AUNT BETTY’S TAMALE PIE

Mom told me that “It’s time for an agonizing reappraisal of things” is something that Aunt Betty used to say, so it is with thoughts of her that I post her tamale pie recipe.  

It is an old fashioned sort of recipe, with lots of cans of this and cans of that. This is Aunt Betty’s recipe as it is. Sometimes I use fresh tomatoes and I usually increase the amount of milk a bit. I also like to use lots of fresh corn, boiled for about 10 minutes and then cut off the cob, because I like the crunch that it gives. You can also add some garlic, diced hot peppers, and feel free to use your own fresh toasted and ground dried chilies with ground cumin added instead of chili powder. Occasionally I’ll serve it with enchilada sauce, or “chili gravy”. Topping it with cheddar cheese is nice, too, though after an agonizing reappraisal of things you may want to be light handed with the cheese.

This makes a large casserole. The measure that I use for a smaller casserole are in brackets to the right.

1 lb bulk sausage (well seasoned) ~ that would be home-made chorizo! [1/2 lb]

1 lg onion, chopped [1/2 lg]

¾ c milk (or more) [1/2 c]

¾ c ¾ c yellow or white corn meal [1/2 c –red cornmeal is nice too]

1 small can corn niblets [1/2 c]

½ c canned tomatoes, chopped [1/4 c]

½ c ripe olives, pitted and halved [1/4 c]

1 T chili powder (or more)

Fry sausage broken into small pieces, loosely. Add onion and brown all.

Add all other ingredients and cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

Transfer to casserole and bake for 1 hour, covered, in medium oven [a smaller casserole takes less time].

CHARCUTEPALOOZA CHALLENGE 5: GRINDING & CHORIZO + AUNT BETTY’S TAMALE PIE

So when I was in the midst of my recent Agonizing Reappraisal of Things, I was thinking that maybe I should write off making sausage and cheese. About sausage, Brian kept suggesting I use it like a seasoning and just eat a little bit of it at a time. And about cheese, Helen said, “I eat so little cheese anyway right now, I want to eat really nice stuff when I do.” And I started thinking that maybe I don’t have to give these things up entirely.

This month’s Charcutepalooza Challenge was to grind and make Chorizo, since it’s spicy

and flavorful, I also thought that I might be able to get away with making a less fatty

version. I know, that lovely fat is what gives sausages their succulent flavor and mouth

feel, and I know all about becoming one with a pork belly, but those test results are still

fresh in my mind, and I really don’t ever want to have to get intimate with gout! Brian did discourage me from using turkey, making such a nasty face about the idea, that I decided on being a little less gung-ho about it and going with a mix of  1.5 lbs pork shoulder to 1 lb boneless skinless chicken thighs.

Mrs. Wheelbarrow has you blend the chiles in a slurry, which is an authentic Mexican technique, and also good for slathering on meat that you slow cook and pull apart for tacos. But I opted out of that technique this time as I tend to make a serious mess with a blender. I loosely followed Rhulman and Polcyn’s recipe, since I often find discrepancy between his US and metric measure, and I haven’t been able to figure out which should be the default.

Ever since I lived in New Mexico, I’ve kept a variety of dried chile peppers in my cabinet, to toast lightly and grind as needed. Each type has a distinct flavor, and for this I used a mix of 1.5 ancho chile to 1 each chipoltle, pasilla, and guajuillo chiles.

You have to love sausage to think that this looks delicious!

With it I made Aunt Betty’s Tamale Pie, next post. 

Smokey Bean Soup

Here's one of the first recipes I ran through the Analyze your Recipe feature on the Self Nutrition Data Site, and this is how it comes out. You pull ingredients from a list, which have set measurements, so the fractions indicate a portion of that measurement. Since not all of the specific ingredients I used were listed, I found a similar ingredient and made a note of it at the start of the recipe. If you click on the link at the bottom, it will take you to the complete analysis. I'm leaving this one as is, but I suppose it would be better to "translate" recipes, so I'll try to do that for future recipes.
[OK, this requires further explanation, and a proper transposition of the recipe, see below. I've edited the ingredient list from the original post, which was wacky)

Barley, pearled, raw
2.0  x  1 ounce (28g)

Beans, navy, mature seeds, raw [Includes USDA commodity food A918, A924]
0.5  x  1 cup (208g)

Beans, pink, mature seeds, raw
0.5  x  1 cup (210g)

Carrots, raw [Includes USDA commodity food A099]
0.0625  x  1 large (7-1/4" to 8-/1/2" long) (72g)

