Recipes
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CURED MEATS
Beef
22 pounds seamed eye round
2 3-pound boxes of kosher salt
1 pound brown sugar
3 yards cheesecloth
3 tablespoons very good dried thyme, off the stick. (Buy a fresh packet in the store, and leave it in a dish on your counter for a week. You’ll have wonderful dried thyme.)
A few grinds of black pepper
1. In a big mixing bowl, combine three pounds of salt with a pound of brown sugar.
2. Trim all the fat off the meat, and dry with paper towel.
3. Coat the beef well with the thyme and pepper.
4. Cut the meat into slices about an inch and half to two inches thick.
5. Put a layer of the salt-and-sugar mixture, about half-and-inch deep at the bottom of a non-reactive pan. (I don’t actually know that aluminum would hurt in this process. But aluminum can impart flavor, and this is such a concentration of available flavors that it seems like a risk. Use stainless, glass, or, best of all, pottery.)
6. Arrange the meat on the bed of salt, with plenty of space between the pieces, and then cover with the rest of the salt and sugar mixture. Wrap the pan up with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator for two days. Put something heavy on top. The old trick is to take a brick and wrap it in aluminum foil. I have these iron gas meter covers that I, um, “found” on the street a long time ago that work perfectly. Not a lot of weight, just a few pounds.
7. On the third day, you’ll see that the salt is watery. The sugar makes the mixture kind of syrupy and sticky. At this point you will make a mess.
8. Use the old imagine-the-palm-of-your-hand-is-a-steak trick. The pad at the bottom of your thumb is what rare meat feels like when you poke it. The middle of your palm is what medium meat feels like, and the pad at the base of your pinky equals well done. Here, we’re going for medium-well. Not rock solid, but very much a medium-well type feeling. You don’t want the meat to be squishy at all. How long will it take? This is a completely organic process. The size and shape of every piece of meat is different. The temperature in every fridge varies. The water content in meat is also variable. It will take no less than two days. For the size of the cuts we’re dealing with here, it shouldn’t take longer than four.
9. If it’s not done on day three, take the meat out of dish and dump off some of the water. Here’s where your back-up salt is going to come in handy. Put the meat back in, and use more salt to fill the container until the meat is again covered. Re-wrap, put it back in the fridge, and try again tomorrow.
10. If medium-well has been achieved, remove the meat from salt, shaking and scraping off the excess. (Try to leave the herbs on the meat, though you’re going to lose some.)
11. Lay each piece of meat on a square of cheesecloth, and tie it up into a bundle. Leave yourself some extra string.
12. Hang the meat outside. If you live somewhere especially sooty, you can hang the meat inside your fridge. You could probably just throw it in the fridge, but air is a big help, so hanging it from the shelf is better than just throwing it in the crisper. The meat does best outside. Don’t let it deep freeze, but a breezy cold day is perfect for the meat. It is like a big, fresh air cooler out there, your own gigantic meat locker.
While the meat hangs, two things will happen. You’ll puzzle your neighbors, because our little gauzy packets look very weird. More importantly, moisture will wick away. The meat will dry out, and cinch up, and become something really, really beautiful.
Duck
2 duck legs and 2 breasts (If you don’t mind deboning, you can save some cash by buying a whole duck.)
3 tablespoons cracked fennel seeds
1. If you debone the duck, leave the thigh and the leg connected, but cut out the thigh bone. (You can use the bones to make stock.)
2. Push fennel seeds into the flesh and onto the skin of the duck.
3. Trim some of the excess fat, but leave that big hunk that covers the breast. The skin of the breast can be a little chewy – you might want to try to trim the skin off – but make sure you leave a good bit of the fat. You can also score the skin on the breasts; just draw your knife over the skin of the breast in a cross-hatch pattern. This will be pretty and will aid in the salt’s permeation of the skin side.
4. Follow steps 5-12 of beef recipe above.
Pork
2 pounds pork tenderloin, trimmed of fat.
1 tablespoon ground cloves
1 tablespoon allspice
1 tablespoon cinnamon
A few grates of fresh nutmeg
1 teaspoon crushed chipotle
A few grinds of fresh black pepper
1. Remove all silverskin. Just tuck the point of a sharp knife under the silverskin, and run along the length of the tenderloin.
