Hogs for the Cause 2011

It's all about the pork.

I love pork. If you know me at all then you know that I'm a huge fan of the Almighty Pig. I love it in all its forms: ground, cured, smoked, slow cooked, fried, baked, roasted, braised, grilled ... I'm drooling just thinking about pork.

Homegrown: Pork, Parsnips and Greens

My neighbors! I'm sorry for leaving you without my endless ramblings for so long, but life (including the flu) sometimes catches you off guard. Let's get right to it!

"Do you know where your food comes from?"

These days, how often do we hear this question? And do we truly know the answer? How many times do we blindly pick up a package of steaks or a head of lettuce with no concern over how it made it from farm to store? I never thought much about it until I started living with ducks. Our layers are pretty consistent, so we have a steady supply of eggs. When we run out and I have to buy chicken eggs, I kind of panic. What were these chickens eating? Were they healthy? Well kept? Did they have bumblefoot? (We had a case of bumblefootwith one of our ducks. It's apparently common in poultry, and probably pretty common in commercial poultry farms. I'll let you read up on it yourself.) I'm amazed, after buying eggs, how watery and weak tasting they are. I can easily replace "2 eggs" in a recipe with just a single duck egg. (Look back to my Cheese-Stuffed Meatballs for an example.) I see the ducks who lay these eggs every day. We feed them and care for them. I know where these eggs come from. And they're freaking delicious. (Don't worry. We'll have some egg recipes in the near future!)

Cheese-Stuffed Meatballs

I doubt the title surprises you at this point. While I certainly do have a lot of love for things full of cheese or meat, or covered in cheese or meat, those aren't the only things I'm capable of doing ... and I hope that's clear. My goal, if I have one, is just to get you to think outside of the box. Be creative. Play with your food.

Keeping that in mind, we'll be making meatballs today!

From NOLA.com: New Orleans king cakes continue to push the edge

I got a mention on NOLA.com! How crazy is that?

From NOLA.com: New Orleans king cakes continue to push the edge

Thanks to the "person on the street" mentioned in the article (a good friend of mine, Ashley, who owns/runs the Porcelain Porcupine shop on Etsy) and to Leslie at NOLA Eats! And, of course, to Brett Anderson at the Times-Picayune!

I'll be cooking something up tomorrow night. Make sure to come back Friday for more food!

NOLA Eats King Cake Tasting: Gâteau de Boeuf Royale is the winner!

The Gâteau de Boeuf Royale won the "Homemade" category at the NOLA Eats King Cake Tasting this past Saturday! It was a really great event and many thanks to Leslie over at NOLA Eats for organizing, and to Barbara Yochum for hosting the event at her gallery.

Some things I learned from my original recipe:

• Making suet pastry dough is a giant pain in the rear. It's easier to use rendered fat than ground or shredded fat. And no matter what, it's probably not going to come out the way you think. I'd like to think I have a good method down for it now, but I have about 6 lbs. of dough in the fridge that attest to the trial and error process I had to go through.
• A little bit of stock with a little bit of cornstarch works well to keep the filling from drying out. The pastry dough absorbs a good amount of liquid so having it thick helps keep it juicy.
• The filling is much easier to work with after being chilled and the juices/fats have had a chance to congeal.
• An egg wash makes all the difference.
• Gastriques are amazing, wonderful things and I want to put them on everything.

For those of you who came out to the event, thank you! And for those of you who missed it there were a ton of great homemade entries and a great selection of retail cakes from around the city. (Sucré. Seriously. Awesome cake. And the glitter on my teeth was a nice finishing touch!) I'm sure NOLA Eats will have a write up on their site soon, so please visit over there and keep an eye out for a follow-up to the event!

I'll hopefully be getting another recipe up here in the next couple of days. I was focusing on the event all last week, so I apologize for falling behind.

Gâteau de Boeuf Royale at NOLA Eats King Cake Tasting on Feb 26!

If you've visited this site (and the few entries that are here) then you've probably seen the post for the Gâteau de Boeuf Royale.

This upcoming Saturday, February 26th at Barbara Yochum's 906 Dream Gallery (at 906 Royal St.), you can sink your teeth into a piece of this meaty creation at the NOLA Eats 3rd Annual King Cake Tasting Party! There's going to be a variety of cakes from a number of bakeries, as well as some other homemade cakes. Although this is not a "cake", so to speak, it will be (as far as I can tell) the only savory entry present! It's only $5 to attend, and besides some delicious cakes there are a number of prizes! Head on over to NOLA Eats and to purchase tickets and to see some photos from previous year's tastings.

I've been working this past week on perfecting the dough and think I finally have a good flaky and tasty recipe figured out. Another possible change will be the use of a gastrique instead of the wine syrup that I originally used, but I still have some more testing to do.

Hope to see you there!

Stuffed Pretzel

Today's recipe adventure has inspiration from a number of different sources.

I love soft pretzels. I grew up right outside of Philadelphia and we used to get the most amazing soft pretzels from the Federal Street Pretzel Bakery (who apparently sells them online). These weren't the giant plastic tasting things you get in the movie theater; they're dense, chewy, and downright amazing. Every year my father buys a couple of cases to give out for Halloween. Bought that day, they're usually a nice, warm treat for a fall costumer.