Boots in the Oven

A very merry Louisiana Christmas!

Happy Holidays from us and ours (well, the cats...) to you and yours!  We're about to get to work on an honest-to-goodness Christmas goose, which none of the folks in attendance has actually ever enjoyed. 

Christmas geese are such an archetype, but I actually don't know anyone who's ever indulged.  Huh.

This time last year, we were leaving for a month-long trip through Sicily and Southern Italy... this year, we drove from Austin to Mandeville with a half of a hog, two cats, and the aforementioned goose.  What a difference a year makes!

Leaving for Louisiana

Well, we're packing up the car and leaving for Louisiana tomorrow, ready to spend Christmas with the in-laws.  We're going to end up looking pretty much straight out of the Beverly Hillbillies, but instead of the truck piled high with furniture we've got a Saturn piled high with meats. 

I believe I've mentioned on here the half a pig we're bringing - add to that a goose (none of us have ever actually eaten a Christmas goose), and two cats.  No, we aren't eating the cats, though the thought did cross my mind when Fatty leapt up on our entertainment console the other day and knocked the oolong teapot we bought in Hong Kong off the side, breaking the top.

Luckily Husbear fixed it, or Fatty would be in kitty traction.  (I assume there is such a thing.)

The best thing about road travel to southern Louisiana is that the state has possibly the best roadfood in the entire country.  We've found several gems, mostly through Jeffery Steingarten's article on turducken from It Must've Been Something I Ate, but our favorite so far has to be Poche's in Breaux Bridge.

Poche's is, of course, where the andouille for the Turducken was purchased, and I have to say it's the best andouille I've ever eaten.  It's so good that we went an hour out of our way last trip to get their andouille - a gas explosion may have closed down I-10, but that wasn't going to keep us from our sausage!

Inside, there's a huge freezer case boasting such delights as boned chicken stuffed with crawfish dressing, pistolettes (stuffed rolls) with five or six different kinds of stuffing, tubs of jambalaya and etouffee, and multiple Cajun sausages.

Then, there's a not-frozen area with fresh sausages and stuffed pig's stomach (seriously - it's called chaudin), and a steam table with fried chicken and potatoes and corn and more jambalaya and etouffee. 

We've tried their andouille and bought a bag of pistolettes, which are delicious, but the thing that always makes us get off the road is their boudin.  They've always had the two types when we've been to visit - crawfish and pork.  Both sit poaching in a pot of water just behind the counter, and when you order, the girl behind the counter whips one out, slaps it on the scale, and charges you like a dollar.

Both of their boudins are very good - nice and wet and spicy.  They have a good organ-meat flavor without being overpoweringly livery.  The casings are a little tough - this is definitely the type of boudin that you squeeze out into your mouth.

The first time we went, we had to try the Cajun roadfood staple - cracklins.  It's what's left when you render a pig's fat and skin; you get a barrel of lard and a barrel of cracklins.  One time we were in Poche's and a man walked out with a 5-gallon bucket of the treats.

These artery-cloggers were delicious.  Though they soaked through the inner of the two bags holding them, they somehow didn't taste all that greasy.  Could have used more salt, though, but that's just us - the seasoning was otherwise good, with a nice spicyness that makes you just keep eating.

So, you know where we'll be midday on Saturday - somewhere in the vicinity of Poche's.  Let us know if we can pick up a chaudin for y'all.

Poche's: 3015 A Main Highway (seriously, that's the address), Breaux Bridge, LA.  800.3.POCHES.

Missing TV... or not.

I love this video, probably because back when we had cable I spent an awful lot of time watching the TV shows it's skewering.

On the other hand, it makes me miss TV because there are hilarious satirical shows like this available to watch.  If you live in the UK, that is.

You're welcome!

Falling in love with a beach

I've never really been a beach person.  The idea of sitting out in the hot sun, then yelping your way down to bone-chillingly cold water while trying not to burn the soles of your feet, then yelping your way back up to your towel (crowded among 10,000 of your closest friends' towels), while trying to keep shards of sand from sneaking their way up into your bathing suit... no thanks.

But, we were in Thailand, home to some of the best beaches in the world... and we weren't going to go?

We agreed to give it a try.  Though we didn't have the time to get on a 20-hour bus to the famed beaches of the South, we could spare an overnight for a jaunt to Koh (or Ko) Samet, a beach idyll just four hours or so from crowded Bangkok.

First, though, sustenance for the trip.  Our Bangkok hotel had a huge, generous, and actually pretty good breakfast buffet, so we loaded up.

