Ketchup

...get it? Har har.

Ok, so I'm going to try to go in somewhat chronological order on the happenings of the last month. We've still been getting almost all our food from the Ballard Farmer's Market, and making some tasty things. Here's a few:

Stuffed Squash Blossoms with Lettuce Sauce

Based on a great recipe in Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations. We picked up some squash blossoms, stuffed them with some shallots, goat cheese, chile powder, garlic. Battered and fried. This week we started getting our lettuce from a particular farm that has been wowing us with weird awesome varieties. As I remember the lettuce sauce involved cooking a shallot and garlic in some milk and then blitzing it with a head of lettuce and bringing it to a bare simmer for a bit. It was really good, the lettuce is a totally unexpected taste in the green sauce.

Braised Short Ribs with Faerie Mushrooms

So my mother is turning out to be quite the source for mushrooms, in that she keeps finding random ones and giving them to me, and fortunately these turn out to be edible. In this case, she gave me another large Agaricus Augustus that she found in the yard this time (unfortunately worms got to it pretty bad, no meal there) and also some Faerie Ring mushrooms from a colony in their back lawn.

These went into a wine braise with some morels and free-range grass-fed short ribs for a few hours. Served over cheesy polenta, with a crunchy herbed breadcrumb topping. It was delicious.

Ridiculously so.

Pickles!

In June I planted four pickling cucumber plants and they have been going crazy for the last two weeks or so. I've already made a quart of refrigerator dills, a quart of sweet bread and butters, and I've started hot canning a quart here and there for later. Here's one of the hot canned dills. I'll have another six or so cukes ready in about 4 more days. Starting to have to get creative. I see a lot of sunomono in our future. Or maybe pickle some gherkins, just so I don't get so many more fully sized ones!

Lobster Mushrooms

Last week Foraged and Found had Lobster Mushrooms in! So I picked up a pound instead of buying meat for the week. Lobster Mushrooms (Hypomyces lactifluorum) are not actually mushrooms per se, but rather a parasitic mold that colonizes other mushrooms, turning them into the bright orange deliciousness in the picture on the right. They actually smell like lobster! Overall, they taste pretty good, but nothing to go crazy over. I'll see if I can hunt some this summer, but otherwise I don't know if it was worth the $18/lb. They're also a bitch to clean.

I'd planned on making a "prove I don't totally suck at this" batch of hot dogs to make up for the Hot Dogs of Failure, but somehow in the move my small grinding plate and the little rotatey blade of my meat grinder went AWOL. So I made an impromptu version of a Beef Bourguignon with the beef stew meat I'd bought for the dogs. Basically this recipe from Epicurious, halved, served with wild rice and subbing in lobster mushrooms for the plain white ones and Walla Walla onions instead of little boiling onions. Oh, and homemade pancetta instead of bacon. Came out pretty good, but the lobsteriness of the mushrooms was annihilated by the half bottle of wine.

The other half of the mushrooms went into a badass Morel and Lobster Mushroom Risotto, that we've been enjoying for several meals. And for some reason I don't have a photo of it.

Pork Shoulders: North Carolina and Coffee Rub!

For my "Oh thank god the Bar Exam is over!" party I threw two pork butts on the smoker about 10 PM the night before. They then held a good 225-250 for nearly 14 hours before I pronounced them delicious. One was given a pretty typical North Carolina Red rub, and I made up some NC Red Vinegar sauce to go with it. The other had a rub that included ground coffee, and was served with a sauce that combined everything you love about BBQ sauce and everything you love about a latte. Wicked. Pulled them, served on buns with slaw. No more photos, but ate them for a week and there's still some in the freezer.

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The Bar Exam Is Over!

Annnnd we're back. The Bar Exam is over and I have taken enough of a break. Job search is beginning in earnest, but I might as well spend the rest of my time writing, eh?

For those interested: the WA Bar Exam was the single most unpleasant, difficult, and otherwise horrible test it has ever been my displeasure to take. That said, I'm certain that I didn't totally fail. Not that I passed, just that I didn't totally, epically fail. I answered all the questions, didn't get hideously stumped by anything, wrote in something resembling the King's English. Hopefully that's enough.

The format is two days of nine questions each, then a final 1/3 day of six questions. You have three 2 hour and 15 minute blocks with short breaks in-between, so it works out to about 45 minutes a question. The final day is six ethics questions in one block, so 22 minutes a question. Unlike any other Bar exam (to my knowledge) WA's is all essay and has no multistate portions. If you count them that's 24 essays.

