Husk Cheeseburger - Page 131

Holy F**king, S**t-b**ling, Wonder-Ch***t!  That's F**king Awesome!

The cheeseburger at Husk is amazing, and the home version is just as good, made maybe better by being able to eat it SECONDS after it's cooked!

I have to go to Germany so will provide details later...

We're back!!!
 And, as a bonus, we popped into Husk for lunch and tried the REAL THING!

It was close.  The burger we made at home was obviously a couple minutes fresher than the one in the restaurant, and, for some reason, ours were quite a bit more greasy (you say that like it's a BAD thing...)

The best part of making the burgers was the extraordinary amount of smoke you get when cooking them.  Ox is definitely considering an industrial vent hood for his new home.  I have to say that from the moment the burgers hit the cast iron, everyone in the room was drooling uncontrollably.  The burgers were barely assembled before we were taking bites.  They are totally worth the effort!

I do have to say that the amount of special sauce the recipe makes is way out of proportion to the number of burgers.  I now have a giant jar of special sauce, and nothing to use it on...except MORE BURGERS!  I have to go buy more meat.

Here's the bad picture of the burger from the restaurant for comparison.  Only had my phone so it's a bit over yellow.  The burger was outstanding!




Update:  Used the leftover frozen meat to do the burgers again.  Just as good after being frozen.  Also made burritos with the meat.  I don't think I'm ever buying ground hamburger again.

Update 2/1/15: Made the recipe a second time, using leftover sauce from the original time.  This time tried the grill but couldn't get it hot enough to make them as awesome as the last time.  Still delicious!

Husk Bar - Dec 1st, 2014

Kari and I popped into Husk Bar to say hello to Weaver (bartender extraordinaire) and have few drinks.  We happened to be sitting right where he would stand to make the Charleston Light Dragoon Punch.  Despite the bar being sparsely populated at an early hour, it seemed he was constantly making them.  A seriously popular drink, for good reasons.

We were there with a friend who's birthday it was and we had a great time.  As usual we ended up talking to total strangers (Husk Bar customers are the coolest).  One guy actually knew a ton of Charleston history, and had helped a bit with research into the punch.  Seriously interesting conversation.

Can't wait to go back and have a Husk Cheeseburger (which we will be making tonight, though probably won't be blogging about it until after December 19th, as we will be vacationing abroad).  If you haven't been to Husk Bar - go there, tonight.

Minero Restaurant - Nov 29, 2014

The picture above gives you a big hint that you might be in a Sean Brock restaurant.  Jars of awesome stuff waiting to be made into food.  Minero is the best Mexican in Charleston!

Kari and I had a HUGE meal here that was primarily based on our desire to try everything on the menu in one trip.  I had four different tacos.  My favorite being the Carnitas, but the Green Chorizo was great too.  Kari had the Chilaquiles and this thing called an Heirloom Pumpkin and Mushroom Mula, Benne Tortilla.  This thing was basically a tostada sandwich stuffed with awesome.  It is Kari's new favorite food.

Everything was great, as expected.  I mean, when the chef spends months perfecting his corn tortillas, you know the food will be phenomenal.  And for you guys on Tripadvisor whining about the silverware and napkins being in a drawer as opposed to on the table, it's called "character".  Quit yer bitchin.

That said, Ox, Kari, Mary and I might seem like wannabe food bloggers, but we're really just four people who f**kin love great food.  That's why every food picture is taken AFTER we've tasted the item.  We simply can't wait to take pictures before we try things.

On a side note, the guy who can't follow instructions (me) struck again and screwed up the recipe for Husk Hot Sauce, so that post is going to be delayed while we find more peppers.

The Charleston Light Dragoon Punch 1792 - Page 265

Kari and I went to the Husk Bar on Thursday after our Thanksgiving Dinner out and hung out with Darryl and Rachel the outstanding bar staff there.  We of course had to try this punch in anticipation of making it from the cookbook.  It wasn't our first time trying it.  It's an excellent and refreshing drink, but this gave us a real chance to do a taste test of our results versus the real thing.

This drink is based on a recipe found in the Charleston Preservation Society archives, and I have to say that I love what the society does.  Their house tours are awesome, and I got an awesome map (the Halsey Map) from them for my retirement. You really should check their store out at the corner of Queen and King streets.

I have to say that I felt like I was cheating on Ox, since he's in Florida for the holidays, but I figure I can accomplish a drink without screwing it up, especially since it involves brewing tea, which Kari excels at.

