Don't look at me!

Go look at this instead!

tagged, eh?

I haven't done much cooking the last couple of months, not the inspired kind, at least. It seems that sculpting and inspired cooking drain the same brain battery, and after I've finished a head, hands, and feet, I really don't care what we eat and could be perfectly happy with chex mix. :p

So, good news, sculpting going well, bad news, nothing to really write about on the food front. I'm already kinda sorta planning menus for the NewYearStravaGanzaWeen that involve no wheat, no dairy, and no fatty or excessively spicy foods that don't keep me in the kitchen all day, but other than that, nothing really going. (Braised short ribs with mashed potatoes and celeriac, a bitter green salad a la Anne Burrell, so far.)

So Nettle tagged me with the "Six Random Things" meme, and hers were terribly interesting. I'm looking forward to Maebius' also. It was neat to go back and read Mahud's six things, too, even though I don't know the fellow. :) I have a problem in that I don't know 6 people well enough to tag them, unfortunately. Nettle and Maebius are the two bloggers I would call upon, so... that's kind of out. I'll do the bits I can, though.

The Six Random Things meme

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

1. I like hands. I think you can read a lot about a person in their hands, and I don't mean palm reading. People don't think about their hands, except when they don't know what to do with them, so it's fun to see the mood of the person inside, behind the social masks.

2. I'm mostly a genuinely happy person. When you get down to it, life is hard, but good. I love my husband, my son, my friends, and they love me back. It really bugs some of the people around me, so I try and keep it in check, but I'm optimistic about the way things are going. Every bad thing is a lesson or a test to help us get better and grow and learn more... even if it isn't. The way I think of it, you can either get angry and bitter about it, or you can learn and grow from it. I like option 2. :)

3. I have 3 cats and 1 dog. The rule of how not to have more cats (for us) is you can have as many cats in the house as there are laps. After that, you stop having the ability to properly care for the animals, and it's not fair to them or you. It's the only thing that saves me from having a menagerie of epic proportions. The only possible exception is that if you live alone. Then you can have 2 cats, so they don't get bored and into mischief during the day.

4. I really REALLY love video games. As far as media goes, books are first, but video games are a crazy close second, followed by podcasts/blogs, radio, and tv. I've been playing Fallout 3 for the last.. week? 2 weeks? and it's honestly phenomenal. I like games that have a pervasive story, and Bethesda Studios are great for that. It's like *being* inside a book. For a while, I'm a ranger in a post-apocalyptic alternate reality whose problems are simple and only have 2 or 3 solutions. What I like about this game so far is that how you choose your solutions changes the story. I'm actively avoiding the ending, because I don't want it to end. :p

5. (I'm stealing this one.) My surname is Irish, and means "the small fierce ones". So my full name means "the noble, bright, small, fierce one." Heh. It always sounds ever so much better that way. Rarrr.

6. I think Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me is probably the funniest show evar. Period. End of story. I love it. I hate riding in the car, and I reward myself by saving up the wait waits and putting them on my iPod to play for the ride. I can get through 3 on the way to my mom's, and 2 and a half on the way to my mother-in-law's, and 5 on the way north.

PS - random bonus fact? Horror movies still give me nightmares for weeks. I never grew out of that.

I wish Meme had a blog so I could hear his... Hey, Meme, answer with your random things in the comments!

*coughcoughHAAAACKcough*

Summertime cold... I'm not cooking because everything is snot flavored anyway right now. I can not recommend it as a flavor sensation.

Back soon.

Meatstravaganza, day three

This is the last or second-to-last post of this round of the Meatstravaganza. Here's where we get to the actual cookery part.

Here's my grill/smoker combination. I really like it a whole lot because it's got that little smoker box on the side that looks like a mini-grill, and can be used as one if you need the real estate. There are lots of other smokers/smoking rigs out there, including some spiffy home made ones. They might have very different settings/controls/variables than mine, so your mileage may vary.

This post is going to be a little disorganized, and I might try to summarize it all in the final post in a more polished form, so bear with me. I'm going to lay out my rough method for you, tell you what tools I find absolutely necessary, and show you the pictures along the way.


Here's how I'm going to have it set up. Fire 1 is going to be larger than Fire 2, because it's going to be in the offset smoker box, and I don't have to worry about it applying direct heat to the rib racks. That's also why Fire 2 is set off on the other side of the grill, as far over as I can manage it. I was finding that without the additional fire, I wasn't able to maintain the 200-225 degree Fahrenheit temperature I was going for. The best way I've found to get smoke is to use a smoke box and place it directly into Fire 1. I've tried using another smoke box (and once just a water bath) in Fire 2, but I found it gave too much smoke and/or unnecessary moisture. The metal rack holding the racks of ribs will be on the grill grates, towards the opening from the smoker box into the main grill.


