Sausages!

I don't think I've mentioned Radishes before--a couple of years ago, some of my foodie friends decided to create a group dedicated to the learning, the cooking and, of course, the eating of different foods.  We meet every other month and there are two basic rules:  there is always a theme which the food or beverage must fit and the dish(es) must be homemade.  Most of our themes have centered around regional cuisines; Russian, Scottish, North African, and so forth.  A couple of times we went with a general topic; comfort food, picnic, you get the idea.  The results have been extraordinary--not only is the food enjoyable, but I find it fun to discover a little about the chosen region and its traditional ingredients.  This month we are meeting at a beach park and the theme is "Sausages 'n Stuff". 

I am ridiculously proud of myself.  I made sausages today; as in, ground, spiced meat, stuffed into pig intestines.  I have no idea how they taste but they look pretty nifty and the sausage stuffer I bought worked like a charm.  I love when things work the way they are supposed to! I started with two basic sausage recipes--one is pork with fresh parsley, sage and maple syrup and the other is pork with brown sugar and a bit of cayenne pepper.

Fresh parsley and sage, maple syrup

 I refrigerated the sausage mixtures for a while and then put the hog casings in warm water to soak--I didn't know how many of the casings I would need and I didn't realize how many were in the package.  Unfortunately, I had to toss the ones I didn't use.

They kind of look like kanpyo...

The casings were very thin and fragile looking but they were surprisingly easy to work with and none of our sausages burst.  C, who acted as my sous chef, said he, for one, was glad to know that intestines don't burst as easily as I had anticipated.  I see his point.  

The stuffer is pretty much like a caulking gun

I loaded the first batch of sausage mixture into the tube and snapped the stuffing nozzle onto the front of the gun.  C screwed the tube onto the handle and we were ready for the casing.

Yes, we both chuckled over the fact that it looked a lot like putting on a condom...

Once the casing was threaded onto the nozzle, C started pumping the trigger and despite the simple mechanism, the meat flowed out in a fairly steady stream.

It took a little practice to get the sausage nice and even.

We had 4 pounds of pork mixture and used 6 casings.  It was a fairly easy process but we definitely had our system down pat by the last sausage.

Definitely need two pairs of hands.

When each sausage was completed, I squeezed out as much air as possible and even used a pin here and there so there wouldn't be any bubbles.  Then I twisted the long piece into links.

Sometimes I forgot which way to turn the next one--they need to alternate.

The final product looked much more professional than I had hoped for.  The sausage stuffer wasn't too complicated to clean but I will definitely buy a bottle brush for the tube.  

Sure hope they taste good!

The real test comes tomorrow when we grill these babies and serve them up to our friends.  Hope it's a happy Sausage Saturday!

The Endless Food Summer

So a couple of people have asked me if I had given up on my Food Summer.  The answer is definitely not!  It's just that it occurred to me that writing about taste-testing recipes was growing monotonous and if I was having a hard time writing' em, well, my extremely small group of readers probably didn't want to read 'em either. Henceforth, I will only blog about my recipe tests when I have hit upon one that is worth writing about. Here's a couple of them.

Last week, T and I made Apple Pie Bars. And they are sooooo worth writing about.  My family loves pies and this one looked interesting; basically it is apple pie for a group larger than 8:

Tangy apple filling encased by two flaky, buttery crusts...it's a pie lover's dream.  I liked the fact that the pie crust was pretty easy to work.  Our humidity does cruel and frustrating things to pie crust so having this one roll out smoothly then peel off the waxed paper neatly was a huge, huge bonus.  The flakiness of the crust was incredibly rewarding for a frustrated pastry cook like me.

We cut the pie into bars as the recipe suggested.  They sure didn't last long--all the bars were gone by the next day.  Another bonus--refrigeration didn't make the crust soggy!  Definitely a make-again recipe!

Tonight I decided to make shrimp and grits.  Except I didn't have shrimp, I had slipper lobster.  The only thing I missed about the shrimp is its pretty pink color when cooked.  Slipper lobster is rather bland-looking by comparison, but the taste more than made up for it!  Nothing that bacon, garlic and onion can't fix!

The grits were a really nice change.  I told E that I could see why farming families ate it--it is so economical and so filling.  I love that it is such a versatile vehicle for all kind of flavors and toppings.  I put cheddar cheese in my grits so they could definitely have been a side dish in and of themselves:

The farmer's market at Windward Mall sells Nalo Farms' greens--I bought two big bags of baby kale for $5.50 each and a smaller bag of Swiss chard.  The kale went into a pot with seasonings and smoked turkey legs.  They were a great accompaniment to the grits dish:

Hmmm--not highly attractive on the plate perhaps, but they were an awesome meal.  A said she thinks I am actually a closet Southerner.  I'll take the regional foods but they can keep their weather; they have even more humidity than we do! ;-)

Food Summer, Part III

I needed something fast and easy last night because E and I had a date for karaoke with a couple of our friends.  I put together a marinade, cut flank steak into thin slices, then threw them into a ziploc bag to soak up some flavor.  I had to resist the urge to improvise on this very simple marinade; it consisted of shoyu, oil, garlic and dried oregano and I thought a shot of sake was called for.  C reminded me that the whole point was to try the recipes, as is, to see which ones were worth keeping and which ones got axed.  Fine.

