Cooking The Whole Quack

Duck Ragu

I stopped by Ottamenelli and Sons in the West Village of New York City last week to buy a whole duck.  The white haired, old-timer butcher with his blood stained apron asked if I wanted him to cut it up.  No, I replied, I liked to do that sort of thing myself.  Looking me up and down in my springtime asparagus green skirt and cream cardigan I can understand why his eyebrows raised.  I was not dressed the part of home butcher.  “You must have some sharp knives,” the old timer said.  You bet I do, I shot back.  The old-timer smiled.  “Beware a woman with sharp knives,” he said to the man in line next to me, and handed over the duck. 

I like my knives, without them I wouldn’t have much use for a whole duck.  If I just bought the breasts and I’d get one dinner for a couple people.  Throw in the legs and I might have confit or the base for a rich ragu.  Give me the whole bird and I have visions of days of meals to come- seared duck breasts one night, molten braised legs another, fat trimmings rendered and reserved for roasted potatoes, and the flavor packed carcass just waiting to form the base of my next poultry stock.

Back home with the duck, out came the knives and off came the breasts.  Seared to a perfect medium rare I wasn’t interested in serving the breasts plain.  Instead, I sliced them paper thin and placed the duck on a bed of Vietnamese rice noodles with roasted peanuts, cilantro, lime, and mint with a sauce of tamarind, chilies, and fish sauce. 

Duck Breast with Vietnamese Vermicelli Salad

Next I went to work on the fat.  I cut as much of the skin and attached thick layer of fat as I could off the carcass and put in in a pot over medium low heat.  After about 30 minutes with barely any attention paid, the fat had melted away.  I strained that off and added to the reserved drippings from the duck breasts.  Purple potatoes were cubed and roasted with a healthy dose of the melted fat.  The rest went in a jar and into the refrigerator to be used in weeks to come.

Several days later it was time for the legs.  Onion, garlic, carrot and celery went in the clay pot with some fresh rosemary and a couple of bay leaves.  Reduced red wine, diced canned tomatoes, chicken stock, and the legs rounded out the sauce.  A couple of hours later I pulled the once tough now achingly tender meat off the bone and mixed it back into the pot.  Tossed with freshly cooked pasta it was a meal fit for a king, or at least four hungry adults.

As for the carcass, it is in the freezer in a large bag marked “duck bones” waiting to be defrosted some lazy Saturday when I feel like putting a pot on to simmer. 

One week.  One duck.  Many meals had and more still to come.  I might finish the old-timer’s sentence for him: Beware a woman with sharp knives, a whole duck is no match for her in the kitchen. 

Duck Ragu

Time: 2 hours

Yield: 4 servings

2 T. olive oil

1 medium onion

1 carrot

2 celery stalks

3 garlic cloves

2 T. minced rosemary leaves

2 bay leaves

1 cup red wine

2 duck legs

Salt

Pepper

2 cups diced canned tomatoes

1 cup chicken stock

1 lb. linguine

Parmesan cheese

Heat oil in a heavy pot over a medium flame.  Dice onion, peel and dice carrot, and dice celery.  Add the vegetables to the pot.  Saute for about ten minutes until softened.  Crush garlic and add to vegetables along with rosemary and bay leaves.  Saute for another two minutes.  Add wine and bring to a simmer.  Reduce wine by half.  Meanwhile season duck legs with salt and pepper.  Add tomatoes, duck legs, and chicken stock to the pot.  Bring to a simmer then reduce heat to medium low.  Put a lid on the pot and let simmer for 1.5 hours stirring occasionally, until duck meat is tender enough to fall off the bone.  Remove duck legs from the sauce.  Remove skin and any visible fat and discard.  Remove meat from bones and shred.  Before adding the meat back to the sauce use a small ladle to skim off any fat that has pooled on the surface.  Stir the meat back into the sauce and season with salt and pepper to taste.  Discard bay leaves.  Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook the pasta until just shy of al dente.  Add the pasta to the sauce with a bit of the pasta water.  Let pasta finish cooking in the sauce.  Serve with grated parmesan cheese.

Amy Powell is a food and travel writer based in New York City. She is a graduate of Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration and the French Culinary Institute. Follow her on Twitter @amymariepowell

Cheating Allowed: Molino Spadoni Instant Pizza Flour

 I normally scorn cheating in the kitchen.  I shun the artfully packaged pre-cut vegetables that the line the shelves at Whole Foods.  And I have been known to reprimand friends who think white powder that comes in a green canister is actual cheese. 

But for every rule there is an exception and I believe I have just found a rather good one to mine on cheating at cooking.  It is called Pizza Gran Sapore from Molino Spadoni- essentially pre-leavened flour that is designed for simple assembly of homemade focaccia and pizzas.