Chard, swiss, raw
3.0  x  1 cup (36g)

Garlic, raw
2.0  x  1 clove (3g)

Oil, olive, salad or cooking
0.125  x  1 tbsp (14g)

Onions, raw
0.56458336  x  1 large (150g)

Parsley, raw
0.5  x  1 cup (60g)

Peppers, hot chili, red, raw
1.0  x  1 ounce (28g)

Pork, cured, ham, whole, separable lean and fat, roasted
2.0  x  1 ounce (28g)

Potatoes, white, flesh and skin, raw [Includes USDA commodity food A215]
1.0  x  1/2 cup, diced (75g)

Salt, table
1.0  x  1 tsp (6g)

Soup, chicken broth, low sodium, canned
2.0  x  1 cup (240g)

Spices, bay leaf
0.125  x  1 tsp, crumbled (0g)

Tomato products, canned, puree, without salt added
0.5  x  1 cup (250g)

Read More http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/2110845/2#ixzz1MinretNo

PREPARATION

Ingredient notes: ham=Tasso ham or smoked ham + 1/2 tsp Creole seasoning; fresno chili, add according to taste; broth=smoked turkey broth or use chicken or turkey broth + smoked ham hock or turkey wing; parsley=lovage; canned tomatoes= Mrs.Wheelbarrow's Roasted Tomato Garlic Soup. Check beans for rocks and remove any shriveled or dark beans. Cover white and pink (red) beans by 2 inches of water and soak for at least 4 hours or overnight. Drain rinse, put in large pot, cover with fresh water. Add 1 bay leaf, 1 garlic clove, and 1 slice onion. Cook over low heat for several hours until soft (alternatively, cook for 20 minutes in pressure cooker). Rinse chard. Remove and slice stems. Roughly chop leaves. Heat oil in large soup pot. Add chopped onion, fresno pepper, chard stems, garlic clove, carrots, and Tasso ham. Cook until onion is soft and ham starts to brown. Mix in barley and add broth plus 2 cups water. Cook for about 30 minutes until barley is almost soft. Drain beans and add to soup with potato and tomatoes, and cook for another 20 minutes until potato and barley are soft. Fold in parsley (lovage) and chard leaves, and salt and pepper to taste. Add water to make more broth if needed.

Read More http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/2110845/1#ixzz1MSXI3koN

A PROPER EXPLANATION AND TRANSPOSITION OF RECIPE


A few quirks/limitations with the Nutrition Data recipe feature: it alphabetizes the ingredients, and you must determine a serving size, and then the program will give you stats on that serving size. For soup, it seemed to me that the best serving size would be an ounce so that I can put it into the My Tracking feature more accurately, depending on the size of my bowl of soup. I think that the wacky ingredient quantities of the original post were the program's calculation from the 1 oz serving size. It also puts everything in one paragraph. Here's the recipe in a more conventional form:


SMOKEY BEAN SOUP


1/2 c white or navy beans, dried
1/2 c red or pink beans, dried
1 bay leaf
2 cloves garlic
1/2 c chopped onion, + 1 slice for beans
1 T olive  or canola oil
A good handful of chard, about 3 c, stems removed and choppped, and leaves chopped separetely
2 oz Tasso Ham (or smoked ham + 1/2 tsp Creole Seasoning)
1 large carrot, chopped
1 fresno pepper, chopped (or any other red or hot pepper)
1/4 c barley
1 medium potato, peeled and chopped (I used a Yukon Gold)
2 c chicken or turkey broth (to get a really smoky flavor to the broth, use broth that has been made with leftover bones from a smoked bird. If you don't have that, add a smoked turkey wing or ham hock from the grocery store)
1/2 c tomato puree or crushed tomatoes (I used some home-canned Mrs. Wheelbarrow's Roasted Tomato Garlic Soup)
1/4 - 1/2 c lovage or parsley, chopped


1. Check beans for rocks and remove any shriveled or dark beans. Cover white and pink (red) beans by 2 inches of water and soak for at least 4 hours or overnight. Drain rinse, put in large pot, cover with fresh water. Add 1 bay leaf, 1 garlic clove, and 1 slice onion. Cook over low heat for several hours until soft (alternatively, cook for 20 minutes in pressure cooker).
2. Rinse chard. Remove and slice stems. Roughly chop leaves.
3. Heat oil in large soup pot. Add chopped onion, fresno pepper, chard stems, garlic clove, carrots, and Tasso ham. Cook until onion is soft and ham starts to brown. (Celery would be nice too, but this time I just used chard stems).
4. Mix in barley and add broth plus 2 cups water. Cook for about 30 minutes until barley is almost soft.
5.  Drain beans and add to soup with potato and tomatoes, and cook for another 20 minutes until potato and barley are soft.
6. Fold in lovage or parsley and chard leaves, and salt and pepper to taste. Add water to make more broth if needed.