You basically brew tea, let it cool, add lemon juice and liquor, let it cool, and then serve with soda water and lemon peel.  The result is a refreshing, slightly peachy drink that tastes great.  My only complaint is that it says it makes 20 servings when in reality you get almost a gallon of the base that you use 3 ounces per serving.  Actually, I really don't see the problem.

Fried Chicken Skin with Hot Sauce and Honey - Page 253

Well s**t.  Mine don't look anything like the picture in the book.  Nor do they look the ones we've had at Husk.  I blame Chef Brock.  Clearly he sabotaged the recipe in his book to ensure I couldn't duplicate the restaurant results.  This ensures that I, and everyone else, have to go to the restaurant to get them.  It couldn't possibly be my marginal kitchen skills - no, not that.  They actually tasted pretty damn good.  Though we used a whipped up hot sauce vice Husk Hot Sauce - since that takes FOUR MONTHS to make!  Better get that recipe started soon.

All kidding aside, the recipe was easy to follow and the results not bad.  The hardest part was scraping the fat off the chicken skins.  I had some practice trying to duplicate a baked chicken skin that Chef Erik Anderson made with Chef Brock on an episode of Mind of a Chef, and had even watched Chef Brock make this very recipe in an add-on video from the series - HERE.  Speaking of which, you should own and watch Mind of a Chef with Sean Brock - it's mindblowing:

We had the skin leftover from the Chicken Stock chickens we broke down so that was no problem.  I also had some great honey from my sister's bee hives in Maine. Once we finished scraping the skins, we put them in the buttermilk bath and baked them for an hour like the recipe said.  When they came out of the oven, it looked a little scary, but once the buttermilk was shaken off, they accepted the flour mixture really well, and it stuck nicely while they were fried.

I managed not to burn myself with Ox's help, and the skins came out okay.  The taste was not quite as awesome as I remember from Husk, but we scarfed them down pretty damn quick.  Hot sauce and honey is a brilliant combination!

Here's the real thing from Husk Restaurant in Charleston:
(much better than the ones we made)

Chicken Stock - Page 318

This is the final if the quintuple fun we had last Sunday.  As stated before, both Ox and I are experienced stock makers, so chicken feet were nothing new to us.  Some of the methods used were, but they seemed to be variations on a theme rather than some new stock making miracle method.  We made a slight modification to the ingredients, because we had a need for thighs, breasts and wings for some future plans, we bought two whole chickens from H and L Market and broke them down ourselves, using everything from both chickens except the thighs and breasts.  As you can see from the picture, I slightly overestimated the size of the stockpot, but we eventually got everything fitted in.

We also did a pre-boil and rinse of the feet, just because I've seen what my sister's chicken's feet and what they walk through, so I don't trust anyone else to clean them!  other than that we followed the recipe to a tee, up until cooldown.  Again we used a wort chiller to cool the stock and then refrigerated it overnight.

My method for storage of stock is to ladel 2 cups into a quart ziploc bag and lay it flat on a quarter sheet pan in the freezer.  This makes what I call "index cards" of pre-measured stock.  It takes a while, but as you can see from the picture, it's easy to store and use.  I also measure out a few 1/2 cup "mini" packs.  If you have a beverage fridge with freezer, you can freeze one bag at a time in the freezer, which is usually directly over the cooling coils.  This means you can freeze a bag in less than 40 minutes!  Even though you're only doing one at a time, it's still faster than sheet pans in a regular freezer.

Advice: If you are going to make large amounts of stock, we love a turkey fryer with a basket and a wort chiller.  A turkey fryer gets this hot mess out of the kitchen and onto the driveway.  A wort chiller is a coil of copper tubing with tubes at either end that you can connect to a garden hose.  It's used to cool home brew beer down before adding yeast, but is awesome for stock.  Submerge it right after turning the heat off (disinfects it), connect to hose and slowly turn the water on.  200F to 70F in 5 minutes (depending on water supply temp).  I don't know why every professional kitchen doesn't do this. 

Beef Stock - Page 320

We cut down the size of this recipe but still had a whole cow's foot and said heck with it, and used the whole thing.  More connective tissue and collagen can only be a good thing, right?  Both Ox and I are huge stock makers, so we were interested to see what differences Chef Brock had from our methods.  We were happy to see that he did the same pre-boil and discard that we do.  We do it for a couple of reasons: to get a head start on impurity removal and thoroughly clean gross parts like cow's feet.