Anyone who ever bought a Boboli crust knows finding a way to cheat on the pizza dough is nothing new.  Part of it is convenience- a premade crust saves about 40 minutes of mixing, kneading, and rising- but it is also the fickle nature of yeast, that all important bread ingredient.  Yeast is alive so quality means everything. Those little packets of Fleischmann’s on the store shelf could have been there so long the yeast has long since kicked the bucket.  And high quality yeast is often expensive and only available in large quantities.  If you are not baking bread every day, there will almost certainly be waste.  

Enter the discovery of this Italian instant pizza dough flour I picked up at Buon Italia in New York’s Chelsea Market.  The directions were all in Italian, a language I know little more than “ciao”, but I could make out from the pictorial that all I needed to do was add warm water, mix, and roll out. 

Assembled

Surprisingly, it worked exactly like that.  The dough is breadier than yeasted pizza dough I’ve made in the past but each cup of the flour with about 2/3 cup warm water yielded smooth, pliant dough that pressed out nicely into a 10 inch round.  A couple of trials revealed that due to its more focaccia-like nature, this dough cooked more evenly at a slightly lower temperature (450°F) and for a longer cooking time (about 15-18 minutes) than your average yeast dough.

Fifteen minutes later

Overall, for the effort and outcome it was definitely worth the cheat.  Less than five minutes to mix the dough, ten to let it rest, and fifteen to bake, it was almost less hassle than ordering in.  And if I really wanted to cheat, and only a thin crust New York style could satisfy my pizza craving, Bleecker Street Pizza is only a phone call away. 

Note: A Google search revealed no apparent online retailers of this instant pizza flour.  But the Molino Spadoni brand does appear popular with Italian markets.  Either ask for it at your local Italian market, or try special requesting through Buon Italia’s mail order business.

Amy Powell is a food and travel writer based in New York City. She is a graduate of Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration and the French Culinary Institute. Follow her on Twitter @amymariepowell

The Ghost of Christmas Goose Past

Peking Duck from New Moon Cafe, San Francisco

Many years ago my parents called me from California just days before I was to return home from New York for the holidays, to ask if I could help procure a goose.  Apparently my then teenage brother had been reading a bit of Dickens that year and got it in his head that a proper Christmas dinner was not the ham our family ate every year on December 25^th but rather, a goose. 

Days before Christmas a goose was not going to be possible.  Should I find one in New York on short notice, I couldn’t exactly tote it home in my suitcase.  And there was zero chance of sourcing one in my dusty desert hometown in Southern California. 

But it was that call that nonetheless started a yearly mission to outdo ourselves in the category of Christmas dinner year after year.  The next year I was able to get a goose.  A meal that each member of our family enjoyed except for the boy who’d asked for it.  The years that followed would produce majestic standing rib roasts, racks of venison, and duck done two ways- confit legs paired with seared rare breast. 

Peppercorn Crusted Ahi

It turns out to be rather exhausting to come up with a completely new menu each year that will surprise, and please, every member in a growing family of relatives and significant others.

Per a special request, last year I revisited Duck Two Ways and this year brought back the standing rib roast- weighing in at 16.6 pounds, the single largest piece of beef I have ever cooked. 

But just because the main courses are now settling into a rotation of greatest hits does not mean the holiday is free from invention.  For Christmas at my grandfather's house in Sonoma this year, we started off the weekend with a light but filling seafood chowder and a tray of peppercorn crusted ahi on spinach salad.  Because it was the holidays, I went the extra mile to make the seafood stock from scratch with Dungeness crab shells leftover from the previous night’s dinner.  It wasn’t exactly a feast of seven fishes but in taste and flavor it was a welcome departure from the heavier meals to come. 

Me carving the Standing Rib Roast

In case anyone was missing duck, for midday noshing John and I brought a couple of Peking ducks up with us to Sonoma from New Moon Café in San Francisco’s Chinatown.  A large step up from a grocery store rotisserie chicken and it sure beat the two-week process of making my own duck confit. 

Potato gratin and Brussels sprouts were far from inventive sides for the beef at Christmas dinner, but we changed things up a bit from our normal routine with a spicy butternut squash and apple soup to start.  And for dessert, pecan pie turned extra decadent with a layer of bittersweet chocolate on the bottom.

Even day-after leftovers where not relegated to ordinary.  As most of my family lounged in front of a football game on TV Monday evening, reviving foggy heads from a day of wine and beer tasting, John and I whipped up something just a little new.  He worked his magic with sweet potatoes, impressing all with his crispy orange cubes roasted with garlic and rosemary, and I made up several trays of crunchy baked kale. 

