I have days where I am just blown away by events and circumstance. June 7th 2008 is one of the great days for sure that I will remember for a long time. I passed the mid-point of my 40’s and the gray in my beard shows it, but that age has brought comfort and a small measure of wisdom in my choices to take a gamble on a job 15 years ago that has paid out, recognizing that my wife was a far better catch for me than what she ended up with and the fortunate experience of having two polar opposite careers. I love cooking and still fraternize with my chef buddies and occasionally romanticize what it would be like to step back in and work in a kitchen.

It was the inaugural event at the newly updated Corson building that Matt and Wylie built with a lot a sweat equity with a nod to sourcing thing from local artisans and it was fantastic. We started in the late afternoon with champagne and walking around, checking out the grounds and the new kitchen addition. Tony arrived around 5.15pm and we started dinner service. Lucky for us, Mary and I sat right next to Tony and he was really down to earth and he told some great stories. Lots of folks asked him questions about their favorite episodes and I got him to tell a little more about the filming in Beirut right when Israel attacked.

Dinner service consisted of…

• Fresh Scallops with basil and olive oil
• Thinly sliced Serrano Ham
• Fresh Peas tossed with a light dressing and sauteed Morels
• Argula with sour cherries
• Sockeye Salmon with greens and onions
• Leg of Lamb with Greek Yogurt
• Fresh Strawberries

All of the preparation was done in a minimal fashion, served family style and absolutely fresh and local. Nothing was overcooked or over seasoned and I get why Matt’s reputation continues to grow.

Then we went off to the Moore and sat in the front row. We were joined by Mary & Marvin and Sean & Rhonna for a few libations and then the VIP after party on stage with the food from our buddies at the Culinary Communion and Gabriel was there having a great time. Tony worked the crowd signed autographs and you can tell he is digging this gig he has made for himself. He is the ultimate celebrity Chef with none of the trappings or bullshit. It was a truly memorable night for me and a great birthday.

Nice write up on my friends at Cafe Flora in the Seattle PI. I have known the restaurant through my POS work in the old days and as supporter over the years with their efforts to help the community and many gifts of their excellent cookbook.

Ahh, perfect ducks rendered of all their excess fat and seasoned to perfecto!

So we are still digging into Duck and I put up the duck breast Prosciutto today.

Remove it from the salt, rinse and pat dry...

Then we lay the pieces out on a cheesecloth, separate them and hang them in the fridge for a week to cure...

For dinner, we did pomme frittes cooked in the duck fat. We served with braised Tallgrass short ribs and green beans from the Pike Place Market. It was a sweet dinner.

Tonight I tackled the Confit (done in a Rillette style) and rendered the final duck fat. I always try to modify the process to try to add something or shave off time. I did something not traditional to the dish and pressure cooked the legs mid process and it sped up the time.

The first step is to remove the legs we packed in Salt, Sugar and Thyme from the day before and rinse and pat dry. The meat is firm and takes on a very reddish hue.

Then we take a shallow pan and heat our duck fat up to 275 or so and I place the legs into fat.

After 40 minutes, I moved the legs into the pressure cooker for 15 minutes under high pressure to infuse the flavors (I added some of duck stock) and sped the tenderization of the legs. The then placed them back in the fat and finished them up. I cut the cooking time in 1/2 this way.

I then plucked all the meat, packed into ramekins and covered with filtered duck fat. I tasted some of it and it is awesome.

You don't see a lot of home cooks diving into preparations of Duck anymore and it has a bit of a bad rap for the uninitiated. It is not hard to cook with, but you have to understand the characteristics to really pull out the awesome flavors and dishes.

I ordered 6 Heritage, Aylesbury ducks from Heritage Foods USA and they describe the qualities of this duck breed on their site. They are elongated and less meaty than production ducks.

I am going to make four separate preparations of these six ducks...

• Duck Confit - Duck legs cooked and stored in the rendered fat
• Duck Prosciutto - Cured duck breast, awesome flavor and easy to make
• Peking Duck - Classic preparation
• Duck Demi-Glace - Quad reduced demi-glace from the duck stock.

I boned out three of the ducks to remove the breasts and legs.

The first task is to start the stock from the carcases and render the excess removed skin and fat for Confit.

With the stock and fat working, I then packed the breasts and legs in salt, thyme and sugar to cure the meat for Confit and duck breast Prosciutto.