The trip to Koh Samet was easy - first a bus to Ban Phe.  The bus conveniently dropped us off right where boats leave for Koh Samet.  Nice.  We only waited fifteen minutes or so, looking out over the water with anticipation.

The boat ride was lovely - the water was calm, and we felt an actual breeze for the first time since leaving Bangkok.  We were already getting into the swing of things, enjoying the crisp sunlight and the open skies.

The boat dropped us at Koh Samet's main port, Na Dan.  This was a bit of a cluster, but not so bad - modified open-backed pickup trucks (actually, sawngthaews) waited to take you wherever on the island you needed to go.  It was just a question of the drivers hooking you up with people going the same direction. 

Transport on the island was basically simple.  You pay rental for the sawngthaews to take you where you want to go.  They usually like to wait until they have more people going, but are happy to take you by yourself if you're willing to rent the whole truck - which gets expensive. 

We climbed aboard with a family of eight or so Thais, grandmothers down to grandchildren, and bounced our way along the road to our hotel, the Silver Sand in Ao Phai.

Koh Samet is a national park, so you have to pay an entrance fee once immediately outside of the main town.  It's 40 baht for Thais and 400 for foreigners (now about $13, though it was $11 when we were there - I can't believe this stupid dollar!), which was a bit of a shock as it was double what both of our guidebooks reported. 

Though it is a national park, there's a huge amount of development on the island.  It's supposed to be sustainable development, but I'm not so sure that's the case.

Our arrival at the hotel wasn't particularly auspicious.  The first bungalow-style room we were shown reeked of smoke and air freshener.  When we marched back to the checkin to ask if they had other rooms available, the young man behind the counter said "well... we do have a room available, but it's by the creek."

Ooh, a creek!  Lovely!

The creek turned out to be a rancid, stinky drainage ditch of some kind.  We could see turbo mosquitoes hatching evil little plots inches away from the surface of the muck.  The first room it would be, after a quick airing-out.

They did have a lovely little restaurant, though, shaded under an enormous tree with lanterns hanging here and there.  And we were hungry.  (I've compressed about five hours of travel into those two pictures up there.)

Having eaten, we immediately went and shed our lightweight linen and cotton clothing in favor of our bathing suits, and spent the next several hours luxuriating down by the water.  Chair and umbrella rentals were inexpensive.  Women came by offering massages or papaya salads or huge sarongs.  I took one up on the massage, which just pushed all the travel knots out of my body.

When the sun started to go down several hours later, we returned to our room, showered, and headed out for an aperitivo at the on-beach bar run by the hotel.

I honestly don't think I've seen a prettier place to enjoy a drink.

I'm guessing the preponderance of bucket drinks on the menus of Koh Samet's bars is due to the island's popularity with tourists.  Whatever, we just wanted a huge Singapore Sling.  We shared it.

It was nice to be in a place where all there was to do was relax.  I think I'm starting to see the draw of beach vacations, though I don't think I could handle more than a few days.  I like my museums and history.

With the sun well and truly down, we went to an internet cafe to email friends and family, and then perused the menus at the different restaurants of Ao Phai.  We ended up at Sea Breeze, with their enticing display of seafood.  Yup, including barracuda.

We chose a pomfret and asked them to fry it, and settled into our table with a beer and a sigh.

It was pretty quiet still; the thumping of the low-rent eurotechno hadn't begun to blast from the beachfront bars.

Listening to the waves thump languidly against the beach, sipping our Thai beer, I really started to think that this beach thing might actually not suck.

Our fish arrived, doused liberally in a sriracha style chili sauce.  Though it didn't approach the deliciousness of the snakehead fish of the nameless restaurant in Kanchanaburi, it was nicely fried and tasted like food on a beach vacation should.

After this flavorful meal, we were ready for some after-dinner entertainment!  Most of the hotels were offering quasi-legal showings of movies that hadn't technically been released on DVD yet, but one place was offering a fire show.  Wheee!

We sat back with a huge Mai Tai bucket and enjoyed the proceedings.

These guys went on for at least an hour, dousing and redousing their,um, tools... no... let's go with flaming balls (I really don't mean this to sound dirty, but I don't know what they're called) in jugs of kerosene set out for the purpose.

Here's a brief video we took so you can have the full experience.  There was a disco party going on right behind us.

After enjoying the fire dance, we headed off to bed.  I know you think we're all-night disco party people, so I hate to burst your bubble.  We'd be heading back to Bangkok fairly early the next day, and I wanted a little more beach time.

We got it.  Around 8:30, we had the beach in front of the hotel almost entirely to ourselves.