Chocolate Pecan Pie

The boy with the Dickensian dreams of a Christmas goose is not so young anymore- he is now my tall and lanky, knife-wielding sidekick in the kitchen, working beside me each year to turn out Christmas dinner on time.  Where the goose may not have lived up to his fantasies, he proved yet again to inspire enthusiasm for new entrants to our family’s world of holiday food.  “Amy, this has changed my life,” he said to me, eyes wide with passion.  Was it the standing rib roast of which he spoke?  Or maybe the chocolate pecan pie?  No, my brother’s life-changing moment this year was, drum roll please, the baked kale we served alongside the reheated beef the day after Christmas.  Perhaps a new tradition is born. 


Amy Powell is a food and travel writer based in New York City. She is a graduate of Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration and the French Culinary Institute. Follow her on Twitter @amymariepowell

What to Do With All Those Holiday Food Gifts

It happens every year.  January to November friends don’t share so much as a potato chip with you then all of a sudden in one month of holiday giving your kitchen counter is filled with every food gift under the sun.  There are cookies and quick breads, infused vodkas and hot chocolate mixes, and a jam and jelly to match every farmer’s stand fruit.

What is one person supposed to so with so much food all at once?  And where are all those cookie bakers when you really need them?  A good homemade chocolate brownie sure would taste good during March and the final bleak days of winter. 

I’m not sure you will convince anyone to start giving IOUs at Christmas for Springtime food gifts, but at the very least you can make the most of what you have been given and make sure it doesn’t go to waste. 

Chocolate:  Chocolate is chocolate, even if it originally came wrapped in foil and shaped like Santa.  Enjoy some holiday catharsis while smashing up some pieces of dark and milk.  Voila!  You have chips and chunks perfect for baking. 

Jams and Jellies: I’m not much for toast in the morning but those jams and jellies tied with ribbon are good for most than just a morning spread.  Melt down a plum jelly and thin it out with vinegar and maybe a little booze and you have a great glaze for pork loin.  Or try my new favorite use for my mom’s pepper jelly: dollop atop crostini spread with young, tangy goat cheese.  It makes a wonderful and easy appetizer for everything from a fancy New Year’s Eve get together to a casual January book club meeting.

Quick Breads: Ever since I tasted The French Laundry’s banana bread and foie gras torchon, my eyes have opened to the potential of quick breads beyond breakfast food.  If you are having a champagne toast at midnight tonight, consider squares of banana bread or ginger bread topped with store bought foie gras pate as a simple and surprising appetizer.

Cookies: One word.  Re-gift.

Infused Spirits:  Use it now or run the risk of that peppermint vodka still taking up precious bar space at next year’s holiday festivities.  Mix up a punch bowl full of a signature cocktail using that infused vodka for tonight’s party and let your guests help you clear another bottle off the shelf. 

Seasoned Popcorn and Nuts: Put it out at a party.  Take all the credit. 

Here’s to a Happy New Year, and a January with fewer food gifts lingering around the house. 

Amy Powell is a food and travel writer based in New York City. She is a graduate of Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration and the French Culinary Institute. Follow her on Twitter @amymariepowell

Best Bites of 2011- Cooking Edition

After an epic three days of Christmas cooking I am finally coming up for air.  Between the seafood chowders, chocolate pecan pies and standing rib roasts I’ve had time to reflect on some of the best cooking I’ve done this year.  Whether over an open fire in the bush or in a borrowed kitchen in Manhattan, whether putting a $40 clay pot to work or working with every odd bit of a homegrown pig, it has been a good year for cooking.

Here are some highlights in no particular order.

Chicken Thighs with Meyer Lemon, Fennel, and Olives:  Where does one start when throwing a dinner party for your spry grandfather and his nonagenarian friends?  I started with my grandfather’s Meyer lemon tree, heavy with fruit in early April.  I thought I had an appetite.  The old folks took down a whole Dungeness crab appetizer then licked clean their plates of chicken thighs roasted with the lemons, fennel, and olives.

Etosha Paella

Etosha Paella:  Boyfriend John gets all the credit for suggesting the heavy cast iron Dutch oven rental along with the standard mess kit for our Namibian car camping adventure.  We put that pan to use right away with a dish we called Etosha Paella- curried lamb sausage cooked with rice, red peppers, onion, olive oil, and lots of garlic over an open fire under a blanket of stars in Etosha National Park, the Serengeti of Namibia.  

Clay Pot Beef for Tacos: At one of the first appearances of the clay pot, cubes of beef simmered away in peppers, onions, garlic, and chilies for hours until the beef could be pulled apart into shreds.  We filled tortillas with the mixture and topped with salsa.  This was just the beginning of clay pot love.

Eggplant and Roasted Garlic Soup

Eggplant Soup: I love my mother’s garden.  One of the only bad things about moving away from California is that I no longer will be able to partake of her summer bounty.  But I got one last shot the last time I was in Hemet with eggplants she had just harvested.  Eggplants roasted side by side in the oven with heads of garlic.  When the garlic cloves were golden and sweet and the eggplants fully collapsed, all went into a pot with chopped onion, thyme, oregano, and chicken stock.  Blended to a puree it was the sort of simple garden dish I could have eaten all summer long. 

