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CHEF MULDOON’S COOKING SCHOOL
By
Seamus Muldoon, Himself :: CHEF MULDOON’S TEXAS IRISH FROGGIE WOP SOUP :: SCHULENBERG SOUP :: MYSTERY MEAT SOUP :: CHEF MULDOON’S CORNED BEEF AND CABBAGE :: SPRINGTIME OLIVE OIL :: INSALATA BELINDANETTA :: MAFUL MULDOON :: :: SAUCE AMATRICIANA (GIRLFRIEND SAUCE) :: CAPPELINI IN CFM SAUCE :: STRACOTTA MULDOON :: COTECHINO, SALUMERIA AND REVOLUTION – DELICIOUS, WHAT :: HOMAGE TO MEATBALLS :: ROAST PORK SHOULDER BUTT – MY WAY :: RISOTTO FESTIVALE :: OLIVE FRITTE – HOMAGE A MARIO BATALI ::SEAMUS MULDOON'S YOM KIPPUR CHOLENT :: CONDALEEZA RICE :: CHIMICHURIS AND COMPOUND BUTTERS :: HOPPIN JOHN, Y’ALL :: CHILENA SALAD DRESSING :: KISS MY ASS SCRAPPLE :: BELINDA GREEN SAUCE :: SALSA BELINDA – HOT AND SWEET :: CHEF MULDOON’S PERSONAL BEST COFFEE ::
INTRODUCTION
You are about to embark upon an exploration of a culinary resource like none you have ever experienced. What will be presented here is not a curriculum on culinary technology or methods, addressed in the main to pedestrian gastronomes. This material assumes that you have enjoyed a wide variety of culinary experiences, mostly as the guest/customer, and that you have also done a lot of cooking for yourself and friends and that you enjoy it a great deal. If you don’t really enjoy cooking, please go elsewhere, for you will not appreciate this course, these recipes, these commentaries, or be responsive to the interests that are represented in this work. This will always be a work in process. It will never be finished. You who come here at the beginning are perhaps being short changed, for it is yet meager in its bulk of material. But, if you enjoy what you find here, perhaps you will return and enjoy added material as it grows. If your sense of humor goes more to white bread and mayonnaise, you will not enjoy one moment in this course. If you are the kind of person who is rule oriented, your sensibilities will be offended on every page. This is for loosey-goosey kinda folks. To be certain, there are rules. There must be discipline. This material starts beyond discipline. It assumes that you already have the discipline and are merely looking for sensory stimulation. These are my recipes, but I didn’t invent/create any of these dishes. These are simply my touches added/subtracted from well known recipes that I have received from others. Consider them to be rhapsodies on themes of gastronomy. I cook the way I like so that the food tastes the way I like food to taste. I like my whole head to be full of flavor when I eat something. I don’t want to be searching for what anything tastes like. I’m not subtle and my food is not subtle. Therefore, the flavors here are very aggressive. They won’t make you sick or give you the runs or the cramps or anything like that. Based upon the reactions of friends who dine here, you may become addicted to my way of cooking. Many do. If you like it, please send me an e-mail telling me so. I love positive feedback. If you don’t like it, I really don’t want to hear about it. I already know that it isn’t for everyone, and I hate whiners. I use more olive oil and garlic than anyone I know. I almost never use butter. I never use cream. Silken tofu works just like cream, even better, and it’s much better for your health. There is no sacrifice of flavor or texture when you use silken tofu, and it is full of isoflavons and all that good shit that you get from soy or flax seed products. If milk would smooth something out, like mashed potatoes, I use Coffee mate or Silk – a soy product, all vegetable. Same grand result. You can use Equal instead of sugar. Any time you can reduce or eliminate sugar, you are doing yourself a grand favor. When you are careful about things that you can be careful about without losing texture or flavor, you can splurge elsewhere – the occasional dessert pig out. I eat a lot of meat and lots of sausages. But, I get all the renderable fat out of it and drain off the fat rather than leave it in the pan to sauté onions et cetera. I drain off the grease and add back olive oil. That will make a big difference in your fat numbers over time. I love herbs. There is nothing like the smell of herbs being used in a kitchen – a roasting chicken with herbes de Provence or fresh basilico simmering for those last few moments in a sauce. I use a lot of Asian vegetables because they perform better in any sauté or soup. Instead of cabbages in a stir-fry, I use Gai Lan, because it has a more aggressive texture and flavor. Instead of spinach, I use Yu Choy, except in pasta dishes. I have all of south Asia at my doorstep, so everything is readily available. If you do not have that luxury, then you are just out of luck on some of these substitutions. I use Asian master stock. It is made of everything, beef, pork and chicken, all together. Chicken feet in a stockpot will give you a satiny finish to stock – wonderful. Seafood stock has to be separate from meat or a pure vegetable stock. The idea of beef stock, chicken stock, veal stock, all done separately, is simply pretentious nonsense and the product of French cooking. The Asian culture approach to stocks yields the very best flavors and textures. This is how I cook. You will enjoy it all the more if you develop your own cooking style and take liberties with every recipe you encounter, mine included. I hope you enjoy these recipes and the sarcastic commentaries that go with some of them. I do not believe there is any such thing as classical cooking. To me it started with the Egyptians and went in its best mode from them to the Greeks and to the Italians. The French have contributed nothing to gastronomy but pretentious nonsense, pomposity, and useless decoration. While I sometimes eat in a French restaurant, I would never wait for a table in one. It’s not worth it.
