Charcutepalooza is a yearlong project I’m participating in to make recipes from Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. For more information, see my introductory post.

The recipe option that immediately jumped out at me from this month’s assignment was English Pork Pie. I mean, . . . → Read More: Charcutepalooza: Empanadas de Chorizo]]>

Charcutepalooza is a yearlong project I’m participating in to make recipes from Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. For more information, see my introductory post.

The recipe option that immediately jumped out at me from this month’s assignment was English Pork Pie. I mean, pork and pie—what’s not to love?

That third word, that’s what. Taking a closer look at the recipe, I found it to be, well, too English. Which is to say, bland. The pastry crust has no salt in it at all! The pork is seasoned with a little thyme and pepper and nothing else! No wonder British food has such a bad reputation.

So I went to Spain instead. Last time I made chorizo for Charcutepalooza, it was the spicier Mexican version. This time, I looked to Ruhlman’s Spanish-style chorizo recipe, which he uses to make a dry-cured sausage. Basically, it swaps various types of chile powder and cumin for smoked paprika, AKA pimentón, my most favoritest spice.

I love pimentón and its amazing smoky flavor so much, I also incorporated it into the pastry dough, just like I do in my greens pie. It gives the finished product a gorgeous golden color, as well as a nice subtle flavor that matches the chorizo filling very well.

Just beware; this is not in any universe a light or fresh-tasting recipe. It’s heavy, a little greasy, a bit spicy, and excellent. You’re going to want to eat more than one empanada in a sitting. This is a bad idea. You should probably serve these with a salad, one topped with a vinegary dressing. Nadria found this theoretically Spanish salad from a restaurant at Disneyland, which was tasty if rather labor-intensive and not particularly Spanish. (The recipe is quite adaptable: In order to use what we had on hand, we subbed rice wine vinegar, cheddar cheese, pears, and a mixture of pistachios and pecans.)

You could also make lots of tiny empanadas—15 to 20 instead of the six in the recipe—for an elegant New Years’ Eve-type appetizer. But don’t serve ‘em cold. That’s much too English.

Empanadas de Chorizo

Dough:
8 oz. all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. smoked paprika
4 oz. (1 stick) cold butter, cut into pieces
4 oz. cold lard, cut into pieces
1 egg
1 tsp. milk

Filling:
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped, divided
12 oz. pork shoulder, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. smoked paprika
2 tsp. chile powder
1/4 to 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/4 cup chicken stock

Make the dough: Stir together the flour, salt, and smoked paprika in a medium bowl. Rub the butter and lard into the flour mixture with your fingers until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Beat the egg in a measuring cup, pour half of it into a small bowl, and set aside. Add enough water to the measuring cup to make 1/2 cup and stir to combine. Add the egg-and-water mixture to the flour mixture and stir until the dough just comes together. Shape into a disc, wrap with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Stir the milk into the reserved half of an egg and refrigerate.

Make the filling: Heat a small pan over medium heat. Add the onion, 1 garlic clove, and a small amount of oil. Cook until the onion is soft but not browned, about 4 minutes. Scrape into a small bowl and refrigerate until cold. Combine the remaining garlic clove, pork, salt, smoked paprika, chile powder, and cayenne pepper in a small bowl. Grind the mixture through the small plate into the bowl of an electric mixer. Add the cooked onion mixture and mix on low speed with the paddle attachment for about 1 minute. Add the chicken stock and mix until combined, about 1 minute more. Cover and refrigerate until very cold, at least 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 425°. Divide the chilled dough into 6 equal pieces and roll each out on a well-floured surface into a rough circle 5 to 6 inches in diameter. Spoon one-sixth of the meat mixture (about 2.5 oz.) onto one half of each dough round and shape into a crescent shape, leaving about 1/2-inch border. Fold the dough rounds in half over the filling and crimp the edges to seal. Place the empanadas on a baking sheet lined with a Silpat or parchment paper. (At this point, you can refrigerate the empanadas for an hour or two—this will help keep the fat in the dough from leaking out during baking.) Brush the empanadas all over with the egg-milk mixture and cut three small slashes in the top of each one. Bake for 15 minutes, reduce the oven temperature to 325°, and bake until the filling reaches an internal temperature of 165°, about 15 minutes more.

If you do much reading of this blog, you know I love to make things from scratch. Frozen, canned, pre-mixed stuff all makes me, well, uneasy.

So it should come as no surprise that my Labor Day barbecue yesterday featured homemade hot dogs and . . . → Read More: Cast-Iron-Skillet Baked Beans]]>

If you do much reading of this blog, you know I love to make things from scratch. Frozen, canned, pre-mixed stuff all makes me, well, uneasy.

So it should come as no surprise that my Labor Day barbecue yesterday featured homemade hot dogs and sauerkraut.

But one thing I’ve never really been able to adequately recreate on a DIY basis is barbecue sauce. It seems like it would be a pretty simple thing—vinegar, spices, and (depending on the style) maybe some tomato paste, sugar, or mustard.

The whole idea is to adjust to your own taste—everybody’s sauce is ever-so-slightly different—so it would seem like a no-brainer, right? But every time I try a sauce on my own, or even from a recipe, it comes out not quite right. I can’t put a finger on it; it’s just missing depth, or balance, or who knows what.

So when it comes to barbecue sauce, I’m a big cheater. I just stick with the bottled stuff. (The good bottled stuff, but still.)

Anyway, for my Labor Day party, I found The Pioneer Woman’s baked-bean recipe irresistible. It’s got bacon, brown sugar, and barbecue sauce—how could you go wrong?

Of course, I did make a few DIY changes of my own.

