Lincolnshire sausages

I've a superabundance of sage & a sausage stuffer.
So Lincolnshires (or as they are known in our house hippopotamus & duckweed). Its a simple recipe (though you need to tone down the pepper)

1kg pork shoulder
200g breadcrumbs
15g pepper
15g salt
50g fresh sage

That's a lot of fresh sage: look

the next 10 grammes, pretty much obscured the scales to the extent that it wasn't worth photographing them.

The sage, bread, salt & pepper went into the minichop & got blitzed up into a homogeneous mass of "filler". Meanwhile the pork gets chopped into rough cubes & gets fed through the mincer on a medium plate. Mix the whole lot together (get your hands in and get it evenly distributed). I then put the whole lot in the fridge for a couple of hours, even though this isn't an emulsified sausage it's probably a good idea to let the meat rest. Then its out with the stuffer. This time we tried the more orthodox stuff a large ring & then twist technique, which didn't really work out for us so we went back to stuff & twist.

Lincolnshire sausages aren't really a breakfast sausage, you want a banger or a pure pork sausage for that. The over pepperiness of these was a bit of a challenge, but using them in a nice warming sausage casserole seemed to find them a perfect home.

In search of perfection:-Bangers

Ahh Sausages. I like the good old banger, in fact I like it better than some pure meat sossies. Heston Blumenthal had a look at Bangers (& mash) in his perfection series, and the banger needs filler. These are pork, some spices a little rusk & toast water. Like all HB recipes there were lows & highs. Most of the issues with this one were due to having an ordinary kitchen, with a fullish fridge & freezer.

First off make toast, but make it in the oven, at gas mark 4 for 30 minutes or so. Whilst that's happening fire up the BBQ, you are about to char pork back fat over smoking woodchips. This was my first arghhh moment, my wood chips were a bit too wet and smothered the charcoal, still a blow torch rescued that.

Once  the fat starts to go things get quite exciting in the BBQ. Gloves & eye protection are recommended as a lot of hot fat spits around. Once its all charred, blistered (and smelling awesome) take it off the heat & pop it in the fridge to cool. Also in there will be a large bowl of water & toast, oh and the pork mince. Cold is quite a vital part of banger making, the fat & meat (and spices & filler) need to emulsify, let it get too warm & it'll split. Blitz the charred fat and it looks pretty unpleasant.

Chill down the bowl & blade on your food processor & blitz the mince in batches, it needs to be smooth & not to rise above 10c. I have a tiny food processor, so this & the next stage were quite hard work and could be an area of improvement for my next batch. The meat and food processor bits go back in the freezer to get everything down to close to 0c, whilst you blend the spices, rusk, golden syrup  and toast water

   That gets to chill too. Then you blitz all the bits, fat, spicy toast water & meat again in small batches keeping a check that they never get above 10c, whilst that's going on let the sausage casings soak (put the now sausage meat back in the fridge to chill)

   Then its time to stuff your sausages. If you can get help with this part do. 2 pairs of hands make it pretty easy. Having spent a few hours getting to this point, surrounded by lumps of fat, piles of meat & collections of spices I was pleasantly surprised to see sausages magically emerging from the combination, mincer, pasta maker sausage stuffer machine.

  To enjoy them to the full Heston recommends poaching at 65c for 320 minutes & then frying, I couldn't wait I had to try the sausages.

  Well worth it.

Yes its fiddly & a bit of a pain, no its probably not hugely economic to make small batches (we got about 15 bangers) but your own home made sausage is a pretty awesome thing. I've got casing left, so I might have a stab a Lincolnshire style next. Unless that is you know where I can get some hippopotamus.

Poached duck eggs

I do like poached duck eggs, I finally got enough time together to have a stab at doing them sat bains style

First off I needed a water bath, this is my ersatz set up.

Thats a large pan of water, my meat thermometer and the smallest ring on my gas hob on it's lowest setting heating maybe a third of the pan's base. This kept everything at a fairly even 58-60c.

The eggs went in & I spent the next couple of hours stopping the water from heating too much or cooling down excessively. In between worrying about that I fretted about how I was going to get the eggs out of their shells (Yup you poach them in the shell, I assume it doesn't count as boiling, because you get nowhere near 100c). Turns out they come out of the shell quite easily if you can bring yourself to give the shell enough of a tap against the pan edge.

I served them on hot buttered toast, because it was a "quick" lunch rather than anything fancy & because I was all out of pata-negra ham.

Was it worth it ? I think so, with a proper water bath it's definitely worth while, the yolk ends up really rich. I think next time (and there will be a next time)  I'll let them go for a bit longer and I'll keep the temperature more to the higher end.

Enjoy, I know I did.

Ham in Coca-cola

So we were having a thanksgiving party, what could be more American than ham in coke ?

Nigella Lawson has a few versions of this, so I went with it

I bought "green Gammon" from my butcher, its been slated but that's the full extent of the cure.

