Paul Hinrichs's Open Salon Blog

Skin in the Game

Wed, 5 Oct 2011 14:10:02 -0400

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said he was only making “a historical observation” during a House Judiciary Committee hearing….

“[T]here was a time in American history when you had to be a male property owner in order to vote. The reason for that was, because they wanted the people who voted — that set the public policy, that decided on the taxes and the spending — to have some skin in the game.”

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During the 110th Congress, King voted with the majority of the Republican Party 90.9% of the time.King has continuously voted for Iraq War legislation, and has supported surge efforts and opposed a time table for troop withdrawals.

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King’s official biography, here, does not indicate that he ever served in the armed forces, though he is of an age (b 1949) that would have made him eligible for the draft in the Vietnam era.

Rocket Science

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 08:06:25 -0400

Gather round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun,
A man whose allegiance
Is ruled by expedience.
Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown.
"Ha, Nazi Schmazi," says Wernher von Braun.

"Wernher von Braun" - music and lyrics by Tom Lehrer

Wernher von Braun, the greatest rocket scientist of all time, began his life in Wirsitz in 1912. His family could trace their heritage back to medieval royalty, notably Edward III of England. His mother bought him a telescope for his Lutheran confirmation and young Wernher set his sights on the stars.

After World War I, Wirsitz became part of Poland and the von Braun family moved to Berlin. Already an accomplished cellist, von Braun studied music composition, notably with Paul Hindemith. He also started playing with homemade rockets and, at age 12, got himself arrested when his experimental rocket-propelled toy wagon blew up on a busy street.

The third stage of von Braun’s early career took him to boarding school, the Hermann-Lietz-Internat, on the East Frisian island of Spiekeroog. It was here that he first read Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (1929) (By Rocket into Interplanetary Space) by rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth and, for better or worse, his career went into orbit.

Wernher von Braun must have been a foodie since the post-war presence of German rocket engineers at Fort Bliss, TX was accidentally revealed in "German Scientist Says American Cooking Tasteless; Dislikes Rubberized Chicken,” an article which drew the ire of Albert Einstein. So, though he never lived in Westphalia, he certainly enjoyed the ham from acorn-fed pigs, fine German lagers, and the most complex rye bread ever developed.

Detmold, a city of 74,000 about 3 hours south of the East Frisian islands, lends its name to that bread, which like interplanetary rockets arrives at its destination in three stages of fermentation. I ran across the recipe over the weekend after I’d prepared a batch of rye starter. I was planning on making an ordinary rye (25% rye flour, 25% whole wheat, 50% high-gluten white) when I ran across this sentence in Jeffrey Hamelman’s Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes:

“The Detmolder method of making sourdough rye bread, developed in Germany, is a fascinating and highly effective technique that represents the highest expression of the baker’s skill.”

That sounds like a challenge! Let’s give it a whirl!

Each of the three stages has a specific goal in mind. The first, “freshening,” gives optimum conditions for yeast growth at 150% hydration and a temperature of 78°F for 6 hours. The second, “basic sour,” develops acetic acid potential at 60-65% hydration for 15 to 24 hours at 73° to 80°F. Finally, the “full sour” is used to develop lactic acid at 100% hydration for 3-4 hours at 85°F. Bulk fermentation is short (about 20 minutes) and final fermentation, after forming the loaves, is 1 hour at 82°F. Time and hydration are easy but temperature, like comedy, is difficult.

This is where inspiration hit. What if I hooked up my sous vide temperature controller to the dehydrator – wouldn’t I have an incubator? So that’s what I did. “Easy for you,” you say, “but I don’t have all those ridiculous cooking toys that you’ve filled your closets with.” Aha! Yes, but you do have a mind – and a thermometer. For the lower temperatures, room temperature is close. In summer, it’s cooler near AC vents and warmer close to windows. An oven with the light inside turned on, or a heating pad under a bowl of water – or just outside! – will get you 82° or 85°. Precision helps, but a bit of creativity will always get the job done.

