Potential Gold

Charcuterie Lives...

At work I help butcher all the meats that we use on the menu.  A lot of these meats have an immense amount of usable trim.  The most yielding item is the 'deconstructed' Kobe Rib-Eye.  This item is just the center eye of the rib, so all the parts around the eye are trimmed away.

In the beginning of August I decided to start saving the trim for sausages.  My plan sounded good to the chef (Eddy Shin) and so it was.  By then end of August I had the lower shelf in the freezer packed tight with little packages of trim.

I had Kurobuta Pork trim, Australian Lamb trim, Kobe Lean Meat, and Kobe Fat.

Last week it was finally time to get something going.  Chef ordered some Sheep and Pork casings and I was off.

The casings I rinsed well and let sit in a bath of vinegar, white wine and garlic.  We don't have a sausage stuffing machine at work so I used our 20 qt. Hobart to grind the meat, and then my small (home) Kitchen Aid sausage attachment on works Kitchen Aid.

The process was extremely slow and the result of my first run, a bit on the fatty side, but these sausages were practically free...

For the first run, I made three variations.
I made an Italian Style - I'm not calling it anything more than that.
I made a Merguez style &
I made a sausage with Dried Fruits and Nuts

My first taste was the Merguez style...of the three, my favorite.  The Lamb fat adds a great dimension to the mix.

My biggest problem was figuring out a safe way to cook and use these sausages at the restaurant.  We tried to straight grill one of the merguez and the thing basically exploded on the grill into a huge fire ball...you should have been there!

Yesterday I cut all the sausages into portioned links and individually froze the whole batch.  I am hoping to pull out a few per day and roast them in the oven until done.  That, I have noticed, is the safest way.

These are some Merguez style, in Sheep Casing.

Family Meal - Update

Recently added family meals include:

Aussie Mark's famous curry.  Always made on Curry Day Friday, last week was BEEF with potatoes and snow peas.  I can recall the mixture of herbs and spices as being Chili Powder, Paprika, Cumin, Tumeric, Oregano, Cayenne and Fennel Seed.  Very tasty!

Haggis

While in Edinburgh, a few months ago (time flies), I had the opportunity to enjoy me a great big (half portion) plate of the world famous Haggis.

In tasting this culinary question for me, I needed to make sure that the Haggis was made from scratch.  Finally, a day before leaving Edinburgh, I found a street pub who said that their Haggis was made from scratch.

I recall the ingredients being:

Sheep Stomach as the casing
Oats
Salt and Pepper
Onion
Liver, Lung and Heart (all of Mutton)
Flavorful Stock

For a pre-lunch snack, this plate hit the spot.  I recall the taste being a bit over peppery but the presence of such organ meat didn't come out too strongly in taste, more in smell.

The Haggis was served with Turnip and Potato...

This adventure went way back to my Culinary School days when a friend (A.B.) would mention Haggis as an item often served at special occasions at his home or when he would go on the road with his Bag-Pipe playing friends.  Since then it always stuck with me, and what better place for a tourist to try Haggis then Edinburgh - A trully Scotish experience!

A Face Lift

It was time - change is good - but change is ever evolving.

Let me know what you think.  I will be trying new designs throughout the week.

Thanks!

Here is a great piece of street art aka. graffiti that I saw while in Italy.

My Meez...

Starting at the Burger and working our way down...

The 12 ounce SRF Kobe Burger
The USDA Prime 10 ounce Filet Mignon
The USDA Prime 6 ounce Petit Filet
The huge USDA Prime 24 ounce Bedrock bone-in Ribe Eye
The 8 Bone Australian Rack of Lamb
The USDA Prime 22 ounce Porterhouse
The 14 ounce Veal Chop
The USDA Prime 16 ounce New York Strip
The USDA Prime 12 ounce Rib Eye
- The bellow the Ribe Eye, and working down and around -
The 10 ounce SRF 'Deconstructed' Kobe Rib Eye - Center Eye only
The USDA Prime Skirt Steak - part of the Mixed Grill
The USDA Prime Sirloin
The Kurobuta Pork Loin - part of the Mixed Grill
The Duck Apple-Brandy Sausage - part of the Mixed Grill
The 12 ounce Bison Ribe Eye from the Dakotas
The Double Bone Kurobuta Pork Chop

And for The Sea -

The 2+ Pound Live Maine Lobster
The 12 ounce Nova Scotia Lobster Tail
The U-10 Prawns for the Cocktail
Fresh Yellowtail
Fresh Salmon
Fresh Ahi
Fresh Arctic Char (as a special that day)

Family Meal

This last weeks menu:

One day was Enchiladas...made with beef tenderloin trim, corn tortillas, jalapenos, red onion, cheese, and a #10 can of gifted enchilada sauce.


The Enchiladas were not bad at all.  Mind you they weren't rolled up in tortillas, I just deep fried the corn tortillas and shredded them into the whole mixture; it was quick and easy and tasty too.

One of the days was Chicken Fingers.  Usually, we use the chix fingers when we aren't cutting meat that day - no beef trim = no beef family meal.

With my chicken fingers I like to make a Tabasco-Ranch or a 'Sriracha'-Ranch dipping sauce although others in the kitchen like Cholula a lot more.

And finally, my favorite for the week, was a quick stir fry that I again used the beef tenderloin scraps for.  This one took a bit longer to prepare because I cut all the scraps into tiny pieces of meat, but still worth the time and energy for my fellow workers.

So, GGS to start (ginger, garlic, scallion) - then the beef gets nice and dark, pull the beef out, add the carrots and celery, then a bit of rice wine, a bit of soya and a bit of honey.  I added some 'Sriracha' for heat and flavor.  That was it.

A new Category

Ciao Tutti,

I finally found a way to get myself back on track with the blog.  Since I have been back from Italy, sure, there have been some cool food moments, but nothing I felt worth blabbing about...till now.

How cool would it be to let you in on what we eat (what I usually make) for family meal at the restaurant.  So, I know it isn't always, or even likely, gourmet, but it is real life kitchen and real life food...family style.

Here's the beginning:

Coming back from the weekend I found a whole Prime rib - ready for the taking.  I cut it up to bite size pieces and found some red onion and broccoli that would add enough body to get people through the long night...we are open for seven hours of service!

I sweated the onions, added the beef and in a separate pot, blanched and shocked the broccoli.

The end result was something like this...

Sure, it isnt the most appealing thing in the world, but it is much more then one may find at any other restaurant around...the servers all drool over family meal...commenting on how they never ate family meal till working at this restaurant, etc. etc.  (maybe they're all fibbing!!!)

That night I made some tomatoe sauce that I would use the next day with some penne.

I took two #10s of tomatoes, some sweated onion, some Kurobuta pork trim, some Grana rinds, two cloves of garlic and about seven hours of slow cooking for the sauce.

End result was...

The garlic bread was made with 'older then fresh' hamburger buns, some grated cheese, rubbed garlic and olive oil.   At the end, some basil went into the sauce as well.

So, I hope you enjoyed our family meal...more to come soon!