A TAVOLA E A LETTO NON CE RISPETTO
CHEF SEAMUS IGNATIOUS MULDOON
For this recipe, you would do well already to have beans made – preferably a white bean/navy/great northern/lima. Prepare the soup in seasoned water/broth and then add rich asian master stock for satinizing its texture, near the end. (My Asian master stock is made with beef/pork/chicken/veal/whatever – extra chicken feet and chicken wing tips for a truly cartilaginous stock pot charge) The cotechino should be roasted in a 350 oven for 45-60 minutes, (internal temp of 165) then cut up as you serve this soup and added to each plate. You could stop at 45 minutes and add the cotechino to the pot for the last 15 minutes of simmering, but I like to render as much fat out of the cotechino as possible before it gets into the soup.
1 Stewing hen – make the chicken broth with this before you begin this soup recipe – cut up the hen and include it in the soup about 30 minutes before the end 1 Pork butt 1 Cotechino sausage, roasted 1 Head of garlic 1 Large onion, rough chopped 2 – 4 Cups cooked white beans – added at the end of the simmering Bouquet garni 2.5 – 3.5 quarts of chicken broth (If you add more water during cooking, always add cold water so that the soup does not become cloudy. If you decided, for example, to omit the potatoes or to substitute noodles for the potatoes, you would want the broth to be clearer, not clouded up.) 1 Large turnip peeled and cubed small 2 Leeks, white part and 1 inch of the green, thinly sliced 3 Large waxy potatoes, peeled and cubed 1 Head of savoy cabbage, cut up 1 Bunch of parsley, chopped (not the stems – you can use the stems in the chicken broth pot while you are simmering the chicken – good flavor) After you have simmered the hen in seasoned and herbed water until it is done, cleaned that broth, cut up the chicken and reserved both the broth and the chicken, season and sear the pork butt in olive oil on all sides. In the soup pot, sautee the onions/leeks/garlic, and then add the chicken broth. Season with salt and pepper. (I like to add a bay leaf or two also, but that’s optional. Add the seared pork butt to the pot, and the bouquet garni. Simmer for two hours, skimming when appropriate to keep the stock/broth “clean”. Gently stir every 30 minutes just to be sure nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pot. Add the Master Stock. Thinly slice the cabbage and add it to the pot with the potatoes – simmer for twenty minutes. Add the beans and simmer for another 15 minutes. Slice the cotechino and add it at the end. Adjust seasonings. Add chopped parsley at the end (optional but pretty) Serve with crusty bread and copious amounts of wine.
THIS IS A TEXAS IRISH RECIPE, NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THAT FRENCH SOUP KNOWN AS POTEE. EVEN IF IT TASTES THE SAME AND LOOKS THE SAME, IT IS TEXAS IRISH, NOT FRENCH. Back to top of page
This soup is another generic dish, common to every place on earth where people eat potatoes, greens and smoked sausages. If you have read the recipe and story of Froggie Wop Soup that appears earlier in this series, you will recognize the relationship at once. This particular version of the dish is dedicated to the wonderful Czech people of Schulenberg, Texas. Schulenberg, Texas is a small town about half way between Houston and San Antonio that is a bit of the Czech Republic right here in Texas. There are a number of small towns like Schulenberg in that part of Texas where Czech culture still thrives, including the beautiful painted churches in towns with Czech names like Praha. Czechs have always made enormous contributions to the quality of life in America, and the many Czech I have met from this part of Texas are typical of the high level of quality that their culture brings to us. In the Iberian Peninsula version of this soup you would use a very garlicky Spanish or Portuguese sausage called a chorizo – different from Mexican chorizo. It is more of the Cantimpao sausage genre. And you would use Kale as the green leafy vegetable. And it might be called Caldo Gallego or Caldo Verde. In this recipe we will use a middle European smoked garlic sausage that was made by the folks at the City Market in Schulenberg, Texas, along with some of their thick sliced pepper bacon. Instead of Kale, we will be using any or all of collar greens, mustard greens and turnip greens. Each has different flavor notes, and you just use the one you like best, or use all three. This is fall or winter fare more than summer. It will fill you up, put a huge smile on your face and keep you warm for hours, from the inside. This and crusty bread constitute a veritable feast. You could serve a small salad before – not with – this soup, but it really is superfluous. If I saw, smelled a steaming bowl of this soup on the table and you were between the table and me, you would probably get trampled and end up in the hospital. Don’t get caught between a bowl of this soup and some Texas good old boy – you’ll get hurt bad.