Here are the quantities and numbers for the Detmolder 90% rye method:

Freshening

1½ Tablespoons whole-rye flour
1 Tablespoon water
1 teaspoon rye culture (see my previous blog entry for details)

Mix and ripen for 5-6 hours at 77° to 79°F

Basic Sour

7/8 cup whole-rye flour
3/8 cup water
All of the freshening sour

Mix. Keep at 73° to 80°F for 15-24 hours

Full Sour

2¼ cups whole-rye flour
1 cup water
All of the basic sour

Mix. Keep at 85°F for 3-4 hours

Final Dough

4 7/8 cups Medium rye flour
¾ cup high-gluten flour
1¾ cups water
1 Tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon yeast (optional)
Almost all of the full sour (reserve 1 teaspoon for the next batch)

Mix in stand mixer for 4 minutes at low speed. If you have a spiral blade, great, but a dough hook won’t work. Increase speed to medium and mix for another 1 to 1½ minutes. Bulk fermentation takes only 20 minutes at 82° to 85°F.

Form into two loaves and allow them to ferment 1 hour at 82°F.

Baking: Score loaves and bake at 480°F for 10 minutes in high humidity (a pan of water on a lower shelf). Lower temperature to 410°F and bake for another 40-50 minutes. Allow to cool on baker’s rack, then wrap and allow to rest 24 hours for moisture to stabilize throughout the loaf.

Clamps on the mixer prevent the bowl from jumping off when mixing heavy doughs.

You can make round or elongated loaves as suggested in the Hamelman technique, but I chose to use standard loaf pans.

Johannes Brahms did live in Detmold from 1856 until moving to Vienna in the early 1860s. He was the soloist at the premiere of his Piano Concerto No. 1 in Detmold in 1859. Here is Arthur Rubenstein playing the first movement with Bernard Haitink conducting.

The Rye Stuff

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 13:06:27 -0400

Ever since I got that USB microscope, I’ve been trying to find a way to work it in here. The built-in LED illumination puts a greenish-blue color cast which is the opposite of the warm colors you usually want with food pictures, but PhotoShop lets me get rid of most of that. The latest effort is rye grain which comes out looking somewhat metallic and maybe a little shinier than it really is.

I got a grain mill attachment for the KitchenAid and found that I’m using it more than I thought I might. You can adjust it from “very fine” (which is what is grinding in the picture) to “coarse” which is going to come out very chewy. The local food co-op has an interesting variety of grains and winter wheat berries make a fantastic loaf. Because whole wheat breaks down really quickly, flour labeled whole wheat really isn’t and you can taste the difference. Today, I’m using the mill to make a rye starter for sourdough rye bread and you can do the same even if you don’t have a grain mill, Just mix 8 ounces of rye flour with 7 ounces of water and a good sourdough starter.

Although the starter I’m using is labeled “Lalvain LA-4” (available from King Arthur Flour), it is no longer the stuff that you pay $10 to get enough for 12 loaves. That’s because I’ve kept it going – and not the way you might think, with a jar of goop in the fridge that needs constant tending and likely gets cross-contaminated anyway. I’ve been drying starter for over a year now and it’s a hassle-free way to keep a wide variety of wild yeasts around. It takes a day or two to “wake” it up, but that’s better than that ugly jar that will probably get moldy when you inevitably neglect it. I put a half teaspoon of the starter in with the rye dough and will give it until Sunday to do what sourdough does all by itself.

When I make the rye bread I can pinch off a small piece about the size of a shooter marble and use that to start the next batch – or just keep using the dried LA-4 until it’s time to refresh that. The starter looks like a Ben & Jerry experiment gone all wrong right now, but as the yeast develops it will relax. The bread I’m making also uses a standard fast-acting yeast for leavening and the SAF Instant I use has no problem with the lower pH after more wheat and bread flour are added to the mix. Sourdough rye bread is soul food in this house (and the recipe is simple – just add 8 ounces whole wheat and 16 ounces bread flour to the rye sourdough, 1 teaspoon spoon instant yeast, 1 tablespoon salt, and two cups of water. Knead well and treat it like regular bread with proofing and loaving, then bake in a moist oven at 460 for 15 minutes. Lower the heat to 425 and bake for another 25 minutes. Let it cool completely).

My brain got infected with “Remoulade” this week and, dang me, the Emeril recipe sounded good. Onions, green onions, horseradish, two kind of mustard, celery, garlic, ketchup, and cayenne pepper (I used smoked paprika). I didn’t measure anything because I doubt Emeril did either. Process it with lemon juice and vegetable oil and you’ve got a sauce that’s fun to pronounce. Now, what the hell am I going to do with it?

