Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey Meatloaf

One of the cool things about going to culinary school is the exposure to a great many cuisines and cooking techniques over a very short time frame.  You also get to play with really cool equipment such as a double-ring wok burner that puts out a few thousand BTU's and sounds like a fighter jet with afterburners on.  Unfortunately in the relatively short three-week course titled, Garde Manger, we went over subjects as varied as plated apps, cheese (the making of and use of), charcuterie and due to the amount of material being learned we only discussed things from the 50,000-foot level.  Essentially just enough to whet your appetite but not so much that you felt confident and ready to take on the world.

I've been able to get back into learning on my own and expanding my knowledge,  but one meaty foodstuff that I've been hankering to try again was terrines.  What you ask is a terrine?  Basically it's a fancy-schmancy meatloaf…in fact there are many parallels between to the stuff yo’ momma made on Sunday night and the fine frenchified versions.  You could call good ol' 'merican meatloaf the bastard step-child of French terrines but that would be rude and frankly libelous to mommas everywhere.  Ground meat?  check!  Eggs?  check!  Bread crumbs?  check!  Parsley?  check!  Where the two take different paths is how the ingredients are processed, cooked and treated ante-cooking.  Whereas the meatloaf is classically made from good ol' moo-cow, terrines are most regularly made with pork.  For glueification of the meats meatloaf has breadcrumbs from unknown or dubious sources, fresh bread that's been grated, Japanese panko, saltines, really just about any savory baked complex carbohydrate frowned upon by Dr. Atkins would work.  Mine regularly often came from a canister purchased at my local mega-grocer and was labeled as “Italian Flavor”.  Frankly, I'm not sure I want to know what an Italian tastes like, nor do I really want to know how they came to the conclusion of what an Italian tastes like.  At this point, I have the mental picture of the residents of Stanten Island, definitely not good eats.  

Defense’s Exhibit 1:

 Now that I've had to wash my brain out with bleach we're back to terrines.  Meatloaf is usually slathered with a mixture of ketchup, sugar and vinegar, incinerated in an oven hot enough to have been described in Dante's inferno until the meat shrinks, withers and squeezes out every bit of moisture.  The now sahara-like meat-product is unceremoniously slopped onto a plate next to gluey mashed potatoes and limp insipid canned green beans.  In fact, the whole reason products like the one pictured below exist is to compensate for a poorly made meatloaf that has leached all it’s succulence.  

  

One of the techniques utilized to create the tight texture of a terrine is a mixture of bread, cream and eggs (and regularly includes a spirit    such as brandy).  When all are mixed together it’s called a panada, at this point I always seem to picture actual panda bears, go figure.  On the other hand, terrines are gently cooked in a low-temp oven, whilst being coddled in a jacuzzi-like water-bath then slowly massaged over night to allow the mixture to compress to uniformity and reabsorb any errant liquids then sliced and served with tasty accouterments such as pickles of various but thoughtful design; toast points, a dab of jam and maybe some grainy/spicy/acidy mustard.  Now don't get me wrong, I loves me some meatloaf, there is very little in this world I love more than leftover meatloaf slathered with Hellman's and slapped between a couple slices of bread wonderbread, that stuff is mana for the soul.  And while many parallels exist between these two meat products in the end they are more like apples and oranges. 

I went back to my stalwart reference, Charcuterie, by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn.  If you are looking to purchase a book to start learning more about charcuterie I highly recommend this book.  If you're already making charcuterie products and want to expand or refine your knowledge, get this book, you won't regret it.  

One word about the afore mentioned overnight massage, in reality it's a controlled squish.  Imagine if you will Spanx for your meat.  You want to get something hard and flat and cut it so it just sits inside the terrine pan.  Please make it food safe or at least cover it with plastic wrap and a aluminum foil (yes both).  I went to my local hardware store and picked up a square of Plexiglas for under $5, scored it with a razor and snapped it into the size I needed.  Then I headed over to the gardening section and purchased a couple paving bricks.  You can use whatever you want as a weight, I just like how easily bricks stack.  You can use cans of food, workout weights or give JB Prince a ring, they have this fancy terrine press.  Kinda overkill but pretty cool and I've begun to attempt to justify its purchase.  I want to mention again, if you chose to use something that's not foodsafe, double bag it with the plastic wrap and aluminum.  You're already playing with meat, you don't want to have gravel bits in the mix.  