Soft Shell Crabs with Lemon Chive Vinaigrette and Arugula: Staying with friends in Manhattan while we looked for a place to live, one night John and I cooked for them as a way of saying thanks.  I expected our hostess, a proficient cook herself, to be a tough critic.  Little did I know that soft shells crabs are a family favorite, one that they never really eat at home.  We were beyond grateful to have a soft landing and friendly welcome in a new city, and we whipped up a mid summer meal worthy of that gratitude.

Fregula with Clams and Chorizo:  There are two amazing things about our new apartment in New York. 1. The open kitchen.  2. Its proximity to Chelsea Market.  I put both of these features to good use one night while John was out of town.  My girlfriends sat at the counter watching me cook up a dish of Sardinian fregula from the Italian store in Chelsea market with clams from The Lobster Place and vegetables from Manhattan Fruits. 

Cambodian Beef Curry

Cambodian Beef Curry:  Diminutive in size but huge in flavor, the spices John brought me back from a trip to Cambodia turned out to be one of my favorite 30^th birthday gifts.  Black peppercorns, white peppercorns, and sinus clearing red chili powder blended with lemongrass, garlic, ginger, and coconut milk for a fragrant, and very spicy, Cambodian Beef Curry. 

Rabbit Ragu: What can you make with a $7 domestic rabbit from Western Beef in New York City?  A lot it turns out.  In our case, at least 6 meals of delicious ragu spooned, tossed, and slathered on many kinds of pasta.

Pernil Style Pork Shoulder

Sir Hamsalot: It is possible that no one pig has brought so much delicious joy to so manypeople.  This year I had the pleasure of enjoying one of his shoulders classically roasted by my friend’s father and I did the other shoulder Pernil style a few months later.  We had ribs slathered in hoisin sauce and thick smoky bacon.  I’ll be using the rendered fat as cooking lard for months to come.

Sonoma Bouillabaisse: Before the pies, roasts, and stockings filled with candy, it was nice to get the holidays off to a flavorful, somewhat healthy start. I made the broth for my west coast bouillabaisse from Dungeness crab shells, then built flavor into the stew with lots of fennel, white wine, and a pinch of saffron.  A couple of waxy potatoes for heft, then every kind of good looking fish I could find- crab legs, clams, shrimp, and escolar.


Amy Powell is a food and travel writer based in New York City. She is a graduate of Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration and the French Culinary Institute. Follow her on Twitter @amymariepowell

Soup as Salve for Post-Thanksgiving Blues

Chicken, Kale, Brown Rice Soup

Thanksgiving plus my birthday plus impending holiday celebrations equals an almost involuntary response: the desire to eat healthy this week.  I’ve had some wonderful meals out to celebrate my big day- tagliatelle with frutti di mare at Bianca, duck confit at AOC- and have been showered with gifts from delicious chocolate cake at Bee Desserts to fresh eggs from my friend Vicki’s farm.  I have cooked too- roast chicken and pecan-chocolate pie for Thanksgiving, those farm fresh eggs with butter and gruyere for a birthday morning scramble. 

Which leads me to today, where the aftermath of gluttony has joined forces with the fear of more holiday season indulgence to come.  This state of guilt and pre-guilt usually leads me to one eating solution: soup.  I want to feel soothed, fill up my belly with lighter fare, and pack in a huge dose of flavor in the process.  This soup however, though healthy, should not taste like any dieter’s soup.

I had chicken bones leftover from Thanksgiving, but not quite enough to make a full pot of stock, so I set out to enrich store bought stock instead. Browning the bones in a little oil then add them to a pot of premade chicken broth (this works for any poultry bones) is a great way to add flavor to generic chicken stock without adding much fat.

Next I went to the depths of the vegetable bin, hoping to use up odds and ends leftover from recent, more elaborate cooking.  This was the time to put that stray carrot to work or the half and onion sitting in a plastic bag.  Kale is one of my favorite soup greens, the hardy leaves stand up well to a long simmer and come packed full of vitamins and fiber- roughage whose taste is far from rough.  Cubed sweet potato, diced red pepper, sliced mushrooms, just about anything goes. 

With a richly flavorful stock and a heap of veg, all that was left was some protein and carbs to make my soup feel like a complete meal.  A little decadent meat can go a long way.  Think two sweet fennel sausages in a pot of soup that feeds 4-6 people.  But of course, leftover shredded turkey, or chicken in my case, also does the trick.  If there is not already tons of potato in the soup (I had one unused sweet potato in mine), I’ll add a small scoop of brown rice or even some leftover bread cubes to help thicken up the pot.

Rich broth plus plenty of vegetables plus a little protein plus some starch equals a guilt-free and filling post Thanksgiving, pre-Christmas meal.  A week of healthy soup and I’ll be back in form for round two of holiday eating indulgence. 