2. Mix the spices in a bowl.
3. Rub them all over the meat.
4. Follow steps 5-12 of beef recipe above.
Be creative and try other options. Star Anise pork is wonderful. It’s also good plain, or with a light dusting of white pepper.
SAUCES
For the pork
Onion Ginger Marmalade
5-7 onions
2 tablespoons fresh ginger
4 tablespoons butter
1 bottle white wine
I serve the pork with butternut squash gnocchi and onion ginger marmalade. If you can make or find squash or pumpkin gnocchi, great; if not, use plain. I arranged the pork, the gnocchi (which I tossed with extra virgin olive oil and grated Romano), and the marmalade as three separate piles. You can also serve them as a main dish, mixed up on a big platter.
1. Slice the onions thinly. Use a mandoline, a food processor, or a sharp knife.
2. Shred about two tablespoons of fresh ginger, and drop it briefly into boiling water to blanch (about 15 seconds; as soon as it hits the water it’s done). Pour out into a strainer.
3. Melt four tablespoons of butter in a heavy saute pan over a medium flame and add onions. The volume of the onions will reduce by two-thirds, so don’t panic if it seems you’ve used too small of a pan.
4. Once the onions begin to sweat (they turn slightly translucent), add the ginger.
5. When the onions begin to stick to the pan, start adding white wine. When the wine evaporates, add more. Repeat. If the wine is evaporating quickly, lower the heat. There shouldn’t be much hiss and pop when you add the wine. The whole mixture should cook slowly for as many hours as you’ve got; don’t cook for less than two and a half hours. By the end of this stirring and adding wine, you will have used at least half a bottle of wine, perhaps as much as a whole. What you’re going for here is a texture that is completely soft, sugars that are totally developed. The longer you cook the onions, the better they’ll be. If you’ve got a good pan that will distribute the heat well, you can turn the heat down very low and spend a lot of time away from the pan.
6. Season to taste with salt and white pepper at the end of the cooking. (If you do this too early, you’ll misjudge the amount of food you’ve got and overseason.)
For the duck
Cranberry Coulis
1 cup duck stock (you can use any stock, but the richer, the better)
2 tablespoons sherry fresh juice from a lemon quarter (no more than a tablespoon)
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 bag fresh cranberries
A splash of white wine
Zest of 1 orange
For the duck, I wanted to cut the silky fat flavor with something tart. I cooked a bag of cranberries very much according to the recipe for whole cranberry sauce on the back of the bag.
1. Combine stock, 12 cups water, sherry, and lemon juice in a 3- or 4-quart sauce pot. Stir in brown sugar and bring to a boil.
2. Add the berries and the orange zest and reduce heat to medium. The recipe on the cranberry bag says to stop after 10 minutes, and if you wanted whole berries, you would. Keep on cooking. Cook until it looks like a soupy jam with half of the cranberries floating in a juicy mixture. This might take 25 minutes or longer; pay attention to what you want from the pot of berries – a soupy jam – rather than how much time has elapsed.
3. When finished, strain the sauce, heat it up in a pot, splash with some white wine (two tablespoons should do), and adjust the seasoning to taste. (Don’t feel the need to use it all. I originally served the duck with mounds of cranberries, but I find that a drizzle of the strained sauce makes a much better accompaniment. Use the leftover sauce for turkey or chicken.)
4. Pile the duck in the center of the plate with a garnish of mesclun (just a handful), and drizzle the sauce sparingly around the plate. Garnish with orange zest (make sure that some of the oil from the orange rind squirts onto the duck while you zest the orange).
I also serve the salted duck with a dressing of raspberry jam mixed with extra virgin olive oil and sushi vinegar, and with a little sesame oil, drizzled over a piece of Belgian endive; it’s terrific finger food.
For the beef
The beef was the simplest of all. I have served this a hundred ways. It can be wonderful with just extra virgin olive oil, a sea salt like Sel Gris, and a squirt of lemon. Or try one of the following:
Harry’s Bar Carpaccio Sauce
3 4 cup homemade mayonnaise
2 teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
2 to 3 tablespoons milk
Whisk the ingredients together and season with salt and white pepper.
Tonno Sauce
1 can good Italian tuna in olive oil
1/2 cup of olive oil
squirt of lemon
salt and pepper
1 tablespoon fresh cream
Blend all ingredients in a food processor until it becomes a paste. This is a classic Italian sauce for veal cutlets, but it is a miraculous flavor when combined with the depth of the beef. Garnish with watercress.