Saturday, January 17, 2015

Duck, duck, goose!

A friend of mine posted a link on her facebook wall to a lovely article on making duck ham. The article can be found here . I found this idea, intriguing and began to investigate some and found that it is a tried and trusted way of making Prosciutto which people mostly think of as a pork ham but the word is actually for the process not the type of meat.

Searching the sales papers I found a great sale and went to get some duck. After I got home though I discovered that I had bought goose. Not deterred I searched and found that goose ham is really a thing! So off we went to make some.

Today we pulled it out of the basement to try it :)

Thoughts:
Texture is fine, a good "ham", flavor was good though as noted by others who have tried it it was salty. I attribute this to the quick rinse we used to get the salt off and not a thorough cleaning as it probably should have gotten. I suppose that done again I might use less salt and more herbs in order to try and combat the overly salty taste.

Another experiment is we are trying is that they are "dry enough" as they are now and to leave them until we need them wold turn them to leather, so we have packaged them up and placed them in the freezer to try in a few weeks. I will try to remember to update when we do that what the results are.

Monday, January 12, 2015

You want me to eat what?

Don't get me wrong, I like to be adventurous when trying food, but I also like my food a bit... normal. OK I get that what is normal for me may not be normal for the next person, but really, garlic and orange juice?

OK, story goes like this. I was looking for simple vegetarian alternative recipes for the feast I am creating in April. I am using only 1 book for this feast and that is Opera. I already know there can be some strange food combinations in there but this one so far has taken the cake. The recipe is "To prepare a layered omelet" from Book 2 recipe number 235 page 254 of the translation I am using.

Original:
Beat fourteen eggs. Get a spoon that will hold 2 eggs, fill it with the beaten egg and make a small omelet the size of the pan - which pan should not be much larger than the dish in which the omelet is to be set. When the little omelet is made, set it in the dish - minding that, to do it well, is enough for the bottom of the pan to be greases with rendered fat. Sprinkle the omelet with sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg, splash it with orange juice and set small slices of provatura or a creamy cheese on it. and on that little chunks of butter, cloves of garlic that have been steeped and crushed, and raisins. Cover that with another omelet. Go one making omelets, putting one on top of the other until all the egg is gone.


I will stop here as next he offers an alternative meat filling which I will not be making at this time.

What we did. First we did not use 14 eggs, this would have been too much for just the three of us. No, first I read the recipe wrong and made 2 omelets. One with the OJ, cinnamon sugar and nutmeg with mozzarella cheese, the other with creamy cheese, garlic and raisins. We thought that each of them was a little "flat" and the garlic one was better. Then we realized I was reading the recipe wrong and all the ingredients should be in one omelet... Um... OK, I guess. This sounds strange and dubious at best but off we went back to the kitchen. We were all damned surprised when it tasted good! Real good! Don't believe me? Try out what we did.

What I did:
6 large eggs well beaten Butter for the pans to cook the eggs
Filling: 4 Tbsp ricotta 4 large cloves of garlic (blanched until soft and crushed) 2Tbsp Raisins (measure before plumping with either hot water or OJ) 1/4 tsp nutmeg 1/2 - 1 tsp sugar with cinnamon (make it sort of strong) 1 lg pinch of salt
OJ for splashing
cook 1/2 cup of egg at a time in a well buttered 6" frying pan (you should get 3 omelets)
mix the filling together and spread 1/2 between the 1st and 2nd omelet dotting with tiny pieces of butter and splashing with OJ

Now go forth and try this crazy creation that somehow works real well, next time I want to try it with fresh mozzarella.