Palo Santo Marron

For a while, and for whatever reason, it was nearly impossible to find Dogfish Head in Colorado.  A few months back 60 Minutes finally started sneaking back onto the shelves, followed by the 90, India Brown Ale, Raison D-Etre and finally the Punkin brought up the rear in October.  While this is a respectable selection and DFH has clearly gotten through their production/distribution glitches, I still had not been able to find Palo Santo Marron.  I searched and asked every conceivable liquor store to scare some up, even if I had to buy  case...  

Well, yesterday Total Beverage brought the thunder.  From DFH they had Palo Santo, Theobroma!!!, Midas Touch, Pangea along with their standard stock.  They also ran deep in Stone, Port Brewing, Allagash, Lost Abbey, Russian River and tons of fresh fall harvest beers.

Pork Belly- The Finale

So here is the finished dishWhat I did was dehydrate potato slices, grind them up into a chunky powder, and bread the pork belly chunks. Then I fried the chunks in duck fat until they were a little past golden brown. Also on the plate I have pickled mustard seeds, compressed apples & pears, butternut squash puree (under the pork belly), butternut squash confit, port wine balsamic soaked cherries, port wine balsamic reduction, bacon, & fried sage. All the flavors came together very nice. There was a good sweet and sour balance that held up real nice with the fatty pork belly. The bacon pieces added little blasts of salt as did the butternut squash puree. The pickled mustard seeds added a little pop of flavor and texture. I think it was a success.

Pork Belly-The Transformation

Here is the pork belly pieces out of the brine, ready for the confit treatment

Nothing says love like a big glob of duck fat. I was going to use pork fat, but we don't have big buckets of D'Artagnan pork fat at work. Duck fat will have to do.

In with the pork I have shallots, thyme, & butternut squash. I'm not sure if the squash is going to hold up or turn to mush. I'll keep an eye on the texture and if I see it breaking down, I'll pull them out of the fat. If they do hold up, I'm going to use them in the final dish as a crispy on the outside/ mushy on the inside element. How I achieve that is yet to be determined. Any thoughts? I'm open to suggestions?

(update) Here are a couple items that I am going to use in the finished dish:

Pickled mustard seed

Compressed apples & pears

A sauce made with dried cherries or cranberries

Confit butternut squash

I'll keep you posted.

(read Pork Belly - The Beginning)

Homebrew Pumpkin Ale Part 2

After a week in the fermenter and 2 more in the secondary fermenter, the pumpkin ale is bottled and getting delicious. See you in a few more weeks...

read more: 

Homebrew Pumpkin Ale Part 1

Pork Belly-The Beginning

Here I have the beginnings of what I hope to be the Best Pork Belly Ever! It is enjoying itself in a lovely bath of green tea, apple cider, apple cider vinegar, dijon mustard, green curry paste, cinnamon, salt & pepper.

The brine is very tasty with a bit of heat from the green curry paste.

Not sure where I'm going with this, but I'll keep you posted. I'm either going to make some bacon on the smoker or braise it some cider or something. I'm still in deep thought.
I'll let you know.

Meat Pile!

Here we have 9 Beef tenderloins prepped for sous vide cooking tomorrow night. If I were you, I would try to get a last minute invite to the Van Beisen Bat Mitzvah. Mozel Tov!

A Breakfast Sandwich

A simple open faced breakfast sandwich.

2 poached eggs served on grilled italian bread with pesto spread, topped with crispy sauteed prosciutto and shaved parmesan cheese.