CAUTION: The recipe below contains baby cow.  Yes, it's true folks, I eat cute baby cows.  I know that some people prefer to avoid veal products but to be honest, it's just about the easiest liver to get at a specific weight at my local butcher shop.  You can substitute chicken liver which is available at most supermarkets or pork liver but you might have to go to an Asian market for that.  

So the recipe I chose to do is Pâté de Campagne from Charcuterie.  It's a classic and a good place to start, below is my adaptation:

Pâté de Campagne

1 kg pork shoulder

100 grams veal liver

50 grams yellow onion (aka - Spanish onion)

25 grams (approx) chopped parsley (I went with the volume measurement of 1/4 cup)

24 grams garlic

25 grams kosher salt

16.5 grams pink salt (optional – if you use it you might want to reduce the kosher salt to 15 grams)

3 grams fresh ground black pepper

2 grams pate spice

20 grams all-purpose flour

2 large eggs

2 Tbl brandy

1/2 cup heavy cream

Pâté Spice

1 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground coriander

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 Tbl ground white pepper

Prepare the terrine pan:  Spray the inside of the pan with non-stick cooking spray.  Now cut a length of plastic wrap that's about 2.5 times the length of your terrine pan and lay the plastic wrap into the pan, across the bottom and up the sides.  This is where you have a decision to make, you can use your hands to manipulate the plastic wrap to remove as many wrinkles or bubbles as you can but I prefer an alternate method.  Make sure that your plastic wrap reaches at least to the top edge of all four sides of your pan and gently fill the plastic wrapped pan with water to just below the edge.  Now when you (gently) pull and tug on the plastic wrap the weight of the water will help displace the air bubbles and wrinkles and make everything all smooth and happy-like.  When everything has been smoothed to your satisfaction just pour out the water.  Whichever method you choose, once you're satisfied set the terrine pan off to the side until your meat mixture is ready.  

This is also a good time to get your water bath ready.  Place your terrine pan into another pan that's at least as deep as the terrine pan.  With the terrine pan in the larger pan add water to the larger pan until it reaches about 2/3-3/4 of the way up the side of the terrine pan.  Remove the terrine pan and set both aside until their ready to use.  Also, get your over heating to 300 degrees F.  

In a medium bowl combine the liver, through pâté spice and put in the fridge.  You want everything as cold as possible.  Now grind the pork shoulder through the large die of your grinder.  Take about 1/3 of the ground mixture, add it to the liver and grind that through your smaller die.  Combine the first and second grinds together and place in the refrigerator.  

Now on to the panda, I mean panada.  This terrine eschews the bread and instead calls for flour, and to reduce the possibility of lumps I found that this process of mixing the panada seems to work well.  First lightly whisk up the eggs, then whisk in the flour a little at a time.  Once fully combined whisk in the brandy and cream.  

Now combine the ground meat mixture with the panada and mix with either a spatula, a big wooden spoon or your hands until the mixture comes together.  At first everything will seem kinda soupy but as you continue to mix everything the myosin in the meat will begin to get all happy-like, the mix will become a little sticky and the mass will begin to coalesce and get less soupy, which is just about when you want to stop.

If you choose to add some sort of garnish you would want to include it when mixing everything together.  Options include small cubes of fatback, pistachios, craisins or in the case of this terrine pickled green peppercorns which had been rinsed and drained.  Add or not as you desire.  A word on the peppercorns...some people liked them, I totally unabashedly hated them.  They were like little spicy land mines and I did not find that they added anything but a bit of danger to the terrine.    

Spoon the mixture into your prepared terrine pan of choice lightly while trying to avoid including air bubbles.  When all the terrine is added take the terrine pan and lightly slam the base of the terrine pan on the cutting board about three to four times.  Don't go nuts here, you don't want to break anything, but the banging helps to remove and/or reduce air bubbles that might have made their way into the mixture.  

Smooth the top of the mixture with a spatula and lightly fold over your over-hanging plastic wrap.  Avoid pulling the plastic wrap tight or taut, if anything you want it on the looser side.  As the plastic wrap heats in the oven it has a tendency to contract and if you pulled it too tight at this point it can pull the top and sides of the terrine inward making the top a slight dome, still good eats, just not so much pretty.  