Chicken, Brown Rice, and Kale Soup

Time: 60 minutes

Yield: 4 servings

2 T. vegetable oil

Chicken bones

8 c. store bought chicken broth

1 bay leaf

2 thyme sprigs

1 half medium onion

1 clove garlic

3 cups thinly sliced kale

1 ½ c. diced sweet potato

3 T. olive oil

1 tsp dried oregano

2 cups shredded, cooked chicken
1/3 cup long grain brown rice

salt and pepper

Heat vegetable oil in a large soup pot over a medium high heat.  Add chicken bones and brown on all sides.  Add chicken stock, bay leaf, and thyme sprigs to the chicken bones.  Bring pot to a boil then reduce to a simmer.  Let simmer for 20 minutes then strain off broth.  Discard bones and herbs.  Return strained reinforced chicken stock to the stove to keep warm for the soup.

While stock is simmering, prep vegetables.  Cut onion into a small dice.  Mince garlic.  Remove woody ribs from kale then shred the leaves.  Peel and dice sweet potato.  Heat olive oil over a medium flame in a large soup pot.  Add onion and cook till softened, about 3-5 minutes.  Add garlic and cook for another 2 minutes.  Stir in kale with a bit of salt and pepper.  Keep stirring till slightly wilted, about 3 minutes.  Add sweet potato, oregano, shredded chicken, rice, and reinforced chicken stock.  Bring soup to a boil then reduce to a simmer.  Season with a bit of salt and pepper.  Cover with a lid and let simmer for about 30 minutes, until rice is tender.  Adjust seasoning if necessary with additional salt and pepper. 

Amy Powell is a food and travel writer based in New York City. She is a graduate of Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration and the French Culinary Institute. Follow her on Twitter @amymariepowell

Of Food Hangovers and Turkey Wings

If you are lucky at Thanksgiving dinner, one carnivorous soul will live out his caveman fantasies by taking ownership of a hulking turkey drumstick.  But what of those pesky wings?  Finding a taker to pick finicky strands of dark meat out of the turkey wing is a bit of a challenge too often leaving the wings behind in the pile of Misfit Thanksgiving Food bound for the garbage bin.

A couple of years ago I woke up with the inevitable Day-After-Thanksgiving food hangover looking for a breakfast that would simultaneously soothe my tummy and potentially use up some leftovers.  It was then, as I stared at a bag of plain white rice contemplating a comforting bowl of porridge, that I finally found a use for those misfit wings: congee.

Ubiquitously served for breakfast in China as well as at dim sum restaurants across America, congee is simply a porridge made of rice and water.  This bland breakfast food turns out to be not only the perfect dish to stage a morning after recovery, but also a great way to use up some leftover turkey bits, like wings, in the process. 

The porridge cannot be simpler- water, rice, and a bit of salt simmer for a very long time until the rice bursts, transforming the water to a milky soup.  Congee doesn’t taste like much, that is, until you add to it.  The Chinese like combinations of pickled vegetables, ham, and omelet usually with a fiery chili sauce to crank up the flavor.  For my purposes after Thanksgiving, the turkey wings do all the hard work.

Turkey wings turn out to be the perfect flavoring for this long cooking porridge.  Throw a couple of uneaten wings into the pot with the rice and water, over the next 90 minutes the porridge is flavored with a rich turkey taste.  As for those pesky bits of meat on the bone?  They naturally fall off during the cooking process mixing in seamlessly with the slowly dissolving rice.  A little garlic chili sauce and maybe a sprinkling of green onions and the bowl is good to go, for breakfast, lunch, or even a late night snack.

In my kitchen, turkey wings, once confounding for being nearly inedible find new life the day after Thanksgiving in a bowl of congee.  It is like grandma’s chicken noodle soup for exhausted stomachs, if my grandmother was Chinese and had some turkey wings lying around.

Turkey Wing Congee

Time: 90 minutes

Yield: 6 serving

¾ cup short grain white rice

8 cups water

1 tsp Kosher salt

2 turkey wings plus other miscellaneous turkey bones if desired

Sliced green onions

Soy sauce

Garlic chili sauce

Bring rice, water, salt, and turkey wings to a boil in a large pot.  Reduce heat to a low simmer.  Partially cover with a lid.  Cook stirring occasionally over the first hour, then frequently during the last 30 minutes.  Rice kernels should burst and the porridge should have a thick, milky consistency.  Remove the bones.  Any pieces of meat that didn’t naturally fall off during cooking can be removed at this point and added back to the pot.  To serve, ladle congee into bowls and let each person add soy sauce, sliced green onions, and chili sauce as desired. 