The meat was very tender at the end of a few hours but not very flavorful.  I ended up cutting it into strips and stir-frying it with baby bok choy and some oyster sauce.  It was very good over rice but I wouldn't follow this particular recipe again.

For tonight, Recipe 8 had a lot of promise--Thai Spicy Chicken Wings.  We all love baked or fried chicken wings and 3 out of 4 of us like Thai food a lot.  I marinated the wings in a combination of soy, oil, garlic, ginger, sugar, cracked black pepper and Thai chili sauce.  Couple of major problems:  the recipe said to cook at 400 for 20 minutes (turning halfway through). I cook wings a lot and I know that 20 minutes is not anywhere long enough for them to be cooked through.  I was right.  It took a total of about 45 minutes at that temperature.  Second problem:  the recipe photo showed wings that were a rich mahogany color.  Even after 45 minutes, my wings were a light brown and not crispy at all.  The sticky sauce was starting to burn to the pan though--I was glad I covered it with foil first.

The chicken was tender but not particularly flavorful.  We dunked them in additional Thai sweet chili sauce and that was pretty good.  I wouldn't make this one again either though.

Recipe 9 is probably one of Emeril's simplest dishes with only 6 ingredients:  cauliflower, salt, pepper, garlic, olive oil and Parmesan cheese.

I love cauliflower and this simple baked dish topped with shredded cheese was yummy.  But again, not particularly special nor something I couldn't have come up with by myself.

A good meal.  Just not an outstanding one.

Food Summer, Part II

C and I got ambitious today.  Between the two of us, we made 3 new recipes:  C concocted a lovely Surprise Meringue cookie; it was light and sweet on the outside and the inside was a slightly chewy texture full of mini chocolate chips and chopped pecans.  Yum!

Of course, the humidity in Hawaii is going to quickly render these little guys gooey.  Fortunately, I doubt they'll last that long!  They are so light, it's awfully easy to eat them up!

Salmon with dijon and pecans is up next.  I got two big slabs of salmon from Costco and smeared them with a mixture of melted butter, honey and spicy brown mustard.  I topped the salmon with a combination of panko bread crumbs, chopped parsley and diced pecans, then baked it at 375 for 25 minutes.  The result was a very delicately seasoned and very moist piece of fish.  A definite keeper!

 Recipe 6 is green beans with almonds and onions.  The original recipe called for a diced red pepper and shallots but since I had neither, I went with diced onions.  I let the onions caramelize then doused them with some white wine, salt and pepper and a couple of tablespoons of sugar.  I steamed the beans in the microwave for three minutes, drained them and tossed them with the onions.  A simple dish but very satisfying.

The beans went well with the salmon and the meringues...well, they go with just about everything as far as I'm concerned!  Three for three tonight!

Food Summer 2012, Part I

So far I've tried three new recipes; last night it was a chicken and eggplant casserole which I found on the internet.  It was pretty much either a chicken parm or an eggplant parm.  Depending on what side of the meal you were looking at. 

 

I didn't have mozzarella cheese to top it with so I sliced up some Fontina; I think the substitution worked out well. I served the dish with spaghetti but I didn't realize how much of the sauce the eggplant would absorb.  The unfortunate result was there was not quite enough sauce to coat the noodles as I would have liked.  The dish refrigerates well and the flavors were, understandably, even more melded this morning.  I'd say this one is a keeper.

Tonight I made two new recipes. The first is a creamy oriental salad dressing that I got from the culinary teacher at Farrington.  This one has all the elements I like in a dressing; it's creamy but the vinegar prevents it from being too rich.  There's a touch of shoyu and a touch of sesame.  Yum.  We ate it over a combination of mushrooms, romaine and green lettuce.

The one setback is the dressing is very thick--it's hard to trickle a small amount onto your individual serving; it works better if the whole thing is just tossed together.

The second recipe is from a magazine.  It was a first-place winner in some cooking contest and the winner claims it's a recipe her mother got from Hawaii.  Naturally it contains pineapple.  And coconut.  Basically, it's oven-roasted Cornish hens basted with butter then basted with a mixture of the pineapple juice and steak sauce. With all the basting I did, I would expect the Cornish hens to be spectacular.  It wasn't.  Good but not incredibly outstanding.  

The pineapple coconut stuffing, on the other hand, was very good--crushed pineapple mixed with shredded coconut, melted butter and chopped onions then tossed with bread crumbs and salt and pepper.  I used some of the mixture in the hens before I tied them shut.  The majority went into a baking dish and was heated after the hens came out of the oven.  The top got a bit crusty and the rest was moist and fruity.  I don't normally like sweet stuffings but I did like this one.

