Duck treats

So we've decided that duck confit is just something we need to keep doing on a regular basis...It's ridiculously easy, and, as I mentioned to my Omnivore, it's the gift that keeps on giving.

Here's what we had for dinner the other night after I'd made the duck confit in the slow cooker (6 hours on low). My Omnivore came back from his Sunday afternoon gig and just inhaled when he stepped through the door.

From the pecans (toasted lightly) moving clockwise,

• a jar of garlic cloves (also slow cooked in the duck fat for six hours)


• a square jar of duck rillette (confit meat shredded and mixed with some of the duck jello left over from the slow cooking process)
• a crock of French Onion Soup (onions caramelized for an hour and a half)
• a little dish of Serra d'Estrella -- an unctuous fabulous sheep cheese from Portugal
• a small dish of shredded pickled beets (homemade with rice wine vinegar courtesy of Martha Stewart)
• some duck liver pate (homemade with Armagnac and truffle salt)
• some chicken liver pate (also homemade with armagnac and truffle salt)

So I used to make a sort of fancy overworked chicken liver pate, a recipe out of Saveur Magazine. But once I had some chicken liver pate made by the chefs at Postrio, and I was told it was just onions, liver, salt and pepper. It was then that I started to understand that it was all about technique. Here's how I make it now.

Chicken (or Duck) Liver Pate

• 1 lb chicken livers
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 cup finely diced onions
• 6 Tbsp cognac or Armagnac
• 8 Tbsp butter, softened
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1/2 tsp truffle salt

Clean the livers very carefully. Rinse them in cold water and paper towel them dry. Pull off any sinewy parts, blood vessels, anything stringy, even if you have to smush the liver a bit to clean it off. I've learned that this is the key to getting a good texture in the final pate.

Heat the oil in a skillet and saute the onions over a medium heat until they're golden brown. Add the livers and stir, until they're cooked through. Put the livers into a small bowl to cool, and add the cognac to the pan. Ignite to burn off the alcohol, and then cook over medium heat until the liquid evaporates.

Combine the onions and pan juices along with the butter and liver in a bowl and using a stick blender, blend thoroughly until completely smooth and creamy. Add truffle salt (I like to put in as many chunks from the salt as I can fish out) and pepper to taste. Transfer to a small crock or bowl that's nice enough to serve in and refrigerate until it's firm.

YUM.

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The Rat-tat-tat of a Ratatouille Tart

So we've made this tart three times... this week... so I guess we like it.

Since I didn't grow up in the South of France, I don't have that nostalgic relationship with ratatouille -- mainly it seems like a bunch of vegetables to me, and vegetables are not my favorite thing, as my friends will attest. But maybe if all the veggies of my childhood had tasted like this I'd feel differently.

Strictly speaking this isn't a real ratatouille at all -- no eggplant, no tomatoes -- but my Omnivore and I have taken to calling it the Ratatart. I haven't got any clever mnemonics for it like Melissa d'Arabian's EZ POT (Eggplant, Zucchini, Peppers, Onions and Tomatoes) but it's not hard to put together. Incidentally was anyone else relieved that Melissa won out in the Next Food Network Star? I need food tips and she looks like she has them.

Anyhoo, the recipe is based off of one from Cuisine, and although it requires one to make and blind-bake a pastry crust it's pretty straightforward. I suspect you could even get a frozen tart shell or a nice sheet of puff pastry and get similarly yummy results.

The Ratatart

Pastry Crust:
1 1/2 cups AP flour
1 stick of butter
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
4-6 Tbsp of water

Filling:
5-8 oz goat cheese
handful of basil, chiffonnaded
1/2 zucchini, sliced thinly
1/2 yellow squash, sliced thinly
1 medium shallot sliced thinly
1 red bell pepper, trimmed, seeded and sliced thinly

1/4 cup olive oil

Preheat the oven to 375F.

For the crust, mix together the flour, salt and pepper, then cut in the butter with a pastry blender (or two knives used scissor fashion) until the butter is reduced to gravel sized pieces. Stirr in ice water a few tablespoons at a time, stirring the dough until it clumps together in a slightly crumbly ball (better dry than too wet). Wrap it in plastic wrap and flatten it down into a disc then refrigerate for 10-15 minutes. Roll out the dough to fit a 9-inch tart pan and press the crust into the pan.

