Cherry Liqueur

Here in the Pacific Northwest we have an abundance of cherries, particularly Rainier and Bing cherries. When I saw Rainier cherries for $1.49 per pound, I knew it was time to try making a liqueur.

I started with two pounds of Rainier cherries, unpitted, and added 1½ cups of sugar and a fifth of grain alcohol. I let it sit outside in the sun for four weeks.

After four weeks, I strained the liquor and discarded the Rainiers. Then I added two pounds of pitted Bing cherries, 1 cup sugar, one cinnamon stick about 3″ long, and two vanilla pods. I let that mixture sit for two weeks in the sun.

Then I strained the liquor again and added two pounds pitted Bings, two cinnamon sticks, 8 whole cloves, and 750ml French brandy. After one more week, I gave it a taste.

I think it’s done, but I’m letting half of the liqueur continue to steep. It certainly isn’t the best liqueur I’ve ever tasted, but it was fun to make, and it will make an excellent flavoring for desserts. Maybe I’ll just call it cherry extract.

Tuscan Steak

Is it really Tuscan? No, but it has flavors I think of when I think of Tuscany: lemon, rosemary, olive oil.

This is a simple preparation. Rub olive oil into the steak, then sprinkle on some freshly ground pepper (I used a blend of tellicherry black, malabar white, and pink peppercorns), sea salt, rosemary (fresh from the garden, of course), and lemon zest. Be sure to season both sides. Let rest for 30 minutes or so, then grill.

After the steak has grilled to your desired degree of doneness, let it rest for five minutes or so. I used that time to step out to the garden, select a couple of tomatoes, rinse them off, and slice them. I finished the steak by drizzling some Villa Manodori balsamic vinegar on it.

The tomatoes were dressed with a bit of Villa Manodori extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and then dusted with a hint of Fleur de Sel. I added a bit of Black Jack Cheese from Scott “Dominic” Catino to round out an excellent meal.

Bacon

Mmm, bacon. I need some bacon for the BLT From Scratch Challenge, and I’ve never cured meat before, so it’s time to do a test.

For this first bacon I used the recipe and method in Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It. There are excellent recipes in Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie and The Paley’s Place Cookbook by Vitaly Paley. I’ll try both eventually.

For this recipe you’ll need to get some curing salt, sometimes called “pink salt,” Prague powder, or Insta-Cure #1. Don’t confuse this pink salt with actual pink salt from Australia or the Himalayan Plateau. Curing salt includes salt, sodium nitrate, sodium nitrite, and other ingredients, and is commonly dyed pink to make it visually different from regular salt.

Bacon Cure

½ cup sugar
1 tablespoon blackstrap molasses
2 tablespoons kosher or sea salt
1 teaspoon curing salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Rinse, trim, and dry one hunk of pork belly of about 2½-3 pounds so that it’s rectangular. Then mix the cure ingredients together and rub it into the pork belly on both sides and along the edges.

Put the belly into a plastic bag if you have one big enough, or into a glass dish that will hold it and cover with plastic wrap. Put into the refrigerator to cure.

Every day for the next week, massage the juices that have accumulated back into the meat and turn it over. If it still feels squishy anywhere after a week, continue to cure for another day or two. Then you’re ready to smoke or roast the bacon.

For this first batch I roasted the bacon in a 200°F oven for about 2 hours until the interior temperature reached 150°F. Then I brushed genuine liquid hickory smoke on both sides and let it cool.

This was my first home-cured bacon and I will never buy bacon again. It’s just plain silly to buy that which can be made so easily and so very much better than store-bought.

Pickled Beets

In the garden, the beets are beginning to look like they’re ready to eat. If I have a large crop, I’ll want to pickle some of them.

There are three steps required for good pickled beets, and all three take some time. First you need to make a good picking vinegar, then the beets need to be roasted, and finally you’ll preserve the beets in the vinegar and wait at least a month.

