Some of you may know that I recently celebrated my 30th birthday, and as part of this celebration I was fortunate enough to cajole one of my friends, Fran, to come out to Boston and stay with us for a fabulous birthday dinner at the indomitable Hungry Mother which was amazing as always. It has become my favorite restaurant in Boston, combining exquisite down-home cooking with a flawless staff and great bartenders - it simply can't be beat. I'm sure I'll have more in-depth reviews of HM on this blog more as we go, but suffice it to say that this was a perfect 30th birthday dinner.
Fran holding our Thanksgiving turkey, from T-day 2009
That was a Saturday night; on Sunday Fran and I spent the day making some wonderful delights: aside from the above-mentioned, we also did lemon curd, candied lemon peel and mirangues.
First up was the sauerkraut. This was my second attempt at the kraut, the first ended up drying out because I didn't keep a close enough eye on it and I didn't have a crock that had a tight fitting top, so in the first two weeks of fermenting, most of it dried out. One great birthday present was a pair of fermentation pots, which are supposed to allow you to walk away for the first two weeks because of their designed lids that creates a water seal. We'll see.
So I began with 1 green cabbage that we got as part of our last pick-up of the early winter CSA share with Red Fire Farm back in December and added to that 1 head of red cabbage and 1 head Nappa cabbage, both organic, for a total of about 8lbs of cabbage, to which I added 3T kosher salt to bring out the brine, some caraway seeds, juniper berries and garlic cloves. I have read a few different methods to making the kraut but what I did was remove the hearts of the cabbage, chopped each head, working in halves, and in a bowl combining it with some of the salt and pushing down on the cabbage to release the juices for about 10m. per batch. Now I've read that this can potentially bruise the cabbage and one will end up with mushy kraut, but between doing it by hand or using a potato (or cabbage) masher I think that the latter would bruise the veg even more. I've also recently read that if you simply leave the chopped cabbage and salt alone at the bottom of the crock that it will produce enough juice on its own to begin. Maybe I'll try that next time, but for this attempt I went with a gentle message.
The 5L crock on the right houses the sauerkraut
Once all of the cabbage was in the crock, I added the spices, weighted it down with the designed weights and sealed it up. This Sunday will be two weeks, but because it has been cold in the house (~63º) I think I'll leave it to ferment a little longer before checking it.
While I was messaging the cabbage, Fran was dutifully juicing 15 lemons and zesting 4. At one point I saw her about to throw away a stack of the peels and I said, wait a minute, there must be something that we can do with those instead of throwing them all away! We thought for a minute and Fran suggested candied lemon peel. Of course! So of the remaining 11 lemons (obviously the zested ones were unworkable for peel) Fran got to removing the inner membranes by ingeniously flipping each half inside-out where she was able to get a good hold on the membrane and peel them away. This was time consuming, but also seemed to be the easiest way after attempting a knife and spoon.
While Fran was finishing up with the membranes, I began on the curd. This recipe makes 5L of curd, so be ready with the jars. We also decided to add some ginger to the mix to give it all a nice little kick. Combine and beat until mixed the following: 8 whole eggs, 12 egg yolks (save the whites for mirangues), 300g sugar and 1t salt. Add to this the juice of 15 lemons and zest of 4, with about 1" of grated ginger (this ends up being a nice hint, add more if you want to increase its forwardness). Pour into a large enough, wide enough pot (make sure there is enough surface area within the pot to make the evaporation of the water happen well). Cut 320g of butter into small chunks and add to this mixture and set over a medium heat. Get comfortable because you'll be stirring for a little while, but this needs constant attention because you don't want this to ever boil and once it begins to thicken it will become too thick quite soon. You basically want this thick enough to coat the back of a spoon (use a wooden one so as not to get any metallic taste into the curd). Taste as you go to make sure that you don't want too add anything. I, then, jarred it all up (a ladle and funnel work wonders, one really doesn't want to pour directly from the pot into a funnel because everything comes out too quick and you end up with a pool of curd - oops) and will be distributing it to friends and my own belly over the next little bit.
