CharcutePalooza Final: Tapas

CharcutePalooza has been quite the experience.  Twelve months of brining, curing, grinding, stuffing, and smoking have come and gone.  With each challenge came a new technique or a refinement of a previous one.  These techniques opened up the door to new dishes and new flavors, though admittedly most of the composed dishes were rooted in something from my past.

Beyond the obvious things like sausage making, CharcutePalooza has drilled into me something I can utilize in and out of the kitchen: organization.  Organization doesn’t just apply to mise en place but starts the moment conceptualization begins on a new dish.  Corralling disparate ideas, flavors, and experiences and focusing them into a cohesive composed dish around a single charcuterie item each month was an exciting test of my organizational skills.  So to say I was ecstatic that the final challenge required the use of four distinct charcuterie items was an understatement.

The moment the final challenge was announced I knew wanted to do four separate Spanish-inspired tapas-sized dishes to be served as an entire meal.  After much deliberation I chose to make bacalao al pil pil, a rillettes and tortilla bocadillo, chickpeas with botifarra negra, and violet-lavender ice cream with bacon.  This selection was a result the experiences I had in Spain and the confluence and osmosis between shared ingredients as seen in the above scribbling.

The first tapa was a rillettes and tortilla bocadillo.  Tortillas (Spanish omelettes) and bocadillos (baguette-like sandwiches) are popular in Spain.  When combined, they make one of Spain's most beloved sandwiches.  One regret I have was not seeking out a quality bocadillo as the ones I had were pretty dry and bland.  To make sure I wouldn’t have that problem, I decided to lubricate my bocadillo with a nice spread of rillettes.

The fat and meat from the rillettes also added richness to the bocadillo which would normally be provided by the egg yolks in the tortilla.  However, this was an egg white tortilla.  Early in the planning stages I realized I would have a lot of unused egg whites as a result of making the ice cream.  At that point, I decided to make my tortilla an egg white tortilla from the orphaned egg whites.

Having imagined my rillettes potentially turning about to be no more than glorified pulled pork, I was a bit skeptical at first.  However, the rillettes came out surprisingly spreadable and not stringy at all.  Cooking the pork in a veal-pork stock contributed a lot to the flavor.  From that stock, I was able to use the cooked meat from the veal bones and pork necks in the rillettes itself.

Due to a lack of Spanish bakeries in my vicinity and also due to my unconditional love for shoti, I chose to use a toasted piece of shoti for the bread.  It’s crispy exterior and chewy interior made it a great great vessel for the rillettes and tortilla.

The second tapa was bacalao al pil pil: salt cod pil pil style.  Bacalao is king in Spain, and one of the most traditional preparations is the Basque pil pil style.

Salting the cod to make the bacalao was step one.  My fridge was quickly taken over by the smell of dried fish despite putting two boxes of baking soda next to it.

After rehydrating the bacalao, it’s placed in a pan with olive oil, garlic, and parsley.  As the bacalao cooks, it releases water and proteins into the oil.  Once the fish has been cooked, the pan is swirled to create an emulsion between the oil, water, and proteins.  This is what makes the dish “al pil pil.”

The third tapa was chickpeas with botifarra negra (blood sausage).  Legumes are very common in Catalan cuisine, and the legendary Bar Pinotxo in Barcelona’s La Boqueria serves up their signature chickpeas with botifarra negra for breakfast and lunch.  Thankfully, finding fresh pork blood wasn’t very hard as my local Vietnamese market always seems to have it in stock.

Ruhlman was right about blood sausage being one of the easiest sausages to make.  Once the blood was liquefied,  all that was required was to mix in some pork fat, onions, and seasoning and shove the mixture into the casing through a funnel.  Not being able to find any recipes for botifarra negra, I simply took the blood sausage recipe from Charcuterie but seasoned it with salt and pimenton de La Vera (Spanish smoked paprika).

From what I recall, Pinotxo’s version of the dish had the botifarra crumbled and distributed throughout the chickpeas.  I preferred to keep it in casing so I could control the amount of botifarra eaten with each bite and also reap the rewards of the Maillard reaction.  A balsamic vinegar reduction and raisins added the perfect amount of acidity and sweetness to cut through the botifarra’s fat.

