Things I do while drinking beer

Chasing Wok Hei

2012-01-30T03:21:00.000-08:00

Searching for a specific result is usually a lot harder when you actually don't realize what it is you're looking for. Over the last 15 years I've owned a few woks of different types, cast-iron, non-stick, carbon steel, but I've never achieved that "take-away" smokey taste of a proper stir-fry. For a long time I thought it was simply due to some unknown ingredient in the food that I didn't have, later on I learned that it's the high heat of gas burner that creates the aroma and taste. So when our new house came with a gas stove with a wok burner, I was happy. But after a lot of attempts, I still didn't cook something I hadn't previously done in a flat bottomed wok on an electrical stove...

Glorified noodle boiler.

One day when we picked up some chinese take-away, we asked the owner about this aroma, and he said that it was due to the high heat from the gas burner. "Yeah, yeah, got one of those" I said. "No, you don't," was the answer and he invited us into his kitchen. "Behold!", he said and started the Jet Fighter that he had somehow buried underneath his kitchen. The flames reached up to eye level and were most impressive. "I concur", I said, full of wok burner envy.

Cue a few months later, having some friends around, I mentioned during apéritif my distinct lack of a proper wok burner, "I have a spare that you can have," was the answer. Not, "I have one", but "I have two", and I could have one of them. Happiness happening.

Cast iron happiness.

Unfortunately, still after a few attempts I didn't achieve my goal and I knew that I still was missing something. Doing some more searching on the net brought up the term "wok hay/hei", which can be translated into "breath of the wok", and this is the technical term of the aroma I've been searching for. To achieve this, you not only need the high heat, you also need a well seasoned wok as well, meaning that you have to build up layers of burned oil in the wok, so that the inside of it is smooth as silk and black like a proverb. The initial seasoing is done by simply heating oil in the wok and then let it cool, but to reach Wok Hei, you need to actually cook in the wok, a lot.

Wok in progress

So fingers crossed that I achieve my goal before we get tired of stir-fry.

Making biltong

2011-09-18T02:40:00.000-07:00

This was my first foray into curing and drying meats, but it's something that I've wanted to do for a long time. I can't remember the first time that I tasted biltong, but I do know that I've always liked it. During the last year or so I've also had this nagging feeling that, "I can do this", and when I recently received a book from my SA friend Jennie called "Make you own Bilton and Droewors", it was time to step up.

I have to say that the book might have been a little more detailed, assuming that it's geared towards people who would like to make biltong for the first time at home. Thus, it might be a bit excessive in the included salt/spice charts to use 25 kgs and 50 kgs of meat as example weights. Either that or the 0.7 kgs of meat that I used is below consideration. "To make biltong, take one cow..."

The procedure described is first to salt and spice the meat and leave it overnight, and then in the morning, quickly dip it in a water/vinegar mix and then hang it up to dry. Easy enough, until you look on the internet, where everybody else bastes the meat in a vinegar/tabasco/Worcestershire sauce and then salts and spice the meat and leave it overnight before hanging it up to dry. After careful consideration (Tabasco? Hell yeah!) I went for the latter way of doing it.

Select pieces of cow.

I got some faux file from the supermarket, slightly less than 25 kgs, sliced it up and prepared the spice mix.

1 part salt.
1/2 part sugar.
1/2 part crushed coriander seeds.
A small amount of bicarbonate.
A healthy dose of chili powder.

Faux file and faux Tabasco.

I mixed two vinegar solutions, one with Worcestershire sauce and one with Tabasco-ish. I basted the meat with the vinegar solutions and dusted it with the spice mix and left it in the fridge overnight.

Spice em up!

To dry the biltong, people used to hang the meat from the rafters of their houses and let it airdry over time. Most people now uses a biltong box, which in its simplest form is a cardboard box with a lightbulb in it, trusting convection to create the airflow that dries the meat. Living in France, I used a wooden winecrate.

Yummyness in a box.

Hung the meat in the box and let the light do its magic. Normaly should this process take about 3-4 days, so I was rather surprised that it was already done the day after, but probably due to not useing a whole cow, the process took a bit shorter time.

I made this!