First, for some reason, Pioneer Woman uses cans of pork-and-beans; I went instead with, well, pork (extra bacon) and beans (plain ol’ navy beans, but you could use pinto, white, really whatever you like).

Second, she sweetens with brown sugar alone; I used half brown sugar and half sorghum syrup, for a little extra mineral complexity (and Southernness) along with the sweetness.

Third, she combines barbecue sauce, vinegar, and mustard; I happened to have some Butts Sauce, a friend of mine’s creation, and used it instead of the latter two ingredients. (It’s a South Carolina-style barbecue sauce, which means it’s made of mustard and vinegar anyway, plus extra delicious spices.)

And finally, the change that seemed most obvious to me. Pioneer Woman cooks her bacon and veggies in a big cast-iron skillet and then pours everything into a baking dish to bake. Is she insane? Why go to all the trouble of dirtying such a gorgeous pan and then not serve the beans in it? Serving anything in a cast-iron skillet leads to guaranteed oohs and ahhs.

Don’t have a cast-iron skillet? Buy one.

But until you do, you can bake this in a 9×13 baking dish.

Cast-Iron-Skillet Baked Beans
Serves 10 to 12

11 strips bacon, divided
1 onion, diced
1 bell pepper, diced
1 tsp. salt
5 (15.5-oz.) cans navy or pinto beans, rinsed and drained
1 cup sweet tomato-based barbecue sauce (Western North Carolina-style)
1/2 cup mustard-based barbecue sauce (South Carolina-style), or 1/4 cup cider vinegar plus 1/4 cup Dijon mustard
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sorghum syrup

Preheat the oven to 325°.

Cut 8 of the bacon strips in half and cook in a large cast-iron skillet over medium-low heat until most of the fat has rendered out but the bacon has not started to brown, about 6 to 8 minutes. Remove from the pan and drain on a layer of paper towels.

Dice the remaining 3 bacon strips, increase the heat to medium, and cook, stirring often, until browned and crisp, about 5 minutes. Add the onion, bell pepper, and salt, and season to taste with freshly ground black pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are softened and beginning to brown, 7 to 10 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients, stir to combine, and cook until the liquid comes to a simmer.

Arrange the partially cooked bacon half-strips on top of the beans and bake for 90 minutes or until the bacon on top is crisp and the sauce is thick and sticky.

So remember Pianeta 3, the pizza joint in Mountain Brook Village that opened, oh, seven months ago? Yeah, it’s long gone. Such is the way of promising Birmingham restaurants.

But what replaced it just a couple weeks ago is the new spot I’m perhaps most excited . . . → Read More: First Taste: Ollie Irene]]>

So remember Pianeta 3, the pizza joint in Mountain Brook Village that opened, oh, seven months ago? Yeah, it’s long gone. Such is the way of promising Birmingham restaurants.

But what replaced it just a couple weeks ago is the new spot I’m perhaps most excited about, maybe since I moved here.

Ollie Irene is an honest-to-God gastropub, a kind of restaurant we didn’t have any of before but which is wildly popular in bigger cities. Basically, you take a casual, comfy British pub-style atmosphere and serve high-end cocktails and food in it. Simple enough idea, and there are lots of famous ones around the country.

And now Birmingham is home to an excellent one. Which also happens to be run by a pair of extremely nice people who have their hearts in exactly the right place. And you should check it out.

I tried the place literally on opening night (it was two weeks ago already; sorry for the delay in posting—I’m a bad blogger), and it seemed to have its shit fully together already, quite a feat in and of itself.

We started with cocktails, of course. Now, I was a bit worried on this front: When I interviewed the owners for my Magic City Post story a week and a half before opening, they hadn’t yet hired a bartender and the drinks program was still kind of up in the air.

Well, in the intervening 10 days, they managed to find a mixological prodigy. According to the restaurant’s blog, the guy’s name is Zak, and that’s all I know about him, but the drink at left that he created is incredible.

It’s called the Tallulah. Y’know that weird Southern tradition of dumping salted peanuts into Coca-Cola? It’s that in drink form. Zak makes a peanut orgeat from scratch (usually made from almonds and used in tiki drinks, orgeat is a nut-flavored syrup) and adds it to Jack Daniel’s and Coke. Sounds simple enough, but words can’t really describe how delicious this cocktail is. Peanut is no subtle hint; it’s the main flavor of the cocktail, accented by caramel sweetness from both the cola and the whiskey. Ah-maz-ing.

Luckily, I went to Ollie Irene with a big group, so I got to try a bunch of items. We started with the ham plate, the boudin balls, and the chicken liver paté.

A plate of sliced ham is a pretty basic thing, so what really matters is the quality of the pork. This doesn’t disappoint, with an unctuous Surryano ham from Virginia (it’s a pun, get it?). The local melon helps, too.

The boudin and paté, both house-made, are definitely worth a try if you like either dish. Both come with pickled veggies—bread-and-butter cucumber for the former, cherries for the latter—plus savory mustard.

Then came entrees. For me, it was a tie for first between the catfish and the pork shoulder. The fish gets a dusting of cornmeal and a quick saute, so it’s not exactly deep-fried crunchy, but it’s still nice and crisp. It’s perfectly, perfectly seasoned and comes topped with corn, tasso ham, and lemon butter. (As I understand it, the accompaniments for the main dishes will change with the seasons, but the proteins themselves will stay the same.)

The pork is a huge chunk of shoulder meat, slow-cooked until fork-tender but not quite falling apart. It came with field peas and local peaches: The tart fruit was an ideal counterpoint to the savory meat.