So to practice I wrote out at least two practice essays for each possible topic, so about 50 essays. The Bar gives out sample answers that it considers 'adequate' to previous years' questions. They are generally ok, but sometimes misstate the law, confuse the parties, or have weird grammar mistakes. When you read these, sometimes it looks like a retarded monkey was jamming away on a typewriter. Also he was sleep deprived. Also there was no 'L' key. Also he was simultaneously being launched into space. So when you compare your fresh, bright-eyed, calmly typed answer it's like "Hey, no problem! I am going to dominate this test. Dominate."

Then you do six back-to-back essays to practice the equivalent of 2/3 of one day of the Bar. By then end you're typing:

"And um, P should sue D because, um, D is a Bad Man. That thing he did was illegal. Seriously, I'm pretty sure about that. Yep. And I should know, I'm a lawyer. It was that tort that begins with a P. Or was it an S? I need a banana..."

So it becomes this shotgun approach, because the test awards breadth of knowledge, not depth. You cannot possibly remember everything in enough detail, and if you could you'd run out of space and time. It's about finding just the right amount of vagueness, so that you're not misstating the law, indeed, you're implying that you could say more, but not understating it either. You start prepping and spewing this fire hose of boilerplate and hope that gets you to a 5. Then you try to carefully apply a bit of it to the facts in the question for a 6. Then you remember one weird twist in the law, or that one exception, and there's your 7th point and you're passing. Good job! 23 more to go.

During the breaks you try to remember the subjects you just spent two hours writing about and for some reason it is difficult! Durrrr, brain no function well sleep without. Eventually you start to winnow down the subjects and refresh yourself on the remaining ones. So, lets say you never had any real instruction in Law School on UCC Article 2 Sales? You study it like crazy. CivPro isn't hard but there are lots of exceptions and time periods, lets study that some more. Indian Law? Completely new to me. Now go, frantically refresh, you've got 15 more minutes. Then at the end it's: Oh! Exam's over and those subjects weren't tested... psyche! Haha thanks for playing.

And during the break you start to analyze your answers and you see all the places where you missed something. When you wrote "Prescriptive Easement" did you really write "proscriptive"? "Perscriptive?" Wait, did I remember to discuss damages? D'oh! and so on. By the time I got home my brain was pure cottage cheese. In a blender. With bananas.

So I kept thinking of this scene in Billy Madison:

Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Yep. May God have mercy on my soul. We'll know for sure in October, I'm sure it will be fine.

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No Posts 'Till Brooklyn

...No sleep till the Bar Exam.

T-minus 9 days. I'm dropping off the face of the planet until at least August. But I've got some good posts lined up. The bacon and pancetta are done (and delicious!) and I got a hog jowl today for guanciale. Also the nitro tap is up and running and pretty much everything I thought beer could be. And one of my hop vines is now over the roof. I don't know where it will stop. Some castle in the clouds, presumably.

Ok. An Evidence and a Criminal Law essay and I can go to bed. Then get up at six and write four more essays. Whee.

Mental Soundtrack: dueling bouts of Jason Webley's Dance While the Sky Crashes Down and Sparklehorse's It's a Wonderful Life.

I'm the dog that ate
your birthday cake

it's a wonderful life...

and

It takes strength to laugh
when you start to drown
and we dance
while the sky
crashes down!

(also "It's raining leprosy and acid." That line always makes me laugh.)

See you in August.

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Ballard Farmer's Market Week II

Here's this week's haul:

• The Meat: Beef Short Ribs, Oxtail, and suet
• A half-flat of raspberries!
• Bing cherries
• Apricots
• Weird Austrian heirloom 'Speckled Trout' lettuce and some kind of Italian heirloom lettuce
  
• Beets
• Squash Blossoms
  
• Garlic
• Green Onions
• Purple Carrots
• Seabeans
• Dried Porcini, Morel and Wild Mix mushrooms
• Kombucha
  

Plan is to braise the oxtails and short ribs with some wine, maybe some of the dried mushrooms, beets, carrots. Several salads this week. M's plans for the raspberries are not fully formed yet, but hopefully there will be some for the salads. I've got some goat cheese leftover, so I'm thinking something with the squash blossoms. The suet will go toward another round of hot dogs some evening when I'm bored, because I am still a bit cranky about the last round's failure. Had a chat with the Sea Breeze guys, hopefully they'll be landing me a hog jowl in two weeks for guanciale.

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Update: Pickled Garlic Scapes

The pickled garlic scapes have been in the fridge for a about two weeks. Took a taste today. Very happy with it. Like a super-garlicy-salty-spicy dill pickle. They need another week or so to get more tender. I put a clove of two or garlic in each jar, probably unnecessary. Now I've got to figure out what to do with them...