Blind bake the crust for 25 minutes, then remove and allow to cool.

Spread the goat cheese around the bottom of the crust. I like to snip off a corner of the Laura Chenel package and squeeze it out like Cheez Wiz around the bottom of the tart. Makes me feel declasse. Then spread the basil around the bottom of the tart.

About those thinly sliced veggies, I used a Joyce Chen vegetable slicer since I don't have a working mandoline, but knife-cut squash and zucchini would work fine too. We sliced things so thin that two zucchini and two squash have lasted through three tarts and we still have enought for one more.

So start laying the veggies neatly around the outside of the tart: two slices of squash, two slices of zucchini, a slice of shallot and a slice of bell pepper. Continue all the way around the circle and then fill in the center. Salt and pepper the top and then drizzle with olive oil and bake for 25 minutes or until the crust is golden brown.

I was highly disturbed this week by Michael Pollan's article on America's obsession with cooking... on TV. I mean, I spend no mean amount of time with the TV tuned to the Food Network and Top Chef. Nothing pleases me more than to have a Top Chef marathon on Bravo for the whole day. And today I wasted the whole day catching up on The Next Food Network Star. And on any given day I can't really work until I've settled the order of what I'm watching (Good Eats, usually two back-to-back episodes, Cooking with Lidia, Gordon Ramsay's F Word, and if I must settle, then Emeril Live).

Pollan notes that these days the average American spends 27 meager minutes a day on food prep, which generates a self-doubting course of questioning: Am I not cooking enough? I take more time than that, don't I?

"Umm," says my long-suffering Omnivore, who's been forced to sample four different types of homemade sauerkraut, three kinds of homemade pickle, two kinds of homemade mustard and homemade cornichons in the last couple of weeks, "You make our bread from scratch, make our butter from scratch. We make our own potstickers, our own pastry crusts, smoke our own burgers, churn our own ice cream-- we are DEFINITELY spending more than 27 minutes a day on preparing food."

I sank back into the couch, still pursing my lips slightly and took in the finale of The Next Food Network Star.

"When does Melissa's first show air?"

By the way, here's my helpful tip of the day: When making lots of different kinds of experimental pickles and sauerkrauts and such, write the recipe you used for a particular batch of whatnot on an index card and tape it to the jar, so you can remember how you made it. Let me tell you, it can all become a blur after a while.

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In a pickle...kosher dill pickles, cornichons and sauerkraut

I've been off of the blog for a little while -- life's been busy , in a good way--but it's meant that we've been doing an awful lot of eating and cooking that I just haven't yet blogged. Yikes! Catchup time.

I figure I might as well start with our pickling adventures, since pickling and preserving is such a hot topic in these more economically frugal times.

So, I've been toting around a sauerkraut recipe for ages now, and meaning to make it, but it always sort of sounds vaguely complicated. Well, let me tell you, now that I've made some, it takes absolutely no time to start it off. Really. Plus it's cheap to make and if you can wait a few days for fermenting time, you'll be rewarded with the easiest cheap delicious condiment you've ever made.
Homemade Sauerkraut

Unusually for me, I was very cavalier about the amounts I used in making this recipe. But basically you need the following:

• Green cabbage (a nice tight head, cleaned, and sliced very finely. Save a couple of leaves for covering the sauerkraut later) I used a 5 lb head
  
• caraway seeds (I used about a tablespoon here)
  
• coarse sea salt (I used about a tablespoon of La Baleine sea salt)
  
• Clean crock or jars (after the initial salting and squishing, it all fit in two quart sized jars)
  
• time (around a week or so)
  

Shred or finely chop the cabbage -- this is easier with a food processor to be sure, but can be done by hand, believe me. Leave a couple of large (3-4 inch diameter) leaf pieces to cap the top of the sauerkraut later.

In a large non-reactive bowl, toss the cabbage with sea salt. Use liberal amounts of sea salt -- as usual I went for the notion of the whole thing tasting as salty as the ocean and that seemed to work.