The last tapa was a serving of violet-lavender ice cream with bacon.  After having a violet ice cream at DiverXO, I learned that violet confections are very traditional in Madrid.  In fact, there’s a shop called La Violeta that specializes in such candies.  Having grown up on Vietnamese desserts, which tend to have some element of salt, my palette is tuned to crave a little bit of salt with my sweets to balance thing out.  In this case, the bacon not only added salt to the ice cream but texture.

The reason for not making a pure violet ice cream was because I found it fairly difficult to source violet extract.  I was able to get a hold of some violet syrup, but it ended up tasting like cough syrup.  If I were to make this ice cream again, I’d probably wait until violets were in season and use fresh petals.

Of all the dishes, the ice cream unfortunately reminded me the least of Spain.  There wasn’t much violet flavor because I held back on the syrup, and putting too much lavender extract made the ice cream taste citrusy with floral and minty notes; the flavor was much like Fruit Loops.  That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the ice cream.  In fact, it tasted like one of my favorite ice creams: blue moon.  Because I opted not to add food coloring, I dubbed the accidental ice cream “yellow moon.”

And so CharcutePalooza has come to an end.  It was a fun and wild ride, and I’m very glad I participated.  I learned a lot, I cooked a lot, and I ate a lot.

 

Egg White Tortilla De Patatas Y Cebolla

Mise En Place

1. 300 g potatoes, sliced 2-3 mm thick
2. 480 g egg whites (about 12 egg whites)
3. 150 g caramelized onions
4. An 8” nonstick pan

Method

1. Whisk egg whisk until combined and add caramelized onions
2. Shallow fry the potatoes over medium heat until tender, about 5-10 minutes
3. Add hot potatoes to egg mixture and season with salt
4. Drain the pan of the oil but leave some for the egg mixture
5. Pour egg mixture into the pan and reduce heat to medium-low
6. After about a minute, gently work the pan by swirling it and tucking the edges in
7. Once the bottom is set (about 5 minutes), place a cover of plate over the top of the pan and flip the egg mixture onto the plate so the runny side is on the top side of the plate
8. Slide the egg mixture onto the pan, runny side down, and cook for another 2-3 minutes

 

Bacalao Al Pil Pil (adapter from here)

Mise En Place

1. 225 g bacalao (dried mass), rehydrated and cut into 1” cubes
2. 1 clove of garlic, minced
3. 5 g parsley, minced
4. Extra virgin olive oil

Method

1. Place bacalao in a pan such that they do not touch each other
2. Fill the pan with enough oil such that it covers half of the bacalao
3. Heat the pan over medium heat until the oil starts to simmer
4. Lower the heat to medium-low and cook for 5 minutes
5. Flip the bacalao and cook for another 5 minutes
6. Pour off about half the oil
7. Swirl the the pan to start the emulsion and swirl until thickened

 

Chickpeas With Botifarra Negra

Mise En Place

1. 225 g dried chickpeas
2. 30 g sofrito
3. 1.5-2 feet of botifarra negra
4. 15 g raisins
5. Parsley, minced
6. Balsamic vinegar reduction

Method

1. Cook chickpeas in a pressure cooker at full pressure for 35 minutes.  Release pressure naturally and drain
2. Brown botifarra under the broiler on in a pan and portion as you wish
3. Heat the sofrito through in a pan over medium-high heat and add the chickpeas and raisins
4. Top the chickpeas with the botifarra, parsley, and balsamic vinegar reduction

Yellow Moon Ice Cream Base (adapted from Ratio)

Mise En Place

1. 650 g heavy cream
2. 240 g milk
3. 170 g sugar
4. 225 g egg yolks (about 12 extra large egg yolks)
5. 75 g violet syrup
6. 5 g lavender extract

Method

1. Whisk sugar and yolks together
2. Bring cream and milk to a simmer over medium heat
3. Slowly pour the cream and milk into the sugar and yolks while whisking continuously
4. Pour the mixture back into the pan and stir continuously until nappe
5. Pour the mixture into a bowl set over ice water and stir until chilled
6. Stir in violet syrup and lavender extract

Rice-Butter-Maggi-Egg

Everyone has fond memories of their favorite comfort foods growing up.  For me, one of those comfort foods is what my family refers to as “rice-butter-Maggi-egg.”  The dish is exactly what it sounds like: rice topped with butter, Maggi, and eggs with a dash of black pepper.  Rice-butter-Maggi-egg was my mom’s go-to dish whenever she needed to whip something up fast.  It has since become one of my emergency meals when I’m feeling too lazy to do any actual cooking or when I have no produce or pantry items to work with.

