Fall charcuterie

You don't think that just because I haven't blogged here for a while, I stopped cooking, do you? In fact, I was so absorbed in developing my Personal Chef business and bringing up the new USPCA Bay Area Chapter website, I just didn't have energy for my dear own food blog. But I'm going to change this. And I've been cooking all the time!

The changing season requires some cured meat. Simple country-style pâté can be a great comfort.

When it comes to bistro-style cooking I like to rely on recipes from Antony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook. If Jamie Oliver is the naked chef, this is a chef, skin off. He takes classic recipes and strips them from all the bells and whistles, leaving just the bare 3-ingredient (well, sometimes 14) essence of the dish. And they work amazingly well!

Also, Bourdain's recipes withstand modifications very well. This is one of the very few cookbooks that I actually cook from. It's not just for browsing by the fireplace.

For my pâté de campagne I used chicken livers instead of pork liver. Marinated the livers, pieces of pork butt and pork belly with wine, cognac, and spices overnight, ground them using my old trusted manual meat grinder, and divided the meat into three portions. One I decorated with rosemary and thyme, the other with sage leaves, and the third with chopped almonds. Pictured here is the one with almonds. R. got both rosemary and sage ones to take to work for lunches during his crazy work week.

The sausages are pork with some beef. The red ones on the right have bright red, super aromatic paprika that a friend brought directly from Hungary. The ones on the left are mixed fresh herbs, and the light ones in the center are apple and cognac. If you are like me overwhelmed with tons of apples this season, check out my personal chef blog post on Dealing with all these apples for more ideas.

Here all three kinds of sausages are roasted and served with cannellini beans and tomato sauce.

Bacon wrapped chicken livers

It's a grilled heart attack: you wrap chicken livers (high cholesterol) in bacon (sodium, fat), carefully thread them on scewers and grill.

Anything missing? Yep, sugar. So grill some sweet corn alongside the livers, and add to the salad. To offset the pure evil, I used tomatoes and a little parsley in the salad too.

Grilled corn and tomato salad
Serves 2

2 corn cobs
1 tsp olive oil
2 large heirloom tomatoes, sliced
1 Tbsp chopped parsley
1 tsp Dijon mustard
salt, pepper
1 tsp red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp olive oil

Carefully peel back the husks off the corn; remove silk, rub the corn with olive oil; pull the husks ove the corn, secure with kitchen twine.
Preheat the gas grill to 400 degrees.
Grill the corn intil tender (10-20 minutes, depending on the ripeness of the corn), turning ocassionally.
Remove the charred thread and husks. Hold the corn with a paper towel upright on a cutting board. With a sharp knife, cut off the kernels.

Combine corn cernels and tomato slices. Season with salt and pepper. In a small bowl whisk together mustard, vinegar, and olive oil, dress the salad.
Bacon wrapped chicken livers
serves 2
10 chicken livers, about 1 lb, trimmed of fat and connective tissue
5 thin bacon slices
salt, pepper
1 tsp chopped thyme leaves

Preheat the gas grill to 400 degrees. Season chicken livers with salt, pepper, and thyme (easy on salt, bacon will add saltiness). Slice the bacon in half. Wrap each chicken liver in a half-slice of bacon; carefully thread the wrapped livers on scewers. Carefully transfer scewers to the hot grill (the livers are slippery and will try to slide off the scewers - don't let them; as soon as they are somewhat cooked, they will stay put). Don't touch the scewers for the next two minutes. then turn and cook 2-3 minutes on the other side, until bacon is crisp and the livers are firm, cooked through, but still pink inside.

Remove from scewers; serve with the corn-tomato salad.
Pure bliss. Don't tell your cardiologist.

Comfort Food: Sauteed Chicken Livers

When summer?

This wind has been blowing for a week now non-stop. It knocks down fences, falls trees; my flower pots fly across the back yard. And it's cold.
This weather is driving all life out of me. I need comfort. Food.

Chicken liver is one of the least glamorous foods, it's cheap, people think it's not healthy, and it doesn't look like much. But it's tasty, and it keeps you warm. Here I used a few fancier ingredients like duck fat (left over from cooking foie gras and kept in the freezer) and truffle oil to add shine to this old-style home cooking, but it would actually be as comforting without all this, just use half butter - half olive oil for sauteeing.

Sauteed Chicken Livers with Marsala and Truffle Mushed Potatoes
serves 2
1 lb chicken livers, dried with paper towels and trimmed
2 Tbsp duck fat or 1 Tbsp butter and 1 Tbsp olive oil
2 shallots, minced
1/2 cup Marsala
salt, pepper

for the mushed potatoes:
8 new Yukon Gold potatoes, with skins
3 Tbsp heavy cream
1 small bunch of flat-leaf parsley, minced, plus 2 sprigs for serving
salt, pepper
6 drops of white truffle oil

Boil the potatoes in lightly salted water until tender, checking with a fork. Drain. Place the potatoes in a bowl, add the cream and minced parsley, coarsly mash with a fork, skin and all.
Season with salt, pepper and truffle oil. Keep warm.

