 |
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
When I lost the James Beard Award to the crew at Sunset magazine’s One Block Diet this May, I found myself far less disappointed than I thought I would be: After all, their message is pretty similar to what I am trying to do. Besides, as we got our snark on during the insanely long awards ceremony, we found that we liked each other pretty well.
Sunset is based in the Bay Area, so I offered to have them over for dinner sometime. They accepted, and finally made it out to Casa de Hank and Holly yesterday — on what had been the hottest day of the year (It’s 108 degrees out now, which is even hotter than yesterday’s 106). We feared the Bay Area peeps would melt, but they proved plenty hardy.
Can I just say how fun it was to have an evening of food, wine (lots of wine) and conversation with a group of people equally excited about learning where their food comes from, and how to make good things from scratch? Holly and I are typically ”conversation pieces” among gatherings of the Normal – but with the Sunset Crew’s Margo, Peter, Alan, Sara, Julie, George and Amy, discussions on beekeeping or making your own wine or chicory coffee is normal conversation.
What’s more, we’re usually the ones bearing odd gifts, but this time Margo brought some vinegar and honey from their garden and Sara the Sunset Wine Guru brought us their homemade Syrah (I served my Rainy Sunday Sangiovese at the table, which Sara liked enough to have two glasses and called “well balanced.” In my world, hearing that from a Sunset wine editor is as good as it gets).
I had a feeling this would be a good night, so I wanted a feast fit for them. I knew it was going to be hot, so I went with cold salads, pickles, cured meats and some fresh grilled venison sausages.
Laying out the spread before everyone arrived sparked a little epiphany. If someone asked me what makes my food different from someone else’s, it distills down to this: My food is a juxtaposition of the cured and the fresh, laced with fresh herbs and grounded in wild game and fish. It’s not like I hadn’t realized this distinction before yesterday, but seeing the spread hammered it home.
First off was the pickle plate:
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
At the center are olives I’d been curing since November. Elise, Garrett and I gathered them, and I’d been storing the olives in a spicy brine since then. I wasn’t too sure they’d be OK, but after an hour’s soak in fresh water and a coating of olive oil, they were delicious: tangy, meaty and firm.
Even more tangy were the fermented carrots. These were also brine pickles, but the carrots had soaked up a good deal of the chile I included in the brine. Now datsa’ spicy carrot! The crew had to restrain themselves leave one last carrot for Margo and Peter, who got stuck in traffic and arrived late.
I also had beets from the garden pickled in balsamic vinegar, and the always-popular sweet-and-sour sunchoke pickles, which are spiced with chile and colored with turmeric.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
On to the charcuterie plate. I pulled the wild boar lonzino I had been making, and it looked and tasted wonderful, although this batch was a little saltier than the last one I’d made.
I also put out some wild boar saucisson sec, which Margo and Peter pronounced excellent — high praise, as I suspect this is not the first such salami they’ve eaten.
I’d meant to slice some coppa di testa, but it fell apart when I tried to cut it. Lesson learned? The gelatin that helps a testa set doesn’t survive freezing. Now I know. We plan on using now-loose meat to make cabesas tacos. Mmmm!
Summer means fish to me, even on a cured meat platter. So I hauled out some Alaskan pink salmon a friend of mine had caught last season and gave it a cure with fennel seeds, fennel pollen and ouzo. I love this recipe.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
I also decided to make something new: Smoked Shad Rillettes. I had all this shad that my Dad, brother and I had caught last week, and I’d heard of chefs making smoked trout pate and salmon rillettes, so why not?
Besides, as a by product of my recent pork fat orgy, I had tons of creamy lard kicking around. Spread on table water crackers, these rillettes were awesome: A little smoky, a little sagey, rich with a slight zing from lemon juice. I’ll make this again — and I bet it’d be just as good with smoked trout, mackerel or bluefish, too.
For the main course I made a big batch of the octopus a la Gallego with my homemade paprika and oregano from the yard, a barley salad with sage and sun-dried tomatoes, a fregola salad with bocconcini, lemon zest and lots of basil, and a beet salad with feta cheese and lovage.
The only hot item on the table were sandwiches with fresh made venison sausages, flavored with bay leaves and garlic, topped with mustard and some pickled jalapenos and onions from Elise.
photo by Holly A. Heyser
I think I made a bit too much food, as I am pretty sure Amy came close to exploding by the time we hauled out the honey-lemon verbena ice cream to go with Margo’s peach and raspberry pies.
Just about the only thing to get us out of our collective food coma was a round of my homemade absinthe. Yep. Nothing like the Green Fairy to get the digestion going. And if you don’t like absinthe, you can always use it as lighter fluid.
At the end of the evening they all piled into their cars for the long trip back to the Bay Area. But before heading into the night, they invited us to their place for a shindig, Sunset style. We’re looking forward to Round II.
UPDATE: Here’s Margo’s account of the evening, complete with pictures of the tour I gave her of our “ancestral manse.”
______________
SMOKED SHAD RILLETTES
This is something fun and refined to make with smoked shad. Rillettes are basically a rough pate — you spread it on crackers or toast. Pates tend to be smoother, and I like the texture of a rillette better.
