bbq

Today is the BBQ. I am cooking basically for me. My mom, my way hetero life partner, and two of our friends will be enjoying the food, but everyone has places to be and things to do. I don’t mind, ill be happy if people enjoy the food. I’m currently writing as the coals warm, drinking a bottle of my favorite beer (Old Brown Dog by Smutty Nose Brewery) as my dog sniffs around the yard and London Calling plays on the boom box. Something about a post-apocalyptic extravaganza is totally sitting right with me at the moment. The weather is perfect, on the cool side, and sunny. I might move the party to the hammock in a bit, though that would make it impossible to read lappy's screen.

As mentioned, my friends Jay and Sarah are working today. That is hella lame, to be laboring on labor day. As a consolation I will be bringing them some delicious food. In the case of Jay this presents me with certain problems. Jay is not a picky eater, but is a man who knows what he likes. At my last BBQ I knocked one out of the park by making a burger to which he expressed special devotion. A simple burger, it nonetheless made extensive use of garlic, and other ingredients that added up to a delicious whole. That is basically all i remember of the recipe. This is a problem. I want to repeat this success, but due to my habit of not writing my recipes down I forget almost all the ingredients. This is not the first time this has happened, but I'm hoping to make it the last by finally utilizing this blog. So then, concurrent with my sausage saga, I will begin The Quest to Grill the Perfect Burger (Jay Edition). Cheese! He likes cheese. I'll go slice some mozzarella.

Back.

Another long standing issue I have is how to properly utilize the veggies I grill. I love grilling veggies but I always pile so much onto my grilling agenda as to have no time to do anything but, and grilled veggie, while delicious, are not a dish unto themselves. this time I am only making sausages, burgers, and veggies, so I could attend to some veggie deliciousness. I'm still not really sure what to do. One issue is that my gal Friday dislikes the main veggie on offer: eggplant. I certainly understand her reasoning. Eggplant is a very bizarre and slimy creature, more like bread and less like a plant. As a chef I do not believe in forcing people to eat what they do not desire. On the other hand, it makes me not over eager to try the dill, grilled eggplant linguini dish that is eating at the back of my mind. I feel that everyone I cook for should be provided with a full meal, so I would have to make another veggie dish anyway. For today I think salad is going to be the main veggie axe, which people may top as they please. I would love to make the linguini tomorrow, but there are already plans, and Wednesday begins the high holy days for us chosen people, meaning Thursday would be the first day I could do this without undue stress. Still, grilled eggplant keeps. Its not like its going to get MORE slimy.

Anyway, my recipes. This is the one I am using for the eggplant. My only variation is that i am using three medium sized white eggplants rather than the large purple one called for here. As a result, I doubled the recipe, and added lemon pepper because it is good. http://southernfood.about.com/od/grillfruitveggie/r/bl30627e.htm

I had two issues with this recipe. First, the oil and the vinegar separate very fast. I know this isn’t rocket science, but I ended up with half very vinegary eggplants and half very oily eggplants. If possible have someone keep stirring for you whilst you baste. second, if you are actually a good person and use a coal grill, and if you follow the recipe’s directions and use glowing coals, do more like 5 minutes a side or you will end up with charcoal. Its not the end of the world, burned eggplant is tasty, but not really what you go for when you cook.

For the zucchini and mushrooms I marinated them in olive oil, red wine vinegar, lemon pepper, salt. I topped it up with water till they were submerged in the plastic bag. I was originally going to cook them on skewers, but the string beans I was planning on grilling in my classic manner turned out to be bad. I was somewhat disappointed in this outcome, and decided to switch to a similar method for the zucchini and mushrooms. In this vein I cut them into thin slices. After the eggplant were done, I put two tablespoons of garlic and butter in a cast iron pan which I put on the grill to heat up. Once it was hot I threw in the zucchini and mushroom combo. This you can let sit a while. The water from the marinade will take a while to cook off. Actually a long while. Leave out water if you can.

For the burger I took a well marbled boneless steak and ground it with two tablespoons of minced garlic. I grilled till it looked done, and when I flipped it i topped it with shredded mozzarella. For the sausage I made relatively small patties, and cooked them well. This was a mistake. I did it this way due to fears of disease, but that was ill founded. I did the grinding myself, and the pork was very fresh. I found the patties flavorful but a bit dry. Next time i will not overcook them. Mom called the result bacon-y. I can definitely see where she's coming from. I’ll also definitely want to increase the seasonings, including the fennel. The salt was a little overpowering, though maybe that is just because the fat was cooked off.

sausages 2: the en-longing

Today I learned two valuable lessons: Ignore Alton Brown at your own peril, and there is no way to write a blog entry about sausage packing without being heavy on the sexual innuendo. So just to get it all out of our systems, go look at this clip.

As for the former lesson. Today I made another attempt at making sausage. Since last we spoke on this subject I viewed the sausage episode of Good Eats, one of Alton Brown's Food Network programs. The fortuitous viewing of this program contributed greatly to directing my current effort at encased meat production. His two recipes from the show can be found here and here. My recipe is something of a blend of the two.

