Homemade Pancetta for Equal Rights and Equal Work

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

“It’s all work,” the preacher replied. “They’s too much of it to split it up to men’s or women’s work. You got stuff to do. Leave me salt the meat.” From The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The Joads are ready to head out; their last chore is to butcher and salt down two young pigs for the trip.  When Casy offers to take over the job so Ma Joad can pack her room, she protests that it’s “women’s work.”  But Casy is adamant.

Home Cured Pancetta

About 5 lbs of pork belly (do yourself a favor and make sure that the skin and ribs are removed by the butcher and that it’s trimmed up to a nice rectangular shape)

12 grams pink salt (Prague powder #2)

50 grams kosher salt

26 grams brown sugar

10 grams juniper berries

4 bay leaves crumbled

4 grams nutmeg

4 grams thyme

40 grams coarsely ground black pepper (plus extra for the drying phase)

4 cloves garlic, pressed

Grind all of the spices except the pepper in a spice grinder/coffee grinder (I actually bought a new one just for this purpose).  Then mix the coarse pepper and garlic into the rest of the spices.  Rub the meat all over with the spices being sure to get it good and coated.  Place in a zip lock bag in the fridge for 7 days.  Every other day, you should flip the bag over and “massage” the meat.  

After the 7 days have passed, you should rinse the meat thoroughly and pat it dry with paper towels.  Sprinkle the meat side with more ground pepper.  Roll the meat as tightly as you can so that there are no air pockets (air pockets can lead to bad mold).  Tie it off to keep it tight and then place it inside a linen bag.  Hang to dry for 2 weeks.  The best conditions are  70% humidity with minimal light.  I made a home for mine in a seldom used cupboard and placed a bowl of salted water on the shelf for humidity. 

Here’s why I don’t think my project is going to work.  Good kitchen knives are super expensive.  I don’t own any.  I have a decent set that my friends Bethany and Carey gave me about 7 years ago.  They get me through the average kitchen task.  Butchering meat is way beyond my average task.  When I bought the pork belly, it was from a great, albeit expensive, shop in Carrol Gardens called Paisanos.  When it rang up at $27, I assumed I was being victimized by the neighborhood and the “artisanal” craze.  In fact, when I got home, I discovered that not only did I have the belly, I had the ribs and the skin as well.  I had to cut it off.  Pun intended, I butchered it.  I lost most of the fat that makes pancetta delicious, and I also ended up with long rents in the middle of the belly as well as piece that got pulled completely away from the main portion.  I attempted to overlap it and splice it together as much as possible, but it looks nothing like it should.  I am anticipating lots of air pockets, and dreading lots of bad mold.

On the plus side, I was also able to make some delicious honey soy sauce spare ribs and roast my own chicharron (blogs to follow).

Although this took an initial layout of money in the form of the food scale and the grinder, I think, if it works, it will mean that I have close to 4 pounds of pancetta for a reasonable price when you consider the ribs and the chicharon.

Check back in about 2 weeks to see how the experiment fares.

Breaded Pork Chops You Could Eat Your Way Outta

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

“If I was rich, if I was rich I’d git so many pork chops—I’d cord ’em up aroun’ me like wood, an’ I’d eat my way out.” From the Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

You know you’ve been truly hungry when the thought of being rich just makes you think about food instead of cars, clothes, or traveling to exotic places.

Breaded Pork Chops

3 bone in pork chops (because they were in my freezer from when they were on sale)

1/4 cup bread crumbs

1/4 cup flour

A little smear of cold bacon grease reserved from the last time I cooked it

Melt the bacon grease in the pan.  While it’s heating up, dredge the chops through the flour and breadcrumb mixture.  Cook over medium heat for about 3 minutes on each side until golden brown and cooked through. 

I served mine with some leftover emergency mac and cheese (also topped with breadcrumbs for comfort food purposes) and steamed brussels sprouts.  I think the bacon grease made it more delicious than ever.

Beer Baked Beans and Tom Joad Finds the Friendly People

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

“They walked away through the sleeping camp. In front of one tent a low fitful fire burned, and a woman watched a kettle that cooked early breakfast. The smell of the cooking beans was strong and fine. ‘Like to have a plate a them,’ Tom said politely as they went by. The woman smiled. ‘They ain’t done or you’d be welcome,’ she said. ‘Come aroun’ in the daybreak.’ ‘Thank you, ma’am,’”

There is something fine and delicious about the smell of baking beans…

Beer Baked Beans 

2 bags pinto beans soaked in cold water over night

2 cups chicken stock (I just threw in a Maggi chicken cube)

4 bay leaves

2 medium onions

4 slices of cooked bacon, crumbled

4 cloves of garlic

A bottle of medium to dark beer (I used Magic Hat’s Black and Night Stout – because it was all I had in the fridge)

Ketchup

Dijon Mustard

Brown Sugar

Cayenne Pepper

Drain the overnight water from the beans and put them in a pot with enough fresh water to cover them for boiling.  Quarter one of the onions and add it to the pan with the bay leaves.  Boil the beans for at least half an hour or until they are tender to your liking.  Drain the water, reserving a cup or two, and discard the onion and bay leaves.  Mix the rest of your ingredients – this is very similar to the barbecue sauce I made the same night, so don’t ask me for precise measurements, it’s all “to taste.”  Bake the beans at 350 for 40 minutes to an hour and serve to any stranger who happens along and looks hungry.

