Rabbit, pickles, tesa, and more

Although I'm not particularly religious and certainly don't follow Christian holidays I do enjoy using them as an excuse to cook an awesome meal.  With Easter earlier this month I did just that.  Jessica and I decided to make a feast of sorts from the Kokkari, which is a pretty amazing Greek restaurant in San Francisco.  Feeling adventurous and wanting to cook a themed meal with something we never had cooked with before we settled upon rabbit.  Of course we didn't realize the irony behind cooking a rabbit on Easter until we planned the whole.  This wasn't really thought through before we bought it since it inevitably was put upon me to break it down.  Into individual pieces.  And then take off the meat.  Did I mention that it was a cute little rabbit?  But, always wanting to master special techniques in the kitchen, such as butchering, I took one for the team.  It proved a lot more difficult than I thought it would be.  I've broken down a couple of chickens before, which are fairly easy especially with the number of helpful guides online (thank you YouTube for telling me how to de-bone a lamb leg for Thanksgiving!).  However, a rabbit is a lot smaller making things more difficult (maybe I shouldn't go into pediatric surgery...) and has a thin layer of "silver skin" surrounding its meat that needs to be removed before cooking.  But, after about an hour it was all done and I was quickly looking forward to trying out another Greek rabbit recipe that involved braising, which does not involve taking the meat off the bone...that I did here on accident.  I also need to try it out before Jessica gets two dwarf lionhead rabbits that I will feel too guilty cooking their cousin in front of them.   

I also got the chance to try out some new pickles that had some Mediterranean  flavors.  I chose some vegetables that were available at the farmers market: Persian cucumber, cauliflower, and carrots.  The brine was simply 2 cups: 1 cup: 1 tbls: 1 tbls white wine vinegar, water, salt, and sugar.  Then the spices were your basic dill, garlic, peppercorns, bay leaves, mustard seeds, fennel seeds, and the new to me Greek oregano.  These were heated up to dissolve and poured over the vegetables.  I think these pickles turned out really well after sitting in the fridge for 3 days and I'll definitely be making them again!  I haven't played around with oregano (let alone Greek oregano) or white wine vinegar in a pickle yet so these were a nice change. 

The rest of the meal was roasted/fried potatoes with lemon, spicy feta dip, flat bread, brown butter orzo, watermelon feta salad, and grilled rabbit.  

Tesa update: I think this turned out really well considering it was my first time curing a piece of meat!  I'm not entirely confident the cure penetrated all the way to the center of the meat, which it is supposed to do.  Having a class or instructor would be handy since I could be told first hand what to look for.  We've mostly been using it to fry and then through some vegetables in the pan with it.  I think it would be really great in carbonara or a base for bolognese!  After making this at home I definitely want to try to cure some more things since it was so fun and nice to make something at home that you usually have to buy in a specialty store - I just need an environment (i.e. wine fridge) that is nurturing and safe for curing, which a LA apartment definitely is not.  

Tesa

Ah, pork.

More specifically: ah, pork belly. This cut of meat from the pig offers itself perfectly to curing whether it is bacon, pancetta, or, as in here, tesa. While bacon is often, though not always, smoked both pancetta and tesa are unsmoked pork belly. Tesa differs from pancetta in that it is not rolled up and remains flat during curing, which gives it its name which means "extended".

Ready for the refrigerator

Tesa is a salt cured pork belly. The purpose of curing any meat, whether it is fermented or salted, is to prevent it from spoiling, which was particularly useful before refrigeration. Here, salt is used as preservative that essentially enhances dehydration of the meat. Microorganisms love water and most need it to grow thus by speeding up dehydration one is preventing those microorganisms from taking over. Most cured meats also need nitrate in order to be correctly preserved, though. This often comes in the form of what is called "Insta Cure no. 1", which is a mixture of salt and sodium nitrate. It is an effective inhibitor of bacterial growth (including the infamous botulism), but also changes the flavor and color of the meat. Nitrate is converted by bacteria (not bad) in the meat to nitrite that can then react with myoglobin giving cured meat the distinct color we associate with it.

Curing is quite the precise process - requires an accurate scale

I followed the recipe in Paul Bertolli's "Cooking by Hand". The seasonings called for include red pepper flakes, juniper berries, allspice berries, black peppercorns, cloves, and nutmeg. Wine is used to help encourage the salt rub to enter the meat. I was excited when I found this recipe because you only needed a refrigerator that was at least below 40 degrees. Many cured meats require a precise temperature and humidity range for the fermentation and curing process, which calls for a specialty curing chamber or, if you're lucky, a basement with the right conditions. All I needed to do was rub the salt with the spices over the pork belly, sprinkle some wine on it, and leave it in the fridge for 7-14 days until the salt has penetrated to the center of the belly.

Serious nutmeg grating concentration

Tesa is great in all the applications that you usually associate with bacon and pancetta: building sauces, fried by itself, sandwiches, and lardons in salads.


We'll see how it turns out soon!

Tomato chili jam and more

After taking an exam this week I couldn't think of a better activity to wind down with than dicing cups upon cups of ginger, garlic, and scallions along with making some tomato chili jam. I think one thing I'm jealous of restaurants is that they always have sauces or bases to dishes that they can quickly throw together. I realize there are only two people living in this small apartment, but I can dream of having that can't I? Well, the next best thing is for me to whip up a a batch each of fish sauce vinaigrette, ginger-scallion oil, and octo vinaigrette from the Momofuku cookbook, which I've all made before. I love having these sauces around to just quickly throw on something.

I also got a chance to try out a recipe for Jess' place: tomato chili jam. Pretty much exactly what it sounds like and is amazing. We've been enjoying it on some bread with goat cheese or just on the bread alone. I'm sure it'd also go well with some grilled meat!