Weekend Evaluation: I'd Already Rather Be Bow Hunting

I've been working on prepping a lot of things for the freezer - this weekend was more sausages.  As is typical, I totally got depressed about all of the projects on Sunday night, and went into my typical bullshit routine of  'I'll never be good at anything if I can't do it that often...why do I spend 50 hours a week at work when I could be doing something I care about' - like I'm the only person to ever think that they don't care about their job.  I made my office-working bed, now I have to lie in it.  Besides everybody knows food service workers don't get paid anything.

At least the CSA is starting to pick up again in volume - and the farm gave some explanation about what happened this summer.  I guess they lost zucchini, eggplant, cucumbers, lettuce, and green bean crops to disease and drought.  Last year the rain ruined everything, now it was drought.

Sausages

Jagerwurst, Beef Hot Dogs, Red Pepper Fennel Sausage

Maybe I was inspired by Oktoberfest, or maybe it's just because I had a pork shoulder sitting in the freezer for months, and I needed to clear it out to make room for the goat shoulder I had coming, so I made sausages for the first time in our new place.  Went pretty well - until maybe the end...but the prepping and stuffing went fairly smoothly.  The smoking - eh, it was okay I guess.

Beef Hot Dogs 

Last time I made hot dogs I used a blend of pork, beef, (and bacon), then roasted them off in the oven.  This time I went beef as the only lean meat and smoked them.  I pretty much followed the recipe from Ruhlman's Charcuterie, with the addition of some mace.  The recipe called for short rib for the fattiness, and I only had a sirlion tip roast - so I added in about 40 percent back fat....so guess what, my 'kosher' beef dogs got traif'd up a bit.

Positive - It was kind of hot on Saturday morning when I finished these up, so I was worried about the mixture breaking; but through the stuffing process it went pretty well.  Usually I have all sorts of problems with the lamb casing; they're pretty small and somewhat delicate so they blow out all of the time.  Maybe this led me to understuff them; but having blow outs is such a mess and time consuming; I only had one blow out  while I was linking them off.

We had these for dinner on Sunday, and they tasted pretty good.

Negative - The smoking went a lot faster than I wanted it to, so I kept trying to bring down the temp in the oven.  The first batch took a while, but didn't taste as smoky as the second batch, which got done in like 45 minutes.

I'm slightly worried that the second batch that was smoked suffered because I didn't chill them down fast enough when they came out of the smoking rig- I think I had the same problem with the jagerwurst. 

Jagerwurst

Positive - We had this for dinner on Monday (with rauch braised onion, over cauliflower-puree), and it was decently smokey; but the spicing was kind of mild.  The spicing was somewhere between weisswurst (spices) and keilbasa (garlic/smoke).

Negative - The pork shoulder seemed insanely fatty, so I didn't add any extra fat; probably a mistake.  This seemed like it was cooking way too fast so I backed down the temp in the smoker (which was only at 190 to begin with) and held it in there for a while.

When I did take this out, I probably didn't chill it down fast enough either and it seemed some of the fat rendered out, because you could see it beneath the casing.  This really pissed me off since I was so careful to keep the emulsion together during the stuffing process.

Roasted Red Pepper Fennel Sausage 

This was the fresh sausage in my normal routine of three sausages (emulsified, smoked, fresh), it's also my 'original' sausage this time.  I wasn't very inspired - but had red peppers from the CSA, so made a basic Italian fennel sausage and garnished it with slivers of red pepper.

Positive - We haven't had this yet, but the little piece I fried off tasted pretty good; but maybe under spiced.

Negative - I didn't cut up the pepper enough, and didn't use enough.  I eyeballed the quantities and it looked Ok, but when I was stuffing it probably wasn't enough.

Sourdough Kolsch Rolls 

Positive - Readjusting to leaner doughs have been hard for me lately - Not really good.

Negative - I'm not sure what's going on with me and rolls these days.  I have a recipe that worked for years and now I can't make it. They were really dense and crappy.

Honey Whole Wheat Sourdough Boule

I wanted more of a sandwich bread here so went with a really lean dough (60% Hydration).

Positive - Has the texture I was looking for but maybe it's a little dense (overworked?).  It was okay, but whatever.

Negative - The dough was so lean that when I formed the Boule it didn't really seal up, so there were kind of creases in the final dough.  Again - I feel like I lost my touch here.

Chicago-Style Hot Dogs 

with Thyme Potato Chips and Corn on the Cob

You can see my notes above about the hot dogs and rolls - but also used the pickles, pickled peppers from the fridge, along with tomato and celery salt. 

Positive - The chips actually turned out really good. I haven't had good luck with them in the past, but my summer of frying has paid off, and these were really good.  The corn actually tasted pretty good too.

I was down on the old pickled peppers when I first tried them, but they're actually pretty good - same thing with the pickles.

Negative - The rolls sucked and everything seem to fall off of my hot dog. 

Zucchini Pancakes

w/ Maple Peach syrup

I'm working with summer vegetables until they stop showing up at the market.

Positive- The maple/peach syrup tasted good

Negative - The pancakes were too heavy.  I probably should have backed off the flour in the recipe because of the zucchini.  They did that thing where they rise on the griddle but collapse on your plate.

Peach Thyme Preserves

This was a late addition - Sunday night, after cleaning up for the day I noticed that the two peaches (probably the last of the year from the CSA) were getting moldy.  I wasn't about to eat them after having pound cake with ice cream - so I cut out the moldy spots and made some jam.

Positive - It tasted pretty good in the pan - just peaches, sugar, salt, a little white wine vinegar and thyme.

Negative - I really wanted to just eat these peaches - and didn't really feel like standing near the stove keeping an eye on it, but throwing these away would have been a waste.

Spiced Brown Sugar Ice Cream

Cardamom, Star Anise, Cinnamon

I knew I wanted to make ice cream this week, but wasn't sure what to do.  While running one morning I was thinking about what we had on hand - I came up with Cardamom Honey, but when I was assembling the mixture I totally forgot about the honey component and added brown sugar instead.

Positive -  It actually all worked out - this tasted pretty good.

Negative - A little on the icy side.  Throughout the summer I've come to a 2:1 ratio of heavy cream to milk as an egg-less base; I started the other way around 1 part cream, 2 parts milk; but I was short cream here and it was more or less half and half. Either this was the cause of the slightly icy consistency, or the fact that it took a really long time to freeze in the ice-cream maker, so too much air got in there. The texture wasn't horrible - but not that creamy.   

Bacon

I also prepped some belly for smoking next week, since we're almost out of bacon.  Looking for more of a savory bacon than a breakfast bacon - used rosemary, thyme, cloves, allspice.  We'll see how it turns out.

Sauerkraut

Wanted to have some kraut to go with the Jagdwurst  - put this in a jar with salt to ferment on Saturday.  The cabbage before it went in was actually pretty good - It's amazing  how easy sauerkraut is.

CSA

Arugula
Plum Tomatoes
Red Tomatoes
Lettuce mix
Wrinkled, Crinkled, Crumpled Cress
Green Romaine Lettuce
Kohlrabi
Collards
Sweet Dumpling Squash – 2 pcs

Black Beans
Freekeh
Coffee