Three recipes down.  Many more to go!

Food Quest, Year 2

So summer vacation is here once again and in an attempt to pick up and improve on where we left off last summer, the boys and I are back on the Food Quest track. 

There are two major goals this summer:  the first is to make our way through the unbelievably large stack of recipes I have accumulated but never tried over the years.  C pulled four recipe cards that he personally wants to try and I have selected two.  The idea is that by the end of the summer, we will have cooked our way through most of them, discarding those we don't like and filing the ones we do.  Soon to be cooked:  pineapple cornish hen and ginger lime carrots.  Among many, many others.

The second goal is to check out restaurants we haven't tried before and sample their offerings.  Today we went to Max's of Manila--a restaurant tucked into the parking lot of Costco Iwilei.  The overflow parking at Costco is ideal for this endeavor; it's a short distance from the restaurant and parking there keeps the craziness associated with Costco to a bare minimum.  The boys and I parked and were seated within minutes of entering the zone of madness.

Max's features a smallish but separate party room and a dining room that is larger than it first appears.  A limited amount of patio seating is also available out back.  Fried chicken is their specialty and it can be ordered in several combination plates with pancit Canton or pancit bihon, steamed rice, jasmine rice, fries or garlic rice, lumpia in the Shanghai style.  The rest of the menu is family style. 

Since their menu was advertising "adobo festival" and C is a big fan, we asked the waitress what her favorite is.  I wish I can remember her name; not only did she recommend the pork adobo and made several other recommendations from the menu, she also made suggestions on what combination to order some of the dishes in. She was also attentive without being intrusive. She gets 5 stars in customer service!

We decided on half a fried chicken, a large serving of the garlic fried rice, pancit bihon, and of course, the pork adobo.  We also started with calamari--it was interesting to note that you could order either the "calamares" which is the fried calamari rings or "tentacles" which are, well, you guessed it, the tentacle portion of the calamari.  The calamari were large but very tender, the batter was light and golden and they were served with a garlic vinegar dip.  Yum. 

The famous fried chicken was done up in a similar fashion; a very light but crisp breading.  Very tasty but the white meat was a tad dry--nothing that a little banana sauce couldn't help though!  The pancit bihon was very flavorful and came with lemons on the side.  The pork adobo--definite hit.  The chunks of pork were tender, tender and the traditional vinegar flavoring was just enough--C, who is a big vinegar fiend, would have liked even more.  Diced tomatoes and onions were served alongside.  The garlic fried rice was also a hit with the boys--the garlic was clearly visible but was in no way overpowering.  It added a nice touch to the chicken and pork.

We had enough chicken, pancit and rice to bring home for either one very significant meal or two moderate meals--depending on which of us gets to the leftovers first.  Total bill:  $51.  Very good and very worth it--we highly recommend it.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall...

I was doing some research yesterday and came across Samantha Brick, a writer for the UK's Daily Mail.  It seems that Ms. Brick wrote an article on Tuesday entitled "Why Women Hate Me for Being Beautiful" that became an internet sensation which generated more than a million tweets and caused several of the newspapers I looked at to close down their comment section.

According to Ms. Brick, her physical attractiveness has cost her jobs, friends and created considerable tension in social situations--that is, if her employers, friends and social contacts were women.  The men, it would seem, adore Ms. Brick and their open admiration has garnered her drinks, great service and the animosity of, it would appear, every woman she has ever had contact with. Even her friends have a problem with her attractiveness:  "And most poignantly of all, not one girlfriend has ever asked me to be bridesmaid."

Predictably, most of the comments I saw had to do with the readers' opinions of Ms. Brick's beauty, or for the most part, the lack thereof.  Anyone who wrote this article would be marked as arrogant but she might have achieved grudging agreement for her comments if she had the looks to back them up.  Instead, she comes across as a delusional, ordinary-looking woman with an over-achieving ego.

I personally don't dispute the idea that gorgeous people may get treated in ways they find unacceptable or uncomfortable so my biggest beef with her article is her failure to back up her claims with anything other than her own personal experiences--experiences that are weak and naturally biased.  For example, she describes a time she was out walking and waved at a neighbor who was driving by.  The neighbor deliberately snubbed her Brick says and the conclusion Brick came to?  She was jealous of Brick's looks. 

I can't even count the number of times I failed to see someone I knew out walking while I drove by and didn't notice till they called it to my attention later on.  Sometimes I am deep in thought as I drive, sometimes I am singing, and sometimes, I am actually paying attention to my driving while I'm in my vehicle. 

But I can't possibly understand what Brick has gone through; though she is only 5 years younger than me, I am exactly the kind of woman she describes as being hostile to her:  older, heavier, and "with the bloom beginning to fade."  I just don't have the experience she has had to feel sympathy or compassion.  And that so does not bother me.  I've been a bridesmaid four times.