So, "I can do this"? Yep. Tasted just like the shop bought variant, although I was a bit surprised that there wasn't any hotness to it, considering the amount of Tabaco and chili powder used, but next time... :)

Pulled Pork Experiments

2011-09-12T03:55:00.000-07:00

The last time I smoked a pork shoulder, I finished the post with "But I'm not sure that it was 8.5 hours good though..." I've meant to do some more experimenting around that, since I suspected that there's more to it than I did in my initial attempts. So I did some searching and found two recipies that I wanted to try, one more lowkey and the other a bit extra. Perfect.

I mixed a batch of liquid that I injected into the pork and then let it marinate over night.

Needs moar garlic!

Shoulder #1 Marinade:
3/4 dl Apple Juice
1/2 dl Water
1/2 dl Sugar
1/4 dl Salt
2 tbs Worcestershire sauce

Shoulder #2 Marinade:
2 dl Coca Cola
1 dl Jack Daniels
1 dl Worcestershire sauce
1 tbs Cider Vinegar
6 chopped garlic cloves
1 tbs Tabasco
1 tbs Celeri Salt

The perfect tool for experiments.

I took them out of the marinate in the morning and dried them off and rubbed them with spices.

Shoulder #1 Spice Rub:
3/4 dl Sugar
1/2 dl Paprika Powder
1/3 dl Garlic Powder
1/3 dl Salt
1 tbs Chili Powder
1 tbs Cumin
1 tbs Black Pepper powder.

Shoulder #2 Spice Rub:
Galena Street rub from Penzeys (Thanks Magnus for shopping).

Then onto the smoker and once again injected with the marinades. The last time it took 8.5 hours to reach my target of an internal temperature of 95°C and this time it went a bit quicker. One shoulder was done after 7 hours and the other after 7.5 hours. Wrapped them in tinfoil and let them rest for an hour to let the juices redistribute themselves in the meat. Grab two forks, and if you've done it right, the pulling of the pork will go very easy.

Toothpick for identification.

The last time I figured that I missed a suitable sauce to use with the pulled pork, so the following was used:

2 dl Ketchup
1.5 dl Coca Cola
1 dl Jack Daniels
1/4 dl Tabasco
2 tbs Honey
1 tbs Soy sauce
Salt + Pepper

I have to admit that I was a tad bit sceptic when mixing it, but the result was amazing. A two punch taste, the initial with flavour and a second hit from the Tabasco. Great stuff, will be used a lot in the future.

Very, very tasty.

Serve it all in a bun and slather it with the sauce. Stuff of legends. The JD & Coke shoulder tasted amazing while the more normal one had a better smoke flavour, but still tasted great.

Well worth the time in the smoker. :)

Deboned chicken with mozzarella and tomato.

2011-07-27T13:24:00.000-07:00

I saw an interesting video on youtube recently (video), some french guy showed how to debone a chicken and that looked really nice. So I though I would give it a go. In the video he says it should take about a minute to debone a chicken, and I think I did rather good, it took me around two beers, which is rather quick for a newbie.

What do you call a spineless and gutless chicken? A chicken chicken?

Having removed all the non-meat parts, I added a mix of tomato, mozzarella, basil and chili, and trussed it up. In French they call this a "saucisse poulet", i.e. a chicken sausage, which is rather fitting.

I've been to TG...

In the barbecue and half an hour later it was ready. Even the "BBQ cat" showed up rather quickly which I take as a good sign, and yes, it was very good.

Chickenloaf?

Might have to use a stronger filling and maybe let it marinade from the inside for a bit longer, but we're onto something here...

Smoking a pork shoulder

2011-07-18T04:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my second attempt at smoking a pork shoulder in order to make pulled pork. My first attempt was about a month ago and that took a bit longer than expected, meaning that after 10 hours in the BBQ the meat was still not done, but I was, since it was 2 AM and bed called. This time around I planned it better, so the meat went in the BBQ at noon.

Using the Minion method for the coal fire.

The shoulder was rubbed in a simple mixture of salt, pepper, sugar, dried bell pepper and chili pepper. Normally I slather the meat in mustard first, which helps the rub to stick better, but since this actually doesn't add any flavour to the final product and only makes it all a lot messier, I skipped that this time around. Wrap it all in cling film and leave it in the fridge for a few hours.