I also vastly underestimated how much cabbage I'd have, so I wound up needing other pots and bowls initially, but after 20 minutes or so, enough water had drained out of the cabbage that I could squish it all down and condense it into one bowl. Don't throw away that brine, transfer the cabbage and water into the same bowl!

I sprinkled it with the caraway seeds until it seemed like it was nicely dotted with seeds (see above pic) and then set it aside for a bit longer, maybe another half hour. After that I squeezed and wrung as much moisture out of the cabbage as I could, (still saving the brine in the bowl, mind you) and packed it into two clean quart-sized Fido jars with the wire-clasp closure. Tamp the sauerkraut down very firmly as tight as you can -- if you're doing this in a big crock, tamp it all down and weight it further down with a heavy plate too.

Add in the brine to cover the sauerkraut, leaving at least an inch of head room at the top of the jar, and cover it with the cabbage leaf and close it up. Do the same with the other jar.

Stand them in a tray or pan in case the jar leak -- I overfilled mine and they leaked quite a bit over the next few days-- and then put them in a cool dark place for a few days. Say, under the sink or in the closet. You may notice that they'll not only leak out liquid, but also some foam off the sides. Don't worry, it just lets you know that fermentation is working. Do be careful though, as you open the jars, mine sprayed out a bit as I unclasped it from the pressure buildup.

After a few days taste test the sauerkraut and see if you like it -- if you want it more sauer, let it ferment a bit longer. When it's to your liking, you can just close up the jar and put it in the fridge, or you can can it to preserve it for later, perhaps an Oktoberfest.

I bought a box of half pint Ball canning jars in case I liked the sauerkraut and/or thought it might be a useful item to trade someone for other food items, perhaps some fresh eggs, or such.

To can the sauerkraut you can follow the instructions on the bottom of the Ball packaging, to which I will add that not only should you heat the jars and lids to sterilize, but also heat up the sauerkraut. If the kraut seems a bit dry, you can add in clean plain water to moisten it up again.

Pack the kraut in the jars and add water if you need too, leaving at least 1/2 an inch of headroom. Wipe the rims and center the lid on top, screw down the band, and then process them for however long the instructions advise it takes in your pressure canner or in boiling water -- it's different for different altitudes. Let them stand in the hot water for five minutes and then take them out and stand them up on a towel in a tray (in case there's breakage). I always find it satisfying to listen for the little metallic pops as the jars cool and the lids suck downward, indicating a good seal.

They tell me that sauerkraut is often made in big batches. The amounts above seemed like a lot to me-- it was a 5 lb cabbage and about a tablespoon of caraway seeds with about two tablespoons of sea salt. But I gather "big" is relative, as other sauerkraut makers talk about making it 75 pounds at a time. And at the Webber Ranch last night, our host pointed me to a ceramic crock that could fit a small child and was marked "30" as in 30 gallons. That was their sauerkraut crock. Well, I was happy with 5 pints of sauerkraut. I know how to make more after all....

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Flush with the success of the sauerkraut -- and while it was still quietly foaming and fermenting in my closet-- I turned my attention to pickles.

For many of us crazy food-obsessive New Yorkers, pickles mean only really one place, Guss' Kosher pickles, right out of the barrels in front of 85 Orchard Street (helpful hint: if you're there and they're open, buy a lot, because God only knows when the next time will be when you see them open again.)

If you are sadly, hundreds of miles away from pickledom, though, you might turn your thought to making your own kosher dill pickles, which is in fact what I did.

Kosher Dill Pickles

Basing off of the Arthur Schwartz recipe which David Lebovitz so kindly linked, I made the following adjusted recipe, which worked well for the baker's dozen of Persian cucumbers I found at our local market. There are better cukes out there for pickling, and I'd like to try the Kirbys or lemon cucumbers, but unfortunately this is what I had on hand.

12-14 short pickling cucumbers
2 quarts water
3 tablespoons coarse white salt (kosher, if available)
4 cloves garlic, unpeeled and lightly-crushed
2 tsp whole coriander seed
1 tsp whole fennel seed
1/2 tsp whole allspice berries
2 bay leaves
4 sprigs of dill, preferably going to seed, washed

1. In a large pot, heat 1 quart of water with the salt until the salt is dissolved. Add the remaining water.

2. Prepare a quart widemouth jar or a couple of pint jars by running them through the dishwasher or filling them with boiling water, then dumping it out.

