Xesla Research Organisation

Hank Shaw, my friend, blogger, published author, and bringer of shenanigans  is on a book tour right now.  His stop in Austin happily coincided with IACP (a big Food Professionals conference) giving us a good solid week of being able to hang out.

One of the things I was most looking forward to was taking him down to my local park to learn from him more about what plants and animals are resident there. Surprisingly (to me at least) it held a fair amount of wild edible plants.  Mustang Grapes, Black Walnuts, Hardy Oranges, plus a bunch of spring greens that are too bitter at this time of the year like Curled Dock.

Wild Grapes known locally as Mustang Grapes

Curled Dock gone to seed … which are also edible.

Black Walnuts, a little earlier and we could have pickled them whole,  now have to wait for them to mature on tree.  Hank has an excellent black walnut icecream recipe which I’ll try once they’re ripe.
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Tags: Foraging, Grapes, Hank Shaw, Verjuice

A friend of ours gave us a bag of local Texas Rio Star grapefruit the other day and we were kind of at a loss with what to do with them. I’m not a huge fan of eating grapefruit as it is, so figured I should look at transforming it into something more palatable for me. After a bit of googling it seemed the best thing to do with it was marmalade. I figured grapefruit marmalade would be quite bitter so wanted some interesting secondary flavours to offset it. I went through my copy of The Flavor Bible and found two things to add to the marmalade, Vanilla and Star Anise.

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Tags: Canning, grapefruit, marmalade, star anise, vanilla

I wanted to do something a little bit different for dinner this easter, and figured I’d go down the cliche anti-easter route of cooking rabbit. To make it a little less cliche I decided to harken back to centuries old tradition of thickening stew with blood and liver, otherwise known as Jugged Rabbit. I had first read about this in Fergus Henderson’s book ‘Nose to Tail’ and eaten it for the first time recently at Ryan’s 24 hour cookathon.

I remember a conversation between Ryan and Hank Shaw where they were discussing the importance of blood in jugged hare and Hank said that liver was actually the more important of the two. I did a quick search on his website and sure enough he had a recipe for it. I decided to use Hank’s recipe rather than Fergus’ since I had recently eaten Fergus’ version @ Ryan’s.

I even doubled the Hank by garnishing it with some cilantro flowers from a plant that had gone to seed, which ironically a rabbit (who has taken up residence in our herb garden) has been eating in our back yard. In fact you can see the very same flowers sitting just above his head in this photo.

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Tags: blood, Hank Shaw, jugged, liver, rabbit, ryan adams, stew

I had a hankering for a hearty bean stew and went rummaging through the pantry for some ingredients, originally I had planned to do something along the lines of Boston Baked Beans, but I had forgotten I was out of Molasses. So I dug deep and found a bottle of Apple Cider and figured I’d give that a shot.

Into my new Cast Iron Pan went some Lardons of Bacon and some home made Chorizo.

To this I added a chopped onion, some diced garlic and some finely chopped celery and about half a tomato I had left over from a lunchtime BLT

Then goes in a pound of canned beans ( or fresh if you soak them first )

and enough Cider to cover…

Then a halved pickled home grown Jalepeno and a drizzle of pickling liquid to add a touch of heat.

I added some dried Oregano, Cilantro, a bay leaf and a small handful of dried sour cherries and turned the heat way down to barely simmer for several hours.

I served it with an Organic Pastured Chicken Leg boned and stuffed with Truffle Pate, cooked sous vide @ 62C/145F and some heirloom carrots cooked sous vide. With a Dogfish Head Aprihop on the side.

Tags: apple cider, Bacon, beans, chicken, chorizo, dogfish head

As you get comfortable making a certain dish, or preparing a certain ingredient you gain confidence to change it and add your own touch to it.    This is where I am at with making Bacon right now.    I feel comfortable taking my basic bacon recipe which is taken almost directly from  Ruhlman’s Basic Dry Cure in his Charcuterie manifesto and modifying it to infuse some interesting flavours into the bacon.