When smoking a pork shoulder, the time it takes can be deceiving. My two attempts have used a shoulder weighing in at 1.5 kgs, so it's quite a small packet but it will still need lots of hours in the barbecue to reach the wanted temperature. The reason for this is called the temperature plateau, which is when the internal temperature of the shoulder simply stops rising, and might even drop a few degrees, and is thought to be due to a conversion process where tough collagen turns into soft gelatin, which can take a couple of hours.


Everybody plots graphs while barbecuing, right?!

Due to that, I cooked at a higher temperature this time (150°C) compared to last time (125°C) in order to speed up the cooking time a bit.That might of course have an impact on the end result, but I rather do that and have a baseline to compare to in the future.

8.5 hours later.

This time around it took 8.5 hours to reach the wanted internal temperature of 94°C, so the shoulder was wrapped in tinfoil in order to let it rest for an hour so that the moisture in the meat could redistribute through out the meat.

A nice red hue due to the smoke.

Use two forks and work those forearm muscles by pulling the pork to shreds. If cooking a larger or multiple shoulders, there are actually attachements to your power drill to do this process, since it can be rather strenuous work.

Ready for consumption.

So was it any good then? It was indeed and had a nice smokey flavour, but I would like it to be a tad bit more moist next time, so I might have another go at a lower temperature. But I'm not sure that it was 8.5 hours good though...

2011-04-09T12:04:00.000-07:00

Smoked my first bowl of the season today; "Peterson Connoisseur's Choice", which made me realize that I need to do this more often. To be fair I don't get too much taste out of the actual smoking, but the whole ritual around it really puts me in a relaxed state. The filling, the tampering and the lighting, all major parts of the Art of pipe smoking. Once that's done, you need to keep the pipe going as well, and it's not as simple as fire and forget. If it was, it wouldn't have been known as the art of pipe smoking and it probably would have been known simply as smoking. At the moment I probably have to relight five to ten time per bowl, but practice makes perfect. Pipe smoking is a bit of a contradiction, the smoke tastes the best just before the bowl goes out. Then if you relight it, it's a simple matter to get the smoke belching, but that hot smoke is not what you want, so you have to wait for that ellusive state of smoke.

The reason why I've taken up pipe smoking is that my dad used to do it, so he had a bunch of pipes lying around at home, and let's face it, pipe smoking is cool. Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, James Cagney in Citizen Kane, they maybe didn't smoke a pipe, but they sure wanted to. I just love how second hand, used pipes aren't called that, they are known as "estate pipes" and are actually worth a bit, since a new pipe is frowned upon until it has been broken in. So since my dad had half a dozen of estate pipes lying around from the sixties and seventies, I heard the call, and I haven't looked back.

Brined chicken - Part Deux

2011-02-11T11:18:00.000-08:00

Right. That was rather good, I've never had chicken meat that moist. It even beats beer-can chicken, which normally is a rather hard feat. I have to admit that it actually might be a tad bit too moist, if there is such a thing for meat.

Most moist meat.

So now starts part two of my brined chicken experiments, to actually add some flavour to the brine, since this time is was simply just salt and sugar. Imagine; honey and whisky, soy sauce and ginger, lemon grass and coriander, the possibilities are unlimited (and it's a long barbecue season here). Then on top of that add a proper rub as well, since this time I only used a rudimentary salt, pepper and dried garlic one to see how this tasted in it's original shape. Oh joy!

Brined chicken

2011-02-11T03:09:00.000-08:00

This seems to be a rather nifty idea, hence I'm testing it. Whenever we cook or barbecue meat for a long time, moisture will invariably escape making the meat less moist, i.e. Not Good™. So if we could increase the amount of liquid in the meat, that would be good, right? So to the rescue comes chemistry and osmosis, which is natures way of making sure that things are balanced and fair, or at least at a molecular level. Meat contains a level of salt water already, so if we stick the meat in a solution with a higher level of salt, osmosis kicks in and tries to balance the levels of salt between the meat and the brine, thus pulling our brine into the meat and with it any spices or flavouring that we've added.

Osmosis on a non-molecular level.

So what I've done is to stick a chicken in a brine solution overnight and this morning I took it out to let it airdry before I put it on the grill. The airdrying is to help the chicken skin to become crispy during cooking, since smoking can easily produce a rubbery skin. There are techniques to produce a crispy skin, some involving blow torches, but for now I'll simply see what happens.