2 qts chicken broth/stock (I make my broth first and simmer bay leaves, parsley stems and cilantro stems in it for about 20 minutes, and then strain it into the soup pot – I add 2 pints of my Asian master stock at that point for richness of texture in the soup) 2 bay leaves A handful of cilantro and parsley stems A handful of chopped parsley 6 medium potatoes, boiled and mashed with a little stock to make a rough slurry or paste 1 lb chopped and browned off smoked garlic sausage 2 medium onions and 2 leeks – white park only, all chopped ¼ lb thick bacon chopped and browned off 1 bunch of greens – collards, mustard, turnip – stems removed, washed and chiffonaded 1 head of chopped garlic Salt, pepper and a tblsp of paprika or cayenne pepper Some folks would put cream or milk in this soup. Not me. If you must have “creamy” soup, use silken tofu. It has no cholesterol or fat and it has important nutritional value. It will give you the same texture as cream.
METHOD Brown off the sausage and bacon and reserve. In a clean large soup pot, sauté the onion and leeks in olive oil for about five minutes. Add the garlic and sauté for another three minutes Add the salt, pepper and paprika or cayenne pepper. Strain the broth into the pot. Add the stock to the pot. Stir to blend. Add the mashed potatoes, the sausage and the bacon Simmer for a few minutes and add the chiffonade of greens. Simmer for 30 minutes. Add the chopped parsley and stir again. Check and adjust seasonings. Serve and eat. Some folks toast the crusty bread and put slices in the bottom of the soup bowl and serve the soup over the bread. That’s fine if you like it that way. If you’re going to do that, brush olive oil and sprinkle salt on the bread before toasting.
There are many versions of Mystery Meat Soup. Hell, there are many versions of any and every soup/stew/porridge/ragout. Every culture, and every locale that has even a scintilla of culture, and every person who can plausibly call their own self a cook, has a recipe such as this one. It has frequently been called refrigerator soup, inasmuch as it is something delicious to do with whatever has accumulated in the fridge that you must now either cook and eat or throw out because it is right at its drop dead date. There are two basic platforms for this soup. One is a beef based broth, when the principal meat ingredients are going to be beef. The other is a chicken based broth, when the principal meat ingredients will be chicken and/or pork/ham scraps. I am going to give you this recipe in its chicken incarnation. The only real change when you do it in its beef incarnation is that you can use beef sausage instead of pork sausage or a pork blend sausage. In this version, I prefer to use Cotechino sausage, a Northern Italian Salumeria product that is almost impossible to get in the USA. You can get it from Dean and DeLuca in New York City (though you have to call the store – not the phone order folks – to get it), and from Molinari in San Francisco (also by phone, as it is not in their mail order/on line order program either). If you can’t get Cotechino, go ahead and use Italian sausage or fresh bratwurst sausage that you have broken up and pan fried. It helps a lot –a very large lot – if you keep a rich stock supply on hand that you can add to your broths for enrichment. I keep a constant supply of my own fresh Asian master stock, and my soups are velvety finished pools of loveliness that caress your olfactory senses as a lover caresses the object of his most ardent desires - tender and delicious.
Small pieces of already cooked meat – and small pieces of sausage – about a half cup of each for each person to be served. If the sausage is smoked, chop it into pieces and sauté it anyway to get it crispy edged. 1 Quart of broth for two people 2 cups of stock for two people 2 California bay leaves Handfull of parsley, chopped rough 1 tsp thyme leaves pinch of oregano or chopped tarragon 1 Carrot for each person to be served 1 Celery rib for each person to be served. 1 Rough chopped onion 1 Bunch of leeks, white and little of the green part ½ Bell pepper, chopped, per portion 1 Potato for each person to be served, peeled and cut into little cubes 2 Cloves of garlic for each person to be served, sliced Salt and Pepper to taste Chopped parsley, sufficient to the quantity of soup you are making. If you have leftover beans, put some in the soup five minutes before it’s done. I assume that you will be making enough of this soup to consume the about-to-die “stuff” in your fridge. That may be enough for God-knows-how-many people. Just multiply the per person ingredient quantities in the list to accommodate the totality of the soup project that you are about to make.
I recommend that you put the onion(s), leeks, carrots, celery and bell pepper in a food processor and pulse it to a fine chop. This minced aromatics mixture together with the bay leaves, is then sautéed in olive oil for about ten minutes, adding rough chopped garlic at the end of the sauté. To this you add the broth and the stock. Simmer, skimming any undesirables that may rise to the top, for about an hour. Add the diced potatoes, the meat and the chopped parsley. Simmer another half hour. Remove the bay leaves and discard. Serve with crusty bread and vino, and maybe a small salad.
