Over the centuries many artists have had their muses. This goes for painters, photographers, musicians & children. You find yourself standing before something that inspires one to drop everything to capture that moment in time. A feeling of inspiration strong enough to bring any knuckle dragging hillbilly to his or her knees. This is just that, Toponia’s Jambon Persille. Which is near as I can tell are spots of ham in a pate or terrine atmosphere. The ham chunks are tender yet hold their place, only letting go under yer teefs. The aspic-like material holding the bright herbs & spices together is in harmony.
Yeah okay so I used a photograph of wonderful food to drive an entry. You have to admit though, it was worth our time. Don’t you think?
Happy Holidays from all us at MeatHenge Labs to you’all.
Xo Xo
UPDATE!
Bright Happy Holiday Hammy with Herb Love

Phew, you almost missed out on this one. I found a decent looking pork tenderloin fer dinner. Figured I’d roast it and serve it with some leftover southern greens I made the night before. No big deal, nothing any of you needed to really know about.
However, I decided to heat up a cast iron skillet super hot and sear the sucker first. And when I saw the little wedge of lard melt, smoke waft and then the severe sizzle of the pork hit … it was all I could do to get my camera & flash mounted.

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My theory about Potato Salad: Nobody likes potato salad. The standard fare deli salads, unless you are lucky, are disgusting to say the least. I was an adult before I had potato salad that tickled my fancy. And now I’m fairly obsessed with it, and usually to my disappointment I’ll try it wherever I go.
This love/hate relationship forced me to try my hand at it myself. There are a few certainties with my potato salad: no sweet things, and no eggs. I’ve had plenty of potato salads with eggs that I liked, but it is always my least favorite part, and in bad potato salads it is down right scary. And I’m just generally morally opposed of mixing sweet and savory on principal. There are always exceptions, but usually only with thai food, or quails stuffed with sausage and figs. So no sweet pickles PLEASE.

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I’m not sure what inspired me to put together a ‘scalloped’ potato dish on a work day with not more than an hour and a half for prep and cook time. I know I know, “hey bone, scalloped potatoes aren’t that tough.” Yeah well, I added extra goodies and had to move pretty darned quick to get this on the table before everyone filled up on peanut butter & crackers. Keep in mind too that I have to take decent pictures and make mental notes along with everything else. Boy did my hard work pay off big time.
This dish was succulent, rich, savory & worth every bead of sweat.
Most of the ingredients make sense, onions, parsely, mushrooms, apple wood smoked bacon and fresh herbies. I decided to render up some pancetta to take it over the top. Yum.

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Fat in the fridge. That’s what I’ve been looking at all week. I pulled out a half cup of duck fat from the Fatted Calf’s Duck Confit earlier this week. Three times I pulled it out thinking I was ready to make some corn bread. Each time I was thwarted due to lack of ingredients or inspiration. Yesterday late afternoon I had it all, ingredients & inspiration.

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As near as I can tell, for many of you this meal is a semi-regular pot that you’re all too familiar with. Some of us obviously live in a cave.
I clearly live in a cave.
The more I read the recipe, the more I fumbled with the recipe in the isles of the two grocery stores I had to visit, the more I readied the ingredients, the more I chopped and compiled, the more I watched the stuff boil, the more excited I got. Which means by dinner time I was a nervous happy wreck.
onward …

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A few weeks back I made a journey into Berkeley to visit a new charcuterie, Fatted Calf. They hang out at the Farmer’s Market there selling fresh meat products. Well, with the holidays and bad weather it’s been tough getting a hold of them and the meat love packages.
I scored big time today.
I showed up fairly early and they weren’t there. That sucked. So Eli and I went up and visited Jan while she was working the Blue Bottle Coffee stall. We hung out for a bit then decided to see if Taylor and Kim had showed up. They had, and it felt like xmas all over again. My eyeballs were shaking as I went over the menu asking questions about the sausages and so forth. They were in a good mood and as they were loading up my order, Kim tossed in a salami and said “here, you try this”.
And I did. Take a look at the picture again. The reason there is just a little nub of meat there is cause I ate it. Before my camera got to it. As I’m writing this … there is none left.
I’m telling you. Give them a call or go by the Farmer’s Market in Berkeley from 10am (give or take a few) to 3pm (or when they sell out).
Fatted Calf Charcuterie
Taylor / Kim
958 Illinois Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
v 510.301.9279
f 510.653.4327
www.fattedcalf.com

How many times have you made a gravy or pan sauce that ended up in the trash, a soup or made excuses for? More than once I’ll bet. Well, if you start with a beef sirloin roast wrapped in bacon you’ll almost be assured of victory.