By the way, that boat you see in the foreground was picking people up to take them back to the mainland.  This won't even be the last time in this post you hear me agitate for tiny luggage in Southeast Asia!

When we started to get hungry, fusion food saved our butts.  It was apparently a little early for the strolling som tam vendors to be out, since there weren't any tourists beaching themselves on the sand just yet, but we were able to rustle up a guy who ran a crepe stand.  We got him to make the menu's most interesting offering, a pork floss and chili paste crepe.  I know, what?  I'm telling you, pork floss is awesome.

Come midday, we packed our things up and caught another pickup truck back to the island's main pier. 

An hour or so later, we pulled up to Ban Phe and tied on to a boat carrying ice.  We'd all have to traverse the narrow, slippery isles of the ice boat and clamber up the pockmarked concrete step of the pier. 

Hey, I did say there would be another warning about luggage size...

This was a serious pain in the ass, guys.  The step we had to take out of the second boat was at about waist height - luckily there was a guy there to grab my backpack and give me a hand up.

Another four hours or so later, there we were, checking back into the Baan Sabai on Soi Rambuttri.  We had an extra night there we'd paid for, and we weren't about to let that pass.

After a quick shower to wash off the dirt of travel, we went for a walk outside to find some dinner.

We ended up at one of the dime-a-dozen streetfood stalls off of the busy part of the soi.  Hey, fine by me - we had some great luck at street stands!

Plus, the ambience can't be beat.  These guys did a good morning glory dish, which is definitely a staple of my Thai diet that I miss back here in the States.  They also did a pretty yummy stir-fried wide rice noodle, which we got to season ourselves with the requisite Thai condiment tray - sugar, fish sauce, vinegar, chili.

I love this picture.

I had wanted to do some shopping in the inexpensive clothing stores up and down the streets near Khao San Road, so we wandered into a few.  Most of this stuff is not well made, but it's usually wonderful for the heat, lightweight cotton in nice bright patterns, and you can find some real bargains.  I bought an adorable sundress for $8.

I suppose there are some perils to running a clothing store in a land where it's always steaming hot.

Flush with my new purchase, we retired to the VW Bus bar to have a drink before bed.  Yeah, I have no idea either.  It's a bus!  With a bar in it!  They had a huge drinks list, 200 drinks or so, with one failing - the exotically-named concoctions didn't have their ingredients listed next to them!  So we just picked a couple that sounded good and went with them.

I think mine, the "bee's knees", had gin, honey, and lemon in it.  Not bad.

The moral of this long and twisted narrative is that if you're in Bangkok for a few days, you should definitely head to Koh Samet, especially if you don't have enough time to make it to the beaches of the far South.  It's a great break from the hectic dirtiness of Bangkok, and you can get there in just a few hours. 

Then you too can come back and have drinks out of a bucket from the back of a VW bus.  Why not?

Fighting the Winter Doldrums with a Meat Grinder

Technically, this is not a Kooking Korner with M. Pants, since I'm the one writing it, but hey.  It's got food!

So.  Winter in Texas is not nearly the soul-shredding never-ending eyeball-freezer that it is in my hometown of Chicago, but the sun is going down a little earlier.  That's sad.  How have we been keeping the monsters of winter at bay?

With our shiny new attachment for the KitchenAid blender - the meat grinder!

Husbear's been wanting one of these for donkey's ears.  And, with Christmas coming up, and plans to break down a half of a pig that is as we speak sitting in the fridge of a good friend out in Lakeway (to whom we owe copious sausages), the time had definitively come for one to be purchased.

Oh, the things one can do with a meat grinder attachment.

First, you can use it to... grind meat!

Let's start with a lovely pork shoulder, purchased from Peach Creek Farm at the downtown farmers' market on Guadalupe.  We bought a 2-pound shoulder, which ended up making about... let's see... quick mental arithmetic... about 20 meals, I think?

Husbear made two different kinds of meatballs with this ground pork.  The first were Italian style, and I can't be much more specific than that because we have a tiny kitchen and I was trying to make myself scarce.  I know he made breadcrumbs and soaked them in milk.  I know there was onion involved.  From there, perhaps I'll ask him.  (He says he also added garlic, parsley, an anchovy fillet, parmigiano-reggiano, and salt and pepper.  Sounds Italian to me.)

He served them deliciously, yeah really, with roasted pattypan and sunburst squash (love them, eat them lots) on a bed of caramelized onion Israeli couscous.  The sauce, more of a glaze really, was made from Dario Cecchini's mostarda, thinned out.  It's so wonderful, I hate that he's using it.  Perhaps that's a contradiction.  But we only have the one jar.