3. Pack the cucumbers vertically into the jars, making sure they're tightly-packed. As you fill the jars, divide the garlic, spices, bay leaves, and dill amongst them.

4. Fill the jars with brine so that the cucumbers are completely covered. Cover the jars with cheesecloth, secured with rubber bands, or loosely with the lids. Store in a cool, dark place for 3 days. A white slimy scum developed at the top of my brine, which I scooped off.

5. After 3 days, taste one. The pickles can ferment from 3 to 6 days. The longer the fermentation, the more sour they'll become. Once the pickles are to your liking, refrigerate them. I'm still souring my pickles as we speak.

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Cornichons

I have always wanted to make cornichons because I LOVE LOVE LOVE them, with a bit of pate and cheese or salumi. Mmmmmm, perfect lunching materials. Unfortunately I had no idea where to get the minis to make cornichons.

While we were at the Webber Ranch in Petaluma, our hostess Elisa, set out some cornichons along with a fab cheese board. "Homemade" she said while describing the whole board. My ears pricked up.

"Where can you get the cornichons?" I asked Kathleen, Mme. Baker.

"Oh we grow them. We have them in the garden -- in fact you have to keep picking them before they get too big. You want to see?"

Within about fifteen minutes, I have a little over a dozen cornichons in my hot little hands, including a couple of overgrown fellas which I plan to pickle in the same way as I did the dill pickles above. You can order the seeds for the Cornichon de Bourbonne, the preferred cornichon (also called gherkin) for pickling, from Scheepers.

Elisa was kind enough to share her recipe for cornichons:

• Small cornichons, freshly picked
• Tarragon
• sliced shallots
• whole peppercorns
• whole dried red peppers
• bay leaves
• white wine vinegar

As with much of my pickling experience to date, I haven't been good about amounts or measurements. I had only picked about a dozen cornichon-sized babies, so it all fit into one half-pint Ball jar. therefore I layered them in the jar with only a few slices of shallot, one sprig of tarragon, about a dozen peppercorns, 1 dried red pepper and a bay leaf. Then I just heated up enough white wine vinegar (about a cup) to cover everything, poured it over the whole lot, and put on the lid and screwed on the band (not too tightly) and let it cool, which sealed it without processing. I don't intend to keep it for long, so we just put it in the fridge and plan to eat them oh, probably in the next week or so.
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Final note, so in the process of hunting down my ingredients, I noticed that the corn I had gotten from a local bodega (intending to use much later in a posole,) looked mighty suspicious. I could see even through the tupperware sides that it seemed to be very powdery looking, so I hailed it out and took a look. Indeed, it was not just powdery but full of HOLES. Ew. Ew. EW! Like Swiss cheese, i.e. as if it had been eaten...by something....

With the corners of my mouth drooping ever more downward I looked closer and saw movement.

EW EW EW!!! Unwelcome visitors.
I have tentatively identified it as a granary weevil and am now putting bay leaves in every damn thing I lay my hands on.

Ew.

And ew.

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Call me Llama

Let's face it -- life is way too hectic these days -- all that running around, grubbing for money, trying to catch up on things like, oh...say... your food blog. But then every so often you just have to stop and pet the llamas. At least that's my new adage.

This is one of those reasons why I love San Francisco. There you are, hurrying through Civic Center, feeling hot and grumpy, and suddenly you see two llamas grazing on the grass in front of City Hall.

It just made my day.

And probably made the day for a few other folks too.

The llamas were visiting from their Sonora home -- just in for sightseeing for the day I suppose. I got to pet them and found out that llamas are just wonderfully soft.



And for a bite of SF's finest greenery...

I'm not sure if this Silver Knoll place is the ranch the llamas came from, but I'm mesmerized by that fluffy mane of fuzz around their llamas' necks!

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Check it off: Dining outdoors

I know it looks like I never blog anymore, but I promise I'll get to a bunch of mouthwateringly good slow cooker recipes (!!!) after we finish our show on June 14. With how busy June has suddenly become, all I can say is, thank God for "set it and forget it..."

In the mean time, last Sunday's Chron carried another one of my Check It Off piece, this time with advice for al fresco dining...