Oak smoked, whisky injected Chateaubriand

2011-02-06T10:02:00.000-08:00

The one activity I really like to do while drinking beer is barbecuing, and for a long time I've questioned if it's actually physically possible to barbecue without drinking beer, but so far I haven't found any willing subjects to test this theory. The reasons behind why I like barbecuing so much is probably because it connects with the cave man inside of me. Fire! Meat! Beer! Ugh! So today we had a very sunny afternoon, so I decided to put some Whisky injected Chateaubriand on the grill.

Food junkies only.

So this might be a good oppurtunity to mention that I like to experiment with food as well. My barbecued sallad was a hit due to it really soaks up the smoke flavour, while my Tabasco injected meat was perhaps a tad bit too strong. But Whisky injected steaks works rather well, adding a subtle flavour to the meat.

Oak smoke.

Add to that some mushrooms, pak choi, tomatoes and chili, that made up a nice afternoon meal. Life's hard.

Actually. The vegetables really soaked up way too much smoke, making them more or less too bitter to eat. The meat turned out absolutely fantastic, flavourful and perfectly cooked. So I might have to get a separate grill for those courses that needs less amount of smoke...

Computer-bothering

2011-02-03T02:19:00.000-08:00

I like building computers, I like to write up the shopping list of parts and then spend the next month comparing each item against its peers, trying to find that sweetspot between price and performance. Once satisfied and ordered, then comes the building phase which, surprisingly, I like a lot as well. Who would have thought that cable management could be that fun, right?!

Clearly in need of a new power supply fan.

If price wasn't a concern, I think that to really milk the enjoyment, I would first buy a computer with crappy parts and then slowly swap out all the parts over the next coming months. But even though I've bought proper components from the beginning, I'm still fiddling and pondering and trying to share some of the fun with the wife. "Honey, wouldn't you agree that we need a new CPU fan"? Right now I feel that I need to replace the fan inside the power supply, since it really could be more quiet. I mentioned this to the wife and I got a blank stare in return, which I've realized over the years is her body language for saying "Yes"!

We need more Coriander

2011-02-01T12:41:00.000-08:00

Until two years ago, that's a phrase that I wouldn't dream about saying. Coriander was an ethnic way of ruining good food. One year ago, I wouldn't say it either, but my mind had started to kind of include it into the "things we might have to reconsider" folder in my brain. So today my wife, who has always loved Coriander, did a lurid happy dance in my direction when I said those words while doing soup. So yes, I now love Coriander.
What I haven't decided upon is if it will improve our cooking or not. It used to be that whatever we cooked, we always thought that it could be improved by adding garlic and chili, so now we will include Coriander as well. I have to admit that popcorn wasn't improved by adding garlic, although Tabasco did. So now most of our cooking will contain those three ingredients, and while garlic and chili can sneak under the radar for some houseguests, Coriander won't. Perhaps we'll need to start having Coriander free Thursdays or something...
But it's funny how ones tastebuds can change over the years, or that you simply is a late bloomer to some tastes. So now I'm just waiting for my wife to warm to beer...

French bars

2011-01-30T06:48:00.000-08:00

I guess that the only thing that I miss with London is its pubs, which is not something that you can find in France outside the major cities. Growing up in Sweden during the 80s meant that a pub was a place where alcoholics and losers met up, but no normal people. No-one spent a Friday night in a pub unless you were really, really desperate. This all changed during the 90s when Irish pubs and better drinking establishments started to pop up and it was actually quite nice to hang out there. So living in London it naturally grew on you even more, the habit of going out for beers, or as we called it during workdays, "lunch". So living in France nowdays, there are times when you get the urge, and today was one of those days. You wake up, it's gray and cold outside and you have nothing better to do. Well, you have, but you don't feel inclined to do anything else. Our closest local is what the pubs in Sweden looked like in the 80s, and it's actually quite general for the rest of France, meaning it looks like somebody's living room. My problem with that is that the person who owns that living room has no eye for design or decoration. It's white walls, cold lightning and a distinct lack of atmosphere. But oh! theres a TV in the corner, which really makes it a whole lot better, no? So knowing that we drove to one of the villages surrounding us, and we actually managed to find a place that was open (Sundays are Closed! day in France), which actually wasn't too bad design wise (nice dark wood bar, but still hospital green walls) and it was quite full of people who managed to hide their alcoholism quite OK. As you can see our standards have sunk quite a bit, but once you do realise that you will never find a cosy pub with an open fire populated by trendy young professionals, you have to do with what you find. So we did have a very good time and now it's time for a sallad with thin slices of beef from Friday's steaks and then it's time to paint again.

