This was last night's dinner. Roasted beef tenderloin with buttered fiddleheads. Joe had made a sour cream and horseraddish sauce a few nights ago that went extremely well with the beef.
 |
 |
|
 |
||
The fiddleheads were a good green to accompany the meat. A little out of the ordinary with a taste of artichoke and asparagus. I blanched them in salted boiling water and then tossed in melted butter with salt and pepper.
As you can tell, I am also loving our new digital camera.
Ever since I read Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation I think twice about eating any ground meat, which kind of takes the fun out of burgers! If I order it directly from the butcher, I ask them to grind it fresh in front of me. Call me paranoid but I just don't trust it. But now with my new schnazzy KitchenAid and meat grinder I can make my own.
I took it for a test run last weekend. Determined to make chicken sausages, Joe and I went to Wholefoods and bought 5 pounds of chicken drumsticks and thighs. I am proud to say that while not perfect they turned out quite well.
After taking several pictures, I realized that making 5 pounds of raw sausages look appealing is really hard. There were so few angles that didn't make them look totally obscene. In future I might have to seek Deb's assistance.
To make these sausages, I used the KitchenAid meat grinder and sausage attachment with good results. Although I used the coarse grinding attachment, I made the mistake of passing the chicken through the grinder twice. While still tasty, the resulting mince was too fine and lost all texture.
There were a few other things I learned in this process. The meat and skin needed to be frozen more before it was ground. I also think that the skin should be ground after the meat. I found that some of the skin fibers got caught in the cutting blade and caused the meat that followed to be squashed through the grinder rather than cut cleanly.
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 large onions, sliced
4 1/2 pounds chicken thighs with bones and skin
2 garlic cloves, chopped finely
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
Juice from 1 large lemon
1/4 cup fresh parsley leaves, chopped
Spices
2 tablespoons paprika
2 teaspoons fennel seed
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 teaspoons ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon curry powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
Sausage casing (5 feet should be enough for 5lbs of meat)
1. Heat oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Add onions and sauté until soft and translucent allow to cool.
2. Separate skin from chicken and de-bone. Slice the chicken meat into smaller strips so that will fit into the meat ginder shoot. Place meat and skin on a baking
sheet and place in the freezer for about 20-30 minutes or until the flesh is firm.
3. Using the coarse meat grinder attachment, grind chicken meat once since you want some meat texture and definition in the final product. Using the same attachment pass the chicken skin and cooled onion mixture through grinder.
3. Combine ground chicken mixture with remaining ingredients and spices. Working quickly to prevent fat from melting, blend thoroughly. Fry a small patty until done to taste seasoning and adjust accordingly.
4. Flush sausage casings in cold running water until clean and removed of salt. Pass casing opening onto sausage funnel and feed the entire length of casing onto funnel. It is much easier to do this under running water. The water passes through the casing walls and acts as a lubricant, allowing the casing to easily slide over itself. Tie a knot at the end.
5. Stuff sausage into casings. Occassionally wet casing on funnel to help it glide off as it fills with stuffing. Using a sewing needle gentle prick the stuffed sausage as it fills.
6. Apparently the KitchenAid should be on setting 4 for grinding and sausage stuffing. I also found it useful to stuff the casings loosely. That way you can twist them into links without risk of breaking. Tie the links in even lengths with butchers twine and knot at ends.
Any remaining sausage mixture can be wrapped in plastic and frozen for later use. Left over sausage casing can be packed in salt and refrigerated for up to a year.
April has been busy. While it started with a quiet decadent mid week dinner at Chanterelle, it picked up speed very quickly. Joe had his birthday at Long Tan in Brooklyn, then exactly one week later, on my birthday, Joe took me to Fresh downtown. Somewhere in the middle of that week I entertained out of town clients for lunch at The Odeon and then dinner at The Harrison in Tribeca. Throw in a long weekend trip to California, an excellent meal at Bistro 21 and a day wine tasting in Santa Barbara I can say that I am totally full and exhausted!
If I get some time this week I may add some details on the dinners at these restaurants. There may even be time for me to play with my new birthday toy, a pure white 325 watt KitchenAid with meat grinder and sausage attachments -- fun, fun, fun.