Author: Eric

OK, so I DID start this process by making butter out of fresh cream, but that’s not absolutely necessary.

[In case you are interested how that would work, I’ll quickly describe what I did. Pick up a bunch of fresh cream, innoculate with a little mesophilic culture (the “Flora Danica” mix seems to deliver the best flavor, in my tests, but you could even use a little organic cultured sour cream or creme fraiche because they use the same cultures), and let sit at around 80 °F for 24 hours, afterwhich it should have thickened slightly, but not solidified, and start to smell like sour cream. Shake/whip the cream *at room temperature* until it peaks, then breaks (this could take 15 to 30 minutes) forming bits of butter that start clumping together. Pour off and save separate liquid — this is your buttermilk. Wash the butter grains in cool water until the water stays clear, then knead into a large mass, set aside in the refrigerator.]
Continue reading “Better Butter Biscuits” →

A friend’s recent birthday dinner featured Boudin of Chicken Livers, a lovely poached sausage based on chicken livers with toasted walnuts and shallots (from American Charcuterie by Victoria Wise which is a terrific book for anyone interested in making their own sausages, terrines, patés, and other meat products). In addition to these complementary ingredients, a hunk of “pork fatback” was called for — half a pound to be exact. To obtain this fat back, I extracted a hunk of badly butchered pork loin from the freezer, a refugee from a “Pork Processing Workshop” that I organized last October.

(“Badly butchered” because there were newbies wielding the knives breaking down two whole pigs that were meant to end up mostly as sausage, so the loin was not as plump and round as it could have been. Otherwise the meat was very good — young, tender, and sweet, having been raised organically and fed largely on beets for the last month of its life.)
Continue reading “Pork5Ways” →

I love daikon radish, maybe too much because I tend to grow too much of them at once. It doesn’t help that I’m the only person in my family who eats them.

I think back to fond childhood memories of hot summer afternoons when my father would enjoy a turnip and a beer on the weekends while watching a Red Sox game on TV. He would peel the fist sized white and purple root in one long spiral strand, then eat it slice by slice, pulling the knife across the edge of the sphere, using his thumb as a stop. If I were quiet, he might hand me a slice every so often. This crunchy cool vegetable would taste the way green looked, then provide a little scorching pop in the sinuses and out the ears. The aftertaste was best: a lingering mustardy burn that would persist in the back of the throat, reinforced by the occasional burp.
Continue reading “sour hot salty bitter stinky goodness” →