Jonathon Erdeljac's Beer-and-Cheddar Soup

I'm anxious to visit Jonathon Erdeljac's new Oak Cliff restaurant, Jonathon's Oak Cliff.  In the meantime, I made his Beer-and-Cheddar Soup recipe, which has received the stamp of approval from my family.  My version of this soup doesn't make the prettiest picture, as I sacrificed vanity in favor of flavor and used my favorite Cabot extra sharp white cheddar instead of yellow cheddar.  I think this recipe has the perfect ratio of broth to cheese to beer, very savory, not cloyingly cheesy, no overpowering elements.  We try to limit our simple carbs, so we didn't serve the soup with the garlic-rubbed toasts as the recipe calls for, but that would certainly be a great textural addition.  And I didn't have a jalapeno handy, so I used a couple of pinches of cayenne pepper instead. 


Jonathon Erdeljac's Beer-and-Cheddar Soup

2 large garlic cloves, minced
1 celery rib, finely chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Garlic-rubbed toasts, for serving
1 tablespoon chopped thyme
1 large jalapeño, seeded and chopped
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
One 12-ounce bottle lager or pilsner
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 pound piece of slab bacon, sliced 1/3 inch thick and cut into 1/3-inch dice
About 2 1/4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1/2 pound sharp yellow cheddar cheese, coarsely shredded
4 ounces smoked cheddar cheese, coarsely shredded

1.  In a large saucepan, cook the bacon over moderate heat until the fat is rendered and the bacon is crisp, 7 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the bacon to a bowl. Add the celery, onion, jalapeño, garlic and thyme to the saucepan and cook over moderate heat, stirring, until softened, 8 minutes. Add half of the beer and cook until reduced by half, 5 minutes. Add 2 1/4 cups of chicken broth and bring to a simmer.

2.  In a small skillet, melt the butter. Add the flour and cook over moderate heat, stirring, until lightly browned, about 2 minutes. Whisk this roux into the soup until incorporated and bring to a simmer.  Cook until thickened, about 8 minutes. Add the heavy cream, cheddar cheeses and the remaining beer and simmer, stirring occasionally, until thick and creamy, about 5 minutes. Stir in the bacon and season with salt and pepper. Add a few tablespoons of broth if the soup is too thick. Serve the soup with garlic toasts.

Make Ahead:  The cheddar soup can be refrigerated overnight. Rewarm gently and thin with additional broth.

Pork Belly Futures ... Economics Of Pork



Your initial investment ...



... yields dividends like these ...

... and these.

Don't worry, this isn't an essay about the stock market.  Just a recap of our recent pork projects ... no, not a critique on wasteful government spending either, hahaha.  With apologies to our friends in the financial sector, butchering and curing your own pork products is much more fun than analyzing the stock market; and with no apologies to bureaucrats, our charcuterie is very frugal.  Nothing gets thrown away except a few bones that have already given up all their porcine goodness.

As posted here:  Plunging Headlong Into Charcuterie ... Homemade, Home-Smoked Bacon, I was lucky enough to purchase three bone-in pork belly chunks recently.  I weighed them after removing the bones from all and also removing the skin from one portion for pancetta, and weighed them again when finished.  If you're lucky as are we to live near some good Asian markets, it's easy to find pork bellies with or without bones.  Once we really master this process, I'd like to start ordering pork bellies from local, organic purveyors to get an even higher quality product, but we'll stick to the less expensive bellies while we're learning.

Trying to compare costs is a bit apples to oranges.  The homemade bacon and pancetta is more expensive than crappy store-brands, but less expensive than gourmet market products.  I think ours compares very favorably to the gourmet stuff.  Plus essentially everything is used, bones, skin, and all, and you know exactly what's in your food.

Bone-In Pork Belly Price, $2.99/lb.


Beginning Weight of Pork Belly


#1  8.55 lbs. (final product peppered bacon)
#2  6.32 lbs. (final product regular bacon)
#3  5.57 lbs. (final product pancetta)


Trimmed Weight of Pork Belly


#1  6.18 lbs. (bones removed)
#2  5.6 lbs. (bones removed)
#3  3.62 lbs. (bones and skin removed)


Finished Weight of Yummy Pork Delicacies


#1  5.96 lbs. peppered bacon ($4.29 per lb. for the pork)
#2  5.41 lbs. regular bacon ($3.49 per lb. for the pork)
#3  3.17 lbs. pancetta ($5.25 per lb. for the pork)

Waste Not, Want Not.  I braised the racks of ribs that I cut off the pork bellies, removed the meat from the bones, and made an al-pastor style filling for tacos and enchiladas.  Even the liquid from braising the pork ribs was so tasty that I froze it to use for braising something else later.

I saved the skin that I removed from the pancetta chunk to be smoked along with the bacon and saved that and the smoked skin and excess fat from the bacon chunks to use for cooking beans or stews, just like you'd use fat back or salt pork, but much more flavorful than anything you can buy.

