long lost blog

hmm...haven't posted anything in quite some time.

why? well, first of all my laptop took a big ol' crap and i can't connect to the interwebs. secondly, mike's laptop sucks and half the keys don't work so you have to use the on-screen keyboard which blows and takes forever.

i'm also busy canning and freezing and drying and reading and writing and planning.

the impending nuptials are planned for next summer and it turns out there is quite a bit to think about.

i'm still cooking and we're still eating i just haven't taken the time to photograph it and document it.

we are enjoying loads of brussel sprouts - the best thing our garden has produced all summer - and tonight we have a date night planned.

and by date night i mean slaughtering and butchering four roosters. man oh man i can't wait to say au revoir to those cocks. i am sick of them crowing and crowing all day and night and i am even more sick of them raping the poor little hens.

speaking of hens - we got our first egg last week.



so far we collected probably 8 or 9 eggs and boy are they delicious. this morning i had a dippy egg breakfast sandwich on wheat bread with swiss cheese. and yesterday i had a breakfast burrito with scrambled eggs, cheese, leftover flank steak, cilantro and hot sauce. mmm!!

i have a real craving for some good fried chicken. goodbye cocks. hello fried chicken!

can all you can!

the summer of 2010 is the summer of jamming.

jam. jam. jam. it's what i do. pretty much all the time.

for the last several years i have given jam as christmas gifts but i never really paid attention to the seasonality of the fruit. so, in december i'd go up to the market and load up on strawberries, raspberries and blackberries never even considering that they were shipped in from who knows where. and since the jam tasted good and people liked it i never gave it a second thought.

but jam made with seasonal, delicious ohio fruits....man oh man!
what a difference! i feel better getting fruit from farmers, friends and family close by and the taste is really off the charts.

the only problem - there is a small window of time for each fruit so you gotta get a lot of it and can, can, can all you can while the window is open.

i bought 10 pounds of blueberries. two of these boxes.



i made blueberry jam, blueberry lemon jam and blueberry syrup. i also froze a bunch and we ate them in cobblers, pancakes and by the handful.

blueberries...mmm....

i bought a ten pound bucket of sour cherries in their own juice. i made cherry sauce (soooo good on ice cream!) and cherry jelly. i also made a clafoutis, a cobbler and i froze some for later.



we got blackberries from mike's folks. i made blackberry jam, blackberry syrup and peach blackberry sauce. more cobblers.

here's some blackberry jam from start to finish.









the latest fruit is peaches. mmm! sweet, juicy ohio peaches.

look at these beauties!



this is after i quickly blanched, shocked and peeled them.

the first project i attempted was a peach blackberry jam. i came across a recipe for blackberry apricot on my favorite new blog so i thought i'd adapt it a bit and use some peaches.

first i pureed the peaches.





then i squished some blackberries through a sieve to get rid of some of the seeds.



i cooked the fruit with some pectin and sugar...



...and then into the jars it went.



this was pretty delicious but it still hasn't set up so the tag reads, "peach blackberry sauce" not "peach blackberry jam." i did read (after making this) that you shouldn't puree fruit cuz it messes with their natural pectin. hmm...

i also canned some quartered peaches in a lil' simple syrup.



and i made peach jam.



and of course - more cobbler. peach blackberry...mmm!!

confit de canard

duck fest 2010 continued with a dish i've read about and eaten a zillion times but never tried myself - duck confit !

it's old school. and delicious!!

i made a rub of salt, pepper, fresh thyme and a couple of bay leaves. i rubbed down the duck legs and wings, wrapped 'em up tight and put in the fridge.

they sat in the "salt cure" for two days and then on the third i rinsed 'em, dried 'em and seared 'em.



mmm! nice, brown and crispy!



then the duck went into my single woman's dutch oven -
nice and snug.



and now for the best part - the fat! i added all that wonderful fat i rendered earlier - enough to cover the duck - and put it in the oven.



and here it is after a couple of hours.



after the duck confit cooled i covered the pot and stuck it in the fridge. the duck, submerged in the fat, will last for quite some time. like months!

we couldn't wait that long but we did manage to wait a whole week!

i took the dutch oven outta the fridge as soon as i got home from work and let it sit on the counter for several hours. once the fat melted enough i removed the duck and rubbed off the salty, fatty goop before roasting it on a rack in the oven for about 20 minutes. this made the skin nice and crispy. mmm.

i served the duck confit straight up with a side of baby potatoes (roasted in duck fat of course!) and a swiss chard gratin.



practice makes perfect so i'll have to give this one another go. it was pretty salty. too salty. my salt cure was either too potent or it sat on the duck for too long. next time - less salt.
another lesson learned.

good thing i have another duck in the freezer!

fat!

fat! it's delicious!

especially duck fat. mmm!

and since i had fat from a whole duck...



...i hacked it up...



...threw it in a pan with a lil' water...