A burger, topped with blue cheese, caramelized onions, and more of those bread-and-butter pickles, was very good (if perhaps a bit overpriced at $12), but the real highlight was the “pub fries” on the side. They’re more like potato wedges than fries, but they’re cooked exactly perfectly—crunchy on the outside and creamy within. They even stayed crisp after they got cold, perhaps the highest French-fry achievement possible.

The only miss I tried was the lemon-ricotta gnocchi. The pasta itself was fine—good texture, cooked well—but there was way too much lemon in it, making it unpleasantly sour. And it came with broccoli on top, which didn’t really pair well or make a lot of sense. But that’s small potatoes compared to everything else.

We were offered dessert, but everyone was too full to even attempt it. That’s on the agenda for next time, which should be very soon.

All in all, I can’t recommend Ollie Irene highly enough. Go there now, and order yourself a Tallulah!

Charcutepalooza is a yearlong project I’m participating in to make recipes from Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. For more information, see my introductory post.

Making a seafood terrine, especially this one, is an expensive proposition. Scallops, crabmeat, saffron: It’s like they picked out all . . . → Read More: Charcutepalooza: Saffron-Seafood Terrine]]>

Charcutepalooza is a yearlong project I’m participating in to make recipes from Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. For more information, see my introductory post.

Making a seafood terrine, especially this one, is an expensive proposition. Scallops, crabmeat, saffron: It’s like they picked out all the priciest items at Whole Foods. But the alternative for this month’s challenge was head cheese, and as much as I would have enjoyed doing that, Nadria made it very clear that no pigs’ heads were going to be allowed in our apartment. (Also, I have no idea where one can acquire a pig’s head in Birmingham.)

So seafood terrine it was. This is a seriously old-school dish, and everything about it reminds me of Driving Miss Daisy and ladies who lunch. But it tastes good, and it looks lovely. A platter of slices paired with a nice sauce (more on that later) make an impressive start to a fancy dinner party.

And the great thing about a seafood terrine is that it takes maybe two hours. This was the quickest Charcutepalooza project so far: No brining, no curing, no salting.

What struck me about this recipe is its texture. I made a half-recipe, which means that there’s all of one egg white to a full pound of seafood, but it comes out dense and rich and very omelet-like. The leek wrapper was also very cool: You boil the green ends of some leeks until they’re limp and use the verdant, ever-so-slightly oniony strips as the outer layer. It makes basically anything look gorgeous. I’m thinking maybe a wrapper for goat cheese-stuffed dates or perhaps tied in a bow around deviled eggs.

Having not ever really made terrine before, I was a bit trepidatious about modifying Ruhlman’s recipe. Thus the costly ingredients. Next time, I’d make this a little more Southern: Gulf shrimp instead of scallops, crawfish tails for the crabmeat, and cayenne-infused cream in place of saffron.

To go with something this rich, though, you need a luxurious sauce. I had an egg yolk left over and a pinch of saffron left in in the jar, so I immediately went to aioli. And I had a bunch of red peppers from my CSA, so roasted red pepper-saffron aioli was the obvious choice. I haven’t had the best luck making mayonnaise and mayonnaise-like substances at home: There was a terrible incident a couple years ago where my KitchenAid pulled itself off the counter, leaving a nasty gash in my kitchen floor and bending the machine’s switch. Luckily, I was able to fix the machine, and I made a valuable discovery. Mayonnaise is easier to make by hand than with an electric mixer. Really. Just pull out a whisk.

Roasted Red Pepper-Saffron Aioli

1 1/2 tsp. hot water
1/2 tsp. rice wine vinegar
1 tiny pinch saffron
2 small red bell peppers
1 egg yolk
1 clove elephant garlic (or 2 cloves regular garlic), minced and mashed into a paste
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. fresh ground black pepper
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Combine the water, vinegar, and saffron in a medium bowl and let stand for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat the broiler. Broil the peppers, turning occasionally, until skin is blackened on all sides. Place in a small bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let stand for 10 minutes.

Add the egg yolk, garlic, salt, and pepper to the saffron mixture and whisk until well combined. While whisking constantly, slowly drizzle in the oil until it is all incorporated and the mixture is thick and creamy.

Under running water, peel and seed the peppers. Puree in a food processor until smooth. Stir into the aioli mixture. Taste, and add more salt and pepper if needed.

I think food trucks have finally hit the tipping point in Birmingham. Food trends seem to get to this town about five years or so after they break in New York, LA, and San Francisco, so the timeline is about right.

I’m not sure what critical mass is for a city . . . → Read More: First Taste: Shindigs Truck]]>

I think food trucks have finally hit the tipping point in Birmingham. Food trends seem to get to this town about five years or so after they break in New York, LA, and San Francisco, so the timeline is about right.

I’m not sure what critical mass is for a city this size, but we’re creeping toward having 10 trucks out on the road, and locals are starting to get interested. There are the two taco trucks (West Valley Ave. and Tarrant), Spoonfed Grill, Cantina on Wheels, the Dreamcakes cupcake truck, and the NOLA Ice sno-ball truck. (If you know of any others, leave a comment!)

And now joining that crowd is Shindigs. A catering company started by a pair local restaurant veterans, Shindigs joined the mobile-cuisine world a couple weeks ago with the truck you see above. It’s been catering to the UAB crowd during the week, parking on 20th Street between 6th and 7th Avenue South, and heading to Railroad Park on Saturdays.

Reading Shindigs’ menu and cooking philosophy gives me foodie goosebumps: It’s committed to using local, organic produce and humanely raised meats; its burger buns are custom-baked at Continental Bakery; there’s even a truck-made veggie burger!

So I had to check it out, and picked up lunch last Friday. The food is damn promising, but some of it, especially that veggie burger, could use some work.

