Journal

Cleaning trout

Brian J. Geiger — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:53:59 +0000

One of the great things about our trip to Asheville was that we got some hands-on experience with a few parts of our trip. The biggie was definitely the Cooking Competition that we all participated in, but that's a story for another time. One of the first things that I did when I arrived was to go to a sustainable trout farm, Sunburst Trout Farm.

The first part of our visit to Sunburst was learning what it really means for a trout farm to be sustainable instead of a breeding ground for more diseases than trout. By and large, it's what you'd think: don't overpack the fish, keep predators away, keep things clean.

One of the things you might not expect is that water temperature is vital. The trout farm itself is on a hill with a lake above them and a stream below them, and they get a decent amount of cooling from the lake waters joining the river. If the weather is particularly uncooperative, then they break out the liquid oxygen. There's a huuuuge tank on property that helps to drop the temperature when it's needed. A lot of mischief could be made with that much liquid oxygen, and it's just the thing you need to help deal with a 2000-series terminator.

After feeding us a breakfast that consisted of about 40 things you can do with trout, all delicious (especially the biscuits and smoked trout sausage gravy), they let us don the garb of the trout cleaner and get to cleaning some trout. The traditional outfit is a hair-cap, apron, gloves, and boots. We all looked particularly sexy in the protective gear.

The first of us to remove the innards from the trout was Jaden Hair of Steamy Kitchen. She may not fully appreciate this, but I did get a video of the process, and it teaches the important first lesson of cleaning trout: trout are slippery.

Jaden cleans trout from Brian Geiger on Vimeo.

Sadly, I couldn't get a good video of the machine that removes the spine from the trout. In general terms, it started out as a monorail for the emptied trout and gave us back two fillets minus a skeletal structure. Very impressive.

If you need farmed trout, talk to your fishmonger and ensure that the trout is farmed sustainably. There are a lot of things that can go badly with any farmed animal, so finding a reputable farm is important.

My Drive to Get Doughnuts

Brian J. Geiger — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 22:51:42 +0000

Here's a little slideshow of where I get to go if I want some doughnuts. Specifically, apple cider doughnuts from Carter Mountain. I hope your drive is as nice.

Asheville, North Carolina: The Disclaimer

Brian J. Geiger — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:05:53 +0000

A couple of months ago (good heavens. Months? Sigh.) I was brought out to Asheville, NC for a visit to their local area and to learn all about how they enjoy their food there. I've written a little about it, and a brief mention here, but I haven't gone into much detail yet, because you'll need a disclaimer first.

If there was a problem with the trip*, it was that everything was fantastic. That is primarily a problem because I paid for none of it, so I don't have any really good examples of something I didn't like to balance out the reporting. Therefore, it's possible that because the Asheville Convention and Visitors Bureau footed the bill, I might be biased towards the place, and you should know that.

The problem with that line of reasoning is that I get sent to all sorts of places where someone else foots the bill (they like to call them "business trips", and I can be quite miserable on those trips). Free is not where the bias comes in. No, the bias comes in from the knowledge we were given about the area, the people we met in it, and all the great food we tasted. If I could have paid for that exact same trip, I would have been just as enthusiastic. More so, in fact, because I wouldn't have to disclaim it.

The disturbing part is that I think I understand the Asheville food scene better than I do the Charlottesville food scene, and I've been in Charlottesville for a decade, the last few years of which as The Food Geek. Clearly, I need to do some more research on my local environment.

In any case, disclaimers are made. Ethics are, if not preserved, at least consistent with what I set out for this site. And when I go back later and do all the same things again but paying for it and with my wife, then I will report back to tell you how much 'free' biased me.

*-aside from a minor incident involving a tray of mimosas and my pants. Oh, and their attempts to try to kill us with large quantities of food and drink of such high quality that it's hard to refuse. Honestly, if they had pulled off their masks at the end to reveal that they were aliens ("IT'S A COOKBOOK!") and we were to be their tasty treats, I would have merely thought, "Ohhhh. Yeah, that makes sense." Fortunately, that was not the case.

This week on Fine Cooking: Basil and Lettuce 2-for-1

Brian J. Geiger — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:48:35 +0000

I have not-one-but-two articles on my Kitchen Mysteries with The Food Geek at Fine Cooking (dot) Com. Woo!

The first is my print article from issue 100, in which I discuss the the proper storage and treatment of leafy greens. The illustration by Aude Van Ryn are fantastic, incidentally.

The second is my usual weekly column discussing using basil in cooked food, from a technique standpoint as well as a pointer (familiar to longtime readers) for finding out what foods pair well with others.