Amy Powell is a food and travel writer based in New York City. She is a graduate of Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration and the French Culinary Institute. Follow her on Twitter @amymariepowell

Straight from the Backyard: Cooking the Whole Hog

Pernil Style Pork Shoulder

Back in my cooking school days, I never shied away from breaking down large pieces of meat.  Today, as I do not work in a restaurant kitchen, I make do like most people and have the butcher do the hard work for me.

But I miss it.  I dare say that working with the whole animal, whether its pig, cow, or chicken, gives me more respect for the food I eat.  It is not just filet medallions from the meat case- it is a cut from a tubular piece of beef, part of the tenderloin that runs along both sides of the cow’s spine.  Understanding where the filet comes from on the cow it is easy for me to see how the meat is so tender and so valuable- it is the part of the cow does not get much of a workout.

Lard rendering in crockpot

It was great fun for me last week then to work with some parts of a pig I don’t get much time with- like pig skin and back fat. About 18 months ago, some friends in rural Massachusetts bought two piglets to raise on their mini farm- Sir Hamsalot and YouBaconMeCrazy.  Over the next few months those piglets became full grown swine, and those swine became a freezer full of pig parts the couple has been slowly making their way through ever since.

Good lard is a treat.  Sir Hamsalot, raised on a diet of pumpkins and corn, has some really tasty fat.  To render the lard I removed the skin, cut the fat into chunks and then added them a few at a time to a hot crockpot.  Over the next couple of hours, the pile dissolved into a luscious amber liquid.  Strained and poured off into glass jars, my friends and I will have lard to work with for months to come.

Still warm rendered lard

Working the pig skin was more difficult than I imagined, but as long as it was there, I had to give pork rinds a try.  Using a few recipes as reference, I tried to cut down the three-day process recommended by the blogs into a one-day marathon.  The skin was boiled in a pot, cooled in a freezer, and scraped clean off the remaining fat.  After letting it dry out for a couple hours I cut the skin into squares and heated up some oil for frying.  The result? Crunchy, slightly chewy pig snack.  Not really my cup of tea but hey, not everyday uncooked pig skin comes my way.

A partial rack of spareribs got the appetizer treatment one night.  Slipped into a shallow pan with a spicy-sweet Asian inspired sauce and some water, they came out tender and intensely flavorful.

Pig Skin getting ready to fry

The highlight of the great pig experiment was roasting the pork shoulder on my last night with the friends at their home.  Twenty-four hours before cooking time, I covered the shoulder with a marinade comprised of things I scavenged from their refrigerator: onion, garlic, orange juice, lime juice, honey, and pickled jalapenos.  About four and a half hours before dinnertime, I transferred the shoulder to a roasting pan fat side up along with the marinade and enough water to come about an inch up the side of the meat.  A sort of cheaters pernil, the Puerto Rican classic pork dish, the beast emerged from the oven dark, pink, fat oozing, and so tender it could be eaten with a fork.

Sir Hamsalot’s shoulder was the best pork I’ve ever had.  From where he lived happy days eating pumpkins and playing in the mud to the table on which he was eventually served, there lies a distance of no more than 100 feet. A happy ending to a very piggy tale. 

Pernil-Style Pork Shoulder

Time: 24 hours

Yield: 6 servings

5 lb pork shoulder

1 ½ cup orange juice

½ cup lime juice

1 medium onion

4 cloves garlic

¼ cup honey

3 T. chopped pickled jalapenos

1 tsp. ground black pepper

Salt

Pepper

Place pork shoulder in a dish or bowl that is a snug fit with just a bit of space on all sides for the marinade.  In a separate bowl, mix orange and lime juice with the honey.  Thinly slice onion and chop garlic.  Mix in with juice mixture, jalapenos, and black pepper.  Pour the marinade over the pork.  Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate over night.  About 4.5 hours before dinnertime, remove the pork from the refrigerator and let it rest at room temperature for half an hour.  Preheat oven to 400°F. Transfer pork to a slightly larger roasting pan, preferably one where it will fit with a lid on (like a Dutch oven).  Season the pork with salt and pepper on all sides.  Add the marinade to the roasting dish along with enough water to so the liquid comes about 1 inch up the side.  Place pork in the hot oven uncovered for 20 minutes.  Reduce heat to 350°F, place a lid (or foil) on the roasting pan and cook for about 3 hours.  After 3 hours, remove the lid or foil.  Increase heat to 400°F and cook for another 20 minutes.  Top of the pork should have a nice dark crust and the fat should be unctuous at this point.  Remove pork to a cutting board and let rest for 15 minutes before slicing and serving.

Amy Powell is a food and travel writer based in New York City. She is a graduate of Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration and the French Culinary Institute. Follow her on Twitter @amymariepowell

America’s Favorite Bird Meets America’s Favorite Sandwich

Just in time for Thanksgiving, a new way to look at this season’s iconic bird: ground up and on a bun.  If the hamburger is the quintessential American food, then substituting our country’s most symbolic edible bird for the beef perhaps makes the turkey burger even more patriotic than a McDonald’s quarter pounder.