The menu item that most excited me was the pork-belly steamed bun. I love pork buns, and there isn’t any place in town to get a good one.

Until now. This little number is a lovely chunk of crispy pork belly topped with hoisin sauce folded into a nice, fluffy steamed-bread wrapper. It comes paired, like everything else on the menu, with a selection of house-made pickled veggies, some of which (the baby leek kimchi and jalapeños) are better than others (the garlic and tomato), but all of which are tasty.

And the whole shebang is only $2.50. Sweet.

Next came the Chadillac, Shindigs’ chicken burger. It’s two slices of grilled chicken, pounded flat, with a generous layer of country ham in between, plus cambozola cheese and a magnificent caramelized-onion-and-fig mostarda. This thing is a winner, though the mild cheese kinda gets lost among all those other strong flavors. Honestly, they coulda left the cheese out and it would have been just as good. But I’m nitpicking.

But things went downhill with Nadria’s Lower Alabama, Shindigs’ veggie burger. Nadria is something of a Birmingham-veggie-burger connoisseur, so of course she had to try this one.

You can’t tell from the photo, but the patty itself is bright red in color, so it’s obviously made with a lot of beets, plus some grains of some kind (I think I detected brown rice and possibly oats but I’m not sure). It tastes pretty good (though there’s a bit too much beet sweetness), but the real issue is the texture. The thing doesn’t hold together as a patty at all—it’s like eating a mashed-potato sandwich. And the mushy patty, combined with the (quite tasty) avocado-tarragon puree on top unfortunately leads to a soggy bun after about five minutes as well.

All of this made Nadria a sad panda. I hope the Shindigs folks work on reformulating it; they certainly have the creativity to pull it off.

We also had an order of fries, which were good if not world-changing, and came with a tasty “Not 2 Fancy” sauce. The sauce tasted like a mix of blue cheese dressing and yogurt, with maybe a tiny bit of ketchup mixed in for color. It’s interesting, and goes well with the fries, and I was glad to get something other than a foil packet of ketchup from the truck.

And in the interest of completeness, we also grabbed an order of the Elvis bread pudding. (It’s peanut butter and banana, get it?) It’s very good stuff and peanut-butter bread pudding isn’t something I’ve ever seen before—more cleverness from the Shindigs chefs. But it was cold by the time we got to it and would have been better warm. My advice if you want dessert: Eat your main course first and then come back to the truck for bread pudding.

All in all, Shindigs is everything you could want in a food truck: innovative dishes made by quality chefs from sustainable ingredients and sold for very reasonable prices. (They even take credit cards!) If the line of people in scrubs in front of the truck at 12:30 on a Friday is any indication, Shindigs won’t be Birmingham’s newest food truck for long.

Necessity is the mother of invention. The other day, Nadria asked for cinnamon rolls, one of her favorites. I didn’t want to run out to a bakery, and by the time your standard yeast-raised rolls would have been ready it would have been past lunch, so I came up with a . . . → Read More: Biscuit Cinnamon Rolls: Baking for Cheaters]]>

Necessity is the mother of invention. The other day, Nadria asked for cinnamon rolls, one of her favorites. I didn’t want to run out to a bakery, and by the time your standard yeast-raised rolls would have been ready it would have been past lunch, so I came up with a cheating solution that tasted pretty delicious.

Homemade biscuits are stupidly easy to bake, thanks to the Chicago Biscuits in Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio. (The ratio of flour to butter to liquid is 3:1:2; Chicago’s area code is 312. Get it?) And at some level, all dough is dough, right? So why not roll out some biscuit dough, stuff it with cinnamon and sugar and turn it into cinnamon rolls?

And it worked. Now, the fact is that these will never be as good as the real deal, but on the upside you could actually make them for breakfast in the morning on a weekday. Seriously: It’s maybe 10 minutes of work, plus 20 minutes of baking. Try it!

These were pretty tasty unadorned, but if you like a gooey glaze on your rolls, mix together equal parts lemon juice (or water) and powdered sugar, and drizzle on top after baking.

Biscuit Cinnamon Rolls
Makes 6 rolls

4.5 oz. AP flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
6 tbsp. sugar, divided
4 tbsp. butter, divided
3 oz. (1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp.) milk or buttermilk
2 tsp. ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 400°. Stir together the AP flour, baking powder, salt, and 2 tbsp. of the sugar in a small bowl. Cut 3 tbsp. of the butter into small pieces and cut into the flour mixture with a pastry cutter or your fingers until the mixture resembles sand. Stir in the milk or buttermilk until a dough forms.

Knead the dough for 30 seconds or so on a floured surface, and then roll into a rough rectangle about 12 by 3 inches. Melt the remaining 1 tbsp. butter and spread evenly over the dough. Stir together the cinnamon and the remaining 4 tbsp. sugar, and sprinkle evenly on top of the butter. Roll up the dough lengthwise, pinching the end to seal.

Slice the dough roll into 6 equal slices and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a Silpat. Bake for 20 minutes or until the rolls just begin to brown.

Charcutepalooza is a yearlong project I’m participating in to make recipes from Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. For more information, see my introductory post.

When you get hardcore into sausage-making, there’s all kinds of crazy equipment you need. Grinders, stuffers, casings, pink salt, and . . . → Read More: Charcutepalooza: Hot Dogs]]>

Charcutepalooza is a yearlong project I’m participating in to make recipes from Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. For more information, see my introductory post.

When you get hardcore into sausage-making, there’s all kinds of crazy equipment you need. Grinders, stuffers, casings, pink salt, and all manner of herbs and spices of which you need about a quarter of a teaspoon per recipe.