As the warmer weather kicks in, thoughts turn to dining in the great outdoors. Whether you're firing up the grill for Father's Day, planning a fancy al fresco buffet or just relaxing out in your garden on a weekend, here are a few things that can make your next outdoor gathering a bit more pleasant.

- Frozen fruit. If you don't care for watered-down drinks, consider freezing some fruit the night before for use in your beverages the next day. Slices of lemon, grapes, chunks of pineapple, pieces of mango or raspberries can be a refreshing addition to iced tea, lemonade or a simple glass of fizzy water.

- Candle in the wind. Glass jars protect candles from being snuffed out by the breezes. You can soak the labels off of old containers and reuse. If the candle wobbles on the bottom of the jar, pour a little salt or sand in the bottom to stabilize it.

- Lap blankets. If you live in a part of the Bay Area where evenings get a little chilly, you may want to have a few inexpensive lap blankets on hand to keep your guests warm.

Read more at Check it off: Dining outdoors.

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Taco Party: Slow Cooker Carnitas redux, plus Fabulous Coleslaw

A little while ago Mr. Tarte Tatin asked if we'd cater a party in celebration of the Pajama Queen's graduation-- something fun that would go with margaritas. Tacos, do-it-yourself tacos, looked like the answer, especially since we expected to feed 50 people or so The Evite had terrifying said 150 people, but Mr TT assured us that only a third of them would show up. Better hope so, or everyone is only getting half a taco.

We've been honing the Carnitas recipe that I first tried about a month ago.

We made it much the same way as the recipe, but I have a secret. After cooking the meat seemed like it was drying out, so when we reheated it in the electric skillet (which we left on low for serving) we incorporated the pork "jello," the leftover juices that separated from the lard. When it coold it gelatinizes and it is unbelievably flavorful. So rather than waste it, we mixed it back into the shreeded pork and it is FAN-freaking-tastic.

With it, we got a box of fresh tortillas, made by hand and utterly scrumptious, from La Palma Mexicatessen, and to complete the "do-it-yourself" taco bar, there were bowls of crema, chopped onions, cilantro, shredded cheese and three kinds of salsa. Oh baby...

After the food, a rousing round of pinata fun.

Does it say something about the Pajama Queen's determination that she beheaded the poor thing on her first wild swing?

Do not get between her and dessert.

Along with the tacos we served a Cumin Lime coleslaw which was pretty yummy. This recipe started out life on Epicurious, but we made a few changes based on the helpful reciews people left and our own tastes.

Cumin Lime Coleslaw

3 medium carrots, peeled, finely chopped
6 cups shredded green cabbage (from 1 small head)
1 red bell pepper, cut into matchstick-size strips
1 red onion, thinly sliced
3/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

1/3 cup fresh lime juice
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
1/2 cup olive oil

Drain. Cool completely. Transfer carrots to large bowl. Add cabbage, bell pepper, onion and cilantro.

Whisk lime juice, cumin, garlic and hot pepper sauce in medium bowl. Gradually whisk in oil. Season with salt and pepper. (Cabbage mixture and dressing can be made 8 hours ahead. Cover separately; chill. Rewhisk dressing before continuing.)

Toss salad with enough dressing to coat. Season with salt and pepper; serve.

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Check It Off: Organizing the pantry

So I have another Check It Off column in the Chronicle's Home & Garden today. Those of you who follow this blog might find yourselves amused by a few of my suggestions...

Whether you have a walk-in pantry with acres of shelf space, or a tiny under-the-sink cabinet in your rental apartment, the key to avoiding cooking frustration is organization. If your pantry is a disorganized mess, and you've just bought your third can of paprika because you can't find the other two, it's worth your while to make a weekend project of clearing out the pantry and reorganizing. Here are a few ideas that can help.

Square glass canisters. For efficient use of your space, square containers stack better, and clear canisters allow you to see what's inside quickly. If you want to avoid plastic containers - those made with #3, #5, #6, or #7 plastic can leach chemicals into your food - ceramic, metal or glass containers like these Anchor Hocking canisters are perfect for bulk foods like rice and pasta, or for storing sugar and flour. $5.49-$8.99 at Bed, Bath & Beyond. (Related to my recent rant against plastics...)

