The brown sugar cuts the, for a lack of better term, the saltyness.   For this amount of pork, I used 2 cups salt and 2 cups brown sugar.  I don't use any preservatives, like the store bought stuff does and I am not sure of the effects of ingredients like sodium nitrite or store bought cures, although I have used them in the past.   If you buy everything fresh, and watch your temps, like always under 40F for storage and when you cook the bacon, make sure it reaches the temp of 165F for 15 seconds, you are good.

Making Brine 2c Salt 2c Brown Sugar

     We add the pork bellies to a clean bucket that is marked "food only" on it, add the brine mixture and fill the bucket to the top with water so the pork bellies are completely submerged.

Pork Bellies in the bucket

     Then we put the bucket, with the pork bellies and brine in the refrigerator for 5 day (or so), making sure to turn and shake the bucket every day and mix it up.

Pork Bellies in Fridge

    After 5 days of soaking in the brine, I take the pork bellies out and rinse them and then dry them thoroughly.  This is important as the meat will not take the smoke if it is wet, so I make sure I have dried it, and let it sit for a while to make sure it is completely dry.
    After drying them, then it's time for the smoker.  Cold smoke is the key, I try to keep the temp in the smoker under 100 degree F.  I have a cold smoker attachment for the side of my grill that I purchased on Ebay.com, it is not the greatest, but it does the job.  I also try to smoke the pork bellies when the weather is cooler, and I also keep my outdoor smoker in the shade if it's warmer out.  I will also crack, and hold the door slightly open to let heat out if it starts getting too warm.   What wood you ask?  I use fruit woods like apple or cherry, I have also used alder chips, just making sure that there is always smoke rolling out of the smoker.  I prefer the sweetness that those types of woods impart on the flavor of the pork bellies.  I also smoke the pork bellies for a long time, at least 8 hour, I go longer if I can.  After the pork bellies have smoked a good long time, I pull them out of the smoker, let them cool in the freezer, they should go below 40F within 2 - 4 hours of pulling them out of the smoker to keep the bacteria growth down.  After they cool and are getting a little frozen, they are ready to slice.  Note, the pork bellies do not slice very well if they have not had a chance to firm up in the freezer.  Good luck with your bacon, I have had very good luck using these techniques.

Pork Bellies In the smoker

Hey, The Weekend is Here.

     Hello Everyone, This week was good, we learned about Cajun/Creole foods.  I ended up making Chicken Maquechoux.  It was really a good dish, it had corn, heavy cream, the Cajun Holy Trinity (Green Peppers, Onion, Celery) and assorted spices.  I also made Pecan Pie, with home made whipped cream and some Pecan Pralines.   The other recipes had a very good taste, and did not seem overly complicated.  In my opinion, if a recipe is too long and complicated, I just turn the page and move on to the next.  Cooking should not be that complicated.
    I got almost all of my homework done the last couple of days, so I am feeling good about how things are going in school.  I took a take home mid term, I have a catering assignment that I should just look over, but I think I'm done.  I do have to go to the grocery store, look over some unusual vegetable, and then look them up, write about them a little bit and turn it in on Thursday.
    I did fire up the smoker today.  I trimmed the spare ribs and took the trimmings and put them in the smoker for 4 hours.   After they cooled I cut them up, put'em in a large pan with BBQ sauce and cooked them on low for a few hours...  MMM  dinner. 

See you all later, Sam needs to do some research.

Good Morning

Today is Pizza in the brick oven day at our house.  Joe (son 1) is having a friend over (girl), and she has never had our pizza from the oven outside.

Outdoor Oven

To get the oven ready for baking, we have to fire it up around 2, so it's ready by 5pm.
      I made dough last night, and I let it rise once, then froze it.  I did take that same dough out of the freezer this morning so I can let it rise once more.  I made a pizza dough that is for pan pizza, it called for corn meal, but I did not put that in.  This recipe did call for vegetable oil which I did put in.  Let's see what happens at 900 degrees with the oil in the dough.

Update...  The pizza turned out really well, the oil in the dough gave it a softer, more flexible texture, so it would kind of fold over when you picked it up, like most other Neapolitan dough.  Although I like my dough very crispy, this dough was very good.  We also made an apple struesel desert pizza, that everyone loved.  If you would like the recipe, let me know.  Have a great Sunday all.

First Friday in February 2011 = Bread and Laundry

     Well, it's Friday and I'm doing laundry and am going to bake bread later.  Last night I made the "poolish" for ciabatta bread, which is equal parts flour to water (660 grams flour and water) and a little yeast (4 grams).  I let it rise overnight, got up this morning and made the second dough, which is not as wet, (990g flour, 660g water, 8g yeast and 33g salt) in the Kitchen-aid mixer, when the dough was mixed thoroughly and was sticking to the hook, I combined the two doughs together.  I have the dough rising again, and soon will just kind of fold it over itself on the flour to give it a little more body, but not disturb the dough too much.  I will fold it in flour every hour, or so until it's "right", maybe 3 or 4 times.

Baguette

    Ciabatta bread is a very wet dough, and IMO you do not want to mix it very much.  the different size bubbles in the bread is what makes it look like Ciabatta.  I am actually going to turn this dough into baguettes, long, skinny loafs of bread.
     Baking is done at a high temp, 465 degrees, on a stone in the oven.  I also make sure I have moisture, or steam in the oven when I first start baking so the dough is really able to rise up.

Ciabatta

 

 

Happy Tuesday

     Hey Everyone, Just trying to get all my stuff together for today, packing clothes, making sure I have all of the stuff for classes the next 2 days.  You ask why I drive to MPLS a day early?  because traffic sucks even at 6am around the Twin Cities, and I don't have to get up at 4am to drive to MPLS.  Truth be told, I don't really like going and staying away from our home in Rice, but it's better then driving back and forth, plus my brother lives a little different lifestyle then I am used to, like no cable TV.
     My cooking class is Florida and Caribbean cuisine.  Not sure what is happening in Menu Class and Purchasing class, although I am going to re-look at my homework before I hand it in.
    Brandy (dog 2) got fixed yesterday, and is walking around very gingerly today as her stomach has some stitches.   Lucy (dog 1) decided she was going to run off this morning and came back smelling, so both Lucy and Brandy got baths when we got home and smell a ton better.
    I am trying to get an internship at a fine dining restaurant somewhere close to home and I sent an email to Ciatti's in St. Cloud, and get the turn down email, but I responded again, hoping he will help me out, but we will see.

Have a good one.