This is not to mention the health benefits of switching out lean poultry for high fat ground beef.  Our nation certainly doesn’t need to get any wider so rejiggering one of our favorite foods to be less fattening couldn’t hurt. 

Eating turkey burgers out at restaurants, however, is not easy.  Finding one that doesn’t taste like rubber and freezer burn (see my column Turkey Burger on the Brain) is even harder.

And making them at home requires a little more effort than the typical beef burger.  But the extra effort will yield healthy and flavorful results.  Here are some tips for making this king of all bird burgers at home.

1. Go Dark:  it is tempting to think as long as you are making a lower fat burger with the use of ground turkey in lieu of beef, to go as low fat as possible with all white meat ground turkey.  Big mistake.  The flavor, and a bit more fat, is in the dark meat.  Standard ground turkey is usually a combination of white and dark.  Go with that.  The flavor is worth the few extra calories.

2. Bind: A true beef burger has no binders, relying instead on a high fat content (up to 30%) to hold the shape of the patty together.  Lower in fat, turkey burgers lack the natural binder to keep it together.  A bit like a meatball, turkey burgers benefit from a bit of moisture-retaining starch, like breadcrumbs, and some egg as the glue to keep it all in place.

3. Low and Slow: A waitress once asked me how I wanted my turkey burger cooked.  Unless you want that burger with a side of salmonella, I told her, I’d suggest you cook the turkey burger all the way through.  To do that without drying it out, I’ll cook the burger in a heavy pan over a medium heat.  Starting out I’ll keep a lid on the burgers to speed up the process, then remove the lid toward the end to brown the burger on both sides.  The whole process takes a bit longer than a beef burger- about 10 to 12 minutes- but the juicy results are worth it.

4. Compliment with Condiments:  The blue cheese, gorgonzola, and sharp cheddar that work so well with richer beef burgers have a tendency to overwhelm turkey.  Milder cheeses like provolone, swiss, and jack make a fine topping.  And as long as you are keeping it healthy, try out a range of vegetables from heirloom tomatoes, to sprouts, to pickled shredded carrots.  Sauces from flavored mustard to pesto also make a fine dressing for a different take on a special bird.

Basic Turkey Burger

Serves: 3

Time: 20 minutes

1.25 lb ground dark meat turkey (size of average store bought package)

1 egg, lightly beaten

1/3 cup breadcrumbs

salt

Pepper

2 T. vegetable oil

3 Buns

In a medium bowl, mix ground turkey, egg, and breadcrumbs with a bit of salt and pepper.  Heat oil in a large heavy sauté pan over medium heat.  Place burgers side by side being careful not to overcrowd the pan.  Cover with a lid and cook for about 6 minutes, flipping once half way through.  Remove lid and cook for another 4-6 minutes until burgers are cooked through, turning once more to properly brown both sides.  When done, remove to a platter and let rest while toasting the buns.  Toast buns in the same pan as the turkey burgers cut side down.  Serve immediately. 

VARIATIONS

South of the Border

Mix-in: 1 chopped canned chipotle pepper and 1 tablespoon of adobo from the peppers with the ground turkey.

Top: Top burger with jack cheese and sliced avocado.

Thanksgiving

Mix-in: ½ tsp ground sage with the ground turkey.

Top: Top burger with cranberry sauce and sautéed winter greens, such as collard or chard.

Healthy California

Top: Top burger with sprouts, pea shoots, or microgreens, a slice of heirloom tomato, and honey mustard. 

Amy Powell is a food and travel writer based in New York City. She is a graduate of Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration and the French Culinary Institute. Follow her on Twitter @amymariepowell

Sardinia by Way of Fregula

Prepped clams and fregula

 Oh Sardinia.  How I dream of you.  Well, mostly I dream of your food.

Since no round trip tickets from JFK to Sardinia appear to be falling from the sky, I decided to bring Sardinia to me last week.  Girlfriends coming over for dinner and my clam-hating boyfriend out of town for work, a warming dish of saffron infused fregula with clams and chorizo seemed in order.

Fregula, though the product of a technically Italian country, owes a heavy debt to its neighbors on the African continent.  A tiny semolina based pasta, fregula is essentially a larger, toasted version of couscous, a staple of may North African diets. 

An island province, Sardinia works seafood and meat into fregula much the way Spaniards add combinations of land and sea to rice in paella. 

Fregula with chorizo and clams.  Brussels sprouts and winter squash.

For the purposes of my girls night dinner, I prepped the clams in advance.  After steaming open the clams in some white wine, I shucked about two thirds, reserving the rest still in their shell for a more decorative look.  The clam and wine broth was strained through some cheesecloth and reserved for cooking with the pasta later. 