Irish cooking is an oxymoron. You boil the bejaysus out of everything in the ice box just before it spoils and you have to throw it out. And of course your kitchen and your whole house smell like boiled garbage for several days until the ambient wind direction changes. But if you make rich stocks, and you use food while it is still fresh, you can transform some Irish traditional dishes into a meal too good to waste on any bloody priest - may God rot the lot. This is one of those moments. Ingredients 1 gallon of rich neutral master stock that is flavored with chicken broth. 2 pounds (or whatever you get in the package) corned beef, trimmed of fat and cut into very small pieces 2 pounds of ham, trimmed of fat and cut into very small pieces ½ pound smokey bacon – not American bacon, but a European bacon, chopped 2 large onions, chopped 1 bag of parsnips, peeled and chopped 1 bag of carrots, peeled and chopped The top five inches off a fresh celery bunch, leaves and all, chopped 3 pounds of potatoes, peeled and cut into small pieces, except for three or four that remain peeled but whole The top four inches of a fresh bunch of parsley, chopped- stems and all Salt and pepper to taste 3 teaspoons chopped dill 1 pound of Brussels sprouts, trimmed and quartered and blanched separately in salted water ½ pound of Stilton cheese, crumbled 4 cans of Campbell’s cream of chicken soup
Instructions Sauté the bacon until browned. You should not get a lot of rendered fat off this bacon, so just add the onions and sauté until they are translucent. If you do use American bacon, throw out the fat in the pan before proceeding to the second step and add some olive oil. Add the carrots, parsnips and celery and sauté for another few minutes, stirring it all together. Add salt and pepper – first layering of seasoning. Add the stock and broth mixture and stir. Add the meats and potatoes. Simmer for 30 minutes. Remove the whole potatoes and mash them. Return the mashed potatoes to the stew and stir it around to smooth it out. Simmer for another 30 minutes. Add the contents of the Campbell cream of chicken soup concentrate and stir to smooth it out. Simmer for 10 minutes. Check and correct the seasoning. Add the chopped parsley and the dill and simmer for another 15 minutes. Place the trimmed, quartered and cooked Brussels sprouts (4 pieces per bowl) in the bottom of each soup/stew bowl and add the stew over the top of them. Serve with crusty bread. Serve the crumbled Stilton cheese separately and let folks add it as they choose, or not.
It is Springtime. Everything is beautiful here.
I wish that everyone in the world could sit with me in my garden and
experience the new bursts of hope that are expressed in every flower
and herb and tree and bush – and enjoy the vino and the conversation
and the humor and the music. If you can see God in the garden, hear
God in the music, sense God in the burgeoning tumescence and fecundity
of nature, and be grateful to God for all the beauty and grace, then
you would absolutely love joining me in the garden..
This recipe assumes that you always roast more meat(s) than you could possibly consume at the meal for which you are roasting them. You do this so that you will always have an inventory of delicious roasted meats to include in other meals and recipes. If you stingily roast only enough for current consumption, please don’t bother with this recipe, as you won’t have sufficient ingredients anyway. One should think in terms of one’s “pantry”. Every chef has a pantry that is specialized to the practices of that particular chef. It contains an inventory of that chef’s favorite seasonings and flavoring aids. It is the chef’s personal ensemble of grace notes from which the gastronomic melodies are composed. It is also the underlying chords that provide background for those grace notes. The artistic playing of that instrument, the pantry, by someone of exquisite talent, is what equates to great meals. To be sure, it requires appropriate company. The greatest of meals will be dross if one shares it with the wrong person. Insalata Belindanetta is one such dish. It is something that is available because the day before you had a grand roast/grill/bake/sauté, the products of which remain in abundance afterwards.
Chiffonade of romaine lettuce (according to the number of people you are serving) – assume a small amount per person – less that your typical salad which is based primarily upon lettuce. Prep the lettuce and refrigerate it wrapped in paper toweling until needed. Separately, combine chopped tomatoes, minced red onion, minced pickled Italian pepperoncini, capers and chiffonaded basilico, dressed in a seasoned stravirgine olive oil and left to macerate at room temperature for two hours at least. The olive oil seasoning can be a commercial olive oil seasoning preparation, coupled with crushed fresh garlic, cracked red pepper, bay leaves, a spice mix preparations such as Belinda Blend or some commercial spice mix that some celebrity chef sells under his/her name. The oil should marinate these herbs and spices for a few days before it will be ready for use. Julienne the several roasted meats that are left over from last night’s dinner. PROCEDUREToss the lettuce in a simple red wine vinaigrette made from the seasoned olive oil, Belinda Blend or equivalent spice, and red wine vinegar. Add the tomato mix to the tossed lettuce. Add the meat to the salad and toss everything together. Serve assorted olives as a side dish. Serve with crusty bread and your favorite wine.
Back to top of page I have friends from and in Chile. Chile is now – but who
knows for how long – the California of South America – climate,
geographic position, topography – all well suited for viticulture –
picturesque – possessed of ever potentiality of natural beauty for the
development of sports and tourism – if only they can maintain a stable
government. Our policy toward Chile was owned by copper mining and
smelting companies for many years – just as our policy toward so many
South and Central American countries was owned by banana companies and
other companies that dealt in whatever resources those countries may
have had. The companies sponsored thugs governments that lived on
bribery and provided no democratic potentialities or opportunities.
The natural consequence of that kind of policy is an oppressed, abused
population that turned to communist leadership or any other kind of
leadership and revolted. To protect these companies’ business
interests, we supported the petty dictators. We lost. The communists
won. The Commies wrecked everything in every country they took over.
Right wing revolts then overthrew the Commies and cleaned house with
military “justice” – death squads – wholesale executions, people
disappearing by the thousands with no due process. Chile went through
this entire cycle. Consequently, its economy and resources are just
now coming into the mid twentieth century, and free trade
opportunities abound with the promised stability of democratic
institutions.