Aha! I still haven’t fixed those cured ribs, you know, the ones Rytek Kutas used to charge a fortune for in Vegas? I could spread Remoulade on ‘em and bake them a while to warm ‘em up, then fire up the broiler to put a singe on the sauce. A mustard-based sauce just seemed to make sense for ribs that are more like ham than what you’d get over at Tony Roma’s. It worked out pretty well, except next time I use spare ribs instead of baby backs I’ll give them a little more time in the smoker to render more of the fat. These were very tasty and the Remoulade gave them a unique appearance.

and here's some rye bread as seen through the USB microscope...

Homemade Mystery Meat

Sun, 5 Jun 2011 08:06:28 -0400

I’m sure you’re familiar with mystery meat from high school cafeterias, army mess halls, or some other place where institutional food is served. It is almost always gray and has a strange texture and no recognizable flavor. You eat it because it is what they’ve served and the alternative is to go hungry – but while you eat it you make jokes about groundhogs, possums, and squirrels because you can tell it probably came from some sort of animal, you just don’t know which. Those were good times and we all survived, but it probably never occurred to us to make our very own mystery meat at home. So you always had to go "out" to have mystery meat.

Until now!

I first saw this particular mystery meat on A Taste of History, a PBS show that features on of the best chefs on TV, Walter Staib. He produces colonial-era dishes using only the tools available at the time – mainly a chef’s knife, which he handles like Michelangelo did a paint brush – and cooks over an open hearth. No blenders, food processors, or offstage toadies to produce the mise en place, he does it all in real time on a butcher block table, He sautéed our mystery meat and minced it with the chef’s knife.

I simmered it in chicken stock that had been beefed up a bit with 14 chicken wing tips leftover from a Memorial Day chicken wing pig-out. After they’d chilled out in the fridge, I ground them up using the meat grinder attachment for the KitchenAid. Then it sat in a ZipLock chilling out in the fridge while I decided what to do with it. I contemplated a sausage with grits and cheddar cheese, but after I cooked up the yellow grits they looked so good that I went ahead and ate them. That didn’t sound so good anyway.

Next idea was a mystery meat salad for sandwiches, you know, with pickle relish, some celery, and mayo. I floated that idea to my friend Victoria and, after a long silence on the other end of the phone, it sunk. Finally, in desperation, I prayed to Mr. Google and he suggested dirty rice – though he used the mystery meat whole, not all ground up. No longer willing to invest a lot of time in this project, I decided to get a Zatarain’s dirty rice mix at the store but, as luck would have it, it was just too bloody hot to go out. Back in the larder, way back, I found a package of Goya dried Rice & Red Beans. That’s close enough. Let’s start cooking it…

I used that "beefed-up" chicken stock instead of water. The tomatoes were left over from some guacamole that turned out pretty draned good and is all gone now. Still, it looks kinda threadbare...

Ah, that's better, a mirepoix and maybe a couple of cloves of garlic too.

Saute the carrots, onions, garlic, and celery...

say, I always wondered when I'd get to use that bottle of overpriced Penzey stuff labeled "Cajun Very Hot" that somebody gave me...

Now add the mytsery meat and tomatoes. Next the stock and the equally mysterious contents of that Goya box go in.

Cover with a bogus tagine thingie, if you have one, or a plain lid if you don't. Simmer for 25 minutes, just like it said on the box.

Then serve it to yourself, or anyone else willing to try it...

By now, you're probably wondering what the mystery meat is. That's good! It's the whole idea of mystery meat, to keep you guessing for a while. But, unlike Goldie, the surly server in your high school cafeteria, I'm gonna tell you what it is! Here's the answer..

Yep. That's right! It's chicken gizzards - or more accurately, "Chicken Hearts & Gizzards, Mostly Gizzards" that cost about 2 bucks a pound at your local Piggly Wiggly. Oh sure, you can saute them or deep-fry them in a cayenne coating and chew your way through a down home delight knowing all the time what it is, but mystery meat is a lot more fun! My dirty rice didn't taste too bad, but it wasn't that good either. The coarse grinding eliminated the "chew factor" texture and it's pretty much a place marker in this dish, like, "Hmmm, there's some kind of meat in here, but I don't know for sure what..." - and that's the true spirit of mystery meat!