A few weeks ago I laid down three different types of bacon.    The first important step was to find some nice fatty pork belly.

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Tags: Bacon, beer, charcuterie, cure, dogfish head, pork, pork belly, Ruhlman

Lamb shank was rubbed down with a mixture of salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, thyme, oregano, and lemon zest. Cooked Sous Vide @ 57C (135F ) for 72 hours. Then seared off quickly to brown the outside.

The Couscous salad was made with finely diced green pepper, dried apricot, dried sour cherry, diced pumpkin and some white balsamic vinegar with about 1/2 a tsp of Za’atar and some cayenne pepper.

Tags: couscous, lamb, pumpkin, shank, Sous Vide

Stolen directly from Ryan’s blog. Except I cooked mine Sous Vide for extra nerdy factor.

I need to write up my Duck Consomme experience properly,  but not tonight.    Here is the perfect dish to show it off, a riff on a fantastic dish served to my by Hank Shaw at the Duck Duel.  Perfectly clear consomme with homemade mushroom wontons and crispy home cured bacon and finely chopped green onion ( and seasoning ! ).

Several months ago I had a sweetbread salad at a local restaurant and really enjoyed it. Ever since I’ve been thinking about doing something similar but have been somewhat daunted by it. Last week I decided that I was finally going to tackle them.

Sweetbreads are the common and someone deceiving name for several glands, the Thymus gland and Pancreas are the more common. They consist of pink nuggets of flesh inside a complicated network of membranes and are associated with younger animals,  Veal and Lamb.   I have read that the Thymus gland actually disappears when the animal reaches maturity.

I knew cooking them usually requires several processes and I wanted to make sure I got it right, so I turned to Nose to Tail @ Home the blog run by my good friend Ryan. Not surprisingly he had a good post on sweetbreads. I also read through my River Cottage Meat Book and my own copy of Fergus’ Opus.

In summary to prepare Sweetbreads you first soak them overnight in several changes of water to help draw out any unpleasant odors, then you boil them briefly in a Court Bullion until they firm up. You then have to carefully remove the outer membrane and if they vary in size you can remove some of the connecting membranes to split the fleshy parts up into even sized pieces at the same time.

Once that’s done you can saute, crumb and fry, or otherwise cook them. I chose to prepare mine in a slightly unusual fashion. I first sauteed them in some butter and duck fat and then smoked them in a pan filled with hay ( sorry no pictures of the smoking ).

I served them on a bed of mixed lettuce dressed with a confit garlic and white balsamic vinaigrette, some caramelized lemon segments and some quick pickled red onion ( whoops! i forgot about the onion until after I took the pictures ).

The sweetbreads have a firmness to the outside and then as you bite through have a silky almost pillowy texture and a very light flavor with a slight metallic undertone which goes fantastically with something acidic. I’ve read that the French often have them with a creamy sauce but I think light acidity is definitely the way to go. Next time I make them though I will try and find lamb sweetbreads instead of veal as they are smaller sized and thus would suit a salad better.

Tags: confit garlic, salad, sweetbread

Seeing Hank’s post on Wild Duck Consomme I decided to make some of my own ( post coming soon ) and as a result of butchering a whole duck I ended up with a couple of duck breasts that need eating. I had some Pomegranate Molasses and decided to use this as a base for a thick heavily reduced glaze.

I seasoned the breast well and then cooked it Sous Vide for 2 hours at 57C (135F).

While it cooked I made the sauce from Onion, Garlic, Red Wine, Duck Stock, Honey and Pomegranate Molasses. This was cooked down to a thick syrup and glossed with a small knob of butter.

When the sauce was ready I cross hatched the duck skin and seared it to crisp it up.

Served with some baby potatoes and Asparagus broiled with a slice of bacon cheddar on top.

Oh and kids, if you go to all the effort of getting your duck skin nice and crispy don’t rest it skin side down.

Tags: Asparagus, duck, Pomegranate Molasses, Sous Vide