Smoked fish on my bike.

Smoked shrimp and scallop sausage with braised cabbage (Seafood Choucroute)

I'm probably thinking about food 90% of the time. That includes sleeping. My wife says I need to get a hobby. I used to be into bicyling... That's what I'll do ride my bike! But I can't ride in circles, I need a destination. Oh no not food again.



A few weeks ago I made the trip from my house to Calumet Fisheries. I got excited when google maps revealed that most of my ride would be on actual bike trails.


View On my bike, Calumet Fisheries in a larger map

The ride went through a couple forest preserves to Lansing, Il where I hooked up with the Burnham Greenway. The only rough part was a two mile gap between the north and south sections of the greenway where I had to pedal on Burnham ave.



My first job in Chicago was as a bicycle messenger. In the almost 20 years since then I have seen this town become exponentially more bike friendly, but the Burnham Gap shows more needs to be done.



The north section starts at William W. Powers Conservation Area,



and finishes under the Chicago Skyway. Hanging a right under the Skyway put me on a meandering ride through Calumet Park, finishing at 95th ST.





I had smelts for lunch. After eating, I went around back and caught up with Juan, he was unloading the smoker.











I loaded up on some smoked fish and headed home.





I got some smoked shrimp and smoked trout. I could have eaten this stuff right out of the bag, but since it was Oscar Night®, I made up a choucroute.



I used some scallops from the freezer, with some of the smoked shrimp and made up a sausage, here's what I did:

300 g smoked shrimp and sea scallops
20g leeks, white minced and blanched
6 g salt
1 g white pepper
6 g potato starch
30 ml heavy cream

Make sure all ingredients are cold, place in food processor except the cream. With the machine running add cream to achieve a smooth paste. roll in plastic to form quenelles.



Poach in water bath for 12 minutes.

For the choucroute I decided to braise some cabbage in white wine. I diced a couple of ounces of green bacon, sliced one medium onion, and shredded half a green cabbage. I also pitched in the remaining leeks and half a bulb of fennel sliced. I let all that soften in a dutch oven, then added maybe a cup and a half of white wine and a cup of stock. Threw in a sachet of bay, thyme and garlic, covered and let it bubble for anhour or so. In the meantime I scrubbed and boiled some small red potatoes. before plating, I warmed up the shrimp and trout and sausages, by putting them in the braise for a few minutes. with a sausage, a couple of large shrimp, a pice of trout, the choucroute served four nicely,



With some leftover for lunch. Here's a previous post I wrote on Seafood Choucroute.



I think I'm getting the hang of this bicycle thing, the next trip will be someplace more sausagey.

Cheers.

Green Irish Banger for St. Partick's Day.

Garlic and kale chicken sausage recipe.

You wanna turn your St. Patrick's Day Feast up to 11? How about a green sausage? Today on the blog I've got an banger recipe for you that's as authentic as Irish Coffee and is sure to be a hit at any St. Patty's celebration.



In the natural world, you don't come across green sausage too often. The only one I know of is a chorizo from the Toluca State of Mexico, that's made with green chiles and cilantro. Diana Kennedy mentions it In her book, My Mexico: A culinary odyssey with more than 500 recipes. Rick Bayless gives a recipe for green chorizo that involves spinach powder.



I thought about using spinach for the green, but wanted something more hardy, something that better reflects the spirit of Ireland, and then I remembered kale. While cabbage may be what we Americans think as the "green veg" of the Emerald Isle, kale is perfectly at home in a pot of colcannon.

To make the vibrant green puree, kale needs to be blanched a few times. Set a big pot of salted water on to boil, and set up an ice bath. Drop the kale into the boiling pot for no more than 30 seconds. then put it in the ice bath to slow the coking. Do it 3 times. The point here is to cook the kale without it getting too hot. At a certain temperature the green starts to break down. Puree the cooked kale along with the garlic in a blender, add water as necessary to keep it moving. Since I lent the Vita-Prep to my neighbor to mix grout, I ended up pushing my poorly pureed kale through a metal strainer, it'll be fine. I blanched about a pound (450g) of kale to get my 300g of kale puree.



For that fancy emulsified look grind the meat twice. Here I cut chicken into nice bits, put it into the freezer on a sheet pan, until just crunchy, ground it, spread it out in the sheet tray again, let it get crunchy in the freezer, and ground it again.



Just like pouring paint into the Chicago River, I mixed in the spices then added the green.



To assure the authenticity of this Irish banger, I added potato starch as the binder.



Stuff into prepared hog casings. For a richer patina, let them hang in the fridge for a couple of days.



For the Tricolor trifecta, whip up a pot of Irish cheddar mashers and top with an onion curry gravy.

Kale and Garlic Chicken Sausage

Per 1000 g of Meat
300g Kale puree (see notes above)
15g minced garlic (pureed with the kale)
15 g Salt
5g ground white pepper
2g powdered ginger
2g mustard flour
1g ground mace
pinch of cayenne

20g potato starch or milk powder.

Make as described above. I used a whole chicken cut up for my recipe. If you're buying by the bit, get thighs. Pork will work too.



Happy St. Patricks Day.

Cheers.

Here's a link my other Irish Banger recipe.

Kimchee hot link

This isn't a story about Korean food. This about catching one of 2012's hottest food trends, Kimchee (Kimchi, 김치). Yes, as reported in Australia and Canada, America will soon be replacing kraut and slaw with the more exotic fermented cabbage to garnish our favorite 'Dude Foods.' Huh. Kimchee came on to my cultural crossing flavor radar last year when the chef, at our humble NW Indiana Brewpub, swapped out the red slaw on our bbq sammie with housemade spicy goodness.