Sorry about the mix-up~I'm new to this! And one of these days I'm going to figure out how to separate the recipe from the text and have a print feature too.

AN AGONIZING REAPPRAISAL OF THINGS: METABOLIC SYNDROME, DIABETES, GOUT, HEART DISEASE, STROKE, and VITAMIN D

Whenever Mom would say “It’s time for an agonizing reappraisal of things, Kid,” it meant that, be it your drawer or your attitude, there was no getting around it: things were going to have to change. It was time to think long and hard, and to straighten up. Back in January, I flippantly dubbed 2011 as “The Year of the Agonizing Reappraisal,” with the idea of getting everything around here in its proper place and putting a fresh coat of paint on the walls too, getting “war-ganized,” as Katie used to say.

The plan was to have an agonizing reappraisal of my stuff, not my self, but some months back Helen had urged me to have my cholesterol checked, just for good measure. I figured, “What the Hell,” and made an appointment for my first physical in many years.

My guess was that my numbers would be ok, that the doctor might tell me to lay off the cheese and sausages a bit, but that since I look like Dad on the outside, hopefully I inherited his ability to eat salami and sausages galore as well as his good looks. Not so. My cholesterol numbers are bad, my triglyceride numbers shocking, and I’m a step away from developing diabetes, which means that heart disease, gout, and possibly stroke are just up the street for me if I’m not careful.

I figured that all of these aches and pains I’ve been having in my joints, bones, and fingers were just a matter of getting older, from wrenching my shoulders carrying things, and from overworking my fingers with all of the typing, painting, sewing, and other things I do. I figured that my recent tiredness and exhaustion was simply from not being in as good a shape as I was when I was younger and chasing Jack around all over the place. I also figured that a little bit of depression was normal: of course I was bummed out, all of my kids were off and gone. Not so. That bone pain that kept me up at night, the fingers that could barely hold a brush or a needle or even type, all that tiredness and sadness, it all came from a vitamin D deficiency.

Now my first inclination was to be very “Conroy” about this. That is, to be private about it. Keep your personal information to yourself, and don’t bother or bore everyone else with the details of your latest medical exam. But then I thought about, and decided that you might want to know, because you might want to avoid some discomfort and pain. So pay attention to yourself, and have your blood work done every once in a while, especially as you get older. 

At first I was taken aback by this. I’m not skinny anymore, but at 10 lbs over the healthy limit for my age and height, and with a BMI of 25.5, I’m also not severely overweight. I admit that I don’t exercise enough, but I do take the dog on walks a couple times a week and go to yoga class once or twice a week. And, although I crave cheese, love sausage, and adore pate, I don’t eat it all the time. I don’t eat out often, and never eat “fast food”.  For years I’ve banned shortening and anything with any amount of hydrogenated oil from my kitchen. I make just about everything I eat from scratch, though I have been pretty free with the cream, butter and lard in the past few years. I eat plenty of vegetables, and grow many of them myself. I do enjoy wine, but not more than 2 or 3 glasses of it. I like what I eat, and I want to keep eating it!

So at first I started by just cutting down on any excess¸ cutting back on the wine a bit,  measuring my portions, recording all I ate, and making sure I went to yoga twice a week and walking the dog at least 5 days a week.  I thought I should be able to loose a few pounds that way. Not so. After a month, nothing. 

How sobering. Was I fooling myself? Was my cooking that bad for me? Was I going to have to give up my favorite recipes? Was I going to have to abandon cheese making? Was I going to have to start exercising for hours every day? I don’t even have time for all of the things I do as it is! What a drag!

Well, after moping around a bit, I decided that I had better have an agonizing reappraisal of my activity level, and of what I’ve been putting in my mouth. After all, moving more and modifying my cooking and eating must be less of a drag than diabetes, a heart attack, or gout!

So I’ve decided to do two things: start really analyzing my exercise, as well as my cooking, eating, drinking, and to modify it as need be. I also decided to take inspiration from my young friends Jeff and Katie, of Tasteful Gluttony, who said of their new 6 day a week diet restructuring, “We’re learning all kinds of new ways to cook lentils!”

