Red Meat - - Page 20

by BS

Feed Us Back: Comments of the Week

– Writer and state fair expert Kat Robinson emailed us to take issue with our top 10 state fair foods, noting that we neglected the Arkansas State Fair, which runs through October 17.

While shorter than some of the other fairs in our nation, many original ideas do come out of here. For instance, this year’s preview has shown that we have two items — Deep Fried Battered Hard Boiled Eggs and Chocolate Smooches (deep fried Hershey’s Kisses) that haven’t appeared elsewhere.

Well color us corrected! And hungry for a deep fried battered hard boiled egg. Thanks for the photo, Kat. Don’t miss her full food report on the Arkansas State Fair here. Seriously check it out — barbecued rabbit sandwiches and gator on a stick — heck yeah!

– Speaking of rabbit sandwiches, everybunny loves brit’s report on butchering a whole rabbit carcass. Erica:

by Russell Warnick

Bunny Bourguignon

When it comes to ingredients, I like them fresh and ready to use. For a while now I’ve been wanting to cook rabbit, and after tasting Birch & Barley‘s rabbit gnocchi, I knew it was time I tried to cook the hoppy little guy.

Finding rabbit isn’t easy. It’s not just something you can pick up at Safeway or Whole Foods. Instead, I turned to one of DC’s many weekday farmers’ markets. I took a late lunch one Thursday afternoon and headed out to the White House Farmers Market where I found Garden Path Farm and their one “rabbit” left.

This is where it gets interesting.

At a little over 2 pounds, I assumed the vacuum-packed rabbit was meat, just meat, and I could cube and make a tasty Bunny Bourguignon. How was I wrong!

Continue reading to see what happened, but be warned, the following photos are not for the squeamish.

by Borracho

Gridiron Grub: French Onion Soup Sandwich

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”

That is one of my favorite quotes about teamwork and the spirit of those words is part of why I love sports so much. We see time and time again that individual stars get paid the big bucks but often it is the team that works together best that has the most success. The same could be said for cooking. While quality ingredients are important, the simplest ingredients can really come together with just some time, effort, technique and a sense of fun.

With that in mind, it has been a rain-filled and cold week on the East Coast so I was in the mood for soup and a sandwich. Here’s the spin I put on a traditional combo for wifey and I to enjoy while cheering on PSU football Saturday night.

Open-faced French Onion Soup Sandwich

First you must recruit. So to assemble your team of ingredients, here is what I went with: 4tbsp clarified butter, 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 lb onions sliced lengthwise, 8 oz beef stock, cup of spiced apple wine (I had it on hand from a local winery but feel free to use any white wine you like), c grated apple wood smoked Gruyere,red onion ciabatta bread and parsley.

in Cheese / Drinks / Recipe / Red Meat / Sandwich 3 comments

by BS

Getting Sauce-y in San Francisco

Earlier this year, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution officially encouraging local restaurants to adopt the mantra of “Meatless Mondays,” the one-day-a-week-without-meat initiative pushed by such visionaries as Yoko Ono, Kim O’Donnel and gansie. But contrary to what you might think, not all SF chefs are hippie-dippie enviro crusaders who immediately rallied to the cause.

Ben Paula, the executive chef at Hayes Valley neighborhood spot Sauce and a proponent of putting bacon on everything was one who did respond quickly — by adding a Monday night prime rib special to his menu. After dining at Sauce, I can see why. We here at ES support eating local, lowering your meat intake and all the rest of it, but this is one restaurant where I might cry if I returned and they had dropped the pork.

We started with the app you see above, which Chef Ben humbly calls tater tots, but that’s a bit of an undersell. Creamy mashed potatoes are mixed with white truffle oil and cremini mushrooms, then breaded and fried crispy. A tasty snack even for a vegetarian, actually, but I dare anyone not to dip them in the smoked gouda and bacon fondue provided. Personally, I wanted to take a bath in it.

in Cheese / Fowl / Pig / Politics / Red Meat / Trends 4 comments

by BS

Extreme Simmer: The SousVide Supreme

So after hearing me bitch for the last two years about how everyone on Top Chef gets to sous vide but I don’t, someone finally decided to throw me a bone. The folks over at SousVide Supreme, the first legit sous vide machine aimed at home cooks, sent me over one of their $450 contraptions to test out for a few weeks. Woo-hoo!

For those who need a recap: sous vide cooking involves vacuum sealing ingredients in plastic bags with this neat little contraption:

That’s actually the most fun part, watching all the air get sucked right out of the bag. Then you submerse the bag in a thermal hot water bath that’s designed to remain at an exact pre-set temperature, down to the degree:

in Eggs / Featured / Fish / Red Meat / Veggie 17 comments

by BS

The Grand Wrap-It

Even though I love to travel and spend a large percentage of my time out on the road, as a New Yorker I’m still required by birthright to be hyper-critical of any other place I visit — and in no realm is that more true than food. When evaluating a new city’s food scene, one of the most important criteria is the strength of their after-hours offerings, because there’s nothing worse than getting drunk in a strange city, learning that the bars close at some obscenely early hour like 1am, and then finding yourself wandering strange, grid-less city streets with nary a pizza place open to soak up the booze.

In Grand Rapids, Michigan for a college friends’ wedding last week, my pals and I were pleasantly surprised to find a pretty happening revived downtown area, and particularly pleased with Hopcat, a serious beer geek’s bar with an impressive handpull list (and a A+ rating from Beer Advocate). At least on the liquid side of things, G-rap was shaping up to be a more exciting city than I had imagined.

I did, however, have one major problem…

in Cheese / Red Meat 3 comments

by BS

Daddy, Where Does Sausage Come From?

Sausage. We all love it, laugh at it, and sometimes shudder at it…but when it comes down to it, we’re always left with the same question — just WTF is it anyway? The old joke goes that sausage is the parts of the animal swept off the factory floor after everything else is made, but the truth is it’s much more complicated than that. Fortunately, Kim from Good Bite is here with a guest blog to demystify the whole sausage-making process — for home cooks.

The ingredients

The first and most important ingredient is the meat. Whether making poultry, pork, or lamb sausages, fat is key in the success of the final product. Ample fat content (about 15 to 30 percent) is responsible for creating a smooth consistency and complex of flavor. For red meats, choose higher fat cuts like Boston butt or shoulder, and if opting for chicken or turkey, choose the darker cuts like the thigh.

The meat will need to be ground, so you have a few options here. Ask the butcher to grind the meat at the counter (which should be no problem at all), or take the meat home and grind it in a food processor. No grinding machines necessary.

Seasonings will make up the rest of the flavor profile, so decide what type of sausage you are aiming for and go from there. Common spices include any mixture of peppercorn, fennel, anise, cloves, garlic, thyme, cayenne, sugar, and allspice. It may be necessary to add a drizzle or two of olive oil, depending on the fat content of the chosen meat, as well as a trickle of water to keep the moisture locked in.

The process

in Recipe / Red Meat 1 comments

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