Although I have most of the cure ingredients on-hand already, there is obviously a small cost associated with the cure ingredients and for charcoal and smoking wood, which I haven't tried to quantify yet.  The only unusual item you'll need for curing is pink salt, which you'll probably have to order online. 

If you're the kind of cook who's considering doing charcuterie at home, it's likely that you already have the kitchen equipment and supplies you need.  You need a really good, sharp knife, specifically a boning knife if you're working with bone-in pork.  It's essential that every serious home cook have a good knife sharpener.  You'll want to use a plastic cutting board so it can be sterilized in the dishwasher.  You'll need heavy-duty 2-gallon zip top bags.  You may want to use rubber gloves.  Although it's not absolutely necessary, it's best to use a food scale for weighing the cure ingredients for accuracy.  And last, but certainly not least, make the small investment in a really good instructional cookbook.  I love Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman & Brian Polcyn.

Plunging Headlong Into Charcuterie ... Homemade, Home-Smoked Bacon



Check out this peppery, smoky, sizzling greatness!

 I love all things salted, cured, and preserved ... and I love pork ... therefore, I love Charcuterie!

We've dabbled over the years at smoking salmon, chicken, and turkey, and in the more complicated and sophisticated realm of curing pancetta and curing and smoking our own bacon.  I finally invested in this amazing cookbook:

I'm so in love with this cookbook.  If you are enamored (as am I) with the art of salting, curing, aging, smoking, preserving food, this cookbook is your Bible, a must-have.

Although I like to consider home-curing and home-smoking bacon and other delectables to be so 2011, so avant garde, I remember my daddy talking about his youth, when slaughtering a pig was a routine part of survival in rural life.  They would hang the various pork cuts in the smokehouse to cure, and they dropped pieces of the pork skin into hot oil, creating the treasured delicacy "cracklings," like what we call pork rinds or chicharonnes. 

There's a Biblical passage in Ecclesiastes that says, "There is nothing new under the sun."  No words could be more appropriate.  When we smoke our own bacon, we're not reinventing the wheel, folks; we're simply getting back to our roots.

Yummo, look at all this beautiful pork belly just waiting to fulfill its bacon destiny!

I was lucky enough to find large, bone-in pork belly portions.  And as a bonus I got to practice my meat fabrication skills.  I think that's the culinary school term for having a lot of fun butchering meat, meat fabrication.  I removed the rib sections from the pork bellies, reserving the ribs for another use, which I'll detail in a later post.

You only need a couple of specialized items to make your own bacon.  You need pink salt, a special salt made for curing and preserving (look for sources online) and it's best to use a food scale for accuracy in weighing your ingredients (you can find very inexpensive food scales -- I found this one at Wal-Mart for around $20).

Basic Dry Cure For Bacon


1 pound/450 grams kosher salt
8 ounces/225 grams sugar
2 ounces/50 grams pink salt

Bacon


One 3- to 5-pound slab pork belly, skin on
Basic Dry Cure for dredging


Trim the belly so that its edges are neat and square.  Spread the dry cure on a baking sheet.  Press all sides of the belly onto the cure to give it a thick uniform coating.


Place the belly in a 2-gallon ziploc bag.  Refrigerate for 7 days, flipping the bag over to redistribute the liquid that will accumulate every other day.


After 7 days, check the belly for firmness.  If it feels firm at the thickest point, it's cured.  If it still feels squishy,  refirigerate it for up to 2 more days, checking it every day.


Remove the belly from the cure, rinse thorougly, and pat dry with paper towels.  Let the bacon rest in the refrigerator, covered, for up to 3 days.


We made one slab of regular bacon and one slab of pepper bacon.  For the pepper bacon, we pressed cracked black peppercorns into one of the pork belly slabs after rinsing.

Prepare the fire in your smoker and smoke the bacon with wood of your choice, such as apple wood, at a very low heat until bacon reaches 150 degrees.

The easiest time to remove the skin is while the bacon is still warm from the smoker.  Be sure to save the smoky skin to flavor a pot of beans.

Both the regular and the pepper bacon are good, but the pepper bacon is probably the best bacon I've ever tasted.

Stuffed Mushrooms

These are hands-down the best stuffed mushrooms ever, and once you make them for family and friends they'll be requesting them for every event!  It's really easy to do most of the prep the day before, in fact you'll achieve the best results if you do.


Ingredients:

1 1/2 pounds medium-size fresh mushrooms (all approximately the same size)
6 slices bacon
1/2 cup minced bell pepper
1/2 cup minced onion
6 ounces cream cheese
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
3/4 cup bread crumbs (homemade or store-bought bread crumbs or Panko crumbs)
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley


The Day Before Serving Day:

Put the bacon in the freezer to firm up.  It's easier to dice that way.  Remove the cream cheese from the fridge to soften.