I then prepared the remaining three ducks for preparation as Peking Duck this weekend. I used salt, sugar, some cayenne and five spice. I worked it in and then vacuum sealed for marinating.

In my next post I will explain in detail how to make Confit.

I attended a giving campaign auction at work yesterday and they had this awesome ice carving of a beer stein (the theme was Octoberfest) and it reminded me of my attempts at ice carving in the early 80's. Some of my carvings were okay and many were terrible. I just could not get the proportions correct and having to carve these things in a freezer added to the desire to rush on my part. I scanned in some shots I have from that time for sake of humor.

Making the 300lb blocks requires special equipment to circulate the water and keep it clear until completely frozen. These are called Clinebell Blocks.

The first one below started with the intention to be a horse, it became a sad little pony.

The shot below is my buddy Kevin consoling me after my attempt to do a Dinosaur and ending up with a very poor rendition of an iguana.

I started back in April setting the beer and the Mother up to make my own Malt Vinegar. Today I checked and we have generated a set of two full Mothers and now it was time to drain off some, pasteurize and prepare for the next batch.

First I drained off 3/4 of the vinegar and discarded the mother. This process pretty much chased my kids from my house, "The Mother is Gross Dad!" and "It stinks in here". Ahh the first benefit of putting up vinegar is realized, the noise is gone.

Then we heat the vinegar to exactly 155 degrees Fahrenheit and hold it there for 35 minutes.

Then filter the pasteurized vinegar through multiple brown coffee filters to clarify. I then cleaned the vassal and put the strained remainder of the original 1/4 of the vinegar with the Mother so I can add the fresh beer for our next batch.

I will update with a post after we condition the vinegar and do the final bottling for the aging.

I have been expanding my food experiments and started researching making Mustards. Mustard is an ancient food art and has been documented with recipes back to Medieval times and considering the cold meats and other bland preparations of protein, it make sense that a spicy condiment like mustard who be popular. In it's simplest form, the seeds mashed and mixed with a little vinegar was the first form it took. It expanded with seasonings and blends of the varietal's of the mustard seeds (Yellow, Brown and Black) and fermented foods like ale, wine, mead and sparkling wine.

I buy most of my spices in bulk from "Kalustyan spices" in New York as they carry everything you would every want or need from around the world. I set out to make two kinds of mustards and one sauce. I ordered yellow, brown and black seeds and then soaked them in sherry, red wine and white vinegar for 48 hours...

The first thing I learned is that the seeds soak and absorb a lot of liquid and it expanded the volume of seeds and hence my yield which was going to exceed the number of jars I had. So take your volume estimate at 50% expansion.

I then ground the seeds in the processor to achieve that stone ground look...

I then did my standard double broiler setup on the stove and heated the puree along with additions of water and malt vinegar...

I wanted one mustard to be spicy, garlic and shallots, a real strong, spicy mustard for sandwiches and beef. So I caramelized shallots and garlic and added it to the puree...

I then cooked the mustards and added spices, turmeric and various sea salts to tune the flavors. I placed them into the jars, boiled them to seal them up and finished with a nice black wax airtight seal.

I also used some the excess Moutarde to make a seafood sauce based on peppers, tomatoes and the mustard to replicate a seafood sauce I used to make as a chef. This stuff kicks the ass of any cocktail sauce you will ever eat,

I finished up the picnic hams this weekend.

First I removed them from the cure, dried them and then smoked for 6 hours. I rendered in a water bath'd oven and cooled.

I vacuumed sealed them up after sampling some tonight. You can tell that this style of ham is Olde World and probably would not be popular with a common consumer. The meat is fatty (and yet the fat tastes wonderful and is creamy) and not a smooth piece of meat people come to expect with manufactured hams. The flavor is excellent, subtle, very porky and will be wonderful in a dark rye sandwich or heated up and served with mash and cabbage.

I was able to finish up between work this weekend the smoking of the Ham. It took 12 hours to smoke and another 2 hours to render in a high heat, water bath'd oven.

The first thing was I gave the ham 6 days to really dry out from the brine.

Then I proped it up in the smoke box and used hickory chips. Note the slice I tested to see the color.

This is what it looks like after rendering...

I then broke down the meat and vacuum sealed for future eats.

I used the bones to make stock. Ham stock is the best for soups like tomato and split pea.

So lets examine the costs and our per pound value.

