May 11th - White Beans with Pancetta and Foccacia

I had started some pancetta and knew it would be ready this past weekend. I couldn’t find large pieces of pork belly, so I had to make do with a couple of smaller ones. I didn’t use enough garlic in my last batch of pancetta and it did taste a little off, but was mostly fine. I use the basic pancetta recipe from Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn’s Charcuterie but like most recipes, I’ve altered it a little to suit my own tastes. This go around I went a little overboard on the garlic and you could smell it through the bag as it sat in the fridge (I normally keep it in a zip lock as it cures). After curing for seven days, I washed off the cure (and garlic) and let them sit out to dry out some. Despite the intense amount of garlic, these ones came out quite nicely. The color is beautiful and the meat really tastes perfumed. Strangely, the garlic isn’t overwhelming and seems to tame the bay leaf which sometimes seems to strong. I made a pot of white beans with some cubed pancetta, onions, rosemary and parsley. On the side I made a batch of focaccia topped with basil and garlic. Beans and bread is still one of my favorite foods and this didn’t disappoint me.

While I was cooking I had a bottle of the current Full Sail Brewmaster’s Reserve Brown Ale. It’s a really impressive beer. It has full, smooth malt profile with a slightly dry, bitter chocolate note in the finish. The hops play a background role in this beer. It’s all about the malt in this one. It used to be available year round but got dropped from the line up many years ago, because, unfortunately, brown ale doesn’t sell well in the US. (Too low in hops? Too malty?). It would have been a fantastic beer with food, but it didn’t last long. At 6% alcohol, it’s bigger than many English examples, but it’s still an easy drinking beer.

With dinner I actually had a Hair of the Dog Fred, in honor of Fred Echkhardt’s birthday. This bottle had been lingering on the shelves of a supermarket for some time and was showing some age (not in a good way), but it was still a remarkably complex beer. Even though it’s intense and rich, it was a nice match with earthy, comfort food quality of the white beans and focaccia.

January 5th

January 5th

I normally am good at improvising on meals but unfortunately, most of the things I’ve been craving require either a stove or an oven, so I’ve been feeling a little constrained and thwarted. I’m starting to realize that I may have to start repeating some of the easier meals I’ve been making and luckily I still had some things left over in the fridge to help out on this.

I had cooked a white bean puree on New Years and still had some left over so I opted to do more of the pork chops form the electric griddle, but wanted a sauce of some kind this time, which would be a little more difficult to pull off since most sauces require sautéing or deglazing and neither of those would be possible. I decided to try and emulate this by using the microwave and lower, longer cooking times. I chopped some shallots and tossed them in a small bowl with some olive oil and microwaved them on medium for about 3 minutes and then pulled them out to look at them. They didn’t quite looked sautéed but they were a reasonable facsimile and I figured it would have to do. I added some chopped garlic to it and then put it back in the microwave for about another minute or so. White wine was next with a longer time to burn off the alcohol. Finally I added some Dijon mustard and a drop of cream and then out it back in just long enough to heat it. Was it the best sauce I’d made? Not by a long shot, but it was adequate. The flavors blended well, the shallots weren’t crunchy, and it did vaguely resemble sauce.

I had brined the pork chops again and then cooked them on the electric griddle. They were nicely browned and juicy. I put them on a bed of white bean puree (which had been flavored with garlic, olive oil and lemon juice) and then pout a ribbon of sauce over it, but left enough of it uncovered so it wasn’t drowning in sauce. I had a glass of my Belgian golden ale with it that I’m really starting to like. It’s totally cleared at this point and is brilliant looking. It pours with a thick, billowy head (not as long lasting as Duvel but similar). It has incredible spiciness to it with a subdued undercurrent of orange. It’s a great beer with food and a brilliant match to pork. This meal may have been a repeat but it beat frozen cannelloni.

January 1st - New Years

January 1st

I woke up this morning because our St Bernard was making noise and wouldn’t shut up (we call it “wheeking”) . Finally at around 8:30am, it seemed he would no longer keep quiet when I asked him to so I got up and started to make coffee as he went out. Unfortunately, the burners on the stove wouldn’t go on. I tried the oven and the broiler and it was the same thing. The stove wasn’t completely dead because the light for the oven goes on, and even though the burners never get hot, the light indication they’re on goes on.

I hopped onto the internet to investigate how to fix a broken stove and also to look at stove prices in the event we needed to go buy one. I had hoped to cook a bunch of great food today but it looked like this wasn’t going to work out. There wasn’t much online so I decided to just slide the stove out and open up the back and see what I could find. Luckily I actually did find something. It seems the sparks I had seen in the broiler the previous evening weren’t fat from the hot dogs sparking, it was the broiler element sparking as it burned out. With much cursing and work, I got the old element out and and called Sears on the off chance they might be open. I called the number for the parts division and got someone who looked up the part for me. They looked at all of the parts depots in the state and none of them stock this part so it has to be ordered which will take A WEEK!!!. It’s only $50, and I hope that’s all the problem is, but it means that I have no stove for a week. I have an electric griddle, a crock pot, the weber grill, and…. the microwave. Not the situation I was hoping for (especially since we were supposed to have people over on Saturday). I do have the double propane burners I use for making beer, but it being January and all, I’m not too find of the idea of an outdoor kitchen.

I decided I would still cook anyway and opted for something easy. I cooked some white beans in the crock pot, got a baguette from a boulangerie that was down the street from a coffee house where we met a friend, and brined some pork chops. I figured I would make a white bean puree with garlic, olive oil and lemon and then use that as a bed for the pork chops that I would either grill or cook on the electric griddle. I would serve the baguette on the side with some amazing Irish butter my brewing partner had given me (he claimed he had too much of it; life is rough at Casa Brewing Partner). I got started a little late and the beans didn’t get done until 6:30 or so, which is way after it’s dark, so I opted to cook the pork on the griddle instead with just a little salt and pepper.

The pork was perfectly cooked, the white beans were rich and creamy with just a hint of lemon. The baguette from St. Honore (the boulangerie) was actually quite good. The crust was good and the crumb was very nice. The crumb was a little tighter than I see in most baguettes around here, but very nice. The butter is to die for (or to die from if I eat too much of it). My wife had several of their pastries in the past, but I’m more of a bread guy and figure that any bakery calling itself a boulangerie better be able to make good bread. We also got a canelet so she cold try it. It was rich and eggy, not too sweet and had a nice note of vanilla. It got high approval ratings from her.

To show my triumphant spirit over the broken stove, I opened a good bottle of wine. I love Vieux Telegraphe Chateauneuf du Pape and had a bottle of their 1996. I’ve had a fair amount of their wines from the late 80’s and early 90’s and they are one of my favorite wineries. Even in tough years, the wine has great fruit, an amazing spiciness and is versatile with a variety of foods. The 1996 is no slouch, and although it was browning a bit at the edge, it was quite remarkable. The fruit was vibrant and fleshy and it had that perfect spiciness that Vieux Telegraphe always seems to have.

I’m already thinking of other meals I can cook during the week with no stove and will need to do a little more planning. I refuse to give in to microwaving food, but it could be a long week, so that may change. (I do love those Morningstar farm veggie burgers, so who knows.)