Get yourself a nice sirloin beef roast, and see if you can find one with some fat on one side. Wash lightly and pat dry (oil and water don’t mix and your browning will be spotty at best). Poke some fresh garlic into it, rub it with extra virgin olive oil, and rub with your favorite spicy rub. At this point you want to get some fresh herbs, rosemary is a nice hearty one, but thyme works nicely as well. Then find some applewood smoked bacon, nitrate free if you can find it. Lay a few strips over the top. Pick up the pieces of bacon and turn them over, leaving some of the oily rub on the bacon itself exposed to the oven heat. Which, by the way, is about 350 on the bottom rack. Please get yourself a trivet and roast it sitting on said beast. I have been doing most of my roasts of pork, beef and chicken in old cast iron skillets or dutch ovens. You can use what you want, just get the meat out of the swimmy goodness that will become your pan sauce. While your roast is roasting pull out a nice little shallot and dice it as finely as you can. Maybe a little fresh herbies as well. Set aside. Oh and find your corn starch along with a steel sieve.

Roast it until it looks like this, or until about 135 to 140 internal temperature. Pull it out, set it aside and let it rest for maybe 15 minutes or so. Do it.
Pull out the trivet and let the juicy goodness drip off, knock off any roasted goodness back into the skillet.
At this point any self respecting chef or book will tell you that you need two tablespoons of liquid in there. Well, I say that’s crap. I’m going for max sauce/gravy and max flavor. If I have three tablespoons of drippings I’m damn well going to use them. If it turns out that you come up short of liquid, add some lard or butter. And here we go …
Heat up the skillet under medium heat or so and get the fat & fond going. Toss in your shallots. Actually you could dice up mushrooms and/or sun dried tomatoes as well. But let’s get the basics down first.
Now that you have the shallots rolling nicely, keep them moving. You don’t want them to burn. Just let them go for a minute or two. They’re small and the fat is hot. Grab a tablespoon of corn starch and sprinkling that in. You’re looking for the corn starch to be absorbed and ‘some’ liquid left. Not a complete paste. For this roast I added some lard to the pan and got it hot before I tossed in the shallots. Then I ended up with two tablespoons of corn starch to make the sauce.
Slurry the starch and goodies around until you feel you have it right. Then grab some of your home made or organic/natural beef stock. Start with a cups worth and get the hot and cold to emulsify. Then add another cup or so. What you’re looking for is a somewhat clear, dark brown, rich pan sauce that will barely yet smoothly coat the back of a spoon. Add a sprinkle of good salt and a grind or two of good pepper. Simmer a bit and pour through a steel sieve to remove bits. What you’re left with is a SMOOTH, RICH, dark brown pan sauce that will cause you to smile. I’m smiling even now, just thinking of it.
Get to it !!!

made homemade bleu cheese dressing last night, cuz the grocery store ones bit the big one!
1/2 cup mayo
1/2 lowfat sour cream
3/4 tub of cumbly bleu cheese from Trader Joe’s (all ingredients are from
TJ’s actually)
dash of the following: pepper, italian herbs, parsely, garlic powder,
worcestershire, mustard
2 dashes of: red wine vinegar and rice vinegar (cuz I didn’t have cider
vinegar)
yummy with carrots and veggie buffalo wings. heh.
this stuff rocked HARD. *never* buying store bought no more!
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This excerpt from an email from my sister. Thanks sis!

It was far better than this picture can ever possibly convey. And I”m sorry but I didn’t make it and don’t have the recipe or any secrets. But Eric did such an outfrickenstanding job of crafting this lovely soup I just HAD to install it here at MeatHenge. It deserves it, it’s earned the right and dammit it was GREAT SOUP !!! Not one ingredient overpowered the other, each one had it’s own place in the pot. I give this food stuff a rating of FACE IN MOUTH OPEN.

Here we see the beginnings of the jasmine rice being browned in butter. Grab yourself a nice heavy cast iron skillet. Melt a nice load of butter in it and toss into a cup of jasmine rice. Keep in mind, this does several things. First it turns normal boring rice into a nutty yummy gift of love. Secondly it gives your cast iron a nice shiny seasoned glow. The latter is very important, just so you know.

Look! Nutty brown buttery rice of love! Who knew white rice could look so good.

Oh my, who knew white rice could ever taste this good.