Bay leaves. A bay leaf in your flour and grain containers helps keep away mealworms and other unpleasant pantry pests. (Related to "Why you must sift flour...")

Small spice tins. Don't keep your spices in a plastic bag or little plastic bottle. Small metal tins like the ones from Paper Mart are food grade, uniform, easy to label and stackable. $11.76 for a pack of 24 four-ounce tins at papermart.com. (Inspired by our Spice Rack...)

Read more at Check It Off: Organizing the pantry.

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Picnic essentials

Longtime readers of this blog know that I'm a FAN of the picnic. I LOVE picnics... So I was happy to do a Check It Off article for the San Francisco Chronicle's Home and Garden section last Sunday centered on ideas for a perfect picnic.

A good picnic basket: There are lots of cute baskets out there, but for sheer practical sturdiness, Reisenthel's market basket holds everything from plates and cups to a whole roasted chicken. And when you're not picnicking, use it for shopping at the farmer's market. $40 at Sur la Table, surlatable.com.

Tablecloth: It's not only a civilized addition to a picnic, it can also be a practical one, helping to cover a dusty table and keep splinters at bay. Fabric shops like San Francisco's Satin Moon (32 Clement St., 668-1623) often have lengths of inexpensive remnant fabrics that can easily double as a cheerful table covering.

Silverware: Any outing feels more genteel if you pack silverware instead of plastic sporks. Same goes for glasses and plates.

Wire-bale canning jars: With a wire clamp that firmly closes the top, canning jars are good reusable containers for relishes and condiments or even sides like macaroni salad or cold soup. The wide-mouth makes it easy to spoon the contents out and the rubber ring helps keep the jar from leaking. $3-$6 at Sur la Table, surlatable.com.

Read the rest at the SF Chronicle site.

Of course, poll ten people and you're likely to get ten different ideas of what is essential to a perfect picnic. I tried definitely to focus less on food items, because that kind of stuff falls more under the Food & Wine heading, plus I think the Chronicle has already had lots of great features with yummy recipe ideas in the past.

I thought it was interesting, though, that there were a few comments about the idea of the glass jars. Readers objected to hauling around heavy glassware-- why not use those disposable plastic containers from Ziploc or the Glad Family of Products? After all, they're lighter, reusable and recyclable.

I've used them for a long time myself, because, let's face it, they're cheap, and if you leave them behind by accident, you don't really care. I've even saved the plastic containers that Chinese or Indian takeout food comes in, and reused them because those pint and quart containers are a great convenient size. But when I started this piece (and an upcoming one on storing pantry items), I read a lot more about storing foods in plastic and even though the FDA has approved the use of Bisphenol A or BPA in food grade plastics, there's a body of evidence to suggest that it leaches out of plastics (especially when heated) in unhealthy levels.

If you're like me-- I read about something like High Fructose Corn Syrup and I go rampaging through the house looking for everything with HFCS in it-- you'll head for your cabinet and start flipping over your plastic containers to find out what number plastics are used in the Glad Family of Products. On the bottom of any piece of plastic is a little triangle with the Resin ID number printed on it, telling you what category of plastic you're holding. BPA is commonly found in #3 (PVC), #7 (a variety but notably polycarbonate or Lexan) plastics.

"Well, phew!" you say, after checking your Glad Product, "It's #5 (Polypropylene) and not made with BPAs. Dodged that bullet. I guess we're okay!"

Not so fast. Now it comes out that #5--which you find in everything from Rubbermaid to long underwear--may be leaching other kinds of chemicals, called quaternary ammonium biocides and oleamide, in high enough levels that a research team in Canada had to stop a drug experiment because the chemicals in their containers were contaminating the results. Oleamides are found normally in sleep-deprived animals (including humans) and is thought to help induce sleep.

As a side note, #6 plastic (polystyrene or styrofoam) I try to avoid on the grounds that most recyclers won't take it, and it's not biodegradable -- I envision large flotillas made up of my styro coffee cups choking off a whale and I have fits.

That leaves you pretty much with #1 or #2 or #4 plastics, but now I'm exhausted with the effort of figuring out what plastics are okay and which are not. I'd rather just have some nice glass jars or a Corningware baker with silicone cover.