• 24 LB Berkshire Ham - $120.00
• Labor - $100.00

Breakdown pounds 18 LB = $12.00. That is a fairly expensive product, but unique and not replicable in commercial products. The taste and tenderness of this ham is superb. I had to step in as the family kept cutting off pieces before I could get is broken down and packaged.

I had gathered all of the ingredients I needed to make a higher end version of my Firehouse Pepper Sauce with a lot more heat based on some of the Bhut Jolokia I acquired last year, which is considered the hottest pepper in the world. It is expensive and I have to say, this sauce is hot and there is just no acclimating to it, it stays hot and gets hotter as you eat it. Like my other sauces, it is complex in flavors (not just heat) and I am liking it a lot. I bottled in a real nice trapezoid styled bottle, corked it and sealed with black wax. A little Devil Duck on top completes the package.

The ham has absorbed all of the brine and is fully cured. I removed it from the brine today and started draining it. I will let it sit for another day and then run it under cold water for a couple hours to seep out the excess salt. Then we will dry it out to prepare it for smoking.

It has been going on for a while and getting worse and worse. You probably never even think about it or what a serious issues this is, but the Honey Bees are disappearing, dying and it is a problem. I heard about this a couple years back from friends who steward bees here in Washington. The NYT has an article that gives an overview of the crisis.

I have made smaller hams like Le Petite Jambon (steps 1, step 2 and steps 3) and I wanted to move onto a more challenging charcuterie effort by making a large, bone-in ham. The first step was to procure a fresh leg of pork, so I did a bunch of research on suppliers and I ended up at Heritage Foods USA which has the mission to preserve heritage breeds of animals and foods that are ignored by commercial farming. Of course I love that mission! I finally settled on the Six-Spotted Berkshire breed which is renowned for its flavor and tenderness (marbling). So I placed my order and it arrived in a one helluva box!

Your first step is to setup your brine. My recipe is as follows...

• 3 TBL Old Bay Seasoning
• 3 TBL Ground Black Pepper
• 1/4 Cup Larouex Meat Rub Down
• 6 TBL Dried Onion
• 6 Cups of Kosher Salt
• 1 LB Muscovado Sugar
• 1 Cup Brown Sugar
• 8 TBL Pink Salt #1 Cure

 Combine Everything with 3.5 Gallons of water and bring to a boil, then cool down to 37 degrees.

Then clean the meat up by removing all skin and excess fat from the cut.

Then make sure to inject the brine all around the bone and deep into the meat.

Then immerse the meat in the brine and put into the fridge.

The next post on the project will cover the progress of the cure.

One of the basic skills you should master in butchering is the cutting of New York Steaks from a striploin. It also saves you some bucks and you can create steaks they way you want them.

The first step is to procure a high quality striploin. Grass-fed, Angus or ultra-choice. Unpack it and pat it dry.

The first step is to remove the fat from the bones on the bottom of the striploin.

Trim it all off and make sure the bottom is nice and clean.

The next step it to take off the front skein, this strip of fat if left on will make the steak curl on the grill, so take it off.

Then you need to identify the head and tail. The tail is used for a roast. The tail will have a section of sinew through the steak. The head won't.

Then we start cutting steaks from the head of the strip.

Beauty! Note the tail steak on the right. They are okay, I just avoid them for steaks.

Vacuum them up and freeze or start the BBQ!

Get your requests in, I am now testing my recipes for 2007 sauces. I wanted to expand the sauces this year to include a gourmet steak sauce. There are a couple ways to approach an American styled sauce, you can go the route of A1 or Smith-Wollensky types which have more onion-vinegar overtones or the Heinz 57 and sweeter types. Since my BBQ sauces nail the Memphis style, I wanted this sauce to be sweeter but with a nice kick of pepper. If you request one, you have to fill out the response questionnaire so I can perfect the flavors.

The pork dried for 48 hours and I started the smoking process early this afternoon. It took around 4 hours of smoke to get the color right and flavor.

We started with oak, lump charcoal. You have to order this stuff over the Internet and expensive, but it is great stuff.

Into the steel boxes for smoking...

Looking good after 4 hours...

Now we brush with olive oil, cover with coarse black pepper and some Memphis seasonings. Then wrap in foil as we are going to go into a 450 degree oven (with a water bath) and render for 45 minutes...

Then we pull them out, allow them to cool for an hour in the foil and then let air dry for a 1/2 hour...

The stuff tastes sooo good and look at the color and it is truly a perfect little ham. So I seal them up and refrigerate.