When the girls arrived I browned some crumbled chorizo and set it to to the side, toasting the fregula in the sausage drippings.  To the clam juice I added chicken broth and a pinch of saffron, setting the pot of broth to warm up over the stove.  Slowly, like making risotto, I added broth bit by bit, allowing the liquid to absorb while I went.  Fifteen minutes later, with the fregula al dente, back into the pot went the clams, chorizo, and a handful of chopped parsley. 

It was the sort of dish, light and fragrant, perfect for a girls’ night in of drinking exotic white wine and dreaming of our next vacation. 

Fregula with Clams and Chorizo

Time: 40 minutes

Yield: 4 servings

2 lb. manila clams

½ c. dry white wine

2 links chorizo sausage (about ½ lb.)
2 cloves garlic

3 c. chicken broth

1 pinch saffron

1 c. fregula

2 Roma tomatoes

1 handful flat leaf parsley

salt and pepper

Rinse clams in a colander under cold running water to remove grit.  Place in a pot with the white wine.  Bring the clams and wine to a simmer and steam until clams all open up, about 6-8 minutes.  Remove clams from the broth with a slotted spoon.  Shuck about 2/3 of the clams, discarding the shells.  Reserve the other third with the shells and clams intact.  Strain the clam broth through cheesecloth or a damp paper towel.  Return the strained clam broth to a medium pot.  Stir chicken broth and saffron into the clam broth.  Bring the broth mixture to a boil then reduce to a simmer over very low heat, keeping warm for later use. 

Remove sausage from casing.  In a large pot, brown sausage, breaking up with a spoon until it is all cooked through and crumbled.  Remove sausage and set aside.  Drain off and discard all drippings but two tablespoons.  Mince garlic.  Saute garlic in the sausage drippings over a medium flavor for about two minutes, until soft.  Add the fregula to the pan and toast in the sausage drippings for several minutes.  Dice tomatoes.  Add tomatoes and ½ cup of the warm broth to the fregula stirring while broth absorbs.  Keeping the pan over medium heat, add broth to the fregula ½ cup at a time, only adding more after last addition has absorbed.  Continue on in this manner for 15-20 minutes, until fregula is chewy but not hard. 

Chop parsley.  Stir clams, both in the shell and out, plus chorizo into the cooked fregula with a little additional broth (fregula should be moist but not quite soupy).  Remove from heat after two minutes.  Stir in chopped parsley.  Season with salt and pepper to desired taste.

Amy Powell is a food and travel writer based in New York City. She is a graduate of Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration and the French Culinary Institute. Follow her on Twitter @amymariepowell

All Roads Lead to Sardinia

January 29, 2011.  That is the day I fell in love with Sardinian food.  And I was nowhere near the Italian island that is as physically close to Tunisia as it is to Rome.  I was in San Francisco.

I had been hearing about the small family owned La Ciccia for sometime.  Perhaps it was the location, in the far reaches of San Francisco’s Noe Valley, which kept me from going sooner.  John’s birthday seemed a good excuse to try something new and make the trek across town. 

Lorella Degan, the wife half of the husband-wife team behind the restaurant, ushered us into the small converted house space with the intimacy and warmth of a host who had known us for years, even though we just met.  Through the tiny window behind an equally tiny bar, Massimiliano Conti, the husband, was feverishly working the stove. 

There was no need to dally over food selection, the menu is among the smallest out there when it comes to Italian restaurants.  Five appetizers, four pastas, four mains, two pizzas, a couple of sides, plus one or two specials are all you ever have to choose from.  Flipping the large single sheet menu over it became clear why a small selection of food requires such a physically huge menu- on the back in type so small it almost requires a magnifying glass are over 180 wines from all across Italy. 

That night was my fist experience with Sardinian classics like spaghetti bottarga- pasta tossed with olive oil, breadcrumbs, and dried mullet roe, the “caviar of Sardinia”.  Fregula, a Sardinian version of couscous, comes in a potent sauce of tomato, sea urchin and tuna heart.  Malloreddus, a semolina based gnocchetti, arrives bathed in a seductively rich pork ragu and aged Pecorino. 

Since that first night I can’t seem to get enough.  On a holiday at the Four Seasons Maldives last summer, John and I were giddy with excitement when the menu at the Italian restaurant, Blu, offered fregula and a salad with bottarga- specialties of the Sardinia born chef.  We order Sardinian wines when we find them at generic Italian restaurants and wine bars.  And I scour Italian markets, bringing home the dried pastas and aged Pecorino that are hallmarks of this special island. 

As the saying goes, all roads lead to Rome.  But for my personal quest for authentic, regional Italian, these days I’m partial to boats- the kind that cruise right past Rome on their way to the beautiful beaches and fascinating cuisine of Sardinia.   

Coming up Wednesday, cooking fregula at home.

Amy Powell is a food and travel writer based in New York City. She is a graduate of Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration and the French Culinary Institute. Follow her on Twitter @amymariepowell