Looking backwards and forwards

As another calender year comes to a close I couldn't help but realize that my last post was way back in the summer. A long time to go without a post in the blog world, I know, but not for lack of experimentation. This year has proven to be one of the busiest, most culinary interesting for me and my friends to date. From preserves to pig roasts, butchering to beer, 2009 was a year full of unexpected events, hilarious follies, and yes, even some pretty big successes.

Moments:

1) The first day of butchering a side of beef. This was a pretty awesome day, and one that was thankfully recorded in time lapse (see below). I am not sure what I expected, but butchering a well dry aged piece of meat is surprisingly clean, and as the name suggests, dry. The blood is minimal and the meat is almost tacky. Anyway, it was a tremendous experience for me, and one that I strive to repeat and learn more about. Well treated meat is a beautiful thing, and I personally feel the only way to honour the animal that has given its life for our consumption. I hope to learn more of this craft in the new year, and eventually set up some workshops for those interested. Surprisingly, few places offer formal courses on butchery, and hands-on workshops for the amateur are unheard of. Something I intend to change in the new year.

2) My birthday pig roast. This was a colossal affair that has yet to be digitally recorded for posterity. A testimony to my less than diligent blogging habits. Yet better late than never. The pig roast took place on a beautiful October day in East Vancouver to much fanfare. Liam built me two fire spit, and we ordered a large suckling pig through 3p. Slow cooking, friends, craft brew... there is little more to say other than this was a celebration for the ages. It will now be an annual affair.

3) The new smoker. So after the interior smoking adventures, I got a ragtag group of kids together and went on a trip out to Langely to check out the local bar-b-q competition series. 3P sponsors a team (Badass Bar-b-q Team from North Van) and I wanted to get a firsthand look and taste of what they did. Though we stuck out like soar thumbs, I didn't wear my "tapout" shirt that day, it was a great affair. Bryan, who also came along, was so inspired by all the tender pork and spicy sauces that he built me a beautiful cedar smoker. A smoker that has helped to up the quality of my bacon and pulled pork rather dramatically. I should also mention here that we ended the bar-b-q day at the Central City Brewpub in Surrey. A more than recommended destination for quality craft beer. As a bonus, it is on the skytrain line.

4) Summer Cassoulet. Yes, that's right, summer cassoulet. This is a french classic, perhaps the big classic, and while ingredient lists vary by region and personal taste, it is pretty safe to assume that this is a classy form of beans and pork. Other usual suspects include duck confit, sausage, lamb, tomatoes, and some posh versions will even add lobster ( a version I had at Pear Tree a couple years back did this). The version that Mark and I made had homemade sausage, pork belly and bacon, and duck confit along with cannellini beans instead of the traditional, and prohibitively expensive, tarbais beans. It took three days of intermittent work, but is was a classy way to spend a summer evening with friends.

5) Onward ho. There is still much to do here at the crock pot, many dishes to try, places to eat, and plans to make. That being said, come the new year we are going to be changing the format. I am in the process of creating a new, more dynamic web page with my friend Ryan Romero to be launched in the early spring of 2010. We hope to expand the writer base, include recipes and techniques, and rather ambitiously, have a calender for upcoming food and drink related events (look here for info on butchering workshops). This is part of the reason for the lengthy gap between the last post: a more ambitious project is coming! I will keep this blog going until then, but mainly with updates about the new site. Hopefully it is a smooth transition. In the meantime have a listen to me bumble my way through an interview about how to make sausages on the local podcast Life after radio.

CB

Ants for a day

Jam, I mean good jam, simple jam, is a beautiful thing. I love it, and I hope for your sake that you do too. I am not talking about Smuckers or some other gelatinous paste that you smother over Skippy, but real jam, the homemade kind.

Too be honest, my knowledge of jam is fairly limited, outside of my appreciation of it. Up until this past week the last time I made jam was with my mother at a time when I was barely old enough to see over the counter. Sure there have been episodes of stewing fruit for ice cream sundaes and the like, and making silly berry infusions, but classic jam preserves are mostly a thing of my past. Instead of making it, my jam (and most other preserves for that matter) have come trickling in from the rest of my family on an annual basis.

Looking around, however, I don't think that I am alone in my limited knowledge of jam. The art of preserving fruits and vegetables seems to have been largely given up by this generation of urban folk. We are no longer the ants busily preparing for winter, but the grasshoppers enjoying the spontaneity of play. I am not sure what, if anything, this says about the today's fast-paced lifestyle, but I do think-having recently done it with very little research-- that making jam is easy. It is also delicious. So if you like it, give making it a try. Here is a short time lapse of our efforts.

Yet Another Bacon Explosion

Ok, so the "bacon explosion" has become a culinary cliche.  Internet fame has driven the trend, and the number of youtube how-to videos is astonishing.  That does not mean, however, that every home cook and bacon enthusiast shouldn't give it a try.We made this one with some of the homemade bacon that I smoked (see below) last week.  Bacontastic?  

      

Asparagus Forest

I am not sure that I ever wondered what happened to the asparagus stocks that went unpicked after spring harvest. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that they turned into a freakishly miniature forest. We ran into this small grove while staying with some friends who are spending the summer working on an Organic farm in Grindrod.