The program also reinforced two lessons from my last attempt. 1: I need to use more fat. 2: I need a meat grinder. In remedying the first lesson Alton helpfully directed me to his favorite cut of pork for the purpose of sausaging, the shoulder, noting that it has a proportion of fat that is right in the sweet spot for sausage making, namely 20%. Alton added fat on top of this in one instance, but I'm trying to be relatively healthy, so I'm sticking with the naturally occuring fat in the shoulder. I was able to find such a cut at the local shopright, but stupidly forgot the proper name (it is also called Boston Butt) and let slide some fine boneless cuts last night. Today I returned to the meat department to find a plethora of store made sausages and a solitary, bone in, package of shoulder meat.

There is no finer way to learn to appreciate the job butchers do that to attempt to de-bone something, especially something as irregularly shaped as a shoulder. I am not burdened with the horror of raw meat some people feel, on the contrary being rather fascinated by it, but it is a huge pain in the ass to cut meat from a round joint with a straight knife. It is easier on strait bones, but not buy much.

The second lesson of brown was one I chose to ignore. I am strapped for cash at the moment, having just purchased a shit ton of text books for a large sum. I have found a 20$ grinder on Amazon, but given the delayed gratification of online shipping I could not bring myself to drop the cash. In my previous attempt my issue with the lack of a grinder came down to the consistency of the meat, which was also Mr. Brown's main complaint. Deciding I would rather have some tasty but mealy sausages than none at all, I decided to forge ahead with the food processor and pastry bag method I attempted previously.

So then to the attempt. I altered Alton's arangement based on comments on the rescipie's website (that it was not seasoned enough) and on the availability of fresh herbs. As I have rosemary and parseley growing in the garden, I decided to throw it in. As I very much enjoy sage in sausages, I decided to buy a box at the grocery. I dare you to tell me I was wrong. I had also bought some scallions. I decided to throw some in. I like scallions. They were handy. Fuck you.

sausages

1.5 tsp fennel seed, toasted and ground

2 tb chopped parsley

3 tb rosemary

4 tb sage

2 scallions

1.5 tsp pepper

1 tb garlic minced

2.5 lb pork shoulder

5 ft of pork casing, soaked 1/2 hour before use.

The fennel I did first. I dry toasted it in a pan for five minutes, as recommended by Mr. Brown, and then ground it in my gal Friday’s much abused coffee grinder. The grinder is intended for her flax seed, and other more mild aromatics, but certain of my relatives keep grinding coffee in it. I doubt my grinding of toasted fennel seed was much help. I’m sorry baby; ill buy you a new one after we move. Buying you one now would just see another grinder polluted by my relatives. After grinding and heartfelt guilt, the fennel was placed in a large bowl with the garlic and pepper.

After I acquired, washed, and chopped the herbs, these were also placed in the bowl with the garlic. Once the meat was deboned, I chopped it into pieces as small as I had the patience to create, at least an inch or less, and then threw it into the bowl. Finally, I spread the salt over the meat, and then mixed it all together by hand so the herbs and spices coated the meat. I then covered the bowl securely with plastic wrap, such that there were no vents to the outside, and placed in the fridge. My fridge has smelled poorly recently, and I didn’t want the sausage contaminated by bad smells. The point of the refrigeration is to cool the fat and allow it to take the flavors of the spices. Letting it get infected with the refrigerator smell would be counter productive. I let it rest for several hours, but one should be sufficient.

Then the destruction began.

I ground the meat very, very thoroughly in the food processor. I thought it came out well. It reminded me of dough. I think if I ever make meatloaf in the future I will use this method rather than a meat grinder. I may even be able to make meat hamentashen. That would be funny. Ha. I am enjoying that joke. But seriously. It was like dough. It was kinda gross.

I proceeded to stuff my dough meat into my meat pastry bag. I carefully did prep work on my casings, running water through the full length and tying off one end. As pastry bags are not made for sausage casings, the usual method of forcing meat out into the casing, like rolling a condom onto my erect penis (or pushing my erect penis into a rolled condom which is being held in place over a tube…), was not workable. I could not bunch the casing onto the pastry bag due to its rapid growth in size. Instead I had to hold one end onto the bag and force the meat into the casing. This was hard to do, so I would try to work the meat down the casing, away from the bag. Much like trying to force my erect penis into a used condom I found by the side of the road. not that that ever happened. Just hypothetically. That would be hard. Or like, putting it into a candy wrapper using only rainwater for lube. That sucks. amirite? Not that I’ve done that. That would be hella weird.

I was just musing on how long this was going to take, and how much my wrists and feet already hurt, and how I had two pounds of meat and five feet of casing to work with the meat wasn’t even near the end yet, when i first burst the casing. I paused. One fears this when working casing this way but it had ended up not being an issue last time. I found I could work the meat past the hole if I squeezed it hard enough. I continued to work the meat down the casing, and began to plan a contingency of tying off in the middle and working the meat in from both ends. Then the second hole appeared. And the third. I attempted to tie off, and created a fourth. This is when I gave up.

The sausages at tomorrows’ bbq will be patty style, and after this I will go ahead and order the meat grinder. it is just way too much of a pain int he ass to work the meat into the casing. Simply not practical. This is lame, because grinders are kind of expensive, and somewhat specialized. On the other hand, the one I have my eye on can also be used for pasta making. After I finally make a successful sausage, you may all be subject to the pasta series. So, don’t you go enjoying life yet.