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The Hot Dogs of Failure

So I figured I'd make a batch of Chicago-style all-beef hot dogs for the 4th. I'd found suet, already frozen and ground at the Ballard Market. So I figured: ok, go get a pound of ground beef, combine them and you're golden. Normally the suet and beef would be ground, then combined and run through the grinder again with ice. I figured since they were going to be whipped in the kitchenaid for six minutes, I'd just combine the meat, suet, spices, and some ice water and let 'er rip. Hot dogs are an emulsified sausage, so it's going to become a paste anyway right?

WRONG. Fail #1.

After six minutes some little chunks of suet refused to go into an emulsion. I couldn't get them to go in and any more whipping risked breaking the emulsion. You can see some of the white flecks in the sausage. But I said, screw it. Into the casings.

Attractive, no?

Fail #2. Casings.

I bought a pack of casings from a local sausage company down the street. They charged more than they were worth, but it was short notice and the day before the 4th. Grr. But what can you do? (Answer: don't make sausage right before the 4th, buy some of their awesome ones instead.) Then it turned out that the casings were on the small side, maybe 29mm but it didn't say on the package. So I had an incredibly frustrating time getting them fed on the tube. And I had part of it burst once it was filled. But at least I have enough for 100 more pounds of sausage... Fortunately they'll last a year or so in the salt-brine I put them into.

Fail #3. Impatience.

Ultimately the lesson is, if you're just getting over a cold and are tired and cranky, don't rush things. Normally the dogs would hang out overnight, then get cold smoked and poached to 140. I figured that the rest was so they'd dry out and the smoke would adhere better. In retrospect, there's a small amount of pink salt in them and the overnight rest would also cure them. But I just went ahead and poached them. So the color is off, and the taste and texture were weird. Not mealy, or particularly more greasy or anything, just weird. I don't think the emulsion broke, I just think it wasn't fully emulsified. Part of it is there's a weird taste that makes me suspect the suet picked up some other flavors from where it was refrigerated before. The other possibility is the lack of 'cured' taste just makes it taste off. Not nearly as good as the last time I made them.

Oh well. They've been sitting overnight, I'm thinking I'll try one out for lunch and see if they've improved at all. Otherwise I'll have one very happy dog this week.

UPDATE: Dog food. (Which is to say, compost. I will not be held responsible for what might happen if I fed Ase two pounds of dubious hot dogs...)

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Bacon of Doom

So I said that I'd had the folks at Sea Breeze Farm on Vashon bring me a pork belly at Sunday's market. I said, "You know, somewhere in the usual 10 lb. pork belly range."

When I opened the butcherpaper I was shocked.

I didn't get what I was expecting.

In fact, I was not prepared for the sheer amazingness of that piece of pork.

This is not the first time I've made bacon and pancetta. I seem to do it about two to three times a year, enough that we always have some in the freezer if needs be. As you can see from that link, usually a belly from a factory hog is about maybe three feet by 12-15 inches wide, by an inch to two inches thick. It also may be the only one I do this year, as like all good things it cost 2 1/2 times what a factory belly would.

This one was a monster piece of pork. Maybe 18" x 18" and at least 3" thick. Obviously this little piggy led a much longer life of carefree gluttony. Look at the corner! Jutting like a proud icebreaker of pork.

This round was to be half maple bacon, half pancetta. Right away I knew rolling it for pancetta was out the window.

Neverthelless, I cut it in half. Half got a cure with 1/4 cup of the 'Basic Cure' from Ruhlman's Charcuterie and a half cup of maple syrup. The other half got the pancetta cure from Charcuterie. They'll sit and cure for at least seven days, probably closer to nine. Then I'll smoke the maple bacon over apple and hickory.

This is gonna be good...

The pancetta was to be rolled up and hung to dry in the basement. But rolling isn't really in the cards. It's like a shoebox of meat. So I'm thinking I'll just cure it, poke a hole in a corner, and hang it to dry.

This raises the problem of where to dry it. I've got my little brewery room in the basement. Holds 64 degrees, is completely free from sunlight, and seems reasonably humid. A bit warm, but not terribly so. I'm contemplating getting a hygrometer, like for a cigar humidor, and putting it in the room. Or I've got my little dorm fridge, which I could set to 50 and put the cheap humidifier I got at the Rotary Auction in. Think I'll try the room first and watch to see if it's drying too fast or anything starts to grow on it. And if it starts to get too dry I can always get the humidifier going in there.

Eventually I'd like to start hanging some dry-cured sausages, maybe some mold-covered chorizos. I'd like to do some mold-ripened cheeses too. But those kind of things would be a bit too close to the beer for comfort. Maybe then I'll bring in the fridge.

Anyhow, update in a week or so when I smoke the maple half. This Sunday I'm going to see if they can get me a hog jowl for guanciale...

Oh, also: went down to the Ballard Market. What should I find? Ready-ground, frozen beef suet! For like $1. We all know what that means for this 4th of July... Now I just have to find someone in town who'll sell me some casings tomorrow.

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