Clean the mushrooms and let them dry well on paper towels.  Trim off the very ends of the stems (throw the trimmings in your veggie freezer bag for veggie broth later) and separate the stems carefully from the caps.  Line a gallon-size ziplock bag with a paper towel.  Gently lay the mushroom caps on the paper towel in the ziplock in a single layer.  Use more than one ziplock bag if necessary.  Seal the bag and put the mushrooms in the fridge.

Finely dice the mushroom stems.

Remove the bacon from the freezer.  Use a very sharp knife to dice the bacon.

Cook the diced bacon, minced bell pepper, and minced onion in a skillet over medium heat until the bacon is partly cooked but not crisp and the bell pepper and onion are crisp-tender.  Pour into a strainer and drain off grease and liquid.  Transfer bacon mixture to a storage bowl (with a lid), add diced mushroom stems, softened cream cheese, Worcestershire sauce, and salt and pepper to taste.  Mix well while still warm.  It's easiest to mix with a fork.  Put the lid on the storage bowl and refrigerate the filling.


Serving Day:

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Remove mushrooms and filling from fridge.  Arrange mushroom caps in a single layer on an oven-safe platter (not your final serving platter).  Fill mushroom caps with the filling.  The easiest way to fill them neatly and evenly is to use a cookie scoop.

Put the platter of filled mushrooms in the oven for approximately 30 minutes, checking them every 10 minutes.  You'll be able to see and smell when it's time to remove the mushrooms from the oven.  Their texture will look different, they'll release some moisture, and they'll start to smell like, well, mushrooms.

Remove from oven and set aside to cool.

Increase oven temperature to 375 degrees.

Melt the butter.  Stir the chopped parsley into the bread crumbs.  Add the melted butter and mix well using two forks.

When the mushrooms are cool enough to handle, gently press a small palmful of the bread crumbs to the top of each mushroom, covering the filling with a mound of crumbs.  Place the mushrooms on an oven-safe serving platter.  Return to the oven and bake just until bread crumb topping is golden brown and crispy, about 5 to 10 minutes.  Keep a close eye on them; the difference between golden brown and shrieking smoke alarm is about 2 seconds!

Note:  If you want to prepare the mushrooms at home and serve them somewhere else, after putting the bread crumbs on the mushrooms, wrap the platter tightly with plastic wrap.  At the serving location, remove plastic wrap and heat mushrooms at 350 degrees until the mushrooms are hot and the crumbs are golden brown and crispy, about 20 to 30 minutes.  Again, keep a close eye on them.

And One More Note:  We always intentionally increase the measurements of the filling ingredients so that we have extra filling left over.  The extra filling is decadently good rolled up in an omelet.

Bacon-Wrapped Garlic Shrimp on the Grill

1 1/2 pounds large head-on shrimp, heads removed and shell removed except for the last shell segment and the tail, and deveined and rinsed

1 bacon slice for every 2 shrimp, sliced in half

Several tablespoons olive oil
Zest of 1 lime
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 cloves garlic pressed through a garlic press
1 teaspoon paprika*
2 tablespoons rum or tequila or triple sec**, optional

* I used Penzey's Hungarian half sharp paprika, which is slightly spicy, for this recipe: http://www.penzeys.com/cgi-bin/penzeys/p-penzeyspaprika.html
** A few weeks ago we had some orange rinds left over after squeezing the juice from the oranges. I covered the rinds with rum and let them steep for a few weeks. I then strained the liquid through a coffee filter laid inside a sieve to get a nice, clear orange-infused rum. I used that orange-infused rum in this recipe.

Pre-soak wooden skewers in water, two skewers for every three shrimp.

Drizzle shrimp with enough olive oil to coat. Add the lime zest, salt, pepper, garlic, paprika, and alcohol of choice (optional). Mix well.

"Parfry" your halved bacon slices. Cook in a skillet over medium heat long enough to cook out some of the fat. Bacon should be partially cooked but still be pliable. (Bacon takes a lot longer to cook properly than shrimp, so this precooking will ensure that when the bacon-wrapped shrimp are cooked on the grill the bacon will get slightly crispy and the shrimp will not be overcooked.) Remove the partially cooked bacon pieces to a cooling rack to cool and to allow the grease to drain.

I like to put 3 shrimp on each set of skewers. Be sure to use 2 skewers through each shrimp group; otherwise the shrimp will spin around the skewer every time you try to turn it.

Wrap a half piece of bacon around the "fat" end of a shrimp, the end opposite the tail. Push a skewer through the bacon-wrapped portion of the shrimp. Then push a second skewer through the portion of the shrimp between the bacon and the tail of the shrimp. Repeat with two more bacon-wrapped shrimp so that you have two parallel skewers pressed through three bacon-wrapped shrimp. If there's any remaining marinade, drizzle it over the skewered shrimp.

When all the shrimp skewers are prepared, cook them on your grill for a couple of minutes on each side, just until the shrimp turn pink.