For anyone not familiar with Maggi, I’d describe it as zingy soy sauce with more depth.  It’s easily found at any Asian grocery store, but the trick is to find a place that sells Maggi that’s made in Europe (Germany if I recall correctly).  The bottles with the yellow tops are made in China and are perfectly fine, but the bottles with the red tops that are made in Europe taste so much better.  The European version has more depth and punchiness than the Chinese version.

When it comes to the butter in rice-butter-Maggi-egg, I tend to use Bretel.  It may seem odd to get butter out of a can, but it’s seriously really good and melts in your mouth.  I first discovered Bretel maybe 10 years ago at my aunt’s house where a petit dejeuner of bread and butter is common for breakfast.  The baguettes come from a Vietnamese-Belgian bakery and the butter from France in the form of Bretel.  Canned butter is so popular in Vietnam that counterfeit brands exist.  My mom and uncle have told me stories of how people in Vietnam unwittingly buy Bertel instead of Bretel.

The egg component of rice-butter-Maggi-egg typically consists of a sunny side up egg.  However, in my ongoing experimentation with sous vide eggs, I decided to sous vide the eggs at 63 C (145.4 F) for an hour.  The yolks turned out creamy and runny like I wanted, but the whites turned out a little too runny for my taste.  Texturally, a custardy and slightly runny egg white doesn’t sit well with me.  To remedy this, I put the eggs in boiling water for about 30 seconds to firm up the egg whites.

Once all the components are on a plate, one of my favorite things to do is to break the yolk and mix it with a little of buttered rice and Maggi.  This humble dish will always be a winner in my book and I can’t see myself ever getting tired of it.

Banh Bot Chien: Vietnamese Fried Rice Flour Cake With Pancetta

I may be in the minority here when I say this, but I don’t like bacon as much as most other people do.  I don’t swoon over it, and I’m envious when I hear someone exclaim “everything’s better with bacon!” because I wish I enjoyed something so much that it made whatever I was eating instantly better.  As an outsider looking in, bacon is the MSG of meats.

It should come as no surprise then that I’ve always preferred my breakfast eggs with sausage because I enjoy the spices typically found in breakfast sausages.  Bacon always seemed like a crunchy strip of salt to me.  So when I learned that the second CharcutePalooza challenge would be pancetta, a cousin of bacon, I was somewhat deflated.  However, I saw this as a chance to give salt cured pork belly a shot at winning me over as my preferred egg accompaniment.  Immediately, I knew the egg dish that I wanted to make: bot chien, or Vietnamese fried rice flour cake.  This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve used an Italian ingredient for a Vietnamese dish.

Bot chien is by far my favorite savory egg dish.  Sadly, I was only introduced to it a few years ago at Tan Tan Restaurant in Houston.  The first time I had bot chien, I loved it so much that I angrily asked my mom why we never ordered it in the past or why she’d never made it at home.  According to her, bot chien is a rarity in the States and to some extent Vietnam.  She reminisces about having to hunt down bot chien vendors in dingy back alleys of Saigon for an afterschool snack.

Essentially, bot chien consists of fried rectangular pieces of steamed rice flour cake bound together by eggs and topped with fried shallots, dried radish, and raw scallion.  It’s served with a side of soy sauce mixed with vinegar for dipping to which I usually add some Sriracha, sambal oelek, pickled pepper, or old dry mom sauce to (David Chang recently declared old dry mom sauce as the best sauce on No Reservations, and I couldn’t agree more).  The resulting bite is a symphony of texture and flavor.

You get sweet and sour from the dried radish, salty and sour from the dipping sauce, sweet from the fried shallots, savory from the egg, bright and pungent from the raw scallion, and spicy from the hot sauce or pickled peppers if you’re so inclined.  If that wasn’t enough to seal the deal, you get crispy from the fried rice cake and fried shallots, crunchy from the dried radish, spongy from the egg, and slightly chewy from the inside of the rice cake.