IF ANYONE KNOWS WHERE I CAN GET REAL PASSION FRUIT IN BOSTON LET ME KNOW. One of my favorite desserts is from Nigel Slator's Kitchen Diaries: a passion fruit roulade (p.387 - 388). When I was able to grab some ripe passion fruit and raw cream at the Hollywood Farmers market I would make this up and be in heaven for a couple days until there was no more. Juice just won't do, you need the real fruit here.
Anyway...so while I was stirring, Fran was beating the egg whites into a soft peak and slowly adding 300g of granulated sugar to the 12 egg whites. You then sift together 210g confectioners' sugar and 3/4t kosher salt and fold this into the silky mirangue mixture. Add any other ingredients at this time - we added a little lemon zest - and mound the mix onto a baking sheet ~2-3" apart and bake for 3 hrs at 175º. Joanne Chang in her book Flour (which is where we adapted this recipe from), makes the suggestion that if you take the mirangues out of the oven right after baking, they end up with a bit of a chewy center; if you want them to be crunchier you can leave them in the oven (with it turned off and the door closed) for 6-12 more hours.
Now I'd love to say that we ended up with fabulous mirangues, but there were some issues, primarily that the bowl that we were using to beat the eggs in wasn't large enough, so when we were getting everything aerated it could only go so far before it began to leak out over the top of the bowl. It was already too far gone by that point to really do anything about it, so our mirangues ended up being wimpy and runny. Though they still tasted good, we had to throw the batch away because after it was baked it ended up being just too chewy (even though we left them in the oven overnight). (I'd also love to say that I took pictures of them, but I was just too disappointed with the results.)
Next up was the candied lemon peel:
We got this recipe from The River Cottage Preserve Book. We began with 11 lemons, which weighed out to 410g, and slice them into large matchsticks (or really any shape you like, we kept most of ours as circles). Add these to 12c. of water and bring to a boil, then simmer for 5m. Drain and add 4c. of cold water and bring to a boil again. Cover the pot and simmer for 45m. Add 3 3/4c. of sugar (I don't know why we didn't weigh this) stir until dissolved and continue to simmer, covered, for an additional 30m. Remove from the heat and let stand for 24 hours.
At this point, obviously, we moved on to the meat, however for the sake of the recipe I will finish it here. The next day (or two in my case) bring the pot back to a boil (and add 1 1/2T of light corn syrup if you want to - this addition will make the rind more chewy. I added it, but I want to try this again without it to see what it ends up like) and let it gently work, uncovered, for 30 additional minutes or until all of the liquid has evaporated and the peel is coated with bubbling syrup. When I first read this, I pictured in my mind that the rinds would be sitting in the faintest amount of syrup, almost like a wine reduction, but as the clock kept inching along and I continued to check, I still saw liquid drowning the rind. At some point I realized that while most of the rind was, indeed, submerged, the liquid was not going to be reducing any more, and in fact it would be burning soon. So watch out for that. I assume that if you use fewer lemons it will be easier to tell. 11 sliced lemon rinds makes a lot - just saying. So at this point, remove the pot from the heat and allow to cool. Prepare some wax paper or parchment under a wire cooling rack and once the lemons are cool enough to handle, transfer them to the rack and leave them in a warm place for 24 hours or place in a warm (140º) oven for 2-3 hrs to dry. As I stated before, our apartment isn't the warmest place in the winter, so I probably should have done this latter step, but even leaving them out in 64º weather they were good in a couple days. This, however, left me with a large amount of syrup that I didn't really know what to do with. I have bottled it and am thinking about perhaps combining it with some alcohol to make a bit of a lemon-infused flavoring. Any suggestions??
The lemon syrup
Since this has become quite a long post I will begin a second one specifically about the meat adventures. I look forward to your comments, suggestions, etc.
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