Stock making is a fairly basic endeavor, and we were feeling pretty clever and successful up until the moment that we began ladling the stock into the strainer I had staged over a container hours before.  Key step was missed, removing the container's lid (though the strainer was much more stable sitting on the lid).  It seems that despite our best efforts, large messes and spills are going to be the hallmark of this endeavor.


Advice: If you are going to make large amounts of stock, we love a turkey fryer with a basket and a wort chiller.  A turkey fryer gets this hot mess out of the kitchen and onto the driveway.  A wort chiller is a coil of copper tubing with tubes at either end that you can connect to a garden hose.  It's used to cool home brew beer down before adding yeast, but is awesome for stock.  Submerge it right after turning the heat off (disinfects it), connect to hose and slowly turn the water on.  200F to 70F in 5 minutes (depending on water supply temp).  I don't know why every professional kitchen doesn't do this. 

I'll talk more about how we store our stock in the next post on Chicken Stock (this recipe was a bit more interesting.)

Cornbread and Buttermilk Soup - Page 76

Finishing off the pyramid of recipes that were required to get here, this was something we were a little skeptical of, but we were won over before we even started the soup.  In the introduction to this recipe, Chef Brock discussed a breakfast or late night snack that he made regularly: cornbread with buttermilk poured over it and seasoned with salt and pepper.  We had the cornbread, and the awesome raw buttermilk from Turner's Farm, so we gave it a shot.  WOW!  I have a whole 'nother reason to make this cornbread!

As we're crumbling cornbread into onions and celery sauteed in butter I found myself skeptical again.  I didn't see how this was going to result in a soup, but in Brock we trust so away we went.  I tried to demonstrate my stupidity again by grabbing the buttermilk right away, but Ox saved us by pointing out it needed to cool first.  So much for me learning to read and follow recipes.  Once cooled, the magic began...



We used a stick blender rather than a normal blender, because we love making messes and the feel of soup splashing on our faces.  The buttermilk made it much more soup-like, and a bit of extra vegetable stock finished the job.  Salt and pepper to taste and it was amazing.  Ox, the presentation nazi, dropped a couple cornbread cubes in, and would have drizzled some buttermilk if every spare drop had not been used for buttermilk over corn bread awesomeness discussed above.  Really like this and love the excuse to make EVEN MORE CORNBREAD!

Cracklin' Cornbread - Page 71

I got to use my favorite Cast Iron skillet today!  I love that skillet!  Just look at it, seven layers of polymerized flax seed oil over thousands of layers of traditional seasoning and years and years of cooking.  I got this sucker at the flea market in Hawaii almost twenty years ago, and it was old and seasoned back then!  I think it might be older than I am.  It's my go-to skillet.

Ox has made cast iron skillet corn bread before and he identified this recipe as better designed than the one he uses.  I have to say that Sean Brock neglected step one of the recipe: either open all doors and windows or remove smoke detector batteries.  In his defense this probably isn't necessary under a restaurant exhaust hood.  For the record, in case you're wondering, the best recipes in the world involve opening windows and disabling smoke detectors!

We got lucky and found bacon end pieces at the Summerville Farmer's Market.  We also got the corn meal there from the Flying Farmer.  He has an old milling machine running making corn meal and providing the background beat at the market.  Buttermilk was raw and from Turner Farms (also at the Farmer's Market).  The buttermilk was THICK!  and yummy.

Watching the batter hit the bacon fat and start smoking was a near religious experience.  I wish I'd gotten a picture of it.  The cornbread came out PERFECT and tasted awesome - just like I remember at Husk.  I may make this every day!  I also feel that it made my skillet happy.

You should make this.  Best recipe so far - and easy!

Vegetable Stock - Page 316

This was the first of five recipes for Sunday.  We wanted to make the Corn Bread and Buttermilk Soup, but that required us to make Corn Bread.  That's a shame, having to make cornbread, and then eat it.  We also needed to make Vegetable Stock, which also reminded us that we were pretty much out of Beef and Chicken Stock.  So 10 hours, 3 stock pots and a bunch of deliciousness later, we had Corn Bread and Buttermilk Soup.  Thanks to Brian and Jen for the excellent loaner stockpot that you're never getting back.

And a s**t ton of stock.