INGREDIENTS
6 slices pancetta ½ cup olive oil 1 bay leaf 1 onion, chopped small or minced , or three shallots 1 head of garlic, chopped small 1 carrot, grated 1 large can whole tomatoes 1 bunch parsley, tops only, chopped fine 2 cups white wine 1 fistfull of basil, chiffonaded salt, pepper, cracked red pepper to taste Sautee chopped pancetta and bay leaf in olive oil for two minutes – remove and reserve the pancetta. Sautee onions, carrot for three minutes – Add garlic and sautee two minutes longer. Add the white wine and simmer five minutes to reduce. Hand crush the tomatoes and add them to the pot. Add the seasonings and parsley (not the basil) and the reserved pancetta, and simmer for 15 minutes. Check for taste and adjust seasonings – then add the basil and simmer for 5 minutes. Serve over pasta and add combination of three cheeses (parmigiano, asiago, romano)
If you make this dish competently, it should – at least
the first few times – be made only for two – you and your lover. As
soon as you are done eating this dish, you are going to get your
brains fucked out. That’s why it’s called CFM Sauce.
Chop – all together – the peeled garlic and all the fresh herbs – the
infusion achieved by chopping them together is enough to convince you
always to do this.
Stracotta is a concept, not a recipe. To me it epitomizes that catalyst that brings the smile of delight, the rolling around of the eyes, the gesticulations that signify gastronomic nirvana – in the Italian manner. Stracotta is what God Almighty puts on her own bucatini, after it has been tossed in a little warm butter. It is so exquisite that it is a damn shame that one must have a written recipe, as it should spring directly from inspiration rather than from following instructions There is Stracotta. There is your Stracotta. There is your mamma’s Stracotta. There is Stracotta from this or that specific locale. This is my Stracotta. I really don’t even expect anyone to make this. It’s just too lengthy a project for any but the true seekers of ultimate palatal gratification. I don’t even know what the real/literal meaning of Stracotta is. I think that it means extra cooked, kinda like Stravirgine would refer to extra virgin first cold pressed olive oil of Tuscan origin. Extra in this context obviously does not mean cooked to bloody death. Rather, it signifies, at least to me, that so many things are cooking here all together and at the same time. That is somewhat the description of any stew or ragu, and this is some abstraction of a stew or a ragu. But it is dimensionally beyond stew or ragu. It is what I might think to prepare if God were to summon me to the top of some mountain for a one on one conference about all things of ultimate significance, and in the course of the discussion, God and I would like dinner to be served. I strongly believe that God also realizes that the best food on this planet is Italian, and that gastronomy has never had a better expression than in the Italian culture. Oh well, let’s get started here. The first thing we will need is a stock made from smoked ham hocks and smoked pork neck bones. Eight smoked hocks and two packages of smoked neck bones are to simmer with an onion stuck with a few cloves, several bay leaves and the stems from a bunch of Italian parsley for four hours. You do this in a very large pot, as you will want at least a quart or more of this ham hock/neck bone stock to include in the sauce. When it is done, remove and cool the hocks and neck bones and pick out the meat, discarding the bones and remaining fat and cartilage. This meat will be put into the sauce also. Strain the stock and either use it then and there or put it into the fridge, covered. It will set up like a very firm gelatin, but that will liquefy when incorporated into the sauce pot. It will have a magnificent texturizing effect upon the sauce, and will provide a body to it that you cannot duplicate using any other ingredients. While you are simmering this stock, season a large pork shoulder butt and roast it to an internal temperature of about 110 degrees – nowhere near done. This will then be placed into the simmering sauce in one piece, along with any juice from the bottom of the roasting pan, to stew in the sauce until completion. If the roasting pan lacks juices, but has burnt on residue from the roasting, deglaze the pan with a little wine, red or white makes no difference, and add that to the sauce as well. I almost always use dry vermouth to deglaze or when wine is called for in any recipe. I keep a bottle of Cinzano dry vermouth in the fridge all the time for that purpose. You could try using sweet Marsala in this recipe for the sugar effect. When making tomato sauce one uses sugar (I use sugar substitutes like Equal or Splenda). This compensates for the acid in the tomatoes. The more you tend to use sweet Marsala to deglaze, the less other sweeteners you need to offset the acidic characteristics of the tomatoes. I simply abhor sugar and avoid its use whenever possible. It is probably the worst single ingredient you can use in anything from a health maintenance perspective. The pork shoulder butt will also add body to the sauce as well as great flavor. When the sauce is done, you will remove the pork butt and take the meat from it, cutting it into pieces about twice the size of what you would normally consider appropriate for a stew. These pieces of meat will return to the sauce, and you will discard the bones, fat and connective tissue that remains. Also, while you are simmering the stock, you will season and sear a piece of beef chuck at least three pounds in weight. Let it rest in one piece, reserved, until you get to the point at which the sauce is simmering. You will then add this beef in one piece, with accumulated juices in the plate in which it rested, to the simmering sauce, just as you did the pork butt, and it will braise in the sauce as well. Likewise, when the sauce is done, you will remove the beef chuck and cut the meat into similarly sized pieces, returning that meat to the sauce and discarding the removed fat and connective tissue. None of this meat will present any problems of excess fat or grease in the sauce, as you will be skimming excess fat and grease from the sauce from time to time while it cooks. A word about mirepoix. How rough or fine one chops/minces mirepoix is sometimes a matter of taste concerning the texture of what a mirepoix is intended to do, and sometimes just nonsensical bullshit. Often a coarse chopped mirepoix will be reduced by using an immersion blender in the final sauce product. In making any Sunday gravy type of sauce, I never use an immersion blender because I want different tomato textures in the end product. Accordingly, I put the mirepoix into a food processor before it goes into the oil to be sautéed. What goes into the pot to be sautéed as the mirepoix is a rather finely minced assortment of aromatic vegetables. This is just how I do it. You do it as you like. I have provided at the end for a Gremolata. This nuance is customary when making Ossi Bucchi, but as a lily gilding grace note, I use it here. It’s great in this dish. That is why parsley is not included in the list of herbs to be used while simmering the sauce during the main cooking period. You need a very large pot, preferable a Dutch oven oval roasting pot/pan that has a capacity of at least two gallons, preferably three. If will cover two burners if you have the right pot. Ok. Now we are ready to think about making this baby.