I’ve been using my trusty KitchenAid grinder attachment for both grinding and stuffing, but as I mentioned last month, the thing isn’t the most effective. So I decided to go out and buy something else, and ended up purchasing the single greatest kitchen tool in history.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the Jerky Cannon:

When you live in the Deep South, you have only one non-internet retail option for sausage-making supplies: Bass Pro Shops. These places are like enormous temples to killing animals. Imagine two Wal-Marts stacked on top of each other, except the only things they sell are fishing boats, guns, and camouflage, and you’ll have some idea of what this magnificent store is like.

Anyway, my local Bass Pro Shop had several sausage-stuffing options in the camping section, but the Jerky Cannon was the only one in my price range. (Plus, I couldn’t turn down anything with that name.) It sounds ridiculous, but it’s amazingly effective. Basically a caulking gun for meat, it features a long barrel with a plastic piston on one end. And it looks cool.

On to hot dogs. I grew up loving hot dogs. Excellent Chicago hot dogs: Vienna Beef at pretty much any greasy-spoon restaurant and franks from the now-defunct Best Kosher at home, plus occasionally the magnificent ones made by Hungarian Kosher Foods, which my grandfather would pick up as a special treat a couple times a year.

Birmingham is also famous for hot dogs, though completely different ones. Ours are made almost completely from pork and sold mostly by a small group of old Greek men, topped with chili or a thin, spicy sauce. Also good.

I learned this from this month’s project: Hot dogs are hard to make. You grind, cure for a day or two, add some spices, freeze, grind again, freeze again, run through a food processor, stuff into casings, and finally hot-smoke before you can eat the things.

I was worried stuffing the hot dogs; the color wasn’t right. More a pale peach than the bright red-brown they’re supposed to be. But then 10 minutes in the smoke-filled grill caused a magical transformation in the perfectly colored sausages you see above.

They made for a fantastic summer meal, paired with homemade pickles (using Charcuterie‘s simple recipe) and sauerkraut (using my even simpler one), yellow mustard, and fresh grilled corn on the cob. I went with a longtime favorite: Sunset‘s Honey-Chipotle Grilled Corn. You’ll wind up putting the leftover honey-chipotle butter on everything.

I didn’t expect homemade hot dogs to be exactly the same as the factory-made kind, but honestly the Charcuterie recipe makes an exact replica of the kosher dogs of my youth: The texture and flavor match my memories 100 percent.

And because I made them myself from locally raised meat, that makes these the best hot dogs I’ve ever had. Honestly. If you’re an aspiring home charcutiere, this is a great goal to reach for.

It’s July, which means my CSA is filled with far too many tomatoes. (Seriously. Even if Nadria and I both loved the things, four pounds a week is more than two people can possibly handle. If anybody out there wants some delicious heirloom tomatoes, let me know.)

But that also . . . → Read More: Eggplant Parmesan]]>  

It’s July, which means my CSA is filled with far too many tomatoes. (Seriously. Even if Nadria and I both loved the things, four pounds a week is more than two people can possibly handle. If anybody out there wants some delicious heirloom tomatoes, let me know.)

But that also means it’s eggplant season. And that means I get to make my favorite deceptively easy dish. Eggplant Parmesan is pretty much idiot-proof and takes half an hour, but it’ll blow the mind of whomever you serve it to.

A few notes on my method:

I salt the eggplant and let it drain for a little while before cooking. Received cooking wisdom says this draws out bitterness. I don’t know if that’s true, but it does seem to soften the texture, and I like my eggplant Parm crisp on the outside and kinda mushy within. You can skip it if you want.

Don’t use white-skinned eggplant for this recipe. The skin is thicker than its purple or green cousins and becomes leathery when cooked. (If you only have white, you can peel it, but I can’t vouch for that.)

The combo of panko and Parmesan cheese gives the eggplant a lovely crisp crust and browns really well. Regular breadcrumbs seem to absorb more oil, and you’ll end up with a greasier end product.

So how to serve eggplant Parm? The simplest way is on top of some cooked pasta tossed with marinara sauce (there’s a recipe in my All-Purpose Tomato Sauce post) and topped with sliced fresh basil and grated Parmesan cheese. Or you can do the same with pesto instead. But the most decadent way to serve it is this: Toss two servings of cooked long pasta (linguine, spaghetti, whatever) with a generous amount of marinara sauce, then top with the fried eggplant slices and more sauce. Then cover everything with lots of grated mozzarella and throw it under the broiler unti melty and browned.

Eggplant Parmesan

1 large eggplant, sliced 1/4-inch thick
Vegetable oil, for frying
1/2 cup flour
1 egg
1 cup panko
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground pepper

Generously salt the eggplant slices and place in a colander in the sink to drain for 15 minutes. Rinse thoroughly, blot dry with paper towels, and set aside.

Fill a large skillet with a 1/4-inch layer of oil and heat over medium heat.

Spread the flour on a small plate. Beat the egg with 1/4 cup water in a shallow bowl. Stir together the panko, Parmesan, oregano, 1/2 tsp. salt, and pepper on a separate small plate.

Dredge the eggplant slices in the flour, then dip in the egg, then dredge in the panko mixture. Fry in batches for 2 to 3 minutes per side or until nicely browned. Drain on a wire rack set over paper towels.

Lakeview is not exactly the center of Birmingham’s food universe. The very tasty Sol y Luna aside, most of the restaurants in the area cater to the neighborhood clientele, which is to say intoxicated twentysomethings. It’s all fried bar food and cheap barbecue.

So when I heard an upscale . . . → Read More: First Taste: Slice]]>

Lakeview is not exactly the center of Birmingham’s food universe. The very tasty Sol y Luna aside, most of the restaurants in the area cater to the neighborhood clientele, which is to say intoxicated twentysomethings. It’s all fried bar food and cheap barbecue.