We found the Vegetable Stock recipe to be quite interesting.  I'd never made this before and it was fast.  Running the vegetables through a chopper and then giving them a quick saute before adding water and wine was new to us, but this stock was probably the most aromatic of them all.  It was also less than an hour from start to finish.

We managed to not screw anything up, like the time I strained my stock, and then realized that I had strained it straight down the sink, like it was pasta or something.  That kinda sucked.

Standby for the rest of our Sunday adventures...



Advice: If you are going to make large amounts of stock, we love a turkey fryer with a basket and a wort chiller.  A turkey fryer gets this hot mess out of the kitchen and onto the driveway.  A wort chiller is a coil of copper tubing with tubes at either end that you can connect to a garden hose.  It's used to cool home brew beer down before adding yeast, but is awesome for stock.  Submerge it right after turning the heat off (disinfects it), connect to hose and slowly turn the water on.  200F to 70F in 5 minutes (depending on water supply temp).  I don't know why every professional kitchen doesn't do this. 

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!!!

This Sunday, YOU and all of your friends, can see the latest endeavors of Ox and Brock!

There will be four.  YES!  I said FOUR recipe attempts that may or may not result in mayhem and catastrophe!

I know it's hard to wait so...here is a tiny hint as to the awesomeness that may be coming.  Try to contain your enthusiasm and survive until SUNDAY!

Photo credit goes to Mary, wife of Ox...

Carrots Braised and Glazed in Carrot Juice - Page 46

We decided to start simple, with a side dish to accompany our normal dinner.  This may also have been inspired by the disappointing glazed carrots made by Ox last week - but he's not admitting to that.  We liked the idea espoused in this recipe description of cooking vegetables in their own juices to enhance their flavor.  We expected to have trouble with ingredients at some point during this adventure, but didn't expect it so early...

We weren't able to find baby carrots, so ours were a bit larger than the recipe called for.  We also couldn't find Chervil, which I had assumed was a name for some sort of rodent - imagine my embarrassment at the Whole Foods meat counter.  A quick internet search said that they were actually an herb similar to parsley, so we made the appropriate substitution.

As the mise-en-place guy, my job was to pre-stage the ingredients, and I may have missed the peel the carrots step, which resulted in some interesting things during cooking, but Ox saved the day with some quick thinking.  Lesson learned - read recipe carefully and follow instructions.  I never really learned to do that during my career as a Navy Nuclear Operator.  Also, if you look closely at the juicer picture, you'll see a bit of a setup issue.  In my defense, it has been over a year since I used it.  Speaking of juicing, the Juiceman Junior is over twenty years old and still going strong!

Juiceman Jr. Automatic Juice Extractor

We also forewent using the carrot tops as garnish, since they weren't exuberantly fresh.

All in all, we managed to fuck up several key steps, and yet it still tasted awesome!  I'm sure Chef Brock would have sent it back to the kitchen and fired whoever made it, but we're going to add this to the list of recipes we liked, but want to try again and get right.

P.S. This post may make Ox and I look more like My Drunk Kitchen as opposed to real cooks, but we don't really suck that bad.  Stick with us and we'll show you some good fun!

Advice: We've done this three times and the best advice I can give is to strain the carrot juice through cheesecloth.

What the Hell is Ox and Brock?

Ox and Brock is a blatant rip off of Julie and Julia, wherein a culinary school dropout and a semi-professional Sean Brock stalker get together to cook all the recipes in Sean Brock's new cookbook Heritage, which, if you don't own, you must.

At risk of being accused of starting a blog for the money, I'm going to link directly to the book on Amazon, and, if you buy it, we'll get a tiny fraction of the purchase price.  Lest you think this will make us rich, I encourage you to consider the cost of some of the awesome ingredients we'll need to prepare the recipes.  If we break even, that's a win, but I'm thinking that this blog is simply motivation to make and eat great food.

We will also attempt to eat at McCrady's and Husk on a regular basis, and blog about that as well.  All Sean Brock sightings will be documented.  Speaking of which, our recipes will be prepared using the non-personalized copy of our autographed Heritage book, the personalized autograph book is retained in a climate controlled, highly secured fallout shelter below the Super Tax Genius compound.

To clarify, I (the writer) am the semi professional Sean Brock stalker, along with my wife, Kari.  Ox is the culinary school dropout and his wife, Mary does a lot of the photography.  You can tell she took the pictures when they don't suck.

Please buy the book and follow along!  It should be fun, at least for us!