In the past I’ve always gone for the canned pinto beans but the dry beans are so much tastier!  I don’t know why I balked at the idea of soaking them overnight.  It’s no trouble at all and the results are both cheaper and far more amazing than the canned beans I made earlier.

A note about sauteed escarole.  I heated some garlic in some olive oil before adding the escarole to the pan.  You have to rinse it first, but make sure it’s totally dried before you try to saute it.  The excess water made it steam as well as fry and it was a little slimier than I’d have liked it. The Parmesan helped and it wasn’t bad, but I would either leave it to air dry a while or wipe it down before cooking in the future.

Spicy Baby Back Ribs for Gnawing Purposes

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

“Now that they were committed to going, the hurry infected all of them. Noah carried the slabs of meat into the kitchen and cut it into small salting blocks, and Ma patted the coarse salt in, laid it piece by piece in the kegs, careful that no two pieces touched each other. She laid the slabs like bricks, and pounded salt in the spaces. And Noah cut up the side-meat and he cut up the legs. Ma kept her fire going, and as Noah cleaned the ribs and the spines and leg bones of all the meat he could, she put them in the oven to roast for gnawing purposes.”  From The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The Joads are ready to head out, and they’ve packed some bones to gnaw on.  My grandmother was an expert in all things related to etiquette, and knives and forks were held “properly” from the time we were very young children, but even she couldn’t pass up the chance to announce that she’d be happy to “gnaw on a bone” if there were ribs involved.

Spicy Baby Back Ribs

1 rack of baby back ribs

Ketchup

Brown sugar

Molasses

Apple cider vinegar

Garlic cloves, crushed

Cayenne pepper, to taste

Black Pepper

Salt

Douse your ribs in a splash of apple cider vinegar and leave them to soak it up for about half an hour.  While they soak, create a rub by mashing together salt, cayenne, black pepper, and crushed garlic.  I have learned from experience that it’s possible to be too liberal with your rub and create a salty disaster, so be sure to only just lightly coat the meat on all sides with the mixture. Wrap the ribs firmly in aluminum foil and place in a baking dish to prevent dripping.  Bake at 300 degrees for about 1 hour.  While the ribs are slow roasting away, make your barbecue sauce*.  Cook your sauce over low heat until all the flavors are good and polyamorously married.  After the first hour, remove the ribs from the foil and start basting every half hour for another hour and half.  

* I never measure my ingredients for barbecue sauce because every time I taste it I think it needs a pinch more of cayenne or extra ketchup or another dash of vinegar.  Consequently, it never tastes the same two times in a row.  My advice is use your Cayenne sparingly so it’s not overpoweringly hot and just start tossing in ingredients until you have about 2 cups of something that tastes the way you like it.  I tend to be heavier on ketchup and molasses and lighter on brown sugar.  I add lots of garlic, and with the vinegar, I think it depends on the day.  Be creative, if you get overeager with one ingredient, you can always balance it back by adding more of something else and leftovers are no bad thing.  There are infinite combinations with other ingredients as well and I’ve experimented with honey, soy sauce, maple syrup, as well as other herbs and spices.  Really, there’s not much you can do to screw it up (maybe peanut butter would’t be a great call).

I served my ribs with homemade baked beans (recipe to follow tomorrow) and some sauteed escarole with garlic and Parmesan.  As in a few other instances, I’m not sure whether making your own barbecue sauce is more or less expensive.  Ribs aren’t too cheap, but I got these little guys on sale and they are a real treat for me, so I can’t pass them up.  Certainly, there are cheap and expensive branded sauces that are all kinds of delicious.  Grandma used to use a sticky, red “Chinese” Ah-So sauce and we loved it.

Celebrate a Wedding with some Pancakes

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

“‘Oh, my! I wisht – I wisht we had a cake.  I wisht we had – a cake or somepin.’ ’I'll set some coffee on an’ make up some pancakes,’” Ma said.  ’We got sirup’ ’Oh, my!’ Mrs. Wainright said.  ’ Why – well.  Look, I’ll bring some sugar.  We’ll put sugar in them pancakes.’” From The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The family has gotten a little flush from a few weeks’ worth of good cotton picking, they are living in an old boxcar which they share with another family and they are about to celebrate a wedding – with pancakes because that’s the best they can pull together.  It’s incredible how ready they are to celebrate just anything and share what little they have in order to make the occasion as special as they can.