Another thing that Mom has taught us all how to do is to dive enthusiastically into a new research project. Gather your resource material and get to it!  First, I rounded up all my “diet” cookbooks, old and new (thank you, Susie and Deb), onto one shelf. And then I dove into the ocean of online dieting information. Wow!  

These are a few online resources that I recommend.

Danielle Omar, MS, RD; eat smart, live confidently.  Danielle has a practical and positive approach that seems so grounded to me. The blog section of her site has a positive tone, nice pictures, and tasty looking recipes. I met Danielle through our food52 DC group, and she is as positive in person as she is on line.

Healthier Kitchen. Wendy, also a DC food52er, posts varied and interesting recipes on her site, but they also are recipes that I’d like to try and my family would like to eat.

Tosca Reno’s Eat-Clean Diet My friends Susie and Ben have had good luck with this diet, which is essentially the “no white death diet” that Arnold Schwarzenegger and other bodybuilders have been promoting for years, but Tosca Reno has made it mainstream. This gal is definitely in the business of selling cookbooks and magazines, but she seems to also be promoting eating healthy foods that you cook yourself, and her recipes are straightforward.

Self Nutrition Data know what you eat. This is a site put up by Self magazine. It has an extensive database with nutritional information on just about any food you can imagine, tools for tracking your food intake and calculating daily needs. What I really like is the Analyze Recipe feature, where you can put in a recipe and it will calculate the complete nutritional information per serving. They also have information on diet and weight loss, diabetes, heart health, and recipes. Now you have to put up with all kinds of jumping animated ads and sell your soul to Conde Nast if you want to use the tracking and calculating features, but that’s the price we pay these days.

If you know of any others you like, please share them with me!

With food and love,

Sally

CHARCUTEPALOOZA CHALLENGE #4: A LOT OF SMOKING AND A LOT OF COOKING

When you’re smoking food, it just smells so good. The smell of smoking meat stirs up memories, good ones. Memories of nice clear days, not too hot, not too cold, with the smell of the meat cooking intermingled with wood and smoke.  For me, it’s remembering trips to barbecue shacks with Susie Davis on summer visits in Carolina as a child. It’s the smell of Williamsburg in the summer or Waterford in the fall on those yearly outings with Mom and Dad. It’s the smell of stopping with my own children at Cowlings Barbecue on the way to the beach, sitting on the outdoor bench under the crepe myrtles in the warm summer air, and the smell of afternoon forays to Ben’s Whole Hog with my husband on cooler days when those kids were in school. It’s the memory of the plate of smoked fish Helen and Toby bought at the Duck Deli to share as we enjoyed our beach gin and tonics on the deck overlooking the ocean. And it reminds me of snitching a taste of the smoked turkey on Thanksgiving, ceremoniously offered up by Doug, my father-in-law and the smoker of that turkey, in the kitchen before the meal. In short it reminds me of moments with people I love.

Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s challenge was tasso ham or hot smoked salmon…which would it be? According to Brian, “If you’re going to bother lighting up the smoker, and feeding it with coals every half hour all day long, you might as well fill it up!”  And that we did, smoking the meat first and after it was done smoking up the fish, and throwing some nuts and salt in between as well.

And after that, with a pile of smoked fish and meat, we cooked and we cooked. 


Baby Turnips and Asparagas with Tasso Ham... Tasso Ham Shrimp and Grits... Ranch Beans with Tasso Ham on Red Corn Cakes...Parsnip, Carrot and Potato Soup with Mushrooms and Tasso Ham... Tasso Ham and Onion Quiche...Smoked Salmon Quiche...Smoked Salmon with fresh French Neufchatel Cheese...Smoked Salmon and Asparagus Mousse...Smoked Salmon and Asparagus Terrine in Aspic...Gnocchi with Smoked Salmon Sauce and Spinach... 


Over the weekend I'll post what we made with the tasso ham and the hot smoked salmon, with recipes.

CORNED BEEF HASH

This is easy, hardly worth posting, but definitely worth remembering!

In a cast iron skillet or heavy frying pan, cook on medium heat some minced bacon or pancetta, a slice or so per serving, for a minute or two. Add some finely minced onion, a fair amount, and cook a minute or two. Make sure there is plenty of fat, and if there isn’t, add some oil or fat. Add potatoes, diced small. Potatoes can be cooked or not, if they're already cooked, heat them through, if they're not cover the pan and cook until soft. Add chopped corned beef, to pan, turn heat to low and cook until everything is browned and slightly crispy. You want it crusty on the outside and soft on the inside, kind of like some of our favorite people.