If your terrine pan came with a lid add it and place the prepared water-bath in the over and then the terrine pan into the water-bath.  Cook for about one hour and check the internal temperature, you want to hit about 150 degrees F (160 if you used chicken livers).  Remove the terrine from the oven (leave the water-bath in place and deal with it another time when all that water has cooled down.  

Place the terrine pan on a rimmed cookie sheet, add your press and weights and let it sit for about 30-60 minutes or so to cool.  Then place the terrine in the fridge overnight to rest, still weighted.  I've even seen some people wrap around the terrines and weights with plastic wrap so everything's more secure.  

If you've been paying attention I've already mentioned how I like to serve my terrine.  Typically it's sliced into approximately 1/2" thick slices, left cold and accompanied by some good artisan jelly (no Smuckers here folks, please for the sake of all things holy), some grainy mustard (no French's), some nice thick crusted bread that's been lightly toasted and maybe some nice acidic cornichons.  

Then sit back and revel in the awesomnicity that is you.  

Russian Imperial Stout Sausage'ski

I've been working recently to expand my repertoire of fresh encased meats beyond the basic brat and Italian varieties and I've been going about that two ways.  First, I've been looking at recipes that pique my interest and trying new to me flavors, an example of this is my foray into the Greek Loukanikos sausages I made here.  I've also been looking to tweak existing recipes to fit my tastes which is closer to what happened here, kind of.  In fact I really screwed the pooch on this one and I'm lucky to have made it out alive.  I know, overwrought hyperbole but still, I could have really screwed up a few pounds of meat and that would have made me sincerely displeased with myself.  While trolling the ol’ net’ski I happened upon a recipe for Bookham Boozy Sausage posted on one of my favorite meaty sites: http://forum.sausagemaking.org/viewtopic.php?t=3512&start=15  which is attributed to Bob Daniels, Ken Davey Butchers, Great Bookham, Surrey.  It’s also available on this handy-dandy downloadable pdf here: [  http://www.animatedscience.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/SausageMaking.pdf  ]

I thought this would be a good starting place and wanted rejigger the recipe eliminate the rusk for nonfat dry milk (NFDM).  For those not of the British Empire rusk is a cracker-esque bread that is ground and added to sausages in jolly old England much like we’d add breadcrumbs to meatloaf here in the States.  The rusk works similar to a panada in charcuterie terms by absorbing excess liquid and fat and creating a softer succulent sausage.  Now I’ve got nothing against soft and succulent, however, British sausages have often been described as less meaty than similar American counterparts and as a reformed vegan I want nothing to do with sub-meaty treatys.  In fact, if I’m going to be eating some animals I want to maximize my intake!  The best substitute for rusk is the aforementioned non-fat dry milk which I keep on hand exclusively for sausage-makin’, frankly the stuff is inedible when made into “milk”.

A couple other adjustments I wanted to make was the inclusion of beef and a change in the beer.  I had purchased a large roast to grind up for the fam and decided to poach/borrow some for a sausage project as I don’t think I’ve ever made sausage with beef.  The second was that while Guinness is tasty it’s not my favorite beer, I also wanted something with even bigger flavor.  I happened to have purchased some of my local Mission Brewery Dark Seas Russian Imperial Stout to make mustard and thought I could also use the same brew in the sausage.  Unfortunately, after sausage making and some taste testing I didn’t have enough to make mustard so was forced against my will to consume the remaining beer.  Woe is me….  No when I say that this beer was dark and flavorful I might be understating things.  This stuff was chocked full o’ flavor, so much so that I almost need a knife and fork to cut off hunks, lots of coffee and dark chocolate notes, in a word, “mmmmmmmm….”

Another change that I wanted to make was to adjust how the ratio was listed.  The original recipe added all ingredients up to 100% which is fine but for some reason works a little less cleanly in my noggin.  I prefer recipes where the meat is 100% and all other ingredients are listed as a ratio or percentage of the meat.  Just works better for me…. And this my friends is where I should have taken that proverbial left turn at Albuquerque, because I went right.    