Salmon Dave

Wed, 1 Jun 2011 10:06:25 -0400

When I got my first smoker from the SausageMaker (about a quarter century ago) it was initially to make venison summer sausage. A friend of mine hunted and had this recipe from his grandmother that called for cooking it in an oven at 150°F. That’s easier said than done, grandma. I got one of those silly wind-up convection fans that they’ve since stopped making because they were useless. I put a thermometer in a glass and tweaked the thermostat up and down until I got a fairly stable 150° as long as you didn’t open the door. Next season, I got the smoker.

It was meant to operate at low temperatures so that part was easier, but no matter where you set the thermostat it was very difficult to maintain a stable temperature. Then I got a rheostat that would turn on the juice when you dropped below a certain temperature and off again when you reached. Problem was, it did not have a thermometer scale…well, it did, but it was a separate decal and what angle you put it on was anybody’s guess. One day, making andouille, the smoker caught fire and burned it all away, from fat dripping on the heating element. But not before I learned the SausageMaker’s method of smoking salmon. It came in a pamphlet that accompanied my smoker on its long trip from Buffalo, NY. I still have it and refer to it whenever I smoke salmon:

After a while, a friend of mine who owned a seafood restaurant in Carrboro called me with a deal. If I’d smoke 3 salmon filets for him, he’d give me a 4^th one. That went on for a couple of years. Not only did I eat and share a lot of smoked salmon, I got the process down pretty good. The Kutas recipe was too salty, so I cut back on that. It calls for an ounce of bay leaves and that’s a whole lot, so I cut back on that. I developed a taste for juniper berries, so those started going into the brine. Dave’s Seafood is long gone, along with Dave who moved to Nova Scotia in 1998, but I still haven’t gotten tired of this salmon. The brining makes it moist and spicy and the low temperature leaves it succulent.

Since then I’ve gotten a Bradley Smoker with which there is no danger of fire. Last summer, I built a temperature controller, originally meant for doing sous vide – but I made it universal with switched plugs on GFI (so I don’t electrocute myself) and unswitched plugs for accessories like the CPU fans I put in the smoker for convection. With these improvements, smoking is a no-brainer. Here’s the brine recipe and method – which can be adapted for use in any smoker.

Brine:

1 ounce Insta Cure #1 (or substitute salt)
2 ounces sea salt
2 ounces brown sugar
1 ounce Tellicherry peppercorns
1 ounce juniper berries
1 ounce allspice whole
1/8 ounce bay leaves
1 gallon water

Break up spices in blender or spice grinder. If using a blender, add two cups of the water and blend on high for about a minute. Heat water to boiling, add spices and sea salt, and allow to cool one hour. Add the curing salt after cooling, if you’re using it. Brine 8 hours at 38°F. Hang vertically at room temperature to drip dry until pellicle (glassy-eyed glaze) forms. This takes 6-8 hours. Smoke horizontally for 4 hours at 132°F using alder wood.

Here’s a pictorial…

Check for pinbones in the salmon and remove them with needle-nose pliers. This frozen salmon, from Lowe's, had them already removed. Thank you, Alaskans!

Rinse the salmon with fresh water after it has been brined to remove any spice debris. Here is my patented method of attaching it to a pants hanger for drying. The dowel rod keeps it from slipping out.

Mandatory curing room picture (because Gary and Linda would ask me where it was otherwise). I put a pan underneath to catch the drippings. Vertical drying is better than horizontal because excess brine will drip off.

A pan of water below keeps the salmon from drying out. Fans above circulate the air. There are 4 CPU fans, two aimed up and two aimed down.

The PID controller used in this regulator does not do Fahrenheit, so I convert. (55.5C = 132F)

Here's a better look at the smoke generator. Alder "bisquets" are fed automatically into the box with the aluminum tube, where they smolder one at a time with a pan of water beneath to extinguish them when the next one feeds in.

The tail end of the salmon gets kinda dry. Gordon, the chef at Dave’s Seafood, came up with a great use for this and other bits and pieces that might otherwise get thrown away – make salmon mousse.

Combine 4 ounces smoked salmon, zest and juice from 1/2 lemon, 1 ounce heavy cream, a sprig of dill, and 8 ounces cream cheese in a food processor. Whrrrr!

Serve with Ritz toasted chips, salt-brined capers, cornichons, and - if you're feeling extravagant -salmon roe.

I wasn't.

Uh-oh. Check out the date on my homemade cornichons - they're over 10 years old! 'Course, if you're eating salmon mousse, it probably doesn't matter...