Nice with an egg.

COLCANNON with BROWNED BUTTER

Colcannon is often made with ham or bacon and cabbage or other greens that have been sautéed in butter, and then mixed into mashed potatoes, with a well of melted butter on top. But leftover Corned Beef and Cabbage is so flavorful against the mild mashed potatoes, and with browned butter to boot you may agree with me that the Colcannon you have for lunch the next day is really the reason to make Corned Beef and Cabbage.

So here’s the strategy, formula, and technique. The proportions are more or less, give or take. Make what you need:

Make your browned butter: In a large pot, slowly melt 1 – 2 T butter per serving and cook over low heat until solids brown, but not burned, and have a nice nutty smell. Pour into a small bowl, but don’t clean the pot as you’ll be using it for your potatoes (that’s why you want a large pot and not a small saucepan).

Cook your potatoes: You’ll need some freshly mashed potatoes for this, so bake, microwave, or boil however many potatoes you’ll need, one or two per serving. I prefer to bake or microwave them. When they’re soft, rice, sieve, or mash potatoes into the brown butter pot. Add some warmed milk (or buttermilk, whey, half and half, or cream) and a very small amount of butter. I like to keep it light on the fat and salt, to balance the high fat and salt in the corned beef and browned butter. Pepper potatoes. Keep warm

Warm leftover corned beef in microwave or oven. Shred it by pressing slices along the grain with the side of a knife. Chop shreds into ½” – 1” pieces.  

Warm leftover cabbage and onions.

Per serving stir a few tablespoons of warm corned beef , a few tablespoons of warm cabbage and a teaspoon or so of minced parsley into mashed potatoes, reserving some to be served on the side. Make sure this potato mixture is good and hot.

To serve, mound piping hot potatoes into a bowl and place warm corned beef, warm cabbage, and minced parsley around the edges. Make a well in the center of the potatoes and fill with browned butter. 

SODA BREAD

Makes a small round loaf

2 1/4 c flour

2 tsp sugar

¾ tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 T butter or oil

½ c sour milk or buttermilk

1/3 c beer or soda water

Preheat oven to 375

Sift together dry ingredients. Cut in butter or oil as you would for biscuits or pie. Add liquids and mix until just combined. Gather dough together with your hands and form into a round that is 2-3” thick. Place on greased baking sheet and cook for 35 – 45 minutes, until crust is dark and bread is cooked all the way through. Check the center with a skewer or knife to make sure. Brush with soft butter and sprinkle top with salt.

Cool on wire rack. 

CORNED BEEF & CABBAGE

This is another of those things we make as part of our seasonal routine, but since Jack loves it so much, we also try to make it whenever he comes home. If it’s a busy day, you can just throw everything in the same pot, adding the cabbage, carrots and potatoes in the last hour of cooking, and everyone will eat it and it will be fine. But it all seems so pale and wan when done that way. When the vegetables are browned and added separately, the color, flavor and texture are all better.

So here’s the strategy, formula, and technique. The proportions are more or less, give or take; make adjustments depending on the size of your meat and how many people you’re serving. Multiply or divide as you wish:

You’ll need a deep pot with a lid that holds your piece of meat snugly, with some room around it, but keep in mind that as it cooks it will shrink some. You may cook this on top of the stove, in the oven, or in a slow cooker, which works very nicely.

Place an onion or two, sliced lengthwise, in the bottom of the pot. I like to rinse the corned beef first, though many people don’t. On top of this place your corned beef and cover with more sliced onions, along with a bay leaf, one or two garlic cloves, and a few tablespoons of pickling spice. You can just throw the spices into the pot, but I prefer to wrap them in a piece of cheesecloth, or a couple of coffee filters, tied at the top, or put them in a tea ball. Otherwise you have to either deal with getting it out or you have to put up with it in your teeth.

Pickling spice: a mix of allspice, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, dill, peppercorns, dark and light mustard seeds, and bay leaves. Other spices such as celery seed, chili, caraway, ginger or fenugreek can be added as you like. For corned beef, I go light on the cloves and cinnamon, and heavier on the coriander and mustard.

Pour in a half to a whole beer. I prefer lager or lighter beer, as a darker or black beer can be too strong and cover the other flavors (you may drink the remaining beer, or use it later in your soda bread). Fill pot with water to just cover the meat. Bring heat up to a simmer, turn the heat to the lowest possible setting, cover and let it cook for about two hours, every once in a while skimming any foam off the top. If you’re cooking it in the oven, set temperature to 300˚. If you’re using a slow cooker and it will be in all day, set it on low; if you’ve only got a few hours, set it on high. Whichever way you cook it, keep the heat low and try not to let it boil.