Cider

Brian J. Geiger — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:52:38 +0000

I'm visiting Michigan right now, and there's a decent selection of apples in this portion of the state. Consequently, we've had the opportunity to do a couple of tastings from local apple cider producers.

Tandem cider is a small producer with an enthusiastic brewer. Is "brewer" the right word? In any case, Tandem makes an English-style cider, which allows most of the sugar to be turned into alcohol. This makes for a complex and often subtle product.

Two of their ciders are effectively without any noticable carbonation. It's not at all what one would expect if one has only had, for example, Woodchuck as their only cider experience. Indeed, before a tasting, they are sure to ask if you've had apple cider before, to gauge how shocked you'll be when you taste.

If you go to Leelanau, please do go by. Just look for the building with the Tandem bicycle as a sign.

A most impressive addition

Brian J. Geiger — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:07:00 +0000

During my recent trip to Asheville, for which you'll get an overview and a disclaimer soon enough, we took a quick trip to Wake Robin Farm to visit the bread makers and their oven. There is a lot to be said about both, but right now I want to focus on one small part.

A brick oven is a relatively ancient technique for making bread. Not the original method, of course, because ovens are a pretty recent invention as far as cooking is concerned. If it wasn't done on an open fire, it's probably not one of the first cooking techniques.

Still, centuries ago, a single town or village might have a single wood fire oven that is shared across the community. Generally, the ovens I've seen haven't deviated much from what you might have seen back then, except most of the ovens I've seen are smaller and may have some design differences for aesthetics or because of the skill of the builder.

It wasn't until last week that I saw something that is truly modern and, to my mind, vital for anyone building a new wood fire oven.

What's shown in the picture above, embedded into the side of the oven, is a series of thermocouple interfaces. Thermocouples are effectively thermometers that can handle a wide range of temperatures, especially at the extreme range of what the typical cook would have to deal with (as opposed to what the typical physicist might have to deal with, which would go significantly higher or lower).

These thermocouples are set in the oven so that Steve Bardwell, co-owner of Wake Robin Farm Breads, can plug in a compatible meter and see what the temperature of not only various parts of the interior surface of the oven, but also a few points between the interior surface and the exterior surface. This gives him a tremendous amount of information about how fully the oven is heated and should allow him to predict how long the oven will retain its heat.

Were I to build a brick oven, I would steal this idea. Without a doubt. I would then connect the sensors to a computer to allow me to graph the temperatures and keep a record of historical heating curves. Because there's no geeky idea that can't be made just a little better by recording and graphing the results.

Acquiring tastes

Brian J. Geiger — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 02:23:36 +0000

Everone of a certain age enjoys a few foods, drinks, and other orally-injested substances that, when first tried, were simply unpalatable. Coffee is a good example of this, though maybe not the best example. More on that later. In any case, this class of substances is known as "acquired tastes."

Most acquired tastes are bitter substances. We don't like bitter things because poisons are traditionally bitter. Poisons such as caffeine. After all, a tiny but of caffeine will easily kill a person. It's also one of the most addictive substances we know of. And yet, we love the stuff. What's wrong with us?

The thing we know best about caffeine is that it provides us with some handy if imperfect benefits, like giving us something of a wakefulness boost. Conditioning being what it is, if we taste something that disagrees with us, followed by a pleasant sensation, then eventually we'll come to like what we tasted.

I mentioned that coffee was not a perfect example of this, because coffee only tastes bad when it's prepared improperly. There us so much great flavor in coffee that the bitter should just be an underlying note.

Which is, incidentally, another way that tastes are acquired. You taste something terrible, but sense another taste underneath that is really good. Conditioning happens again, until you not only look forward to the underlying taste, but the bitter taste as well.

The photo accompanying this article is of a beer float, which combines a bitter stout beer from the Highland Brewing Company in Asheville, NC with a stout beer ice cream from the Ultimate Ice Cream Company. Depending on how you combine the ingredients, you'll often start with a bitter hit, then have that mellowed out by the ice cream. As you go on, you appreciate the dish more and more. It's a very quick way to acquire a taste.

Fine Cooking Thursdays: Saving Garlic from Sprouts

Brian J. Geiger — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 02:27:40 +0000

Let's take a look at what can happen to a fresh garlic to give it a less than perfect flavor, and what can be done to save it.

Fine Cooking Thursdays: Degrees of Boiling

Brian J. Geiger — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:25:53 +0000

This week, I explore more of the ins-and-outs of boiling, and bring back my most powerful metaphor: kittens.

Fine Cooking Thursdays: Essence of Coffee

Brian J. Geiger — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 02:49:25 +0000

This week, I talk about a subject near to my heart: brewing coffee in a French Press. I take a little extra meander at the end, exploring some other coffee possibilities, and reminding everyone to keep their minds open.