I thought it would be worth mentioning that I used black radish and pickled them with some carrot in place of dried radish.  I saw black radishes at the market and had never used them before, so I thought I’d give them a whirl.  They turned out to be very similar to daikon in flavor and got the job done well.

The process of making the CharcutePalooza meat of the month was again very simple and straightforward: salt and season, wait a while, rinse, hang, wait a while, enjoy.  One thing that I found funny was the presence of nipples on my pork belly.  I’ve worked with pork belly many times in the past, but only noticed the nipples this time.  However, upon closer inspection, it looks like the pork belly I used for thit kho also had nipples.

My spare bathroom paired with a humidifier was once again used as the meat hanging area.  Due to unforeseen time constraints, I decided to make the flat version of pancetta as the time required to hang is considerably less than that of rolled pancetta.

For my bot chien, I substituted the crispy fried shallots with crispy fried lardons of pancetta.  The rendered fat from the lardons was used to fry the rice cake and eggs and added an extra layer of flavor.  As for the actual pancetta, I could distinctly taste the garlic, thyme, bay leaf, and pepper that went into the cure.  This wasn’t simply a piece of salt disguised as meat like I was accustomed to.

Overall, I would say the pancetta itself and the bot chien with crispy fried pancetta were both great successes.  The pancetta turned out much better than I expected.  It’s climbed up to the number 2 spot on my breakfast meat list and bumped up bacon’s spot in the process as well.  Thanks to CharcutePalooza, I see nothing but a bright future with pancetta in my life.

Steamed Rice Flour Cake

Mise En Place (makes enough for at about 4 bot chien)

• 113 g rice flour
• 25 g tapioca starch
• 1 Tbsp. oil
• 414 g (1.75 C) water
• 2 g salt
• 2 g sugar

Method

1. Mix all ingredients and place into a heatproof vessel such that the depth of the slurry is about half an inch.
2. Steam over medium heat until a toothpick comes out clean, about 45 minutes.
3. Let the cake cool and firm up.

Banh Bot Chien

Mise En Place

• 100 g steamed rice flour cake cut into 1 inch by 2 inch rectangles
• 55 g pancetta lardons
• 3 large eggs, beaten
• Handful of diced scallion
• Your favorite pickled condiment
• Soy sauce
• Vinegar
• Your favorite hot sauce (optional)

Method

1. Crisp lardons in a pan over medium-low heat.  Set aside, leaving the rendered fat in the pan.
2. Fry both sides of the rice cake over medium-high heat until golden brown.
3. Add eggs to the pan, agitating slightly to distribute the egg.
4. Flip the bot chien once the bottom has coagulated enough.
5. Plate the bot chien and garnish with the pancetta lardons, scallion, and your favorite pickled condiment.
6. For the dipping sauce, mix soy sauce, vinegar, and hot sauce (optional) to taste.

Cha Trung Hap: Vietnamese Steamed Egg Meatloaf

Whenever my family went out to eat at a Vietnamese restaurant, there were 2 things that I always had to have: cha gio (Vietnamese egg rolls) and cha trung hap (sort of like a steamed meatloaf comprised of mostly eggs and ground pork).  Typically, cha trung hap accompanies rice dishes, so my dad would order some rice dish with grilled meat and I’d steal his eggy/porky loaf.

One of my favorite things about cha trung hap is the use of wood ear fungus.  They’re easily found in their dried form in Asian markets and have a somewhat furry feel to them.  After reconstituting them in warm water, they become gelatinous but with a bit of crunch.  I liken them to the cartilage that’s found in a pig’s ear.  They taste pretty bland, but it’s all about the gelatinous and crunchy texture that it brings to the plate.

In addition to eggs, ground pork, and wood ear mushrooms, green onions and glass noodles or rice vermicelli are typically thrown into the mix.  I’ve seen variations that include shredded carrot and shrimp, so I opted to include some fresh shrimp for my loaf.  All the ingredients are mixed together and topped with a couple egg yolks to give it a yellow finish.  Many places do something to give the top an orange finish.  I’m not sure what of the cultural or culinary significance of an orange top versus a yellow one, but it’s fairly common.

As I mentioned before, cha trung hap is more often than not served as an accompaniment to something else.  In this case, I chose a simple roast pork marinated in fish sauce, lime, and sugar.  The loaf is usually garnished with cilantro, which brightens and lightens the dish.  It balances out the inherit richness that comes with something that’s so eggy.