Moister meatballs have never been served in this country, as far as I know.  Certainly they haven't been served to me.  I thought meatballs were supposed to be dry - apparently the secret is lots of bread to soak up those meaty juices and keep the proteins from toughening up.  TMYK.

Of course there were leftovers!  We had three people eating this meal, and Husbear had about, oh, 15 meatballs, so we had to have leftovers the next day.

A strong argument for Italian meatball subs was put forth, but nay... Husbear had a craving.

So what if spaghetti and meatballs isn't technically traditional Italian food?  It's traditional Italian-American food, and that's what we wanted.  In Italy, you'd get the spaghetti as a primo and then the meatballs (or polpette) as your secondo.  We just wanted them together.  In homemade marinara sauce.

Now, Husbear still had half of that ground pork left... so what did he do? 

More meatballs!  This time, though, Asian style.

Asian style here means the pork was mixed with panko breadcrumbs, hoisin sauce, cilantro (sorries), and pork floss, an ingredient that's insinuated itself into the delicious pantry maintained by your friend Mr. Pants.   Also ginger, fish sauce, onion, shao xing rice wine, five-spice, and szechuan peppercorns.  Guess these were more elaborate.

These meatballs were served with insanely delicious bok choy we picked up at the farmers' market, as well as a Japanese sweet potato with miso scallion butter.  The scandalously simple (yet overreachingly delicious) recipe can be found in November's Gourmet.

If you're Husbear, what you do with leftover Asian-flavored meatballs is you make a banh mi.  So what if this means you have to pickle daikon and carrot overnight, and make your own aioli?  You're Husbear!

I'm sure he'd tell you these things are ridiculously easy, and within the reach of all but the most hopeless home cooks.  Like me. 

It's a lot easier to make the pickles with a mandolin or a v-slicer - takes all that slicing and chopping down to about 5 minutes.  And a whisk, along with a good recipe (we use one from Cook's Illustrated several years back - online recipe only available to members, apparently) is all you really need for a great aioli.  Well, that and the ingredients, to be fair.

ANYWAY.  He added cilantro (again, farmers' market - we grow GREAT cilantro down here in Texas, let me tell you) to the meatballs and aioli and pickles, along with some tiny cucumber and lettuce, and threw the whole into french rolls picked up at the giant Vietnamese-focused Asian market way up on Lamar.

Hoo boy.

These were so good he had to make them again for friends two days later.

And lest you think that meatballs, or meatloaf, or ground meat, or Hamburger Helper are the only things you can produce with your spanking new meat grinder, let me step in with more ideas.

Take some chickpeas and soak them overnight.  Add chopped red onion and parsley and maybe mint, and possibly some garlic, and salt and pepper, and send them through your grinder.  Don't cook the garbanzos first!

What you get will look about like this.  Perhaps exactly like this.

Then, form the mess into patties.  Do you see where we're going here?

Now, fry the heck out of them.  Leave them in for a while past when you think they'd be done, when the pops and sizzles of escaping moisture have quieted to just about nothing, and take them out.

And what do you have?

Gimme an F!

For Felafel.  (And for many other things which won't be mentioned on a family blog.  Hey, F for family too!)

Actually, F for Freakishly Flavorful Felafel.  Serve these with some tzatziki and a tahini sauce - here's an interesting jumping off point for that, from the lovely men who catered our wedding - and wrap in lettuce or pita for a truly outstanding dinner.

We're having leftovers tonight.  Oh, did I mention these freeze remarkably well?  Just freeze individually, because otherwise they'll stick to each other, then throw them in a bag together.

That's not all this tiny culinary behemoth can do!  If you get the additional $10 sausage stuffer, you're opening up a whole new world.

All the better if a quarter of a Turducken has been staring you in the face from the back of your freezer since Thanksgiving.

First, you do have to go get some casings.  Best are the natural casings, which is how one can refer to pig intestines without having the stomach contents of the squeamish coat your immediate area.

We got ours from a processing plant in South Austin (Hudson's Meat Market), which will also process your freshly shot deer into smaller bits if you bring it to them. 

The stuffer just goes on to the extrusion tube of the grinder.  Feed your ground whatever, turducken in our case because we're strange, through the top of the grinder - and it comes out into the casing like magic.  Try to make it even.