2 lbs hot/spicy Italian sausage – either bulk or removed from their casings and broken into bite size pieces. A mirepoix of three carrots, rough chopped; two large onions, rough chopped; two green and two red bell peppers, rough chopped; and the top five or six inches of a fresh bunch of celery, with the leaves, rough chopped. This goes into the food processor and pulsed to a fine mince. 1 lb sliced crimini mushrooms – white mushrooms will do if crimini are not available 1 head of garlic, rough chopped 4 – 5 teaspoons Equal (sugar substitute – don’t use anything with cyclamate in it) Italian herbs – oregano, thyme, rosemary (chop the rosemary leaves), and fresh California bay leaves You already know about the beef chuck and the pork butt, right? And you know to rub them with a spice mix blend before roasting or searing, as the case may be, right? 1 large institutional can of peeled whole tomatoes – that you break apart with your hands so that you can feel like you are a real Italian cook, with the juice. 1 large institutional can of crushed tomatoes 1 large institutional can of tomato sauce 2 medium cans (3 small cans) tomato paste 3 cups white wine 1 quart of the stock Salt and pepper to taste, plus cracked red pepper to taste FOR THE GREMOLATA Zest (yellow part only) grated off three lemons; one head of garlic, peeled; three handfuls of fresh basil leaves; and at least one bunch of fresh Italian parsley leaves. (I would already have removed the tough bottom stems – below where the leaves start – and used those to flavor the stock. The stems where the leafy part of the parsley is I just throw into the food processor and pulse with the other gremolata ingredients.
Put olive oil in the pot to cover the bottom and add two fresh bay leaves, whole. Gently sauté the bay leaves for a minute or two, and then add the Italian sausage. Sauté the sausage till about done. Remove the sausage and reserve it. Add the sliced mushrooms and sauté them for about five minutes. Add the mirepoix from the food processor and sauté it for ten minutes. Add the chopped garlic and sauté for another three minutes or so. Add salt and pepper and the cracked red pepper – the first seasoning layer. Add the tomato paste and stir it around to incorporate it into the mirepoix. Sauté it for a few minutes to caramelize some of the natural sugars. Add the white wine and stir. Simmer this for 10 - 15 minutes to reduce the wine. Add the tomatoes and juice that you broke up with your hands. Then add the crushed tomatoes and the tomato sauce. Stir. Add the stock and stir. Add the Italian herbs and stir. Add back the sausage and the meat from the hocks and neck bones. Add 4 – 5 teaspoons of Equal to the sauce and stir. Add the pork butt and juices and the beef chuck roast and juices. Gently stir to assure that the meats are submerged into the sauce, and simmer everything very slowly for about two hours, stirring occasionally. If you find that there is not enough room in the pot for everything, remove some of the sauce and reserve it. The long simmering will reduce the sauce remaining in the pot, making room for you to add back the excess sauce later. When the main simmering period is complete, remove the pork butt and the chuck roast. Cut these into pieces about two or three times the size of what you would consider bite size, discarding bones, fat and connective tissue. Return this meat to the pot. Taste and correct seasonings. Ten minutes before serving, add the gremolata that has been processed in the food processor and stir it in. Of course you will taste it again just before service. You and your guests will probably have been dipping pieces of bread into the sauce and tasting it that way for the last hour at least. No one can resist it. I assume that you know what shapes of pasta you like and that you know how to cook it. Toss it in butter before plating it and adding the Stracotta to it. That sauce, with the meats over that pasta will make it clear to you that there is a wonderful and generous God who loves you a great deal. Don’t forget to give thanks. You will be so totally into this meal that you may well expect to get some of it on your shirt or in your lap, no matter how fastidious you might ordinarily be. To avoid the food stains on your clothing, you can either wear some sort of bib or eat in the nude. I prefer the latter.