So when I heard an upscale pizzeria would be opening up there, I thought it was genius. Drunks love pizza, but by putting a sightly fancier spin on it, you’ll also draw the foodie crowd. Unfortunately, the new Slice doesn’t quite live up to the image it wants to project.

First, the good news: Slice has an admirable commitment to local beer. Every tap at the bar (there are 10) dispenses an Alabama brew. Once Avondale Brewing Co. is up an running, the place will serve beers from every single brewery in the state. That is fantastic, and I commend it.

They’ve got a lovely spot set up to drink that beer, too. Ample patio seating (with umbrellas, thank God) covers decks on the front and side of the building.

Too bad I don’t have anything as positive to say about the food. To be fair, I sampled the place on its second night in business, in fact before the official grand opening. But I found some major flaws.

We started with the hummus. Seems like an odd thing to be on a pizza menu, but it’s one of just four appetizers listed, and the fact that it comes topped with ground lamb and pine nuts was intriguing. The dish showed up paired with fresh pita instead of the pita chips on the menu (that’s a good thing in my book), but it tasted exactly like the plastic-tub hummus you get at the grocery store, albeit topped with some completely unseasoned lamb and a spoonful of pine nuts. I have nothing against plastic-tub hummus, but if you only offer four appetizer choices, you shouldn’t waste one on something so boring and out-of-place.

Thankfully, the pizzas were tastier than the hummus. We sampled two pizzas. Both were solid pies. The homemade crust was nice and chewy and baked to a bubbly brown.

The Very Veggie (above) was covered with artichoke hearts, spinach, mushrooms, kalamata olives, onions, peppers, garlic, and feta, but didn’t suffer from the sogginess that often happens when that many toppings crowd a pizza.

As for the second, we actually ordered the Basic Pesto, which has sausage, peppers, goat cheese, and onion, but we got the Pollo Pesto, which comes with chicken, artichoke, cherry tomatoes, and pine nuts (though ours also didn’t have any pine nuts). I’ll chalk that mishap up to new-restaurant jitters—no harm, no foul. There wasn’t a heck of a lot of pesto under the cheese and toppings, but, again, this was a pretty good offering.

So mediocre hummus, decent pizza: What’s so disappointing? The prices. A 12-inch pizza at Slice (which will feed two people pretty easily) will set you back between $14 and $22. For that amount, I’d expect locally grown veggies, house-made sausage and cured meat, imported buffalo mozzarella, something to set it apart.

This is a serious case of not knowing your audience. If Slice hopes to draw people that won’t have a problem dropping a Jackson on a single pizza, there needs to be something extra-special about that pizza. And if it wants to draw in the fratboys from Barking Kudu and Innisfree, it needs to offer a lot more value. As it stands, you can get a comparable pie for less money by calling up a chain joint and having one delivered to whichever bar you’re chugging Coors at.

For the sake of Alabama’s fledging beer industry, I hope Slice stays in business. But there’s also no way in hell that veggie pizza is worth $16.

Charcutepalooza is a yearlong project I’m participating in to make recipes from Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. For more information, see my introductory post.

Not as fun as it looks

Halfway through . . . → Read More: Charcutepalooza: Asia Dogs with Mango Slaw and Hoisin Mustard]]>

Charcutepalooza is a yearlong project I’m participating in to make recipes from Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. For more information, see my introductory post.

Not as fun as it looks

Halfway through the Year of Meat, and I’ve learned two things: One, most cured meats are very, very easy (if time-consuming) to make at home. Two, stuffing sausage into casings using a KitchenAid is a huge pain in the ass.

Making your own encased meats is a massively rewarding endeavor, and one I highly recommend, but if you’re gonna embark on the project, you should pick up one of these guys. The KitchenAid grinder/stuffer attachment is possibly the least efficient way to get sausage into intestine.

That said, I still managed to use it to make what was my tastiest Charcutepalooza project thus far.

On my recent New York trip, I had the pleasure of sampling Asia Dog, perhaps the best bringing together of American and Asian flavors since the Chinese takeout place. The genius concept (which very recently opened a permanent location in Nolita) tops hot dogs with things like barbecue pork belly or mango relish, peanuts, and fish sauce.

So when it came time to make something hot-dog-esque for Charcutepalooza, I knew just who to rip off.

I’m not usually a fan of chicken sausage—why bother, when pigs exist? But Ruhlman’s method adds just enough pork fat to the poultry to make it delicious. And the mild flavor of chicken lets the sausage’s seasonings shine through more clearly. So I went for a balance of sweet, spicy, salty, and sour flavors, with a good splash of toasted sesame oil, which is possibly my favorite ingredient in the whole world.

The slaw is probably the most Asia Dog-robbing part of the recipe; its Sydney dog comes topped with a mango-laden cabbage mixture. My recipe is easy: cabbage, carrot, and mango (underripe is crunchier and tangier, perfect for this purpose), dressed with rice wine vinegar and more sesame oil. I also added some honey and sriracha to help balance the tartness, plus sesame seeds, which are more for looks than flavor.

But what brings the whole thing together is the mixture of hoisin sauce and mustard. Sadly, I can’t take credit for that one, either. I got the idea from the Lettuce Wraps with Hoisin-Mustard Tofu in Appetite for Reduction, a vegan cookbook Nadria bought that we’ve been using once or twice a week for a month or so.

The sweet-and-savory flavors in hoisin match perfectly with the sour pungency of plain ol’ yellow deli mustard, creating an über-condiment you have to taste to believe. I’ve yet to find a food that isn’t tasty with hoisin mustard on it. You could use extra-spicy Chinese-style mustard, but that kinda undercuts the whole East-meets-West feel.