Husbear served the Turducken sausage with a mix of pan-browned celeriac and fingerling potatoes and a heap of amazing farmers' market swiss chard.  (Are you sensing how much time we've been spending at the farmer's market lately?)  And cranberry sauce and mustard for flavoring.  It was quite good, though the bread content of all those stuffings in the turducken made a couple of the sausages burst open.  Ah well, there's always next time we have a huge chunk of turducken sitting in our fridge, right?

I'm sure Husbear hasn't come to the end of the list of things that can be done with this new attachment.  You'll probably see it pop up time and again, though not right now, because I have to go eat a bunch of that leftover felafel.  I'm serious that it's the best ever. 

A tiny taste of the suffocating beauty that is the Royal Palace in Bangkok

Thanks for visiting!

Ha.  No, really.

I really do want to finish blogging the amazing trip we took through Thailand and Vietnam (check here for older posts) before I forget absolutely everything about where we went and what we saw.  Luckily, this means only 4 or 5 more posts, and they're about amazing places, including Ayutthaya, Koh Samet, and the Seattle airport.

Unfortunately, six months on, I've already forgotten a lot about a culture which, admittedly, I didn't know so much to begin with.  So, join me once again on my voyage of cultural insensitivity and ignorance!  (Hey, I don't think it's as bad as all that.)

Bangkok's Royal Palace is part of a huge complex of wats and chedis and stupas and tourists and cannons.  You know immediately upon walking up to it that this is going to be quite a visit.

This mess of buildings was begun in 1782 and has presumably been continually restored ever since then, to keep the luster and sparkle on the gilded mosaics and murals.

The heat, I remember, was oppressive, and we were for some reason there during the worst part of the day.  Topping that, we learned as we entered that one of the site's main attractions, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha (Wat Phra Kaeo) would be closed for the day.  Well, we'd slogged our way over to the temple complex, braving the taxi drivers of Bangkok and the insane tuktuk drivers, and we weren't about to turn around and go back to Siam Square, so screw it.

It's not like all of the other buildings of the temple complex were mud huts.

Here's one view of a spectacularly enormous chedi and what I think was the library, the Phra Mondhop.  We had popped for the audio guide, but you've never heard anything drier in your life, and honestly the heat drove much of the monotone straight out of our heads.

Besides, we were so impressed with just looking around that it was difficult to take time out from staring to listen.

The scale here was really not to be believed.

And not only were these buildings enormous and of a style completely outside of our experience, they were also superbly detailed.

We spent a lot of time with our necks craned.  I'm sort of surprised we didn't wade into a passel of Thai schoolchildren, many of whom were there on school trips.

Of course, not only are there these amazing mosaics - and here's a closeup so you can see the unflinching attention to detail -

there's also a huge mural running the length of an enormous building, telling the saga of Rama - the Ramakien.

It looked so fresh it could have been painted yesterday.  It's apparently likely that parts were; it's under almost constant restoration to keep it shining.

And there weren't just mosaics and murals - what about the giant model of Angkor Wat?  So what if we hadn't made it to the real thing!  We could stand by the model!

For some reason, I think the experience of going out into the jungle to see Angkor Wat is probably a deeper experience than seeing the model on the grounds of the Royal Palace.

We also spent some time admiring what I've just read are garudas strangling nagas, or perhaps just holding them lovingly by the neck.  Naga, sure - snake thing.  I don't really know what makes a garuda.

I do know that the Thais praise serenity above many things, and certain of the statues scattered around the complex really reinforced that message.

We were still disappointed that we wouldn't be able to see the Emerald Buddha, so we peered across towards the wat housing the statue.

Wait a minute - there are people inside!

We walked over to take a closer look - turns out the wat had only been closed for a ceremony earlier in the day, but was now open to visitors.  Word just hadn't gotten back to the ticket windows yet. 

Sweet.

You can't take pictures of the Emerald Buddha from inside the wat.  I assume it's because people would be using the flash, like idiots, and perhaps because the Palace administration wants to sell postcards.

The list of things you couldn't do didn't end with pictures, though.

In reading up on Thai culture, we'd read that Thais consider the feet the lowest portion of the body, and unholy for that reason.  For this reason, you don't point your feet at people - it's considered rude.  How rude on a scale with 1 being yawning while someone's talking and 10 being flipping someone off while screaming obscenities about their mother, I don't know. 

Just don't test it our by showing your dirty soles to the Buddha.

We got a tiny, blurry shot from outside.  At least you can see our fellow tourists.

Having now seen a good chunk of what the temple area had to offer, we left that section and made our way over to the administrative and government buildings, grabbing a sincerely refreshing lemongrass drink on the way.  I can't say it was delicious, and it came out of a can, but I was getting tired of the constant inflow of lukewarm water.