This recipe takes a little work because you need to pick all the bones off the smoked shad fillets. But if you substitute in smoked trout, smoked mackerel or smoked bluefish, it’ll come together in a snap. The amounts of the ingredients here are approximate: You need to season and taste this as it comes together to get it to your liking.
Once made, these shad rillettes will keep for more than a month in the fridge if you pack them tightly and cover with a layer of lard.
Makes enough to serve 12-14.
Prep Time: 15 minutes
- 2 pounds smoked shad, smoked trout, mackerel or bluefish
- 5 tablespoons lard or butter
- Juice of a lemon
- 5 sage leaves, minced
- 1 teaspoon salt
- Pull the skin off the fillets and break into flakes. Pick through shad to get out as many bones as you can. Put the fish in a food processor and buzz in pulses until the fish is pulverized, maybe 3-4 pulses – don’t buzz it into a paste!
- Put the fish to a large bowl and add the lard. If you cannot find fresh rendered lard (don’t use hydrogenated lard!), which is typically sold at Latino markets, use good unsalted butter.
- With a potato masher, pound the lard into the fish, mixing all the way. When it begins to come together, add the sage and half the salt. Pound and mix a bit more, then taste. Add more salt and sage if you want.
- If for some reason the mixture is looking flaky or dry, add some more lard. I found 4 tablespoons worked perfectly for 8 smoked shad fillets.
- Toward the end of the mixing and pound process, add the lemon juice to taste. You want it to just give the rillettes some sharpness, not be overly lemony.
- Serve with table water crackers, on toast, or as a stuffing for sole.
That is impressive.
Nothing much going on with food, I’ve been spending the time, when it isn’t raining, rebuilding my deck. Hope the building inspector doesn’t notice it before I finish as it is about 30″ bigger in all dimensions than before.
I don’t know what is in the lakes of Harriman state park, but because of you, I will be finding out and getting a fishing permit next spring. Don’t think I have fished since age 12 or so, used to be able to clean a fish.
The garden vegetable plot is planted, tomatoes and peppers, we have limited space or rather limited top soil.
I doubt I’ll ever take up hunting, unless they let me take woodchuck on my own land, but have no problem with it.
And I doubt I would ever have enough faith in my mushroom identification abilites to ever eat one I found. Which is odd as I can my own recipes, which any number of people will tell you is certain death.
Good post, good food. When next you get to the NYC area look me up.
Good post. For weird presents, you are not alone. We recently had some family and friends over, and received homemade paper, directions and ingredients for making your own laundry soap, loquat jelly, homemade plum cordial, and two jams: strawberry-apricot-plum, and strawberry brandy.
Last week, I finished my green walnut ketchup – do you want some?
Definitely a feast to remember–and record!
Back in the days when I was a westerner, I always thought Sunset was the best of all the “lifestyle” magazines–more practical, more down-to-earth, and more about the living the good life than about being a good, passive consumer–so I’m glad you guys hooked up. And, as you say, if you had to lose to someone, I’m glad it was them.
Stay cool!
[...] from Sunset magazine over to his house recently and it sounds like he passed the test. Read about his experience and then, zip over to the recipe for smoked shad rillette that keeps for more than a month in the [...]
Aw, Hank, you’re still a winner of the Best Beard to me.
I can’t have rillettes for a few more months (or smoked fish, booooo), but I have been tinkering around with pickling little things from the garden. Great use for thinned beets.
wow! I was gonna say, “What a cool night!” but actually, not really. What a cool spread, what a gift to honor them and share your bounty and skills. And how just plain fun to be among your own tribe.
NTSC: Will do! Would be fun to eat your charcuterie and drink some beer or wine with you.
Josh: Yes on the green walnut ketchup. It fascinates me.
Heather: Why can’t pregnant women eat smoked fish? I am sure our moms did…
Sportingdays girl: Tribe? How did you know we all painted ourselves with blue woad?
Sounds like a perfect summer meal, Hank. Question on the venison sausages. Is there any reason I can’t sub beef fat for pork fat? I’ve got a bunch of trim that I froze, hoping to find use for it. Happy Fourth!
Scampwalker: No reason not to use beef fat — I just prefer pork fat, as it is easier to work with and better for you, healthwise.
Hank,
I will be attmepting the venison sausages this weekend. Can’t wait. Any reason why you threw the instacure #1 in a fresh sausage?
I am currently out, but have a some Morton Tender Quick on hand, should I use that or just omit?
Brady: I threw it in there because I had initially intended to smoke them, and the Instacure helps keep evil nasties away — and gives that awesome color. As it happened, I cooked them so slow on the gas grill I got the color anyway.
Hank, call me or email me and let me know when/where I can drop you off some. I don’t have much, because it was more of an experiment, but you do so much good with food, that it would be better in your hands, anyway.
[...] the editors from Sunset Magazine. They got together after meeting at the James Beard awards, and the spread that Hank put out was a tour-de-force. Olives, cured meats, wine, honey, things he’d grown or shot and [...]