In a large heavy pan over medium heat melt the duck fat or butter and oil. Add chicken livers. Make sure the pot is large enough to hold all the livers in one layer. Sautee until golden-brown.
Add shallots, Marsala, season with salt and pepper, reduce the heat. Cook until the wine is reduces by half, about 10-15 minutes.

Serve over the mushed potatoes, with a glass of wine, by the fireplace.

Seared Duck Foie Gras

The European vacation I was planning this year didn't happen, and I'm not too sad about it. One thing that I really miss (besides seeng my family) is fine French food.

Fortunately, I am not the only food-curious one out there, and a foodie friend who was looking for fat duck liver for a long time, ever since they banned the imported goose foie gras in California, and he was worried that duck liver may follow, finally found it, and very close to home, too - in Sonoma, at http://www.artisanfoiegras.com/ . They only do mail-order, but the packaging is so good that it isn't a problem. The liver comes vacuum-packed, an a foam insulated box, with a couple of ice packs added.

The liver that my friend brought me was the size of a small duck, so we cooked a half of it for two good size entrees, and saved the other half for later. The liver stays fresh refrigerated for a few days.

Of course I couldn't resist and tasted a small slice row, and it is heaven. It's even better pan-seared, with green salad, caramelized onions and Fuji apples and sel gris. Cooked according to the instruction on the Artisan's website, complete with the stovetop fan. Oil is not needed - the liver releases so much fat that after 30 seconds it's floating in fat. Care should be taken not to overcook it, or it will just melt completely. It behaves not unlike ice cream, and when cooked, has similar texture. So I cooked the 1 inch slices exactly 30 seconds per side in a very hot pan. The fat that's left over in the pan smells as sweet as the dish itself, and can be saved either for sauces of for frying.

The other half we cooked the same way and served with sauteed figs and champagne grapes, a great combination too.

"Healthy" Classics: Pâté de Campagne

The man is in Europe and I cook just for my precious self for the time being, so I can relax and forget about fat, cholesterol, and calorie count (I am sure he is not weighting each slice of cheese there either, but you know how you always eat a lot and still lose weight when you travel - I guess he'll be OK).

So we cut into large cubes fat pork belly and pig's liver - sounds like a swearing, Pig's Liver! right? - and marinate them in cheap white bordeaux and cognac, adding a couple of shalots, couple of large garlic cloves, a crushed Jamaican pepper, some dried Provance herbs, or whatever we feel like - I was feeling like Provence herbs.

Cannot add salt and pepper to taste, it's not a very good idea to taste fresh pork from the Chinese store. So just add salt and pepper. I found out that no matter how much salt I add to the pâté or sausage meat, I always have to add more, and even after that they come out not as salty as they are supposed to be.

So we just add a lot of salt and pepper at this stage, and refrigerate the meat till tomorrow.

The next day, we get out the old trusted meat grinder, attach it to the counter, get our meat out of the fridge, and completely mess up our kitchen, clothes, and hair.
Sorry, my hands were so dirty at this step that I just couldn't photograph the process. After the clean-up, we are hopefully left with a bowl of forcemeat. Now we get 2-3 Tbsp of the meat, form it into a patty, if it's too wet, roll it in breadcrumbs, fry it, try it, and adjust the salt! Note that we were probably eating the patty still hot, and the pâté will be served cold, so if the patty tastes good, ADD SOME MORE SALT to the forcemeat. If it comes out undersalted, the best you can do is to serve it with pickles and olives, there is no way to add salt to the finished product.

I was inspired to make pâté this time not only by the absense of the man on a diet, but also by half a pound of caul fat that I recently found in Dittmer's freezer. For such a wonderful product, caul fat is very difficult to find. But now I know that Dittmer's has it, and I'll never wrap my pâté in bacon again! After you defrost your half-pound, it unwraps into a snow-white finest fractal lace that looks more like an example of digital art than like something coming from animal intestines. And it doesn't have added smoke flavor.

As much as I love everything smoked, the bacon flavor does clash with the pâté.


So we unwrap our fatty lace and carefully line the terrine mold (or loaf pan, whatever will be used to cook the pâté) with it, fill it with forcemeat, packing it tight, and cover with the edges of the caul fat, so that the pâté is completely wrapped, cover it with aluminum foul, and in the oven it goes, on a water bath, at 350F, for about 2 hours.

To get the texture right, you have to cool down the pâté under weight. What I use is an oval of cardboard a little smaller than my mold, wrapped in foil and weighted with a large can of San Marzano tomatoes. The next day it's ready to eat. If you don't plan to eat it all at once, cover it with rendered pork, or, better yet, duck fat, to preserve it. I was lucky to have two molds of pâté, and a whole jar of fat left over from a roasted duck, so I'll be eating pâté all week, and will do my best to make sure that by the time the man comes back, there will be no "healthy" food in the house.

Wine: 2004 Dry Creek Mariner, my favorite, I used to have a case...