We took a look at the Chakri Mahaprasart, a decidedly odd building that served as the palace for about thirty years.  What a strange mishmash of styles; columns and a gold tiered Thai roof?

Very earnest guards were keeping a keen eye on all the tourists.  It was difficult to get a shot of one of them by himself, due to the relentless press of tourists desperate, for some reason, to pose with their arms crossed next to these serious-looking men.

This portion of the grounds also housed several small museums.  There was one full of weaponry, with giant Mauser pistols tucked in next to armor and spears, and then one large room that contained my new favorite Thai artifact:

The nine-tiered umbrella of state.

Which was of course placed reverently over a very heavy-looking throne.

We were exhausted by the heat and, lulled nearly to faintness by the droning of the audio guide monotone, we left the complex.  A taxi back to our hotel was fairly simple to find, and, once there, we collapsed.  Well, to be fair, I collapsed... Husbear went outside in search of something to eat for an early dinner.

He was successful, finding the delicious and ubiquitous morning-glory leaves, a spicy red pork curry, and a hot and sour soup.  And a beer, and about seventeen bottles of water that aren't in the picture.

And then we didn't leave the room again, because even at night it was really hot and we were totally run down.

Plus, the next day we'd be taking an early bus to an early boat to Koh Samet!  Beach island paradise, here we come.

Dining on whole pigs with Dai Due

Remember all that pork?

Well, someone (make that 40 or so someones) had to eat it.  The group of happy eaters began with Husbear's compatriots from his porcine class the day before, their significant others (including me!  :waves:) and various others who weren't in the class but wanted to eat its spoils.

We arrived at Rain Lily Farm on a balmy Austin fall Sunday, me being my usual apprehensive self, to a beautiful setting.

The dinner was BYOB, so buckets of ice for chilling wine and beer were provided.  We were given a light, refreshing aperitif, an apple ratafia made of local white muscat wine mixed with local vodka infused with local apples, to drink while we wandered around the small farm operation.

I think Husbear already mentioned Dai Due's overwhelming commitment to eating as locally as possible.  The back of the menu above listed all of the sources for just about every ingredient for each dish we'd be enjoying, and every source was Texan.

We carted our ratafias over to check out Rain Lily Farm's vegetables. 

November and December are great months to eat locally here in Texas.  While August and September are usually too hot for much of anything to grow, by the end of the year second crops are ripening.  Last weekend, the farmers' market was full of tomatoes, along with more traditionally wintry greens and root vegetables.

And okra, which is one of my favorite vegetables.

Rain Lily Farm also raises a few animals, mostly goats and chickens.  We visited with them for a few minutes.  By this time, more people were arriving, and we all made our introductions while trying to avoid the curious nibbles of the friendliest of the goats.

Part of the reason the goats were so interested in getting to know us better is that we'd all just been provided with a pre-dinner snack to go with our ratafias - a slice of banh mi.  Though it was more French than traditionally Vietnamese, in both presentation and flavor, this banh mi was quite good.  Plus, it incorporated some of the pate the class had prepared.

The banh mi was perfect as a before-dinner snacklet; not only did it start the pork theme off loudly, it was also packed with lovely flavors that readied us for the enormity of the meal ahead.

I mean, you saw that menu.

The goats definitely wanted to find out more about this new food in their pen.  The brown one with the warpaint took advantage of the black one's being distracted to try to jump on its back for a quickie.

This did not make the black goat happy.

While the musicians played light fare,

we wandered through the prep stations.  Husbear, of course, wanted to see what was going on with the varied products he and his class had helped to prepare the day before.

He nodded happily at the rilletes, that brilliant method the French have for making shredded pork moist and deliciously fatty.

I have to say I was a little apprehensive about the headcheese... I can't say I'd had a deep-seated desire to ever buy or try this product.  It's gotta be the name.  Or the texture.  Or the appearance.

These particular treats were all being sliced and put on boards for the first course, which would be a family-style charcuterie. 

Which means there would have to be more of that smooth, creamy pate.

Darn.

Many other pork or pork-related items were also undergoing final cooking for later in the meal, including a non-traditional grilled boudin (normally in Louisiana you see boudin poached),

and a spit-roasted pork loin, turning gracefully over low grilling heat.

By this time, we were all nigh-on ravenous, so we took our places at the aforepictured beautiful long table.

We sat down with our wine, that we'd gotten a great deal on from Central Market.  It turned out to be amazing.

