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| Foie Gras, Strawberry and Almond Popsicle with Marshmallow. So good. |
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| Aged Beef, Sweet Potato and Black Truffle. I liked the double poured sauces. |
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| This is Charleston Ice Cream, which we have made. Ours was not even close to this good. |
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| This bonsai tree was sitting on the table when we got there. In the tree was eggplant jerky. |
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| Caviar, Sunflower,Brown Butter and Apple. What an amazing combination. |
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| Oyster in a sea of sea bean and a nitrogen fog. |
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| Cobia - 3 ways - 3 AMAZING ways. |
I think this is our first really successful desert out of the Heritage cookbook. Ox and I loved it, the wives were more ambivalent. Neither of them seemed to appreciate the nuts in the filling. We used the specific Black Walnuts called for in the recipe, and they seemed really good to me. I guess there's no accounting for taste.
The filling was nice and easy to make, and tasted great in my opinion. Rolling everything together was surprisingly easy, though a second pair of hands helped. We didn't use all of the filling, but the leftover was lovely to make pumpkin belvita cookie sandwiches with.
So tonight we had a lot on our plates. Ox and I had made the Pumpkin Roll, and it was in the refrigerator, and then we made Chicken Marsala using a brilliant crispy skinned chicken breast recipe we had been playing with for a while. After dinner, there were a ton of dishes, and the Dilled Green Tomatoes to do. Ox and I jokingly said that we would do the dishes if the womenfolk would do the tomatoes. The ladies were game, so this recipe is all them! (We got the last laugh because we did a shitty job on the dishes.)
When you're not doing the canning, this is a relatively simple recipe. As usual, we got our spices (dill seeds were the only thing we didn't have on hand) from the Charleston Spice Company. With a couple days notice they will have what you want at the Charleston or Summerville Farmer's Market.
The vinaigrette came together easy, and stayed emulsified a lot better than I expected it to based on the recipe description. Was damn good too! The recipe makes a lot of it, so either cut it back, or plan on having a few salads over the next couple days. It really is the vinaigrette version of red-eye gravy.
The cheese was simple and straightforward, with the only remotely twitchy part being keeping the milk mixture at 170F for 2 minutes, which isn't that hard even on my piece of crap electric stove. I found my thermapen to be just as easy as the fry thermometer for doing this, and more accurate.
We used a locally bought green tomato relish, to which we added some homemade pickles, since green tomatoes aren't in season. We'll make the Heritage version next spring or summer. It's actually one of the harder parts of doing every recipe from a book. Usually, we see what's available and fresh, and then make something based on that. Here, we have to plan ahead, plotting out recipes based on what will be available, and then hoping it's good and fresh. Initially, this was easy, because there were a lot of recipes with ingredients that were available and good year round. As the recipes dwindle, it gets a bit harder. But enough whining - this is super fun - I just feel like we need to make excuses for the long gaps between recipes sometimes.
We bought nice thin pork chops from the butcher so they required a minimum of flattening. The dredge was simple and easy and the frying went well, though we almost missed that there were no temperature checkpoints, the cooking is done entirely by time, which was nice - and worked perfectly. At least until my piece of shit electric stove stayed on when we turned it off. I can't wait to convert to gas.
I'm not exactly sure what to do as a result of this recipe. There was some very extensive smoking while charring the beef, but we were prepared with a stool staged under the smoke detector and all windows open - you learn to do this when Sean Brock tells you to put a cast iron skillet over high heat. 16 minutes total of charring and my house was smoky enough that the detector should have gone off - but it didn't. I'll have to get it fixed before we do another heavy heat recipe.
That said - it was worth it. This is a long lead time recipe with a lot of ingredients, but relatively easy to execute. Cooking down the braising liquid is an exercise in torture as the aroma gets more and more amazing. This definitely serves more than 4 people, though in our case it just meant a lot of leftovers.
We didn't quite execute the truffle puree to the letter due to ingredient access and being cheap, but we produced a nice truffle flavored sauce that complimented well.
The worst part of doing these recipes is waiting for the presentation pictures to be done before eating. 
Advice: If you don't want to spring for the truffle puree ingredients this recipe is delicious without it and the braising liquid makes a great sauce. Be prepared for smoking! I have some tall 12-ounce canning jars and I find spooning a liquid I want to defat into them (working in batches if necessary) allows me to get rid of the fat very efficiently. We didn't have a roasting pan that had both a lid and a rack, so I used my dutch oven and made a base of canning jar rings to simulate a rack.
We wanted the Squash Risotto as a side to this (pumpkins and squash let you pretend it's fall and will get cool soon), and that made things complicated. You can see the graph paper timeline on instagram (OxandBrock). Things didn't go quite as planned (the pumpkins required a hacksaw to open - good thing I have a food grade hacksaw blade* - doesn't everybody?) and that slowed things down. The timeline work did help us adjust and recover. There are 5 components to this dish, and the risotto isn't exactly simple either. That said, properly organised, this recipe is relatively straightforward and the recipe guides you pretty well.
We couldn't get dry packed scallops in time, and also didn't get U-10's. This meant we had to sear in 2 batches. I don't recommend this as the second batch didn't sear as well and ended up a little grey. They also don't taste as amazing as really good scallops, but they were still good.
Everything else is straightforward, but this recipe is the poster child for planning, mise en place, and knowing what burner you will be using when. Know where you are going to put the various pans as they finish. Warmed plates and bowls can be helpful, or a large cutting board or towel that is out of the way, but easy to get to. Have the tools you'll need out and easy to get to. Extra hands help, as long as they know what to do when.
It's been a while since we cooked, mainly because of me spending my summers North in Vermont. Also because the remaining recipes are getting a bit complicated and the ingredients a bit more fun. Kari and I are going to Denver for a week and when we get back, Ox and I are going to do a bit of preparation for the future, rather than deciding on a recipe the day we plan on cooking it.