I need to have everything laid out in a helen-logical pattern. So, Here I have -

• a kitchen timer, set (for me) to 20 minutes.
  
• the soaking wood chips (Weber firespice mesquite wood chips in this case. They seem to almost shred the wood for good water absorption and smoke production.)
• an extra bag of wood chips. (not pictured here.)
• a jug of water to soak more wood, and for emergency temperature control.
• a smoke box
• 2 chimney starters, in my case one smaller than the other.
• standard charcoal briquettes, and some canola drizzled newspaper for the chimney starters.
• source of fire - fireplace matches, lighter, plain old matches
• a pair of long welding gloves.
• 2 pairs of tongs
• some nice fluffy kitchen towels
• heavy duty aluminum foil
• hotel/half sheet/cookie sheet pans
• your braising liquid for the end parts - i used apple juice, plus a good pour of Stubbs original and Stubbs spicy bbq sauce, and some apple cider vinegar, too.
• eventually, an oven set to 300 degrees.
• A fire extinguisher.
  

Here's my matchsafe, jug of water, chips soaking, one of the tongs sets, and the bag of chips for identification.


Here's the smoke box filled with the soaked wood chips. I tend to get a little water in there too, because I'm sloppy, but be careful - you can warp the box. This is the box that goes directly onto Fire 1.




This is the picture of the end of the smoking follies. When I tried to get photos during the cooking, all you saw was smoke and some vaguely metallic outlines. Every 20 minutes, I come out, check the temperature on the box, add coal, dump the used smoke wood into the fire, and add new soaked smoke wood. I have occasionally tossed a small handful of the soaked wood on Fire 2 with an extra briquette, but I can't tell you if it really helped all that much.


Here's part of the smoking process. The ribs are well placed, there's a little fire down to the left, and the bigger fire off to the right. The smoke blows through the hole in the side of the smoker, and wafts over the meat before escaping out through the chimney. You can control heat and smoke somewhat by how open your chinmey is, and the air vents next to the coals.

Right now, this is the color we're going for. This has been in the smoke for about an hour and a half to two hours. Some recipes require they stay in the smoke for 6-8 hours, but probably because I'm not doing something right, when I do that, they turn out more black and crusty on the outside than the beautiful browny succulence you see here. This is when you get your cookie sheets and tin foil at the ready.

• one cookie sheet out, a rib-rack-enclosing sized piece of tin foil on it.
• your braising liquid
• the other cookie sheet, laid slightly off to the side to receive the wrapped ribs.
• big ass tongs, sturdy ones are best
• you might need the welding gloves.

My lovely assistant pulling the last rib rack off to the staging area.


There's the bad boy in question. Damn tasty looking, even if I do say so myself! Fold the long sides of the foil up so that they meet in the middle, and roll them down lightly. Roll up the tail end, but open up the other end, and pour in some of your braising liquid. Tilt it back and forth to get good distribution, then seal the open end, and move your rack to the 'done' sheet pan. Lather, rinse, repeat, until you have all your racks swaddled in foil with a glug of the braising liquid.

Move them to a 300 degree fahrenheit oven. Ignore them for at least an hour, then go in, unpeel one end of a rib rack, and use a paper towel to grab a hot bone in the middle of the rack. Wiggle it. Does it pop out of it's socket? they're done, almost overdone. Does it wiggle just a little bit? Done if not real close to done. If the whole chunk of meat wiggles, wrap it back up and ignore it for another hour. By this time, the smells should be making that hard.

When you get the doneness you like, make a V of the foil packets (using your handy welder's gloves) and cut notches in the foil so the juice drains out into a small saucepan. When you've got it from all the rack's you're doing today, set that saucepan to simmer and reduce. It makes a nice glaze for the ribs. Meanwhile, you can start your plating options. Cut them into 2s, 1s, 5s, however you like, pile then back on their tinfoil, and cover with a clean tea towel. When your glaze is done the way you like it, spoon it over the ribs, toss them loosely with your hands, and serve!


This was the only picture I got of the plated ribs because they were instantly devoured when I set them out.

As a serious hobbyist, I think this is the best I've done so far. I'll list the rub, brine, cut of meat, any saucy additions, and any questions you guys might have for me in the next post.