Cha trung hap:

1. 30 g dried wood ear fungus + 30 g (1 bundle) rice vermicelli + warm water => soak
2. 20 minutes => drain => slice wood ear fungus into strips
3. 2  stalks scallion + 3 eggs + 2 egg whites + 225 g shrimp + 450 g ground pork + 2 tsp fish sauce + 1 tsp sugar + 1/2 tsp pepper + step #1 => mix => cooking vessel
4. 2 egg yolks => top layer of mixture
5. Steam, medium heat => 25 minutes
6. Cilantro => garnish

Pig’s Head Jook/Congee With 1000-Year-Old Egg

 
  
Jook, congee, chao: whatever you call it, this humble rice porridge is a staple of many Asian cuisines.  I grew up calling it jook, which from my understanding is the Cantonese name for it.  Whenever my family would go to Chinese restaurants, I always thought it was weird to see it called congee, which I would assume is the Mandarin name for it?

I have fond memories of going to my grandma’s house for Thanksgiving and her making jook the morning after Thanksgiving with the Turkey carcass, and this tradition has continued into my parent’s household.  Topped with a 1000-year old egg, a dash of white pepper, and fresh green onion and cilantro from her garden, it’s such a simple yet gratifying thing to eat.  Her rendition of jook is pretty much the gold standard for which I compare all other versions to.  One thing missing from her version, though, was the Chinese doughnut.  The doughnut adds not only flavor, but more importantly a crunchy texture to what is mostly a mushy textured bowl of gruel.  Tasty, tasty gruel, mind you.

  

My initial thoughts were to use pork belly prepared as it is in thit kho, inspired by my mom’s use of thinly sliced, caramelized pork with a similar flavor profile in her jook.  However, the pig’s heads split down the middle at my grocery store always intrigued me, but I never bought it because I couldn’t think of a good use for it other than making a terrine.   I fantasized about the tender cheek, tasty tongue, crunchy ear, squishy eye and heavenly jowl in a bowl of jook and thought it’d be a good candidate.

Not to mention the bones from the skull and copious amounts of gelatin in the head would make for a delicious stock for the jook to simmer in.  So I went with the head and simmered it with mirepoix  to create a solid pork stock and cook the meat until it was fall-off-the-head tender.  As you can see, the head didn’t fit all the way in the pot and the snout wasn’t fully submerged in water.

 


Harvesting the meat from the head was a true test of my will.  Several times I wanted to stick my face into the meat and start chomping.  The rectangular white strips are pieces of the ear that I cut up in order to spread that great crunchy, cartilage-y texture throughout the meat.  I also wished I had some corn tortillas and barbeque sauce so I could make tacos and a pulled pork sandwich while I harvested.  Sadly, the snout didn’t make it into the meat mix since I was afraid that it’d be covered in pathogens since it sat above the water line for several hours.
I let the stock cool overnight so I could easily skim off the fat, and then proceeded to make the jook.  The steps to make jook couldn’t be simpler:

• Simmer the rice in a lot of water or stock for a few hours, stirring occasionally
• Eat

I took a departure from traditional jook and decided to use brown rice, hoping it would add more flavor.  It did, but it didn’t.  It tasted like brown rice, but I missed the comforting and familiar taste of white rice.  Overall, I don’t think it was worth using brown rice.

One thing I definitely did not departure from was the use of preserved egg, or as most of my family calls it, 1000-year old egg.  To me, the use of the 1000-year old egg is essential to my perfect bowl of jook.  In fact, I’d say that if a bowl of jook didn’t have 1000-year old egg in it, I wouldn’t eat it.  I have no idea how to describe how 1000-year old egg tastes, because I’ve never tasted anything like it.  I did notice that on the egg carton that it said lye was one of the ingredients, so perhaps it has flavors that are found in lutifisk?

My favorite part of the egg is by far the creamy yolk.  It’s packed with flavor, while the egg “white” (I guess you could call it the egg opaque black) is relatively bland and simply adds another layer of texture to the jook.  Green onion, cilantro, and pepper add pop and brightness to round out the deeply flavored porridge.



For those not turned off by seeing a pig’s head, there are a couple details about prepping the head after the jump.