Brisket #1 - Part Deux

2011-01-29T12:03:00.000-08:00

Brisket is a piece of meat that needs long cooking in fairly low temperatures. It's mostly used in stews but is apparently perfect for smoking in your barbecue, low and slow stylee. To acheive that in my Weber OTP I've cut a piece of metal that covers most of the bottom of the kettle and is then folded 90 degrees to form a pocket for the charcoal. This creates a better airflow where all the air that enters from the bottom vents is directed up through the coals and into the kettle, while still giving ample space for the meat to be cooked
indirectly.

Minion method with Oak chunks.

In order to keep the heat for such a long time (5+ hours) without refilling, I use something called the Minion Method. Fill up with unlit charcoal and a few pieces of wood to create the smoke, light a third of a chimney and pour over the unlit coals which will then slowly ignite the rest of the coals, giving you a long nice burn.

After 2.5 hours.

Since this was my first attempt at brisket, I went for something called a "high heat brisket" which means that you run the brisket in the barbecue for 2.5 hours until the meat reach a temperature of about 75 degrees Celcius. You then wrap the whole brisket in tinfoil in order to keep the juices and put it back on the grill for another two hours, until the temperature inside the meat reaches 95 - 100 degrees. Off with the brisket and wrap it in a few towels and put in in a cooler, so that the meat can rest. A normal steak should always rest for about five minutes after cooking, so a large piece of meat like this should rest for about an hour, hence the towels and eski to keep the temperature.

Less smoke ring than expected.

Finally, unwrap the brisket, dodge the wife's angry looks because the meat sauces leaked out and stained the towels, cut it up and *tada*!

A lovely meal.

Or was it? It tasted rather good, but a cheap roast in the oven also tastes rather good and it doesn't take six hours to cook. The meat looked rather dark compared to pictures I've seen, and the smoke ring (the red ring around the edges caused by the smoke) was less then expected. So I will of course try it again, after I've done more research and asked around what can be improved. As someone wrote on a BBQ forum, it took him 50 briskets until the 51st tasted like Heaven. Mine's still in Bedford...

Brisket #1

2011-01-29T04:15:00.000-08:00

Today is brisket day! It's also plastering, sanding and painting day, but that's a bit lower down on the fun-scale of things. I do love my DIY, but I've discovered that plastering probably belongs more as a separate ring of hell in Dante's Inferno than on my list of things I enjoy doing.

Not fun.

So hence the theme for today is brisket (and nothing else!). The current status is that I've rubbed it with spices, which is the same mixture as I used for my ribs, but I also gave it a thin layer of Dijon mustard so that the spice rub would stick better. I have to admit that I'm not 100% sure that my butcher cut the brisket properly, since the brisket concept seems to be more of an American cut than a French one. But if today's brisket turns out well, I'll bring more printed out pictures to the butcher next time.

Fun.

Vintage sausages

2011-01-29T03:35:00.000-08:00

We dropped by J.C. the butcher the other day and picked up a couple of steaks and my brisket, weighing in at 3 kilos. This being France we also got a nice bottle of Bordeaux wine for free, which I always consider a bonus. So this weekend will be my first experiment in barbecuing a brisket, which seems to be the holy grail of low and slow BBQ, so that will interesting. I'm still not sure if I'm going to spend X amount of hours on it and the end result will be "meh" or not, but that's why I'm doing it.