Asia Dogs with Mango Slaw and Hoisin Mustard

1/2 head Napa cabbage, shredded as thinly as possible
1 mango (slightly unripe if possible), peeled, seeded, and shredded using a box grater
2 medium carrots, peeled and shredded using a box grater
2 tbsp. sesame seeds
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
2 tbsp. dark sesame oil
1 to 2 tsp. honey
1 tsp. sriracha
8 Asian-Flavored Chicken Sausages (see below), or hot dogs
1/4 cup yellow mustard
1/4 cup hoisin sauce
8 hot dog buns, lightly toasted

Toss together the cabbage, mango, carrots, and sesame seeds in a large bowl. Whisk together the vinegar, oil, honey, and sriracha in a small bowl and season to taste with salt and pepper. Pour the vinegar mixture over the cabbage mixture and toss to combine. Refrigerate for 1 to 2 hours.

Cook the sausages (grill, or simmer and then brown in a skillet) until done. Keep warm.

Stir together the mustard and hoisin sauce in a small bowl. Generously slather each bun with the mustard mixture and top with a sausage and some of the slaw. (You will probably have extra mustard and slaw left over.) Top with additional sriracha if desired.

Asian-Flavored Chicken Sausage
Adapted from Michael Ruhlman

3 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cubed and chilled
1 pound pork fatback, cubed and chilled
32 grams kosher salt (about 2 tbsp.)
1/3 cup packed Thai basil, roughly chopped
1 (2-inch) piece ginger, peeled and chopped
2 stalks lemongrass, chopped
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup dark sesame oil
2 tbsp. sweet chilli sauce
1 tbsp. sriracha
Natural hog sausage casings

Toss together the chicken, fatback, salt, basil, ginger, and lemon grass in a large, chilled bowl. Grind through the coarse plate into a mixer bowl set in a large bowl half-filled with ice and water. Mix with the paddle attachment until uniformly combined and sticky, about 1 minute. Add the vinegar, oil, chilli sauce, and sriracha, and mix again until combined, about 1 to 2 minutes more. Cook a small amount and taste for seasoning, adding more sriracha, vinegar, or salt if needed.

Place the meat mixture in the refrigerator while you prepare your sausage-stuffer (if grinding and stuffing using the same mixer attachment, wash thoroughly in between. Stuff the mixture into the casings as desired.

Last weekend marked my favorite Birmingham event: Magic City Brewfest. (Yeah, a beer festival doesn’t fit with my job, but until this town gets a world-class cocktail celebration, this is the best we got.)

And this year was an extra-special one: Avondale Brewing Co., the . . . → Read More: Magic City Brewfest 2011]]>

Last weekend marked my favorite Birmingham event: Magic City Brewfest. (Yeah, a beer festival doesn’t fit with my job, but until this town gets a world-class cocktail celebration, this is the best we got.)

And this year was an extra-special one: Avondale Brewing Co., the newest local brewery, got final permission to open the morning of the festival. This was literally the first time Avondale’s brews were served to the public, and I’m happy to report the company is very good at what it does (more on that below).

In fact, the 2011 Brewfest really seemed to shine a spotlight on Alabama breweries. Five of the state’s six legal beer-makers—Avondale and Good People from Birmingham, Blue Pants and Straight to Ale from Huntsville, and Back Forty from Gadsden—were on hand, and all sported the longest lines all day long. (The sixth Alabama brewery, Yellowhammer from Huntsville, missed out only because it suffered some damage in the April 27 tornadoes and is low on product, I’m told.)

It’s always hot in these parts in early June, but this year was especially so: My car thermometer read 104° on Saturday afternoon when I left the house. I’m usually a fan of toasty, malty brown ales and don’t really love heavy hops, but they were just too heavy for triple-digit heat. (A sample glass of Back Forty’s excellent Truck Stop Honey Brown Ale felt like a mug of steaming cocoa in that weather.) I gravitated to lighter, more refreshing styles I usually avoid.

So without further ado, some of my favorites from Magic City Brewfest 2011:

Avondale Brewing Co. Spring Street Saison. A light, low-alcohol brew, saison originated in Belgium (so says Wikipedia) as a way to keep farm workers cool during the late-summer harvest. Makes sense to me, as I could chug Avondale’s flagship beer all day long. It’s clean and crisp on the palate, but true to its Belgian roots it has plenty of the banana and clove notes you’d associate with a wild-fermented beer.

Avondale Brewing Co. Chilton County Belgian Brown. Yeah, it wasn’t a good day for dark beer, but this one deserves mention. It’s light-bodied for a brown ale, though it maintains a nice balanced maltiness. What’s really notable about this brew is that it’s made with real Chilton County (Ala.) peaches. It’s not a fruit beer by any means; the peach note is extremely subtle and comes across as a slightly spiced acidity.

Straight to Ale Stop Work 689 Kölsch. Named for a building-inspector citation the brewery received that put its construction on hold for a while, this is one of the brewery’s newest beers, I believe making its debut at Brewfest. It’s a great example of its German style, which is basically a lightly hopped, super-light-bodied ale. (If you’re a regular drinker of anything labeled “lite,” kölsches are a good place to start getting into craft beer.) Straight to Ale’s version is very refreshing, with a pronounced sweetness that doesn’t linger on the palate at all.

Bacchus. Made by Castle Brewery Van Honsebrouck, which also brews Kasteel and Brigand ales, this was one of the most unique beers at the festival. It’s super-sour, a big wallop of cherry and lemon flavor, but that’s balanced by a nice level of hops. Not for the faint of heart, but if you liked Sour Patch Kids and Atomic Warheads as a kid, it might be for you.