So we have a nice little oval Corningware gratin that I've been forcing My Omnivore to use for his lunches-- I pointed out that he could either microwave or use it in a toaster over which you can't do with a Glad Family Product--and that's ben just perfect for our purposes. And yes, I'm slowly ditching all the plastic we have and replacing it with Corningware bakers-- I'm a sucker for that "Oven to Table" bit-- and Pyrex storage sets.

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Slow Cooker Carnitas

Take that swine flu.

Yesterday I bought some pork shoulder and we sprinkled it with spices, let it sit overnight, and then this morning, while I worked on my deadline, I popped the chunks into the slow cooker with some lard--yes LARD-- and set it and forget---erm...forgot it.

Well, I guess strictly speaking I didn't forget it because the aroma was something crazy.

The "recipe" I used was cobbled together from reading lots of different versions of how to make carnitas. I suppose purists will probably say it's pretty inauthentic, but um... it tastes really freaking good.

Pork Carnitas, My Style

4 lbs pork shoulder (butt) cut into large 4-5 inch chunks and excess fat trimmed)
1 Tbsp Mexican oregano (try to get Mexican oregano specifically, which is different from Greek oregano)
1 tsp ground coriander
Salt and pepper
3 long pieces of orange rind
3 bay leaves
2 sticks cinnamon

About 1 lb of lard (manteca) try to use fresh lard with no preservatives if possible.

Cut and trim the pork shoulder, sprinkle it with oregano and coriander and liberal amounts of salt and pepper. Put it in a non- reactive bowl with the bay leaves, cinnamon and orange rind and cover. Refrigerate overnight.

The next morning melt the lard. Put the pork and seasonings in the slow cooker (including the cinnamon, bay and orange rind). Pour over the melted lard and set the cooker for 6 hours on low.

When the cooking is done, remove the pieces gently from the lard (they will be fragile, so a slotted spoon might be helpful) and put them in a bowl, discarding the cinnamon sticks, bay leaves and orange rind. Shred the meat with two forks.

Yum.

Already the slow cooker has gotten a lot of action.

We made duck confit -- fabulous fabulous way to do it, in the slow cooker. It's basically the same recipe as our original version, but instead of the oven, we put it in the slow cooker set to low and let it go for six hours. Falling off the bone good...

We also tried Nook and Pantry's idea for Duck Rillette.

When you make confit, there's always a nice layer of juices and gelatin that forms from the slow cooking. When you separate out the duck fat -- especially if you like to save the duck fat for future use as I do--you try to solidify the leftovers and you get a layer of what I like to call Duck Jello. Extremely yummy and flavorful duck jello.

Take that and mash it up with some duck fat and shredded duck confit meat to make a fabulous spread that's great on country bread with mustard and cornichons.

We confit the neck, which I know sounds stupid, but I hate wasting anything, and even though there are lots of bones in the neck, there's also lots of meat. We pull the skin off the neck, cut it up and render the fat from the skin, and confit the neck with everything else. Since you have to shred it to get it off the bones anyway, that meat makes a perfect addition to the rillette pate.

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Swine-flu outbreak linked to Smithfield factory farms

"Is Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork packer and hog producer, linked to the outbreak? Smithfield operates massive hog-raising operations Perote, Mexico, in the state of Vera Cruz, where the outbreak originated. The operations, grouped under a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas Carrol, raise 950,000 hogs per year, according to the company Web site."

Read more at Grist.

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I want a new refrigerator

Last night the glass shelf that covers our vegetable rotter exploded. Well, okay, it suddenly and quietly collapsed into about a thousand pieces.

No reason. Just gave up the ghost.


It was hot last night and I'm cranky now. I want a new refrigerator, but the space in our ridiculously small kitchen won't allow for a refrigerator over 58 inches high or 24 inches wide.

Here is a view of our fridge from our Scenes from a Four Square (Foot) kitchen.


I want to stand up straight when I remove food from my fridge.

I want to be able to put all the food we need for a dinner for ten in the fridge instead of some of it in coolers and some of it in Ms. Art Attack's fridge.

I want to have a certified Energy Star fridge.

Is it so much to ask??

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