I hope you all sleep well!- I sure as hell will.

Meatstravaganza, day two

Today's kind of the mellow day for the ribby goodness. It's mostly stage two of the waiting game.

Here they are straight out of the brine, and into Meme's sink for rinsing off. (I promise I washed your sink afterwards, Meme!)


Freshly washed piggy parts. All ready for...


...the rub! Again, one of those I-don't-remember-where-I-read-it things: you want good coverage of the rub, but you don't want to cake it so it looks like you're about to deep fry the sucker. I seem to remember there being a bit about the rub burning off if you have too much.


Here they are all lined up pretty in the bottom of Meme's fridge, where they'll get their pellicle. From the way I understand it, the pellicle is a smoke-loving surface formed by long air drying of the meats.

I'm going to go collapse before people start arriving for the crazy eating and gaming weekend of doom!

Beginnings of Something Wonderful

Warning to the vegetarians - the next three days will be a meatstravaganza. The next 12 pictures are all of raw porky slabs in varying stages of disassembly! Proceed at your own risk.

This is how I make ribs. It takes 3 days, but it could take 5. I'm sure there are faster ways to do it, but this is working out for me so far.

My pork deconstruction station. Comfy chair? Check. Many paper towels? Check. Garbage and good-but-not-ribs bowls? Check. Makeshift brine bucket, lined with makeshift washed plastic brining bags? Check. Son to play video games to amuse me between cuts? Check. (I'm currently watching him play My Life as King on the Wii.)


Frighteningly sharp knife, freshly honed? Check. Spoon for scraping the fat off? Check. Loins girded for 5 cryovac-ed pork spare rib slabs? Check! Bring on the piggy!


Briney goodness in my makeshift brining tub. It's a new office wastebasket, lined with two new kitchen trashbags that I washed out to remove any chemical residues. I think that if I'm going to do this more often, I'm going to get a Home Depot tub, and some of those giant ziploc bags and use those instead. These have worked well so far, though.

I can't tell you entirely where I'm getting my rib lore and instructions from, because honestly, I can't remember. I've watched Alton Brown's Pork Fiction, read Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman, the forums at the Char Grill website, the BBQ forums, a pdf by the Chatham Artillery BBQ Team, the smoking section in On Food and Cooking, and the smoking/barbecuing/grilling section of every damn cookbook I have. Why am I telling you this? Because somewhere I read that if you brine the ribs, you should not use a lot if any salt in the rub, as it will begin to taste like ham. The ribs the last time I made them had a touch of that telltale flavor, so I used what was left of my Charcuterie-based rub with a little more salt and brown sugar as the brine spices. When I make the new rub tomorrow, I'll quarter the salt in the recipe.


Here's my first slab. Part of the reason I get the cryovac-ed packages is 1) they're usually less expensive 2) I could use the butchery practice 3) there's a lot of meat that isn't part of the ribs that I take off and grind up for all kinds of stuff. The thing on the bottom left is half of the piggy's sternum.


And here's the sternum off! I never understood what the tv chefs meant when they said, "you just let the knife slide along the bone, and the meat will peel away" until now. It was really neat! I'd grab the big hunk of bone, and gently slide the frighteningly sharp knife along it, and the meat would slip back like magic. I still had some trouble finding the joints in the cartelige, and ended up cutting through one or two of them.


The slab divided into the top (skirt?) part with no bones, the ribs themselves, and the little wee tail end that didn't have any bones in it.


There's two membranes on the concave side of the ribs. You only need one. Find an edge, and gently start to peel up.


When you've got a little handle-able bit, grab it and peel the membrane off, hopefully in one piece. I grabbed it with paper towels, as it was slippery as hell.


After you get that off, there are chunks of fat that can come off. I scrape them off with a spoon. I also tend to trim off all the big chunks of fat I can see, because there's plenty in there to keep it lovely and moist without too much on the outside.


Here's what was left of the good stuff after I trimmed the ribs and put them in the brine. I'll grind that up tomorrow and use it for potstickers, I think.


Here's what's left of the not-good stuff. If I were making stock, I'd keep the bones, but I'm not any time soon, so nyah.


By the time I made it through all the slabs and cleaned up, it was pretty late. Here's the bag full of brine and ribby goodness heading off to Meme's fridge. He was kind enough to let me use it while he's away for a couple of days.

That's phase one of the ribtacular meatstravaganza. I'm totally beat, and I'm going to bed!

Here, look at this:

I hope to have an interesting set of posts over the next couple of days, but for the moment, look at the cute puppy. Awwwww.