After just a moment, heaping plates of bread arrived on the table, followed closely by boards heaped with the pate, rillettes, and headcheese.  These tasties were supplemented by not only mustards, which are an absolute necessity with charcuterie, but pickled beets from Boggy Creek Farm that were earthy and beety and a good counterpoint to the various fatty pork products on the table in front of us.

All three of these pork products were wonderful, and I have to say Jesse and friends have changed my mind about headcheese.  It can be really good.  I still don't think I'm going to run out to pick some up at the HEB, but I'm hoping Husbear makes some with that half a pig we're bringing to Louisiana for Christmas.

Next, things lightened up a bit with a chorizo and smoked hock soup, with creamer peas, sweet potatoes, and kale.  Need I say that the class made the chorizo?

The soup was nice and light and had a good taste of fall, though the cilantro was a little strong for some.  Cilantro's tough - people have such adamant opinions about it.

Next came an enormous pile of pig - on one plate, the grilled boudin and chile sausages topping a very nice clean potato salad (made with potatoes from Bikkurim Farm, of course).  I loved the potato salad, but was not blown away by the sausages.

Unfortunately, by this time it was getting really dark and we didn't get a decent picture of what may have been the best thing we ate that night - the grilled pork belly, served on apple cider braised chinese cabbage and accompanied by an amazing sweet spicy apple chutney.  So instead, here's a picture of how happy I was to be eating it.

Rain Lily wouldn't have been a real farm without a farm cat, right?  Here he is, sitting on top of the signin book we'd forgotten to sign.  Looks like we missed our chance. (Sitting on? More like guarding with his dynamic cat powers.  He made me answer three questions and a riddle just to get a grassfed beef pamphlet -L.Pants)

For the dessert, which of course had to include pig in some way, Dai Due went all out.  Not only did they fashion pork cracklins into a tart bound with brown sugar and molasses, they also topped it with freshly whipped lard, sort of a sweet version of Dario Cecchini's Burro del Chianti.

No?  Husbear says that was actually a pecan tart made with pecans from the tree we were sitting under, topped with fresh whipped cream.  Oops.   Yes, it was very good.

At least there was lard in the crust, in true Southern style.

Dinner finished with mint tisane and coffee, and Jesse gave a brief speech about the importance of eating locally and knowing the people growing your food and raising your meat.  He's really inspired us - we're buying all of our meat these days at the farmer's market, as well as a good portion of our vegetables, and we've discovered that Central Texas farmers certainly do a wonderful job producing deliciousness.

It's been a bit of a revelation, what we can get at the farmers' markets around here.  Grassfed bison, lamb, beef, and pork.  Geese, roosters, free-range chickens, partridges.  Seriously.  And, of course, some of the most delicious citrus in the country, beautiful greens in copious amounts, and everything as fresh as it can be.

Not only that, but the prices on much of the produce are lower than the pricing at our grocery stores, and you get much better, fresher produce often sold to you by the person who picked it.

Enough.  Dai Due helps to teach us that eating locally is not only good for the environment and the local economy, it's also good for your tummy and tastebuds.  Kudos to them for spreading that message.

The Whole Hog!

Do you know where your pork comes from? I mean like really and truly? And don’t say a pig because that just makes you a smart ass and don’t say the grocery store because that just makes you a- well I’ll try to keep my judgin’ pants off.

As many of you know, I was a long time vegetarian until I moved to Italy to go to culinary school. I decided to eat meat there for the educational and cultural value as well as the fact that I appreciated the relationship and connection to the animals that is possible. (Do I need a ladder for this high horse?)

“Blah, blah, blah,” I’m sure you’re thinking. Another militant PETA crazy. But wait. This story ends with hacksaws and intestines and flesh peeling off boiled faces. I’m not some tree hugging, tofu eating (it is delicious though), condemn your lifestyle vegan. No, I just like to know that whatever I’m eating was happy and healthy and to be able to look it in the eye before I shove it in my mouth kind of guy.

Enter Dai Due, Jesse and Tamara, the awesome Austin couple who’s bringing us all things local and delicious. These guys run a dinner club that hosts parties every week or so at farms or private homes here in town.

They are usually themed by some sort of seasonal ingredient or animal and they work hard to procure all of the fixin's from within a few hundred miles. Jesse (an Italian trained chef) is so serious about it that he says he’s giving up olive oil for pecan oil because he can’t find a reliable local e.v.o.o. supplier. That’s hardcore.