Left Hand Sawtooth Ale. I’d tried a few of the beers from this Colorado brewery (its Milk Stout is quite nice), but never Sawtooth, which is apparently its most popular. It’s a very clean, refreshing flavor with a little bit of lingering malty flavor. It’s similar to Magic Hat #9, a “not quite pale ale” I’ve been drinking a lot of lately.

Cigar City Cubana-Style Espresso. I don’t like coffee, but this is the coffee-est coffe beer I’ve ever tried. Most coffee beers have a hint of flavor that’s more generic roastiness than anything else, but this one really does taste like strong espresso. It’s not something I’d want to drink every day, but it’s a very cool demonstration of just how wide a range of tastes beer can incorporate.

All in all, it was a great weekend for local beer, and I can’t wait for Avondale’s brews to start showing up around town. (It’ll be a few weeks; they brought everything they had to Brewfest.) The new kid in town plans to make a lot of wild-fermented and Belgian styles, which suits my taste just fine. And I have a feeling I’ll be drinking a lot more Spring Street Saison this summer.

Charcutepalooza is a yearlong project I’m participating in to make recipes from Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. For more information, see my introductory post.

If you’re a serious enough cook to own a Kitchenaid, you should definitely invest in a meat . . . → Read More: Charcutepalooza: Chorizo and its Many Uses]]>

Charcutepalooza is a yearlong project I’m participating in to make recipes from Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. For more information, see my introductory post.

If you’re a serious enough cook to own a Kitchenaid, you should definitely invest in a meat grinder attachment for it. Besides enabling you to make the best burger ever, you can also make this month’s Charcutepalooza project: sausage. After all, sausage is just ground meat with spices mixed in.

Ruhlman’s recipe is pretty straightforward, but there’s one tiny note at the end that kind of blew my mind. To make your own ancho chile powder, just toast some chiles in a 300°-oven for 10 or 15 minutes until completely crisp. Break open, pour out and discard the seeds, and run the pepper through a spice grinder. I’d never thought of making chile powder before, but this method’s easy and works with any kind of dried chile. You can even make your own custom blends—I may revisit this soon on this here blog.

But back to sausage. Spicy, garlicky Mexican-style chorizo is one of my favorites, and its flavor is extremely versatile: It’s not so distinctive that you can’t use it in place of just about any other kind of sausage. But its best partner is eggs.

Chorizo con huevos is great by itself for breakfast, but stuffed into a sandwich with lots of toppings, it makes my most favorite Mexican food. It feels sort of sacrilegious that it doesn’t involve tortillas of any kind, but the torta is a magnificent sandwich. The secret is the bolillo, an oval roll with crisp crust and a thick, chewy interior. (Full discolsure: I couldn’t find bolillos at the Clairmont Piggly Wiggly, despite its aisle-and-a-half of Mexican products, so I used French bread, a pretty decent substitute.)

My love for the torta de chorizo con huevos dates back to my first introduction to real Mexican food, at the terribly named but very authentic Chicago chain El Famous Burrito. El Famous also serves awesome tamales and football-sized burritos (and is the only restaurant on Earth, as far as I know, with RC Cola on tap), but the tortas are the best. Here’s my best shot at a recreation.

Tortas de Chorizo con Huevos
Serves 2

1 (15.5-oz.) can pinto beans, rinsed and drained
1 red onion
1 tbsp. vegetable oil
Juice of 1 lime
4 oz. Mexican-style chorizo, removed from casings
3 eggs, beaten
2 bolillo rolls, split and lightly toasted
1/2 avocado, peeled and sliced
Queso fresco, crumbled
Shredded lettuce (optional)
Jalapeño slices (pickled from a jar or fresh) (optional)
2 tbsp. crema Mexicana or sour cream thinned with a little water

In a small bowl, mash the beans with a potato masher or fork until mostly smooth. Cut the onion in half. Thinly slice one half and set aside. Chop the other half finely and cook with the oil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat until translucent, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the beans, lime juice, and 2 to 3 tablespoons water. Cook, stirring, until heated through. Remove from the heat and set aside. (You can also use leftover refried beans and skip this step entirely.)

Heat a medium saute pan over medium heat, add the chorizo, and cook, breaking up with a spoon, until cooked through. Add the eggs and cook, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan (like you’re making scrambled eggs), until cooked to your liking. Remove from the heat.

Spread the bottom half of each bolillo with 2 to 3 tablespoons of the bean mixture (reserve the remainder for another use). Divide the egg mixture between the bolillos and top with the reserved sliced onion, avocado, queso fresco, lettuce, and jalapeño slices. Spread 1 tablespoon crema on the top half of each bolillo and place on top of the torta.

–

But with a three-pound batch of chorizo on hand, I’ve been using the stuff as much as humanly possible in the last few days. It turns out it’s also an excellent partner for greens. I threw together this slightly spicy, vaguely Mexican dish to use up some CSA mustard greens.

Chorizo and Greens

2 to 3 dried chiles (pasilla, guajillo, or ancho work well)
4 oz. chorizo
1 medium onion, chopped
1 bunch greens, stems removed and sliced thinly

Place the chiles in a bowl and pour over boiling water to cover. Let stand about 15 minutes, or until soft. Remove the stems and seeds, and chop. Set aside.

Heat a saute pan over medium heat and add the chorizo. Cook, breaking up with a spoon, for 2 to 3 minutes. Add the onion and continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until the chorizo is fully cooked and the onion is translucent. Add the reserved chile and cook for 1 to 2 minutes. Add the greens and cook until fully wilted.