Fighting the Winter Doldrums with a Meat Grinder (Boots in the Oven)

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.

Comments

ooo i'm so excited by this post! the only think i asked for for christmas was the meat grinder attachement! all of these photos not only looked freaking delish but got me worked up about playing with new toys! :-)

Posted by: amanda | Wednesday, 19 December 2007 at 21:23