Chicken is so much more than white, skinless meat. After a few years in kitchens, I had cooked my share of frozen I.Q.F. breasts that lose half their volume after cooking from the solution they’re injected with. I knew chicken as a dry, powdery meat usually roached on a grilled and chopped to bits before…
Offal
Classic Pork Headcheese
When I heard that suckling pigs were coming into the kitchen at Heartland, I squealed with joy. I knew that the heads would be leftover since they wouldn’t give up the amount of meat a large pig would for our typical headcheese. I begged the butcher to save the heads for me, so I could…
Crispy Pork Snout with Black Truffle
The last time I visited the Butcher Block restaurant in Minneapolis, Chef Fillipo Caffari gave us a tour of the kitchen. Fillipo moved here from Rome, where he used to be a butcher. I haven’t worked directly under him except for one or two special dinners, but I always admired the magic he works with…
Seared Foie Gras with Pickled Ramp-Apricot Syrup
I’ll be honest, when I was younger and had just started working in kitchens around the Twin Cities, I wanted to cook foie gras because it was expensive and, because it was expensive. All the famous French chefs I loved used it, and I wanted to be like them, cook their way. During the fall…
Foie Gras
A 5000 year old delicacy The ancient Egyptians were pretty talented, they learned to manipulate a difficult landscape, transforming it to suit their needs. They built massive monuments and pyramids with mathematical preciseness. Another thing that is overlooked about them is that they excelled at domesticating waterfowl. Over time, working with and caring for the…
Goat Brain Ravioli, Morel Tomato Sauce, Sage
I wrote a brief method of how to cook with brains here. I understand though how much trepidation people have when trying offal though, so I really need to share this recipe. The first time I read about a dish like this was while reading Mario Batali’s Babbo book. Even though Mario Batali now has…
How To Cook Brains
In our era, nose-to-tail eating and honoring the whole animal is a dying art, and, even among those who occasionally eat organ meats, brains are a one-off, and occupy a curious place in the hierarchy of organ meats. For the culinary purposes of this post, I’m only speaking about brains I’ve eaten: pork, lamb,…
Chicken Heart Confit
Here I’ve applied the confit method to chicken hearts, instead of the traditional duck legs.Trimmed, cleaned chicken hearts seasoned and cooked slowly in fat until soft and tender are good in lots of things. Chopped up, gently browned and tossed with buttered noodles, or other pasta based dishes are some of my favorites. They’re also…
Veal Liver With Chanterelle Cream Sauce And Garlic Mustard
I like liver, but lots of people don’t like offal and organ meats. They are ugly, gross things that only cavemen (or Europeans) would eat. They have funky textures, flavors, and scents. The way many people eat now, it is totally understandable how such things are foreign, strange, or just plain gross. At the super…
Nettle-Potato Soup With Creme Fraiche, Chives, And Tongue.
The second forage of the year didn’t yield what we wanted this morning (morels), but it was still fruitful. Stinging nettles are up, so I decided take some home and make a fun soup. Nettle soup is a classic Scottish thing. I don’t think that Scots would puree their nettle soup, but I like making…
Fried Perch with Peas, Ham and Yellowfoot Chanterelle Sauce
The combination of peas, meat, mushrooms onions is a tried and true stand one. At an Italian restaurant I used to work at, we had very popular menu item called “Fettuccine Bosciola”(meaning in the style of the forest). This recipe is a fun play on the traditional ingredients, using them as the basis for a…
How To Cook with Caul Fat / Lace Fat
Ever since I discovered what caul was, I’d been dying to cook with it, and it took me a number of years to finally get to work with this stuff. Reading old french cook books has always had me coming across it being used in various ways. The trick is….where to find it? What…