In addition to dinners, Dai Due occasionally hosts instructional classes on a variety of food related topics. Specifically, every late fall/early winter Jesse does a hog butchering class. Remember now kids, slaughtering and butchering are different. Slaughtering is the one with all the blood and squealing. It’s also the one tightly regulated by the FDA so just the butchering for us thanks.

Our lovely half a hog came from a fantastic family farm in Kemp, Texas called Full Quiver. Some of you may recognize the name from the Discovery show Fourteen Children and Pregnant Again. Mike Sams and his family, who run Full Quiver farms are part of the Quiverfull movement; a Christian branch that eschews birth control and aggressively condones procreation.

That being said, the Sams make wonderful cheese. As a bonus, they use the leftover whey from the dairy production to feed/fatten their hogs – just like the Parmesan makers do in Parma. Can you say “intramuscular marbling!”?

The day started off at the Dragonfly House, a lovely and modern home located in a beautiful part of East Austin. Eight exuberant folks showed up for the class. We began with some basic pig talk and then moved on to a much needed anatomy lesson. All those muscley bits and bone parts can get confusing if you’re not used to seeing them in their original unshrink-wrapped locations.

The first thing to go was the head. Jesse and Chris (another helpful chef) sawed it off and put it in a large stockpot with various herbs and spices in preparation for making a delightful headcheese (we have got to come up with a better label for that folks. I think it’s delicious but even little old me feels a bit queasy if I dwell on the name too long.)

Next, we removed the kidney and the tenderloin and set them aside. Then off with the ham or hind leg as it were. Then we moved onto the bacon; carefully removing belly from ribs in one large fatty piece. The bacon immediately got a dry cure of salt, sugar and spices and got slapped into an ice chest.

This is probably an appropriate time to mention that all of the work we were doing on this animal wasn’t purely for show. The next day there was to be a large dinner party where we and about 30 other pig aficionados could gorge ourselves on the meats of our labor.

Ok, after the bacon Jesse skillfully filleted out the loin. This is the part that pork chops are traditionally cut from, but apparently you need a band saw or some such to do it properly. Lacking our shop class tools, the loin made its way into a large icy brine to await further instructions.

At this point, Jesse broke out the meat grinder from the freezer (don’t underestimate the need for cold when you start cranking pieces of pig through fast moving metal.) The first item up for particularization was the leaf fat- the softer fat that lines the abdominal cavity. This went into a large cast iron Dutch oven to be rendered for lard.

Following the fat fun, we went to work breaking down the shoulder and the hind leg. Now normally, you would cure or smoke the ham, but we were in need of an abnormal amount of sausages so the leg got the slightly less traditional treatment.

Some of the mixed leg/shoulder meat and a healthy dose of fat went into a pot for the making rillettes, that delicious French porky spread. Some went towards a delightful pate and the rest was divided up to make several different kinds of sausages.

We started with a spicy and tangy chorizo- this is Texas after all.

Meanwhile we boiled some more meat and a few organs for a Cajun style boudin. Boudin is one of the few sausages that is actually cooked before you pack it into the casings. It also happens to be one of the yummiest. Boudin is po’ folk food and is traditionally made with a lot of rice as a filler. So when the meat was done, we used the leftover liquid to cook the grains and soak up all that additional flavor- genius I tell you.

Next was a poblano sausage that Jesse wanted to make because he had just come into a surplus of fabulous peppers. It seemed like a good idea and damn it if it didn’t actually turn out to be one too.

At this point in the festivities a break was in order. After all that pig choppin’ a man deserves a decent glass of wine or two. And possibly some cheese. And fruit. And maybe some buffalo jerky…with local candied pecans. But nothing else. And honey.

As a quick note, both of the cheeses were wonderful. The cheddar was from Full Quiver and the Blue (which is really, really good) is from Veldhuizen Family Farm in Dublin, TX. Buy them both.

After our well earned down time, we all meandered back inside for the finishing touches. First order of business: boiled pig face.

It was done and all of the meat needed to come off. There is a surprising amount of meat on a hog’s head, including some seriously succulent cheek meat- the same stuff that makes guanciale for you bacon lovers out there.

When all the removable parts had been removed we shifted over to stuffin’ some more snawsages.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t hang around to finish off the headcheese (who the hell came up with that name?!) because the liquid had to reduce to get the right gelatin proportions. I remained undeterred though as the class was awesome and copious samplings of everything would be had the next evening at the Dai Due dinner/feast hosted at the lovely and amazing Rain Lily Farms! Stay tuned for details.

Props to Jesse and Tamara and Big Thanks to Chris for all y’alls hard work spreading the eat-local-and-love-it gospel!

-L. Pants