Up to that point I thought that making kimchee was a long process taking months or years involving clay jars and holes in the ground. At the restaurant we made it in 4 days. I started making it at home and I put it on everything.



Kimchee on my pizza



Kimchee on my schwarma



Kimchee on my smörgås.



For the kimchee we were making at work, we started by putting thinly sliced Nappa cabbage in a 5% brine, and let it sit on the counter for 24 hours. Then we made what Dave Chang in Lucky Peach #2 calls "The dressing": A puree of red Thai chiles, ginger, garlic, honey and fish sauce. After draining the brined cabbage we tossed it with the dressing, then let it sit for 4 days.



Most recipes call for ground chili flakes called gochugaru (kochukaru, 고추가루). I picked-up a bag to see if it would make any difference for my batches at home. Tasting this particular sample (pictured above) was pretty unremarkable, a cross between crushed red pepper and paprika. Also not spicy at all. While I haven't tried any other brands, and I'm sure there are better, I think half sharp paprika is an spot-on substitute.



I used a combination of both in my batches.



So there are many places you can find a recipe for kimchee, in an effort to stay ahead of the trend, how about a sausage with the dressing on the inside?



Hello hot link.

Kimchee Hot Link

per 1000g Pork shoulder, cubed and chilled
300 ml cabbage jus
20 ml fish sauce
15 g salt
40 g fresh ginger minced
24 g garlic minced
20 g gochugaru
6 g half sharp paprika
10 g whole brown mustard seeds

20g milk powder

For the cabbage jus: Cabbage has a particular sour/peppery taste, that I wanted in this sausage. Take the whites from a head of bok choy and puree it in the blender, it's ok to add a little water to get it going. Strain the resulting mash through muslin. After cleaning out the blender, add in only 100ml of the jus, salt, fish sauce, garlic, ginger and spices and give the blender a whirl to make a smooth dressing.



Toss the pork with the dressing and allow to marinate for a few hours.

Grind the pork mixture into a mixing bowl, then beat in the remaining jus and milk powder. Continue to mix to achieve a nice paste. Stuff into prepared hog casings. Try to let the links hang for a day before cooking.

What to do with a hot link, I could just put it on a bun, but wait there's more.



While I couldn't find any corroborating references that this is actually made in Korea, but I found this interesting shape on the website My Fabulous Recipes.



Then I did a steamed one, and then with the help from Asian Dumplings, by Andrea Nguyen, I went dumpling crazy.



I made a little rolling pin from a dowel.



I cut the hot link mixture with some tofu and formed some dumplings





Steamed, jjinmandu (찐만두)



Boiled, mulmandu (물만두)



Fried, gunmandu (군만두). These ended up looking like gyōza (餃子). I think they are supposed to be browned on two sides, I'm having trouble reading my translation.



Anyway you slice it, get ahead of the trend and make kimchee hot links today!

Cheers.

Further Reading:

Kimchee's new chapter
Korea's traditional condiment blurring culinary borders by Bill Daley, The Chicago Tribune, 21 September 2011

"Paechu and White Kimchi" by Dave Chang, Lucky Peach Issue 2 Fall/Winter 2011

The kimchi chronicles : Korean cooking for an American kitchen, by Vongerichten

Asian dumplings : mastering gyōza, spring rolls, samosas, and more, by Nguyen

Also check out Nguyen's website, Asian Dumpling Tips

Korean translations via @KoreanFood and Wikipedia

Coffeehouse hot link

As in the boudin from Louisiana, the kielbasa from Poland, and the saucisse de Toulouse from, well, Toulouse, everybody knows sausage can be from a place, but can it be about a place? I never really thought about it until I ate some cheese.

The cheese I ate had a rind rubbed with coffee and lavender. At first glance the combination seemed curious, I figured it fit in with today's culinary trend of pairing disperate flavors to create new profiles, but I was wrong, the resulting palette was very familiar.

Coffeehouse.

The penultimate coffeehouse experience: It's cold outside, the storefront has fogged up windows, walk in and you are greeted by a rush of humidity and the aroma of coffee, cinnamon and something hippie. Good hippie. And as I tasted the cheese, I realized that 'something hippie' was lavender.

My standard for coffeehouses was set in the late 80's at the King Ave. Coffeehouse in Columbus. It had it all: a bottomless cup, light vegetarian fare, and a bead store off to one side. It's where I learned to drink coffee, It's where felt I could be anything I imagined.

A great memory, but a sausage? Sure why not.



Coffee. I started with brewed espresso (too weak), and I tasted a sprinkle of a fancy-pants instant (too nasty). I settled on a finely ground French roast. For that authentic DIY feel, you could roast your own,but for this project, I used store bought.



Lavender. I found some buds at The Spice House, then pulverized them to a powder.

Let's go to the boards:

1000g Meat. Pork, duck, and/or up to 20% pork fat.
18g Salt
5g French roast coffee beans, finely ground
3g Black pepper
2g lavender, finely ground
pinch of cayenne and cinnamon
50g milk powder (optional)
100ml water (or 85ml water and 15ml vodka)



Dice up the meats for grinding. The first time I made it with duck, but pork works very nicely. If using duck, you should add some fat.

After grinding, place meats into chilled bowl and beat in spices, milk powder and liquid. Continue beating to achieve a nice paste. stuff into sheep casings, or roll in plastic.







Sausage about place. What do you think? At least it tastes good.

Cheers.