As I already noted, I really screwed the pooch.  Looking back at my notes I fouled things up with my ratio in a pretty spectacular fashion....however... it turned out really really good.  The funniest part of all is that because the recipe turned out so tasty I now have to make it again with what I assumed in hindsight were my mis-steps to recreate them and confirm their validity.  Doesn’t get much more convoluted than that!  This is where I think I went wrong (and to be frank I don’t know how I got there)….I ended up with nearly triple the amount of onion, nearly double the amount of spices and nearly double the salt. The recipe below reflects the positive screw-ups in spices and onion but I dialed the salt back down to 1.5%.  And as I mentioned all non-meat product percentages are based on weight of meat: 

HG Sausageworks Russian Imperial Stout Sausage 

2:1 ratio of pork shoulder to beef roast (beef trimmed of most fat)
10% fat back
20% Russian Imperial Stout beer
4.5% NFDM (non-fat dry milk)
2.8% fresh onion
1.5% salt
1.2% coriander, toasted and finely ground
0.3% black peppercorns, toasted and finely ground
0.3% allspice

Grind all of pork shoulder and beef through large die of grinder.

Regrind 1/2 of pork/beef mixture with fatback and onion through large die again.

Mix in rest of ingredients and stuff in medium-large hog casing (I used 42 mm).

This was a fairly wet mix but cooked up beautifully... 

The sausage had a very dark, meaty, manly flavor.  If you like a hearty meal this would be great with thick whole-grain mustard, some Russian rye and kraut….definitely winter-friendly food!

Loukaniko - My Big Fat Greek Sausage

I’ve talked a lot about innovation and experimentation particularly with the Frankenbacon chronicles but in fact there are two ways to experiment.  The first is just to close your eyes and take a leap of blind faith.  Sometimes things will work out, sometimes not so much.  But, there is something to be said about pure experimentation for experimentation’s sake.  The second way is to riff off of an existing standard.  It's completely acceptable to create a personalized version of a known or iconic dish, but, if you do you gotta pay the piper.  First things first, before you know which direction you want to take your personalized idealized version of a foodstuff you need to know what the original was meant to be.  Without that base knowledge you're running blind and might as well just have gone for option one, the blind leap of faith. 

In my quest to find my voice and personality when it comes to charcuterie items I’ve been trying various recipes and on subsequent versions I might tweak something here or there until I get my personalized version.  The latest encased meat to meet it’s maker was Loukaniko, a Greek sausage.  I was directed to this sausage by my boss who is very proud of their Greek heritage (as has been the case with every person of Greek origin I’ve ever met).  I made this as an homage to her and I’m waiting for feedback from her and her mother, aka Ya-Ya.  I poached the recipe from Len Poli’s exceptional compendium of meat-dom and the original can be found here: Loukaniko

I did things as close as I could to the original with what I had available and here’s my version:

Fresh Loukaniko – Greek Sausage

2270 grams pork shoulder

227  grams pork fat back

¼ cup red wine (I used Two-Buck Chuck)

36.0 grams kosher salt

12.0 grams orange zest

4.5 grams minced garlic

2.0 grams ground anise (not fennel)

2.0 grams fresh ground black pepper

2.0 grams dried marjoram

0.6 grams cinnamon

0.5 grams allspice

Hog casing

Grind all meat and fat through the large die of your meat grinder then regrind through your smaller die.  Once ground mix all remaining ingredients until the meat mass becomes tacky.  Stuff and twist into long links, about 6” each. 

According to my boss loukaniko should be grilled until very, very well done...charred actually.  I prefer to poach mine first until I reach an internal temp of about 155ºF then shock in an ice bath.  The sausages are later re-heated and crisped up on the grill.  This two step process allows the emulsion of meat and fat to set up fully so that I the texture doesn't get messed up when I grill it.   

Tasting Notes:  it took me a couple tries to like this sausage but eventually it grew on me.  At first I felt the orange zest was too strong and overpowered the mix.  The next day I tried another link and my first thought was that the sausage reminded me of winter.  Essentially mulled spices in meat mix with the red wine, orange, cinnamon and allspice. While not unpleasant I still wasn’t feeling it.  On day three or four I did my poach/grill job on them and they were fantastic.  The orange had mellowed and the spices melded together and got all happy-like.  I think moving forward I might adjust the flavorings based on the anticipated consumption rate.  If I’m making the sausages to be consumed the next day I might cut things down a hair, however, if I’ve got a few days lead time I might use the basic version as everything will calm down before final preparation.   