On Smoking Foods and Cultural Integration

Going back to my hometown usually means days spent cooking, eating and drinking, activities that in my family seem to necessitate one another.  You simply cannot have one without the other—at least in Lumby.  And so, for the past week, I have spent my time cooking, smoking, curing, bar-b-qing, baking, drinking, and of course eating.  It was, at the risk of romanticizing our excess, a weeklong celebration of the prosaic—an indulgence of the sensory—and having partaken in such activities, I can now return to my life in Vancouver to write about it.

 

Smoking seems like the obvious place to begin, as it was much the focus of this particular trip.  Mark, my brother-in-law, and I had decided in advance of the trip that we wanted to try our hand at smoking.  It had come up in recent discussions and seemed like an interesting pursuit.  With plenty of readily available hardwoods, and a higher per capita ownership of backyard smokers than subscribers to cable Internet, Lumby was a much better choice to indulge our activities than East Vancouver. 

 

Before leaving I did what I imagine any urban dweller would do to prepare: I googled smoking methods and went to the library.  I read as much as I could on the topic, and even began sketching out plans and calling my family to make sure that certain equipment would be available upon our arrival.  In short, I planned my trip, and Mark's, around smoking experiments.  While these activities provided a useful foundation of knowledge, I knew that once we arrived they would probably get dumped in favour of local knowledge on the subject.  Indeed, when the day of smoking arrived the books didn’t even make it out of my bag.  Instead, Mark, Travis (my other brother-in-law), my sister Becky, and a random flotsam of local aficionados, set to work guiding our rickety smoke house towards a tasty dinner with a rather casual demeanor.  While this method lacked the scientific rigour prized by the books I had taken out from the library, it embodied all the things that cooking is really about: family, community (however spontaneous or ephemeral), and adventure.  

In the end Mark and I are a long way from becoming expert smokers, but we found a way to participate in a culture that despite having grown up within, has become increasingly distant and elusive to me over the years, with the added bonus of course of making a tasty dinner along the way.

 

Follow up:

Here is a bibliography of some of the more helpful books that I discovered.  Despite whatever slant I may have taken in the above confessions they proved a useful resource for a novice smoker and I would definitely recommend them as a starting point.  They are also all available at the Vancouver Public Library.

Andersn, Warren R. (2006).  Mastering the Art of Smoking Food.  Short Hills, NJ: Burford Books.

Dubbs, Chris and Dave Heberle (2008).  Smokin Food: A beginner’s guide.  New York: Skyhorse.

Ruhlman, Michael and Brian Polcyn (2005).  Charcuterie: The craft of salting, smoking, and curing. New York: Norton and Company.

The Fish Market

Yesterday Jen, Simon and I made the mission out to the Steveston Fish Market.  Steveston, though lacking in Dagon temples, is a quaint seaside village that has a certain Lovecraftian charm.  Boardwalks and fishing boats line the docks, fishcentric installations fill the park, and even convenience stores pay homage to the sea with bright red orca silhouettes stencilled onto store awnings.   Yet where Innsmouth, the infamous town of Lovefcraftian myscatology, is a dilapidated place hostile to outsiders, Steveston is a shiny example of the entrepreneurial village welcoming all those willing to make the trek into her shops and businesses with open arms.  

Releshing in the opportunity to play the role of outsiders, and better yet tourists, and armed with little more than our cameras, we arrived at the market in the early afternoon.  Unfortunately, we were a little too late to purchase any black cod (also known as sable fish), though they still had some heads for sale for those interested in the cheeks, or making stock (the market is open throughout the week, but selection varies by season, as well as between weekdays and weekends).  Anyway, we picked up some surprisingly cheap prawns ($4/pound) and because we were set on making fish and chips, eventually found a frozen fillet of cod as well-in this case the idea of the meal out weighed our concern for quality.  When we got home we had ourselves a fryer marathon to celebrate our bounty.  Here are some photos...

The Butcher Shop: Breaking down a cow

This week we finally started to break down the side of beef that has been in the walk in for the last 14 days.  It was a serious task, and I was pretty excited to participate.  Here is a time lapse of us breaking the chuck section down.  The rib and hind quarter will age for another week at least, so look forward to more documentation.

The Butcher Shop

Three weeks ago I got a job at a butcher, 3P Meats in North Vancouver.  So far the learning curve has been steep, but the rewards great.  To my mind I have come a step closer to understanding what it means to produce, and ultimately what is means to eat meat in an era of industrial food production.  What is more, I like to think that such knowledge can help me to make informed decisions about what kind of meat can be consumed in a way that is morally responsible--ensuring that the animals that I eat are treated well and live pleasant pastoral lives devoid of needless suffering, and don't come from half way around the world.  Anyway, before this starts to sound like a rant about slow-food or why I can be a moral carnivore, I will get to the meat of the post.

Over the past week I brought in my computer to document some of the work we have been doing.  To my surprise, Paul, my boss, was very excited that I was showing such interest in the work and agreed to let me post my recordings online.  Here are a couple to get going.  The first is the breakdown of a number of nice chickens from Polderside farms.  The longer clip is the boning out of a pair of venison legs.  Bon appetite!