Pickling Vinegar

1 tablespoon whole cloves
1 tablespoon whole allspice berries
1 tablespoon pink peppercorns
1½ teaspoons white peppercorns
2 mace blades
2 cinnamon sticks
5 cups white wine vinegar

Bring to a boil, then cool slightly and pour into a glass container. Store in a cool, dark place for 2 weeks. Strain.

Now that your vinegar is ready, roast the beets. I suggest wrapping them in foil and roasting them slowly to release as much sugar as possible. As soon as the beets are cool enough to handle, peel them. Then slice, dice, quarter, or leave baby beets whole.

Put the beets into one or more sterilized jars, leaving plenty of room for the vinegar to cover them. If you wish, put some of the whole spices from the vinegar recipe into the jars as well. For spicy beets, add chiles to taste. Chipotles work nicely if you want a smoky heat.

Bring the strained vinegar to a boil and carefully pour it into the jars to cover the beets. Seal the jars and store in a cool, dry place for at least a month, or up to two months for best flavor.

If you don’t have time to make pickling vinegar, distribute the spices from the recipe evenly between the jars and add boiling vinegar. The flavors won’t have as much time to develop, but the pickle will still be okay.

Chicken and Veal Stew

I needed a meal for four. I had chicken for two, veal shanks for two, and absolutely no desire to go to the store. A look into the pantry revealed potatoes and carrots. I had what I needed for a stew!

The first step was to braise the veal shanks. A braise will be successful if the meat is dredged in seasoned flour, then browned before beginning the actual braise. There’s nothing fancy here, just some salt and freshly ground pepper in flour. Be sure to leave air around each piece while browning, even if you have to do it in stages, as in this case.

It isn’t strictly necessary to use aromatics, but I really like to melt some mirepoix to make an extra rich broth. I didn’t have celery, so I used carrots, onions, and red capsicum (bell pepper), better known as the Cajun trinity. I just cooked the trinity in some extra virgin olive oil until the onions were starting to look translucent.

You really need wine and stock for a good braise, although stock alone will work fine. I had some wild mushroom stock left over, and a goodly stock of dried wild mushrooms to make more. I put the shanks into the pan and added hot stock until it was about halfway up the shanks. This went into a 350°F/175°C oven, uncovered, for about three hours. After an hour or so, I turned the shanks over, and turned them back about two hours into cooking.

At this point I needed the oven to make bread, so I finished the stew on the stovetop. It would have worked just as well in the oven.

While the braise was working, I skinned two chicken leg quarters and visited the herb garden for rosemary, thyme, and parsley. The rosemary and thyme were wrapped in a scrap of cheesecloth and secured with a food-safe band–kitchen twine would have worked fine.

After the shanks had cooked to the point that the meat fell off the bone, I removed the veal bones and added the chicken quarters along with more stock and the now-reconstituted dried mushrooms used to make it, three cloves of garlic, and the herb packet.

I cooked this, covered, at a simmer until the chicken meat literally fell off the bones when I picked them up with tongs. At that point I added baby red potatoes, quartered yukon gold potatoes, and carrots. I continued cooking at a simmer until the potatoes were done.

Then I strained the liquid into another container and degreased it. Meanwhile the pot went back onto the stove with wine, which was reduced by one-half, then more stock, and finally the degreased juices from the braise and simmer. At this point I tasted the sauce, and added a bit of salt and pepper. Notice that this was the first and only seasoning, other than the small amount of salt and pepper in the flour used for dredging.

Cooking slowly for more than five hours extracted a lot of flavor from the veal and chicken bones, as well as from the meat. Wine has some sodium in it, and reducing the stock and juices concentrated the flavors. Thus, only a small bit of salt and pepper was needed. The parsley isn’t there just for looks. A bit of  minced parsley adds a subtle fresh note that really finishes a dish.

Turned out that I made too much. No one seemed to complain about having this stew two days running, and yes, it was better the second day!