I always soak gammon joints, so it went in a big pan covered with cold water for a couple of hours, I changed the water hourly. Once you are done with that chop a large onion, put the Gammon skin side down in a the pan throw in the onion & add 2l of coke.

Bring it all to the boil & then let it simmer for about an hour per kilo and add on half an hour for good measure. At this point the meat is cooked & could easily be eaten. However its better if it gets glazed & has some time in the oven. In a fit of organization I did the boiling on the Friday and let my hame rest overnight.
Time to make the glaze

Take 2 tsp sugar
         2 tsp treacle
         2tsp mustard

Mix them together (do it in a bowl stood in warm water, it makes life a lot easier). Whilst that stands take the skin off the joint & cut the fat down to a "reasonable level". Score it (traditionalists use large diamond shaped scores) and then slather it with your glaze. Finally stud it with cloves at the intersection of each score.

Now it needs to go in the oven, since my ham was room temperature I used a slowish oven (gas 4/180) for 45 minutes, feel free to reach in & baste occasionally.

Let it rest and if you have fewer guests or a larger table than I had proudly carry it out & carve it in-situ. Or slice it in the kitchen & pile high on a plate.

Duck egg

When I started using the farm shop, I noticed a larger than usual range of eggs. I'd heard a lot about how great Duck eggs are for breakfast so bought some. After scrambling , frying & omeletting I tried poaching. That's now my favourite way to eat them.  I absolutely had to try the ham, egg & peas at Sat Bains. Sat poaches his eggs in a water bath at around 60c for some hours, I'll be trying that on my next free weekend. Meanwhile I went for the traditional method (ish).

Here's how I normally poach a duck egg

Bring a pan of water to a rolling boil & add in a teaspoon of vinegar. Drop the egg (still in its shell) into the water for about 20 seconds. Fish it out with a slotted spoon and then crack it into the water. You should end up with a mostly egg shaped blob around the yolk & a bit of a tail/veil of white, with some breakaway bits floating about on the surface. I like my yolks soft so about 90s-2mins does the trick. Scoop out with the trusty slotted spoon, set on hot buttered toast and add maybe a twist of black pepper.

Hot wings

Let's face it, most meat eaters like hot wings/buffalo wings. They aren't a healthy food stuff, they are dirty,naughty & delicious. Unfortunately to get some here in the UK you usually have to go somewhere to eat out and then the menu is going to be fried & greasy or just nasty.

Fortunately Asbestos fingers know a thing or two about hot wings. I'd been helping them find Franks© hot sauce when I came across it at the farm shop. I bought a bottle on the grounds I could use it even if Asbestos fingers had found their own supply. Discussion quickly turned to hot wings (a big favourite round here) and how to make them. It turns out to be as simple as it is delicious. First wings. I asked the farm shop butcher, unfortunately BBQ season has kicked off so they'd all been marinated & packed. There is a prize winning butcher just down the road from my house,he had lots of wings, about 1/2 a kilo seemed right for 2 of us.

Next job separate the flat of the wing from the drummer. I've not got round to owning a cleaver yet so I steeled my largest knife & fell too. I apparently don't NEED a cleaver, but it would have been oh so much more satisfying (even if it wouldn't have been much quicker). Heat oil to 190c and fry the wings for 10 minutes, whilst that's going on make the sauce. 2 parts Franks to 1 part melted butter was recommended to me (I know, but I said they were dirty didn't I ?). It makes a smooth glossy looking sauce. Once the wings are done toss them in the sauce & enjoy

I think this will be an occasional home treat, but it is definitely a treat.

Roast Beef

Another Sunday, another roast. I've been eyeing up the côte be bouef at the butchers for a while, and this seemed an ideal opportunity.

That's a kilo & a half, with a bit of marrow bone the butcher provided to give the meat a glaze. Opinion seemed to be dived over using the hot oven and then turn down or the skillet & slow oven method. I went with the skillet, coloured the sides and then put it into a slow oven (gas 3) with the meat thermometer set to go off when the central temp reached 57c (about medium rare).

One mistake I made was not to leave the joint in the kitchen for a hour or two before cooking. Still it wasn't a disaster, I think it would have just improved the timing.

Don't forget to let it rest, whilst it was doing that I turned the oven up high & chucked the potatoes in the pan juices (supplemented with a dash of olive oil) to roast. I got a good yield of meat, with some on the rare side and other bits heading towards medium, keeping everyone round the table happy.

I'd been given orders to reprise the treacle sponge (Mothers day meal, so I do what I'm told). Which coming after this was a calorie festival of epic & somewhat delicious proportion. I'll be buying this joint again, maybe in a half Kg so I can do it as a rich steak rather than a roasting joint.

Perfect Burgers ? (pt2)

Time to take the logs of meat from the fridge & turn them into burgers. They ought to be approx the same diametre as the buns and about 2 fingers thick, the cold & the cling film combine to make this step a bit easier. then roughly shape them into burgers

There they are, if you have more burgers than people, wrap them in baking paper and then freeze them, they should be good for 3 months, but I doubt they'll get a chance to last that long.

