Matt Ruff's Blog, page 44

A little tongue for Santa

…or actually, a big tongue, about four pounds. Last night's cooking experiment was "Tongue with Madeira Sauce," from James Peterson's Meat: A Kitchen Education.

You start by simmering the tongue in water for five minutes, then rinsing it in cold water. The blanched tongue then goes into a heavy pot with a chopped carrot and a quartered onion (the white thing that looks like an upside-down slipper is the skin after the initial blanching):

Insert clever joke about cat getting your tongue

This goes uncovered into a 400°F oven for an hour. Then a braising liquid of chicken or beef broth and Madeira is added, along with a bouquet garni, and the pot is covered and left to simmer over a low flame for another two hours. The tongue then comes out of the braising liquid and the skin—which is very loose at this point—is removed and discarded. The braising liquid is strained, skimmed of fat, and reduced by about half. Finally the tongue and the reduced braising liquid go back into the pot and into the oven for another half hour at 400°F, basting every ten minutes.

And then, at last, it's ready to serve:

Just to give you a sense of the size, this is a 13-inch-long platter.

To serve, you cut crosswise into thin slices, and plate with a little of the braising liquid:

You can also serve it over salad greens, and make sandwiches with the leftovers.

As for the taste, it's beef. It's a tough muscle-meat cut—hence the long braise—but the only thing odd about it is the texture of the outermost layer of muscle, which reminds me a little of octopus. Roast beef-flavored octopus.

My final verdict: Awesome visual, and not bad tasting, but too much work for anything other than a special occasion.

Tonight: hasenpfeffer.

Got some spleening to do

I was planning to do a triptych of organ meats last night, but the calf's liver I bought is still thawing, and the fresh lamb's kidneys I was eyeing at Pike's Market turned out, on closer inspection, to not be so fresh, so I ended up going with just the pig spleen:

"See no offal"

…three pig spleens, to be exact, which I bought for a total of 89 cents at Uwajimaya.

For a recipe I turned to Fergus Henderson's The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating. His "Rolled Pig Spleen" has you layer bacon and sage on the spleens, like so:

Then roll them up tight and secure with skewers (I forgot to buy skewers so I used kitchen twine), and put them in an overproof dish filled with chicken stock:

This goes into an oven for an hour and a half at 350° F. The finished roll-ups are then sliced into serving rounds:

You're supposed to let them cool before you slice them, but I jumped the gun and started cutting while they were still warm, which loosened the roll and led to the unfortunate turd-like appearance you see here. As for the flavor and texture, it's kind of like chewy liverwurst. There's also a weird aftertaste—I thought it might be the sage, but after sampling the leftovers this morning I'm pretty sure it's the spleen itself.

My final verdict: Interesting, but not really my thing.

Tonight: beef tongue.

Stained glass pizza

I've made this before, but didn't get pics last time:

It's the "Rainbow Beet Pizza" from Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François's Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day: red and golden beets, sliced paper thin on a mandolin, placed over a layer of shredded cheddar cheese and drizzled with olive oil. The crust is the same spelt flour dough I used to make the Turkish pita boats.

At our house we also refer to this as the Christopher Moore pizza, because the first time I tweeted about it @TheAuthorGuy responded (I'm paraphrasing): "Gosh! That sounds delicious! Wish I had some!"*

*(Actual Chris Moore quote: "AN ABOMINATION!")

My final verdict: Tasty, but the kind of thing you make more for the visual impact than the flavor.

Today I am off to the International District again to shop for organ meats. Christmas is coming!

Got milk?

Following Tuesday's chicken foot adventure, last night I decided to try pork braised in milk:

The big brown tubers on the right are cassava, or yuca, which my Brazilian cousins turned me on to a few months ago, and which I thought would make a good accompaniment.

For the main course I used the "Roast Pork and Garlic with Milk" recipe from Mark Bittman's The Best Recipes in the World. You start by heating olive oil in a Dutch oven, browning two heads' worth of peeled garlic cloves, then browning and seasoning the meat on all sides. Then you pour in enough whole milk to almost cover the roast, bring to a boil, and simmer until the meat is tender and the milk starts breaking down into curds:

As for the cassava, my cousins had warned me that it's a bit of a pain to make from scratch (they buy theirs pre-peeled and frozen). You need to peel the outer skin with a knife and cut the root into chunks, removing the woody core. From there it's like boiling a really dense, starchy potato. Timing's a bit tricky, because different sized chunks cook at different speeds, and they start to disintegrate not long after they're done, but I was able to find a happy medium. Here's the finished cassava, topped with a Cuban-style sauce of red onion, garlic, parsley, and orange and lime juice:

And below is the finished pork, topped with a bit of milk-garlic sauce. Unfortunately the photo, taken with my iPad2, makes it look like something out of a scary '50s cookbook; trust me, it's more appetizing than that. Iron Chef Kitteh couldn't wait to dive in:

My final verdict: Both good dishes. I liked the pork but didn't find it special enough, compared to more conventional braising/roasting methods, that I'd rush to do it again this way. The cassava on the other hand I really dug, and I'm curious now to see what else I can do with it (I believe the cookbook said something about croquettes).

Tonight: pizza.

My dim sum experiment: four toes make a blog post

Lisa is out of town this week, and one of our deals when we're apart is that she gets to eat all the almonds, cashews, and pistachios she likes (I'm allergic) while I get to indulge in the sort of culinary experiments that she'd rather not be a part of (e.g., anything involving squid ink, the smell of which once woke her from a sound sleep convinced that I'd started an electrical fire).

Seeing as yesterday was the first night of Hanukkah, I decided to try my hand at a traditional dim sum item that I've always been curious about: chicken feet. I bought a pound and a half of them for a little over three bucks at Uwajimaya in the International District.

Iron Chef Kitteh surveys the secret ingredient

For a recipe I settled on "Spicy Steamed Chicken Feet" from Jennifer McLagan's Bones: Recipes, History, and Lore, in part because it was the only one I found that didn't require deep-frying, something I prefer not to do unless I'm sure the result is going to be worth the mess. Instead, after clipping the toenails, you give the feet a quick blanch in boiling water, which makes them curl up like little alien hands:

After that, they simmer for 40 minutes in a braising liquid of soy, Shao Xing wine, ginger, garlic, orange zest, scallion, star anise, brown sugar, and cinnamon. (The braising liquid smells awesome, and very Christmasy with the spices.) Once the feet are nice and tender, you transfer them to a platter, coat them in a mixture of hoisin and chili-garlic sauce, and steam for another 15 minutes. And serve:

My final verdict: Can't beat the visuals, but the eating experience was a disappointment. The flavor was fine, the problem is there's almost no substance behind it: it's all skin and cartilage, without even the token bit of meat you get with chicken wings. (Not sure why I was expecting anything different, but after all those cooking steps I guess I thought the bones would turn into magic breadsticks or something.)

For tonight, I'll be trying something much heftier: pork roasted in milk.

The Mirage chosen for Indie Next

Just in time for the holidays, I've learned that IndieBound has chosen The Mirage for their February 2012 Indie Next List of "inspired recommendations."

Many thanks to IndieBound, and in particular to the independent booksellers who nominated the novel. You folks just made my Christmas!

Win a free ARC of The Mirage

The nice folks at Goodreads.com are giving away 40 advance review copies of The Mirage. If you'd like one, you can sign up here (you'll need to register with the site and give a U.S. mailing address, but it's free). Sign up is open through January 7 and the books should go out immediately afterwards, so if you're one of the lucky winners, you'll have it almost a month before publication.

Because it's not a real blog until you link to some cat videos

Via Twitter, a YouTube channel devoted to four very mellow cats whose owners like to stack fruit, flowers, and various other objects on them:

Mr. Sleeps in Bowls is my favorite:

Product placement:

There's much, much more.

Two months and counting

Sixty-two days till publication. Sorry to be so quiet lately, but I've been in that inevitable low-energy lull that comes between the high of last-round copyediting and the high of actually seeing the book out in the world. On the plus side, I finally understand the appeal of Twitter.

Some news:

* If you haven't seen it yet, the Mirage book tour schedule is here. For now, it's strictly a West Coast tour, but I'm hoping the novel will do well enough to justify adding more dates east of the Rockies.

* I've added an Odds & Ends tab to the site navigation bar. It links to an updated version of the "Unpublished works and ephemera" page from my old website.

* I've converted my personal Facebook page to a fan page. If you were feeling shy about sending me a friend request, now you can just "like" me.

* Those of you who've been asking when/if Fool on the Hill will be available as an ebook, it's in the works. I'll post more once I have details.

The Mirage book tour, part the second

A bunch more dates have been added, including events in Portland and Sunriver, OR, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Vancouver, BC. Check the appearances page of my website for the full list.