You frequently encounter my use of cotechino in various recipes. Cotechino is so rarely used in America that it is almost impossible to find. I use it frequently and have only been able to find it in San Francisco and New York City. I like the cotechino from New York best, as it has more of the authentic taste of the traditional Modenese product that comes to us from the 16th century, when the armies of Pope Julius II besieged Modena, and the locals survived on pigs from which they made sausages, the descendants of which we now know as cotechino or zampone. Of course they had to beat the soldiers to the pigs first, as foraging was the principal manner in which the ranks obtained sustenance. Zampone is the same sausage, but zampone is stuffed into the skin of a pig’s trotter and comes looking like a stuffed pig’s foot, which it is. Foraging is a polite word for stealing, and stealing from the locals was one of the important ways in which armies fed themselves back before MREs and field catering by Haliburton Corporation. To be sure, ancient armies did include live farm animals brought along. However, most of the better provender was reserved for officers, and the ranks had to make do with theft. Similarly, it was the practice for camp followers/women to be brought along for sex. They too were largely reserved for officers, and the ranks had to make do with raping local women as they went along. And, as battles ebbed and flowed, back and forth, the women of the area would be alternately assaulted by one group of soldiers and then the other in their turn. It was largely in this manner that gene pools remained diverse and the double recessive diseases of inbreeding were kept in control. Conflict being so frequent in those wonderful days of Knights and Popes and Princes, going about doing the heroic feats that are described in great books about the period, operas and poems, Europe was kept genetically healthy through itinerant rapine. In those days, a battle or a war might only involve a few hundred or a few thousand combatants. There would be a different “ruler” every fifty miles or so, always suspicious of the plotting and scheming going on amongst the sycophants at his court, and acute paranoia caused by the belief that the “ruler” down the way just a bit had his spies in one’s court stirring up some simmering potion of opportunistic betrayals. Rarely did conflicts involve great armies traveling great distances for some military purpose of empire scale. By and large, it was some local bozo keeping the neighboring bozo down. But there were dynastic conflicts, as the dementia of local rulers was not different from that of “great” rulers except in grandiosity. The petty narcissistic tyrant’s constant angst and the “great” narcissistic tyrant’s constant angst were but concentric circles of dementia, especially amongst the Italians and the French. One need look no further than the writings of Tacitus, the Dan Rather of his day, who recorded for posterity the deeds, thoughts and inclinations of the ruler he most despised, locally known at the time as Caesar Augustus. At the Augustinian level of paranoia, it would be a crime against the ruler, lese-majesty it was then called, if a conquered town were to raise a monument to those of its citizens who had perished in defense of the city. The mere solicitation of local support to raise a war memorial was considered to be a revolutionary act. Thus, Caesar Augustus, formerly known as Octavius Caesar, having himself laid siege to Modena, took measures against those who would sponsor or even suggest such a monument. At his level of craziness, it was also a crime to remove one’s pants at night without searching his pockets and removing any coin having the image of Caesar on it, for taking off your pants and leaving Caesar’s image in the pocket was an act of lese majesty. Writing a poem that could be interpreted in two ways, one of which might seem to express some dissatisfaction, was also a crime. A revolutionary crime was committed, and large numbers of people where whipped to shreds, sent off to the mines, torn apart by animals, or cut in half, for failing to invoke the divine inspiration of Caligula upon the undertaking of any civic task or project. Under Nero, if you failed to show joy at the death of a friend or a relative at the hands of the government, you were subject to prosecution. And prosecution then and there was somewhat unlike prosecution nowadays. You were expected on such an occasion cheerfully to render homage to the gods. Everyone gave homage to the tyrant. You feared being known as a popular person, for you would be seen as a rival to the prince, just waiting to spark a civil war. And if you shunned popularity and remained quietly at home by the fire, this made you notable and respected, and therefore suspicious. If you were rich you were suspect of corrupting the people through your generosity and were considered suspicious. And if poor, you must be watched all the more closely, as there is no more opportunistic a person than he who has nothing. Being somber made you suspicious, as it was deemed that the status quo of society was unsatisfactory to you. Thus was the Italian peninsula ruled for centuries. And Modena was frequently the subject of siege. It was some distance from Rome, from being immediately under the thumb of the Pope. The Medici Popes were from Florence, no admirers of the panjandrums of Milan and Parma and Mantua. And again in the early sixteenth century, Pope Julius II laid siege to it. It was in that conflict that cotechino made its debut upon the stage of gastronomy, in the nearby town of Mirandola. According to the writings of the eyewitness, the local physician, Dr. Marco Cesare Nannini, the townsfolk had to use their wits to survive, and began to encase pork in pigskin, creating what is now known as cotechino or zampone. Cotechino and zampone began displacing the local traditional Modenese sausages, and became the hallmarks of the Modenese gastronomic tradition. As food production, especially with regard to sausages, became more industrialized and less a craft industry, cotechino and zampone spread