We then stopped by E & J, who are the nice old couple that we buy eggs and chickens from, and picked up two capons. I've recently read somewhere that creating capons are illegal in England nowadays, but it seems like there is a big loophole for that since you can simply import them instead. Yay! for toothless laws. Anyway, you can't visit someone and not have some snacks while you're there, and snacks make you dry in the mouth so you simply have to have some wine, and... Yep, life's hard here in France. So we sat around the table and discussed ... sausages. Yep, life's wild here in France. They put sausage after sausage on the table, all were home dried but some where only three weeks old, others were almost a year old and the pièce de résistance was a big jar filled with oil and sausages who had been submerged in there for more than two years. Comparing them all I think that the taste became wider(?) the older the sausage was, but that's probably nothing that we could tell if we didn't have all of them to compare. Seeing how much sausages, mushrooms and frozen animals they had more or less everywhere in the house, we asked them for how long they thought they would survive without going shopping. Around two years apparently. So when the war comes, we'll bring our tent.

But an interesting thing is that we've tried to explain a few times that they have so much knowledge when it comes to food, and that there are actually lots of big city people who would pay money to be able to take part in turning a live pig into lots of jars, fillets and sausages, but for them it's like "everybody knows how to do that, so why would anyone be interested"? But fingers crossed that we've managed to talk our way into the next time they get a pig.

Having a local butcher

2011-01-27T04:33:00.000-08:00

When ever you read a meat related cookbook, you'll notice that they always recommend you to find a proper butcher, one of those that actually enjoys his work and finds joy in discussing meat with his customers. Finally are we actually part of those lucky few that have one, ours is Jean-Christophe Sansuc in St Martory, and yesterday we put him to the test.
I've been reading Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Meat book and there was a chapter about the local butcher, so we cunningly applied that wisdom on Mr Sansuc and he started to explain that all of his meat comes from local farmers (slaughtered in St Gaudens), he pointed on the wall where he displayed the birth certificates from each of the animals that he sold meat from (the cows are of the Limousin breed) and he went on about how to cook the different parts of the animal. Of course, he explained, some of the sausages are not local due to the AOC, i.e. you can't sell locally made Champagne outside of Champagne. In the end he ticked all of the boxes and we are confident that Hugh would approve of J-C Sansuc.

Ribs. In the barbecue. For five hours.

2011-01-26T15:25:00.000-08:00

I have a relationship with cooking, although I guess that most people do. But my interest is based on something I haven't really defined yet, so my solution is to drink beer while I ponder that question. What I do know is that I like barbecueing and that I'm slowly working my way up the ladder of great meat on the fire with even better results. I got my first proper grill (Weber OTP 22.5" for those in the know) last year and suddenly realized how I've been doing it wrong all those other years. Indirect is the answer and if you have a question, there are websites for that. Now we had some friends over for the weekend and I was told that one of them really liked ribs. Haha! I thought and did the following (although the pictures are from another occasion).

1. Clean up the ribs, remove excess fat and membranes to allow the rub to get into the meat. Proper pincers helps with the membranes and it's always cool to include your toolbox when cooking.
2. Do a mix of salt, black pepper, sugar, chili powder, dried garlic, bell pepper powder and Caynenne pepper and rub that into the meat.
3. Get the BBQ going with some Oak wood pieces among the charcoal, keep the temperature low around 120 degrees Celcius and on with the ribs, indirect heat. I'll do a post about this soon.

As can be seen, multilayer is the way to go. On with the lid and wait. Do not peek, just wait and keep the temperature steady.
4. After three hours, I slather the ribs with a mix of ketchup, honey and chili sauce and turn them over.
5. Another hour on and they are starting to get ready. Depending on the size of the ribs, they might need another hour but the tear test will help there. If the meat is easy to tear apart, serve and enjoy.

That redish colour around the edge is known as the smoke ring, and as the name implies, the more smoked the meat is the redder the ring around the edges.

So yes, ribs were served to our friends and yes, they were among the best ribs they've ever had. Mission accomplished.

That was probably the most complicated item so far...

2011-01-26T11:10:00.000-08:00

... the naming of this blog. Actually, that's where I most often get stuck, when I have to name something, be it in naming variables while programming or naming characters in online games, although in the latter case I usually cheat and use the same name I started using back in the mid 90s. So when I met my gaming namesake at a party, a woman named Casey, I thought it was an amusing anecdote. She on the other hand gave me a strange look. I tried to save the situation by telling her that the name came from a doll in the movie Aliens, but I can't say that it improved her fake smile. Anyway, I name thee "Things I do while drinking beer". Cheers!