So to cook them, get a skillet very hot (5-10 mins on full heat) and oil it lightly.

Then put the burgers in.

Now the instructions say turn every 30s, this allows a crust to form on the outside, but keeps the centre moist. I don't think I'd managed to get the pan hot enough, because after 2 mins they were more blue than rare/medium rare, so more flipping and more cooking.

Hot hot hot, flipping every 30s there is almost bound to be a casualty or two, in this case it was light flaking of the burgers.

Since I'd skipped out on doing the whole job, I'd got some buns, cheese & Mr Hienz's ketchup. Instead of going to the chip-shop I made some wedges, the healthy alternative.

That's making me hungry to look at now.

So are they perfect burgers ?

I honestly don't know, they are very good, but this is the first time I've made burgers from scratch, and having traceable meat meant I could eat them much rarer than I would dare with store burgers.

The texture is very good, does aligning the mince make it so ? Probably.

Am I going to do it again ? well not for a while, I've still 10-12 burgers in the freezer, and they are reasonably expensive (Figure about £1:50 per burger, obviously it depends on the cost of the meat though, if you are going to do the whole thing, its going to be closer to £5 per burger.

Its shown me a couple of bugbears with the book, that I'm more prepared for now. Kitchen organization is an absolute must, because the odds are you are working in a family kitchen, complete with all the things competing for that space. Several of the recipes call for long processes, 6 hours in the fridge is nothing compared to making a pre-ferment 24hrs early (thats if you want to use the HB buns) or the amount of cooking the Chili uses, that said, its not exactly arduous and with a bit of experience I'm sure you can adapt the recipes to be even more usable in an average home.

I don't know if the burgers are served at the "hinds head" in bray, but I'd not be suprised to see them on the menu at around £15 which doesn't seem that unreasonable, especially if they come with triple cooked chips.

I did notice the mincer has a sausage nozzle, the book has a bangers & mash recipe and it appears that Heston & I share a taste in sausages (Pork, a little spicing, no herbs or that kind of nonsense) so I could try that next.

Perfect Burgers ? (pt1)

At some point I made a rash comment I was going to make something  out of one of Heston Blumenthal's cookbooks. A chance encounter with a cut price mincer lead me to his Hamburger recipe. The full thing which includes making buns & cheese slices is a somewhat daunting 30+ hour oddesy. So I chickened out and went for just the burgers, the theory being that when I come to do a full recipe I'll have an idea of the pitfalls.

First set up a workspace, its probably not going to be big enough, because its very unlikely you are a michelin starred chef , even if the perfection recipes are meant for the home cook (A slightly nerdy obsessive one at that).

There we go, ahh the folly of youth. Then meat, specifically beef,more specifically 625g chuck, 625g brisket, 1.2kg short rib.

Short rib is a bit of an odd cut, after much discussion with 3 butchers (including a South African (I mention it as they really seem to know meat))

flat rib was suggested as the correct cut.

First off dice the chuck and then put it in a dish with some salt (a teaspoon full ) and then let it sit in the fridge so the salt can draw out the juices.

Looks good, but no time to admire it as there are 2 more cuts to dice

And then mince, not once, but twice, through a reasonably fine mincer too. My mincer is a hand crank one, this is going to give me lats that some would kill for.

 Lots of mincing happens, fortunately I'm getting 4-5 hours rest whilst the chuck & salt do their thing, unfortunately this meant I was getting rest from the kitchen, there were other chores to do.

 Now I've got a bowl of twice minced beef & a bowl of unminced chuck, that all needs mixing together, this is almost the home straight.

Or so you'd think, however this next mincing has an attention to detail that is a hallmark of molecular gastronomy. Several tests Had Heston thinking about the texture of his burger, he solved it by putting the final mince through a coarse plate, and most importantly keeping the mince aligned as it came out.

The stage is a bit awkward, even with an extra pair of hands. It should be coming out on to cling film, then you can wrap it into a beef log.

You can probably see meat in the bowl behind the log, there was no way the entire amount could go in one log & the fridge, so I separated the mass into two. Logs safely rolled it was time for more chilling. The vaguries of the weekend meant that the actual cooking would be the next day.

Half a lamb

You may have noticed I'm a dedicated carnivore. At the farm shop today they had autumn lambs. £ 65 for half or £ 120 for an entire lamb.

What I hadn't realised and I have no idea why not was that the lamb would be butchered there & then. I'd assumed they'd have halves in the meat locker ready. If I'd known better I'd have consulted the textbooks to see what I could best use. As it was I had to go with what I know. (at this point I ought to say the half is being shared out, I was just charged with buying). Anyway I've got one of my favourite joints, a whole shoulder. That'll get roasted a party, it'll take several hours but it'll be rather fine. I quite fancy one of the leg joints & the belly, I'm happy to let most of the chops go though.

Anyway I must go and sort through the cuts & refridgerate/freeze as appropriate.


-- Posted from my iPhone