across the country to Rome and achieved a substantial reputation. Cotechino and zampone sausages are traditionally made from cured meat blends of pork obtained from striated muscle fibres, pork fat, pigskin and seasonings. They must be easy to slice. The interiors are mottled pinkish red to red in color. The meat mixture is close textured and uniform in consistency. The zones in which cotechino and zampone are made include the provinces of Modena, Ferrara, Ravenna, Rimini, Forli, Bologna, Reggio Emilia, Piacenza, Cremona, Lodi, Pavia, Milan, Varese, Como, Lecco, Bergamo, Brescia, Mantua, Verona and Rovigo. For this extensive tour de force on the subject, I happily acknowledge Tacitus and The Instituto Salumi Italiani Tutelati as my sources. The more insightful amongst you might wonder why in hell I am presenting all this historical commentary and trade fair kind of bullshit. It doesn’t inform you of where to get the product, how to prepare it and with what to serve it. The most traditional dish would probably be Lentils and Cotechino, the recipe for which should easily be found just by searching lentils recipes. I always roast cotechino for about forty-five minutes, to an internal temperature of about 145 degreed F, and then let is rest before slicing it. I would never boil it or cook anything in a broth with raw cotechino, as I won’t put that much saturated fat into any dish. Adding the roasted cotechino at or near the end provides a wonderful dish without daring your arteries to clog. I guess that I love the Italians so much that I even derive great pleasure from their quirks, and that is my excuse for foisting all this bullshit on you in this article. Part of the motivation has to be that we just received a very large shipment of cotechino from Dean & DeLuca and are going to enjoy some of it tonight in a Thanksgiving clear turkey broth soup with light veggies, herbs and noodles. YUM!!! Sausages and government have always been linked. Otto Von Bismark, Chancellor of Germany, was noted to have said, “If you like the laws and if you like sausages, never go where either is made”.
You can thank me later – after you have enjoyed this. Pork butt is most often thought of as the favourite cut of meat of the redneck “Bubba” set, along with pork shoulder that aint pork shoulder butt. I have a shirt that says “Smoke Some Butt”. The reference is not sexual, but culinary. This, and more frequently the pork shoulder that aint pork shoulder butt, is what goes into the smoker on Friday night so that it is ready when you wake up Saturday morning and you can have BBQ pork all day Saturday while you watch sports, drink beer, fish, clean your guns and think about gittin some. This aint Bubba’s recipe and it aint slow cooked like BBQ. This is a very succulent cut of meat and deserves more respect than it usually gets. This goes great with a Chilena Dressing salad and crusty bread and red wine. Depending upon how finicky your company is, when you slice it up for serving you may want to trim off some fat deposits. There are fewer fat deposits than there are on regular pork shoulder. This is a slightly upscale cut of meat by comparison. Pre heat the oven to 325 F.
One pork shoulder butt – the bigger the better. Talk to the butcher and get a big one – 8 pounds or more. Fresh herbs – a lot of fresh herbs – oregano, rosemary and lemon thyme (regular thyme will do) One head of garlic, peeled and rough chopped Three tblsps Belinda blend spice mix (or any other proprietary chef’s spice mix), or a combination of salt and pepper if that’s all your sorry ass can muster up. One sliced lemon for each pork butt you roast. The sliced lemon goes on the bottom of the roasting pan and the pork butt sits on the lemon slices while roasting. You can also use onion slices along with the lemon slices, but using lemon only does something to the gravy that you may not want to miss.
Peel and rough chop the garlic. Remove the herb leaves from their stems Slice the Lemon(s) and line the bottom of the roasting pan with the slices. If you’re slicing onions and lemons, line the bottom of the roasting pan with slices of both, alternating lemon and onion slices in one layer. If you are ending up with too much to get it all into one layer, alternate lemon and onion slices in the second layer too. Put the garlic, herbs and spice mix into a mortar and hand pound the mixture into a paste or at least into a paste with small pieces of garlic in the paste. It doesn’t have to be ground to mush. Add a touch of olive oil and pound that into the herb/spice paste. Put the pork butt roast into the pan, fat side down and cut slits (about a dozen slits) into the meat a few inches deep with a small knife, and then stick your finger into the slit and open it so that it easily receives the spice mix pushed down into each slit. Push the garlic/herb/spice mix into the slits deep down into the meat. Rub the remaining garlic/herb/spice mix into the meat across the top. Roast the meat to an internal temperature of 155 - 160 F. Figure close to three hours, but start checking the temperature at two and a half hours. When you take it out of the oven to rest, it will continue to cook to an internal temperature of around 165 F. Don’t worry about it. Remove the roast to a cutting board and skim the fat from the gravy. Slice up the roast and put it onto a warmed platter/serving plate and pour the gravy over it. Like I said, you can thank me later.
Grilled meat and fish are complimented by symphonic
adornment at service. This takes place with the addition of sauces and
other flavor enhancements, layered upon the enhancement of having been
seasoned with a spice mix prior to grilling – in my case the use of my
own proprietary spice blends, not unlike many grilling spice blends
that are commonly available.
This is so good on grilled meat, in the cooking liquid for rice, over fresh sliced tomatoes, in a seafood soup, in any pesto sauce. You can make it hotter by using hotter chilies than roasted poblano – use jalapeno or Serrano.
4 oz salsa verde – any brand 4 oz chopped roasted poblano chili – Hatch in a small can will do nicely 1 head of garlic, peeled |