About an hour and a half before you’re ready to eat, melt some butter and/or oil in a sauté pan. Add whole new potatoes or large potatoes that have been peeled and cut into fairly large chunks or rounds, along with a carrot or two that have been peeled and cut into 1-2” pieces. More potatoes, less carrots. Cook, turning frequently so that they don’t stick, until they start to brown. Sprinkle the vegetables with a tablespoon or so of flour, toss it around, and continue to cook until potatoes are nicely browned.

Remove the meat from the pot and set it on a plate, covered. Run the broth through a sieve, pushing the softened onions through the mesh.  Return the meat to the pot, along with the potatoes and carrots, and a fresh bay leaf. Taste the broth to determine the saltiness, and if it is very strong and salty, dilute with water to taste before you add most of it back to the pot, reserving some for the cabbage. Cover and continue to cook on low for another hour or until the potatoes are just soft.

Meanwhile, cut a green or red cabbage in half. Notice how beautiful it is. Cut the core out, and cut into 1-2” wedges and then into 1-2” lengths. In the same pot you used for the potatoes, add a little more butter/oil and brown and onion, cut in thin wedges and then cut in half. Add cabbage. Saute over medium low heat, stirring frequently until it begins to soften and brown around the edges. Again notice how beautiful it is. Add a cup or two of the strained juice from the corned beef, scrape everything up from the bottom, cover and cook on a low heat until very soft. Remove the lid and cook off any excess liquid. Season with pepper, and salt only if needed, remembering that the meat may be fairly salty.

Let the meat rest on a plate or board, covered, for about 10 minutes. Slice corned beef against the grain and serve with cabbage and vegetables in a deep plate or bowl. Pour broth all around and add plenty of chopped parsley and freshly grated pepper.

Pass mustard or horseradish, or if you’re like me, enjoy it plain.

CHARCUTEPALOOZA CHALLENGE 3, BRINING, PART 1: THE CURING AND COOKING OF CORNED BEEF, BRINED HAM STEAK, WHOLE CHICKEN, AND PORK LOIN, AND A CHANGED ATTITUDE

A few years back brining was all over the place. Everywhere you’d look someone was raving about the virtues of brining, and we climbed right on the brining bandwagon. We brined and we brined, and by the time it was finally out of my system, I had come to the conclusion that it wasn’t for me because is seemed to me that it kind of left everything kind of the same. As lovely as it is to have evenly moist and seasoned meat, that is just what it is: even, and that evenness sacrifices variation. I enjoy having each bite of my meat a little different from the last: one bite may be seasoned more strongly than another, one might be a little more dry than another, one might have a texture that is a little different, and for me the experience will be more interesting and more gratifying.

I wasn’t too excited about this Charcutepalooza challenge, but I’d never corned my own beef, and enough time had passed that I was up to revisiting brining. One thing that had bothered me about brining was the dominance of the salt, how it permeated every bite. I also didn’t like the softened texture. That’s why I don’t buy meat that has been injected with anything. I hoped to be able to adjust the technique or recipe so that the meat was improved by the brine, but not taken over by it.

So how to add some flavor and moisture without letting it take over? How about less salt, more herbs/spices, less brining time and more resting time? For each meat, except the corned beef, I cut the salt and brining time by about half, and doubled the herbs/spices and resting time, to see if I could come up with a milder and more flavorful treatment that added something but didn’t take away from the character of the meat. It worked!

Here’s what we did. Recipes to follow:

We made an out of this world corned beef, for corned beef and cabbage, with leftovers for hash, sandwiches and colcannan.

Ham steak from our Amish farmer is not cured, so brining in basic brine with lots of mustard and sage added nice flavor.

We brined and cooked a chicken on the rotisserie. My sister Mary over for dinner that night, and she pointed out that in Italy they frequently brine game, which is leaner and often tougher, to tenderize it. Free range animals are similar to wild animals in this respect, and also respond well to a light brine.

We figured out how to deal with latter day lean pork tenderloin.

And we got a batch of sauerkraut going for good measure, though we didn’t float it in brine, but just kneaded salt into it as we usually do.

ART LINKS:

James Peale, Still Life with Balsam Apple and Vegetables, at The Met
A Cool Cabbage Hat at the Met
Cabbage Tureen at Minneapolis Museum of Art
Cabbage Field by Simone Nieweg at St. Louis Art Museum