Just watched a couple episodes of Julia Child's original WGBH show. Kinda cool. Very minimal production. Love the fish heads in the bouillabaisse episode. The potato episode featured a lot of dairy.
Rare ribeye of Longhorn cooked over hot oak charcoal.
Watching Night at the Museum, the Battle of the Smithsonian, and how the fuck am I supposed to suspend disbelief when a supernaturally animated bobblehead Einstein gets pi wrong??!
Loin Quest -- Part X
This weekend I cooked my tenth pork loin/tenderloin roast. Approximately. To tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I kind of lost track myself.
I like the Arista roast I did at BI. But it's a hundreds of years old recipe (if you believe the stories), with dozens of variants scattered across the internet. The spicy rub on the Big Indian tenderloin was an ad lib inspired by the big basket of dried spices. That was the starting point for the latest edition.
Meat Procurement:
I went to the Scotts Valley farmers market. I'm sad to report this is my first time. (Hey, they close early! And I need my rest.) The sausage guy was there. I got some lamb sausage for an appetizer. (I'm totally going to steal that three courses of meat idea, MIke & Mike). I also got a Boston butt lamb roast as a backup, in case I couldn't get pork.
Local pork is available at that market, but I would probably have to place an order to obtain a gimongous loin.
I popped over the hill to a meat market in Los Gatos. I've never shopped there, but how could you go wrong with a meat market that has a big pink pig out front, and a dancing cow on their web site. In case I ever catch a boar, they also process game.
The butcher went in back and cut a 6 lb pork loin for me. Once piece. Nice. That was way, way too much for me to cook, given the size of the party, so I cut it in half and froze the smaller end. That left me with just way too much.
While I was waiting for the pork, I found some venison sausage in their freezer case. Those cases were filled with a diverse selection of cuts and species of protein. I will be back.
Spice Procurement:
I've commented about this before, but this was just comical -- ingredient stores vs. packaged food stores. Don't get me wrong, I like Whole Foods and Trader Joes. TJ's makes no pretense to be anything other than a packed food store. Even veggies come in nice, tidy plastic wrapped bundles. Whole Foods tries to be a lot of things. For someone who cooks from scratch, there are some holes.
I made a concerted effort to find the spice aisle this time at WF. Okay, there is one. It's just two little shelves. The only thing I remember was a few bottles of Chef Paul's Magic Spice Blends. I had a little better luck in the produce aisle: garlic, thyme, rosemary, shallots, serrano peppers. I also scored portobellos, corn, purple carrots and asparagus for the grill. When I got to the cash register, it was time for "Stump the Clerk" with all my produce. 50% of produce items were complete mysteries. She got the thyme right, first try, but I think that was an accident.
I went to another store to finish getting spices. Some of my spices have been around for a while. I've got some holes in the spice rack. So my plan was to buy a passel of dried spices. The hardest to find were whole cumin and whole coriander. But I got it all, in just three stops.
Brine:
Same brine from "Ad hoc at home" that I've been using. Salt, honey rosemary, thyme, parsley, bay, pepper corns and tons of garlic.
Wet/Dry Rub:
At Big Indian, there was chili powder and fresh chili peppers. But no dried peppers. I like adding the extra depth of a roasted pepper. So I roasted a hot pepper over one of the burners on the gas stove.
This time I wanted to try something different. I wanted to get a lot of water out of the chilis, but without burning them. I put a few serranos in olive oil. I cooked them hot enough to get some browning. Then I turned the very, very low level for over an hour. This dried the peppers, and infused the flavor or the peppers through the olive. I recently saw a comment that "Fat is the messenger of flavor." My oil was set to be the FedEx of serrano. A fine dice of poached garlic went into the oil shortly before use. (Garlic is way less durable then chilis.)
The dry rub started with toasted cumin. I went as dark as I dared. The cumin seeds were smoking when I pulled them off. Into the pestle. Toasted coriander also. Dried mustard. Onion powder. Garlic powder. A hint of clove. Cayenne powder. Black pepper.
I browned the loin on the stove top, and transferred it to a board. The oil with chili and garlic went on first. Then the dry spices. There was enough to form a bit of a crust in places, but overall the roast was thinly coated. I tied it up. although it really didn't need it. But that gave me a place to put the small branches of rosemary.
Roasting:
I have a big charcoal grill I've just used a couple of times. It's made by an Australian company that primarily makes propane grills and propane grill accessories. But this one's a beaut. The grates are heavy cast iron. The fire is on a platform that can be raised and lowered. It's 3' wide, which is good for indirect heat.
I went with oak charcoal. I built a small fire, moved it to one end, and let the grill heat soak with the lid down. I'm not sure of the temperature. The two thermometors disagreed. Somewhere in the 325 range is my guess. I wanted some extra heat to finish it. Since I couldn't just crank the old propane burner to sear, I had to add fire. I started some charcoal in a chimney on a little baby weber, and poured the charcoal into the big grill. I raised the fire to just below the meat.
The lamb sausage went on early, and cooked for 30+ minutes at very low heat. That sausage was served with a little mustard to keep the carnivores happy while the pork was roasting. The venison was maybe 15 minutes on very low heat, and was served as a side with the main course.
Some vegetables were cooked while the pork rested.
Results and next time:
Yum.
Fatter pork would be good. These ain't chops. It's a roast. There's time for rendering. (Fat being the messenger, and all that.) I noticed that the meat from up towards the shoulder was the juiciest on the BI roast.
Double the rub recipe. Figure out a way to get the rub and the browning of the meat to work together to form more of that tasty crust of goodness. Blow torch the sucker before placing on the grill?
Need to work on getting low heat. For other meat, I've got to find a way to knock it down to 250. I might need a smoker for serious slow cooking.