...and rendered it down on super low heat for several hours.







up next...duck confit!

from coop to table

back in october i decided to leave the swingin' bachelorette pad and move out to the sticks to be with the boy who has loved me for as long as i can remember. and back in october i said to myself, "self - if you're gonna go out to live in an old farmhouse on two acres you need to go all out." and so we have.

and this week we really went all out and it was fucking delicious.

meet the ducks.



mike found these lil' guys 3 for $10 at the flea market back in may. the ducks eventually made friends with the chickens and we fed them and loved them and raised them all with the thought of duck fat fried potatoes in the back of our heads.

here they are just a few days ago.



pekin ducks are ready to butcher around 8 weeks old. too much longer and they molt and get their pin feathers and from what i've read it's very difficult to pluck them.

i've been trying to mentally prepare for this event for weeks and weeks. i've read and read and read - books, magazines, blogs. but i knew none of them would prepare me for the actual killing.

and i was right.



when mike made the first cut and the duck squirmed - i cried. alot. i have never hunted and i have never raised animals for food before. i've been fishing but this was different. actually killing the duck was difficult. it made me really think about being a carnivore. and i had told myself earlier that if i couldn't do this - kill the ducks and chickens - then i didn't deserve to eat meat.

but i did it. and after the initial shock it was ok. i love eating duck. and i don't want to stop eating duck. and what better duck to eat than my own?

after the throat slitting we dunked the ducks in hot water to loosen up the feathers.



and then we started to pluck. this was insanely time consuming. and it smelled pretty bad too.



mike handled the eviscerating and the butchering. i want to learn and watched and listened intently so when it's time to say goodbye to the cocks i'll be ready. that's right - i said cocks. we were supposed to have six hens but instead we have two hens. and sometime in august we will be saying au revoir to the cocks.







once they were all cleaned up (and after about 30 minutes per bird with some tweezers) one went into the freezer whole and the other was cut up for some good eats.







i'm going to try my hand at confit with the legs and wings (they are rubbed with salt and herbs in the fridge right now!) so i saved every scrap of fat to render down for that.



mmm....duck fat....

and the carcass got bagged up and added to the freezer for some duck stock at a later date.

so for my very first coop to table meal i went with the duck breasts. mmm. i love duck breast. it is such a rich meat. delicious. one of my favorites.

i scored the skin on the breasts and seared them over medium high heat until they were nice and brown.



while the meat was searing i started to saute my green beans. i blanched/shocked these earlier and while they were sauteeing i whipped up mike's favorite butter/lemon/dijon sauce for them.


oh, and well before any of this green beans or duck searing took place i got a potato gratin in the oven.

look at these breasts! luscious!



while the duck rested i started the sauce. i dumped out most of the fat from the pan (don't worry - i saved every drop!) and sauteed a small minced white onion. then i added a lil' chicken stock, some port wine, a lil' honey and some sour cherries. i whisked and whisked while it reduced to a nice glaze.

and here it is - the fruits of our coop!



this. was. awesome.

and i will loudly and proudly toot my own horn on this one.
toot! toot!

mike said i nailed it and it was one of the best meals i have ever made. score!

this whole thing was an incredible experience and i am thrilled that i will be doing it for many, many years to come.

oh, and for good measure - a blueberry cobbler!

is that a spatchcock on the grill,or are you just happy to see me?

i remember loving when we'd have cornish game hens at christmas instead of turkey. each of us got our own lil' bird and i just thought that was the coolest.
and i remember them being pretty darn tasty too.

so when i noticed that one of my favorite local chicken farmers had them available i decided to pick some up.

i didn't want to just roast my cornish hens in the oven for a couple of reasons. 1. it's freakin' hot outside and turning on the oven sucks and 2. grilling is usually a far superior cooking method anyways. i had to do some research and during the course of this research i learned two extremely interesting things.

cornish game hens are NOT game birds! did you know that? i didn't. they are just really young chickens - like 5 weeks old or so. a little misleading huh? they kill 'em really young so they're cute and little and have tender white meat. and all those holidays i thought i was easting something exotic. nope. just baby chicken.

the other thing i learned was the term spatchcock.
spatchcock! haha! i had to try it!

so basically spatchcock is really just a much cooler way of saying "butterfly" though i guess it just pertains to poultry. i don't think you can spatchcock shrimp but you can spatchcock cornish hens and chickens. spatchcock! spatchcock! spatchcock!
i just love saying it!

i consulted my book shelf - specifically steven raichlen for some tips and i went to work.



i took my kitchen shears and cut down the length of the hens from the neck to the ass on both sides of the backbone to remove it. then i flipped 'em over and flattened 'em out. some sources suggested removing the breast bone too but these were tiny little birds and i didn't bother. (note - next time i will bother.)



i rubbed 'em down with some olive oil and a blend of salt, cumin, red pepper flakes, oregano and black pepper.

while the birds were relaxing i started a few other things. first of all i made croutons. homemade croutons are one of the finer things in life. if you're not making your own croutons please start. it's easy and so, so, so delicious.

i use whatever bread i have hangin' around and this time i went with a couple of herb rolls i won in a raffle at the farmer's market on saturday. while i cubed up the rolls i melted about 1/4 stick of butter in the microwave. once the butter was melted i stirred in a couple of tablespoons of grated parmesan - you know, "spaghetti cheese" - along with a lil' salt and pepper. i added the cubed rolls to a bowl and poured the buttery mix over top and stirred and tossed. then i baked them in the oven for about 10 minutes or so until golden brown and crusty. mmm....croutons....

i also did some brussel sprouts. no, these are not from our garden BUT we will have some at some point! we planted a whole row for god's sakes!

for the brussels i just halved them and sauteed them in a lil' olive oil and butter and then finished 'em with a nice squeeze of fresh lemon juice. mmm....brussels...



once the brussels were started and the salads were fixed (lettuce & onion from the garden!) i got my spatchcocked birds on the grill. i also took a tip from gin's pseudo-father-in-law and grilled some onions. i selected a couple of smaller ones from the garden, halved them and then tossed them with a lil' olive oil and salt and pepper.

i started the birds skin side down and cooked them for about 10-12 minutes. then i flipped them and cooked them for another 5 minutes or so. by then the onions were finished up too.



here are my birds once they made their way back indoors. mmm!



and here's the whole spread. a delightful sunday feast!