The good thing about going North, however, is that we get to bring back some Hill Farmstead Arthur - a great Farmhouse Saison, with a perfect tartness to compliment the risotto and the Roasted Scallops we made to accompany them.
The Farro Risotto we made from Heritage was amazing, so we had high hopes for this recipe, though the idea of using rice grits seemed a bit strange - In Brock We Trust. The squash seed addition at the end was also unexpected, but kinda made sense texturally. We couldn't figure out why we were rubbing the squash with oil and salt, since you wouldn't be using the peels - turned out you DO use the outsides, and this means you need to salt them liberally. The sofrito step of heating thinly sliced garlic and shallots in butter and oil until they practically dissolve is going to become a staple technique in our kitchen.
This came together as a classic risotto, with stock additions and stirring, though it is quite a bit thicker, so you couldn't stop stirring or you would get a risottoplosion. My microwave can attest to this, as it is covered in risotto splashes. We played around with this and made a few discoveries. Discussed in the advice. One was that if you don't salt the squash generously enough, you will have an under-salted risotto, but this was an easy fix.
Advice: Season the squash liberally. If you don't have classic rice grits, you can briefly pulse good rice in a food processor to break it up a bit - go for the consistency of steel cut oats, and sift most of the dust away. Start the risotto off on Medium Low and raise or lower as necessary to avoid risottoplosion. Don't be afraid to use the skins and seeds of the squash - they are what makes the dish. You can add salt to taste at the end if there's not enough.
Not much to say about making these, they are a pretty basic pickle recipe.
I struggled with these. I had some great, really fresh eggs, and didn't want to mess it up. The recipe seemed like it might be troublesome, and curing has never been my strong suit.
Then it was brushing the salt/sugar off, which was a little sticky, and made me think I wasn't getting enough off. Tying and hanging was okay, though I stressed about tying to tightly, too loosely, or having them drip or something in my pantry.
Turns out I'm just a paranoid pansy. In hindsight, I was sweating too much and should have just rolled with it. These are easy, take no time at all and are awesome. They're like egg yolk flavored cheese. Once they're done curing I just trimmed the rough exterior and had these amazing slivers of eggy pleasure.
We were planning these for standard Sunday Ox and Brock dinner, but on Saturday got invited to a cookout with friends - so we decided to make them there. Since we were cooking at someone else's place, and we didn't know how much equipment/space we would have, we decided to do as much ahead as possible. Since we weren't grilling anything except scallions for prep, I decided to use my tried and true, super fast roasting method that I use for roasting peppers (in fact a roasted a couple jalapenos for Ox to make an Indian chicken dish for our Saturday dinner). I figure if it works for peppers, it should work for scallions. Your chimney starter isn't just for starting the charcoal! Judicious use of a dedicated cooling rack allows for some screamin' high temperature cooking - though the cooking surface is a bit small. Took about 3 minutes to roast the scallions. We even roasted a bunch more and ate them right off the "grill".
A couple minutes in the blender and we had the Barbecue Sauce done. We put the chicken in to marinade, the chips in to soak, and then measured out the rest of the ingredients we needed in easy to travel containers.
Confession...my involvement in this recipe was labeling ziploc bags and taking a picture. But the stock looked pretty f'en good. Nearly solid at room temperature is a good sign, and jello consistency when refrigerated is nice too. Can't wait to use this in a recipe.
This was an interesting recipe to cook for me. It was in preparation for the Hanger Steak at Ox's house, and, since he was getting in from the Blessing of the Fleet a lot later than we would have liked, I was responsible for a lot of prep. I wanted everything to be ready so that when he got in, everything could just hit the pan and we'd be off. The problem was, that, due to an unfortunate Chief's Initiation incident in Singapore in the 90's, I can't smell fish sauce without becoming, well, uncomfortable. I don't even keep the stuff in my house. So what I did was get literally everything except the fish sauce and the spice sachet together in a big jar, so we could just poor and cook at his house. This worked out pretty well, except that his house got to smell like this amazing Steak Sauce, instead of mine.
This is another slightly time consuming recipe, but relatively easy to get right. It took about 45 minutes to reduce, but blended up smooth as silk. A totally delicious steak sauce - and this from a salt, pepper and oil steak guy.
Ox has a gratin problem. Meaning, he has only successfully execute au gratin potatoes once since I've known him...and I've known him a while. Not only that, but I'm pretty sure gratin was to blame for our miscommunication wherein Ox showed up at my house expecting me to have ingredients for this recipe, while I expected him to show up with ingredients for another! Luckily, that day worked out (Huevos de Hoecakes). I'd like to tell you that this was the day of Ox's triumphant redemption, but that wouldn't be true. That said, while the gratin didn't come out perfect, it came out a lot better than his usually does, and we're pretty sure how to fix it next time. The flavors of this gratin are amazing, so we will be doing it right in the future.
There will be another post on the Steak Sauce, which will be used in my kitchen forever, but let me just say it was great! I've said before that I'm a bit of a meat purist, but again, Chef Brock has changed my views. The herb marinade and steak sauce complemented the hanger steak PERFECTLY. 
We marinated the steaks at about 10 am, and ate at 7 pm. I also made the base of the marinade, but didn't cook it until I got to Ox's house. The recipe breaks up nicely over the course of the day, allowing lots of time so it doesn't take over the day. While time consuming, it's remarkably easy to follow and flows nicely, with lots of time for drinking and watching NASCAR (I chose to do both - Carl Wins!) The potatoes in the gratin came out slightly under-cooked, while the topping could not be cooked any longer. We plan on cooking the gratin without the topping until nearly done, then adding the topping and finishing off.