Frankenbacon - Hippity Hop Bacon

                                            

It should be patently clear by now that I'm a happily irreverent fellow as I'm regularly looking for new ways to do things, new flavor combinations and the like.  Interestingly this final bacon was actually the start of the whole idea of the frankenbacon experiments.  A good friend of mine, Mike S. (@guambrewer on Twitter), is a prolific and phenomenal home brewer and one day while helping him brew we got to talking about where our two hobbies intersect beyond the pie-hole love gravy that occurs when drinking a well-made brewski and eating some nice charcuterie. 

We agreed that the majority of beer-ish recipes are primarily an adaptation of an existing recipe but with beer added.  For instance, beer braised short ribs is just a basic short rib braise with the beer swapped out for the standard stock or wine.  Stout mashed potatoes?  Just a basic mashed tuber with beer added instead of stock or dairy.  Now don't misunderstand me, the majority of these things are tasty well thought out preparations, their only fail-point being a lack of creativity or ingenuity, knockoffs of the original if you will.  That said, there was only one really good outside the box recipe that I can point to and say, "that's something I’d like to make" and that's Hamilton’s hop sausage.     

I went to Hamilton's sister resto/bar, Small Bar, with another friend to try the hop sausage.  First off, I gotta give them props, the sausage was tasty but I was left a little underwhelmed.  The tube-steak reminded me of a Sweet Italian sausage with hops.  While tasty it didn’t seem very innovative.  During my meal I happened to get to talking with the cook who made the sausage and I inquired about the how it was made.  He just shrugged his shoulders and mumbled something about, "they just give me a bag of hops and I just toss it in the sausage mix."  He had no idea of ratio, quantity, etc. 

In respect to the tastiness of Hamilton’s hop sausage I wanted to go one step further and of course, use my preferred medium, pork belly.  As I previously mentioned beer is already added to various recipes with lots of bark but too little bite.  I wanted Bond, James Bond... intrigue, beguile, not Jean Claude Van Dam, all show and no go. So instead of just adding beer to the cure I decided to go with the primary ingredient that makes beer beer which is to say, hops.  I didn't want beer bacon, I wanted bacon that was reminiscent of beer.  As hops is the ingredient that gives beer its bitterness and contributes the majority of flavor components I was shooting to transfer a smidge of the bitterness as well as a the flavor profile of the hops into the bellies.  I also wanted a sweet component often found in bacon but staying within the vein of beer-dom I thought of Belgian Rock Candy which I’d often snack on whilst hanging out at Mike S’s. When I brought this idea up to Mike he recommended I instead use Belgian Candi Syrup, which would give me a similar flavor to the rock candy but coming in liquid form it might be easier to work with so that’s the route I took. 

I had the opportunity to speak to one of the brewers from AleSmith brewery about how best to get the hops flavor into the bellies and dismissed the idea of a dry rub as there would likely not be enough flavor transfer.  He instead recommended a hop tea which I decided to go with and I’ll outline the process below.  I did two Hop Bacons, one with the Belgian Candi sugar and one without. 

Hop Tea Bacon

920 grams pork belly

27.6 grams kosher salt

2.94 grams pink salt

22 grams Willamette hops   

Hop Tea/Belgian Candi Bacon

1254 grams pork belly

37.6 grams kosher salt

4 grans pink salt

22 grams Willamette hops

100 grams Belgian Candi Sugar

As with before the first three ingredients are the basic bacon cure.  For the hop tea I brought 2 cups of water to 200ºF, added the hops and allowed the hops to steep for 15 min.  I then strained the liquid, pressed on the solids to get as much liquid out as I could then returned the tea to the pot and reduced the tea from 1.25 cup to ½ cup. 

When I made the second bacon I only ended up with ¾ cup of hop tea and reduced it down to ½ cup.  I whisked the tea into the Candi sugar.

They’re the two on the right with the Belgian being the furthest to the right.   

Both bacons were allowed to cure then were rinsed and smoked just like the other Frankenbacons. 

Tasting Notes:  Again, not so much impressed.  As the bacon was edible I won’t call it a complete failure but I didn’t get the hops flavor I was hoping for.  Considering the cost of hops and the Belgian Candi Sugar ($10 for the jar in the picture) the cost-benefit analysis just didn’t work out in the bacon’s favor.  I’ll probably do more experiments in the future and I like the dark color achieved by using the Belgian Candi Sugar but I think I’ll call this one a dead end and think a little more about what direction to move.