Hello Again

April 29th, 2010 § 6


I need to start posting here more often. There are so few hours in the day. One minute I’ll be writing at my desk or tending to a head in the pot, and the next, the day will have flown by. My foray into butchering has turned my life topsy-turvy, though in the best way possible.

I love Fleisher’s with an unholy passion that I reserve for few other things in my life: my wok, my cast-iron skillets, my Foot Buddy (which, for those of you who haven’t seen a lot of late-night Infomercials, is a cheap plastic electric heating board that warms my feet when I’m sitting at my desk.)

I don’t deserve half the love and attention I get from the good folks at the shop. Mostly, when I’m there I’m futzing around on a pig or ranting about gizzards. Josh will come up to me every hour or so and tell me that I’m doing it all wrong. So I try again.
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Spread the Lard

March 30th, 2010 § 3

I want to preface this post with the disclaimer that I don’t eat like this all the time. Currently my favorite snacks are, in no particular order: candy crisp apples, toasted mochi sweetened with honey, roasted beets dressed in vinegar, and kale chips. So it’s not as if I’m having lard biscuits for breakfast, lard pies for dessert, and lard snacks in between. Because I really only do that once or twice a week, and even then, I share. Sharing is key.

But sometimes, lard just begs to be made into a snack. Once all that beautiful, ambrosial liquid fat has been rendered from leaf lard, you’re left with several hefty handfuls of cracklings: little indigestible bits – crunchy, porky and irresistible. Dressed in your choice of seasonings, cracklings are wonderful as snacks or mashed up and spread on toast. In the fall or winter when I’m more likely to have roasted or confited garlic on hand, I mix the cracklings with the garlic for a classic Southwestern French treat. The softened, sweet garlic blends easily with the crispy bits of fat.
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Lard Cookies

March 24th, 2010 § 2

When you’re looking to bake a batch of cookies for friends who are butchers, it is generally advisable that the cookies be a) made from lard and b) fashioned like pigs. It is, in my opinion the gift for the butcher who has everything.

When I first bought this cookie cutter, I tried cutting everything into the shape of a pig: biscuits, blocks of cotton tofu, premade squares of mochi – you name it, I tried to piggify it. Really, though, a cookie cutter shaped like a pig is good for one thing only: cookies. The nooks and crannies in the cutter can only keep their shape if the material is thin and relatively solid, like that of a rolled out cookie dough.
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Small Celebrations

March 2nd, 2010 § 5

I didn’t get around to posting last week, but I have an extremely good excuse that I plan to employ again a year from now.

It was my birthday.

I baked this cake.

Or rather, I baked myself this birthday liver pâté.

To celebrate, I took a train out of the city to spend the day with a close friend who lives in Princeton. I greeted her at the train station with a sheepish grin on my face. Our birthdays are usually cause for part-reflection, part-lamentation over the state of our lives. Year after year, we never seem to accomplish as much as we’d like or visit enough of the wondrous places in this wide world. Still, we almost always try our best, and that has to count for something.

The night was dark and snowy. Ample flakes fell relentlessly as the evening progressed. Inside, we cranked up the thermostat to a toasty eighty degrees and lit a few candles to mark the occasion. A good crusty loaf accompanied the birthday pâté, and a glass or two of wine made the evening considerably more celebratory.

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The Whole Bottle

February 18th, 2010 § 11

Two weekends ago I took a train from the city to the south shore of Long Island lugging four pounds of lamb’s neck and a bottle of Pinot Noir in my bag. Navigating from the subway to the hub in Penn Station where the trains leave eastward bound is considerably more taxing with all that meat and booze tucked away. Still, I like to arrive at someone’s house prepared to cook.

The moment I got to the house I headed straight for the kitchen, where I found a stainless steel pot that was wide and shallow. I lay the pieces of neck evenly inside the pot and poured in the entire bottle of wine.

I love recipes that use whole bottles of wine. Poured with abandon, the bottle takes heaving, baritone gulps. The wine mingles with the bones; little streaks of red – the blood, the marrow – muddy the juice.

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Home

February 9th, 2010 § 8

I don’t visit New Mexico often, but when I do, I know I’m home. During the winter the landscape in Northern New Mexico is white and pure, like clotted cream undisturbed. Hardy shrubs peek out from under and dot the snowy canyons with bits of green. On a good day everything is set against the backdrop of profoundly blue skies. This is what azure looks like, I always think to myself.

The beauty is enough to make you pause and wonder if what you’re doing is worth the little time you have on earth. Long after you’ve lived the canyons will still be there and in the meantime, there are so many delicious things, edible and otherwise, to be taken in.
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Day One

February 2nd, 2010 § 2

I’m kicking off the inaugural post of The Offal Cook with a confession: I’m not crazy about blogs.  The perfectionist in me hates to post, always wishing that I could have had just one more day to hone my writing style, to make sure that whatever piece of offal I’m featuring has been adequately described and celebrated.  Still, for months I’ve been meaning to start this blog.  Every week on Serious Eats I talk about a brand new cut or innard, but the truth is, I could go on for months just eating neck bones and gizzards.

The recipes for my column, some of which I’ve developed and others which are adapted from my favorite cookbook authors, are just a few among numerous methods I use for any given nasty bit.  I chose to present a stir-fry dish with fermented black beans for an article about frogs, but I could have written about deep-fried frog breaded in cornmeal and served with grits, or simmered frog legs in a Chinese-style hot pot, fiery with chilies and Sichuan peppercorns.

Last year when I nervously pitched the idea of doing a weekly feature about offal to Ed, he gave me a big thumbs-up.  I couldn’t have asked for a more supportive editorial team, or better friends and loved ones who have helped me along the way.  I certainly never expected to find such a welcoming community of offal enthusiasts.

Two weeks ago I visited a farm in New Jersey.


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