Pancakes (A Half Recipe)

1 cup flour

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 tbsp sugar

1 cup milk

2 tbsp melted butter

1 egg

Mix everything together in a bowl and if you forgot the egg the first time, as I did, you can mix it in after.  You don’t want to overmix your batter though, there should be small lumps, they’re delicious.  Heat a skillet over medium heat and spread some cooking oil around it (or butter, as you choose, or lard, if you think you can stand it).  When the pan is evenly heated, start pouring out your pancake batter.  I sometimes tend toward the whimsical myself and so I made my pancakes look like a bear and a dinosaur (I don’t know why the dinosaur head looks like the head of the Alien in the Ridley Scott movies – it was a fluke).  The trick to making good pancakes is not to let them burn but also not to try and flip them too soon.  You want to wait until a good number of bubbles have started to appear on the top, and then you want to test your pancake’s flippability by checking whether you can get the spatula under it easily, if it sticks at all, it’s not ready to be flipped. Serve hot with “sirop” and butter, if you’re feeling decadent, and enjoy!

I prefer real maple syrup.  As I’ve said before, there are certain things that you just can’t skimp on and we grew up with real maple syrup as a staple in our home.  Real maple syrup aside, this was a super cheap meal, since everything was in my kitchen already.  I had two critter shaped cakes for dinner and have enough batter leftover to make some for breakfast tomorrow.

There are an infinite number of ways you could jazz this up, and that’s not including pancake shape competitions, so let your imagination run wild.  I thought of adding crumbled bacon (or candied and crumbled bacon?) right to my batter, but the bacon was going to take too long to defrost and I was hungry.

Cup a Java and a Slice of Pie Before You Head Back Out on the Road

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

“Well, what’s it gonna be? Oh, cup a Java. Kinda pie ya got? Banana cream, pineapple cream, chocolate cream—an’ apple. Make it apple. Wait—Kind is that big thick one? Mae lifts it out and sniffs it. Banana cream. Cut off a hunk; make it a big hunk”  From The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

This is an exchange between a truck driver and a diner waitress.  She is always complaining about how she hates the “Oakies” because they never buy anything and she likes the truck drivers because they have money to tip well.  But she also sells 5 cent candy at 2 for a penny to a traveling family because she wants the little boys to smile.  The truck drivers leave her a 50 cent tip each.  It’s nice to think that people can find kindness and pass it on.

This weekend my friends Julie and Richard made me an apple pie.  Richard brought his own food scale to weight his ingredients instead of using measuring cups, and he deciphered some kind of code on a recipe card I couldn’t read.  He claims he will send the recipe to me in an email, but he might also keep his secret close.  Anyway, since I barely lifted a finger, I shouldn’t be the one blogging about it.  (We picked apple since we were celebrating the Middle Earth New Year’s Eve – March 25th is day the men of the West defeat Sauron in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, so we thought we’d screen a film and drink some ales.  Apple pie seemed to fit the bill. Yes, we are delightfully geeky.)

Richard’s Secret Crust Apple Pie 

Pie crust made with a touch of salt and actual lard (I was surprised I could find any, but it was Goya brand, so maybe not that surprised) 

3 lbs granny smith apples, peeled, cored, and sliced

Cinnamon and Nutmeg to taste

1 cup sugar

1 stick of butter

2 tbsp lemon juice

Richard said that he likes his apples to be very soft, but he usually uses yellow delicious and more lemon juice.  We baked the pie at 55o degrees for about 40 minutes and then lowered the temperature to 350 for an hour.  After that we just turned the oven off and let the pie sit in there while it cooled.  The crust was great but the apples had almost lost their entire shape, which was my fault for getting the granny smiths (they were on sale!  Depressioners know I wasn’t going to spend more for the yellow delicious!).  Still it was eaten to rave reviews.

This was a pretty cheap pie overall, since I had everything but the apples and the lard.  Incidentally, Crisco shortening sticks were $4 and the lard was $1.19.  I will be making biscuits with it in the near future.

Bacon, Biscuits, and Gravy and Ma Gets Her Hands Dirty

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

“She moved back to the stove and dumped the big pan of bulbous biscuits on two tin plates. She shook flour into the deep grease to make gravy, and her hand was white with flour. For a moment Tom watched her, and then he went to the door.”  From The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

I hadn’t known that you could make gravy out of the grease left after cooking bacon. I guess because America is so fat conscious, (what’s that you said, McDonald’s?  The Quarter-Pounder is on sale?) we view this as being a thoroughly unhealthy meal, but it sure did taste good.  Tom Joad agreed as he wolfed down his first home cooked meal in 4 years.

Biscuits and Bacon Gravy

Drop Biscuits baked according to your favorite recipe (I always consult The Joy of Cooking for this one)

1/4 lb of bacon 

About 1 tbsp of flour

About 2 cups of liquid (milk, or water, or a combination of the two)

Salt and Pepper to taste

Cook the bacon and remove to drain on a paper towel.  While the grease is still hot, whisk in the flour and cook for a few minutes, you are basically making a bacon grease roux.  Slowly whisk in your liquids and salt and pepper and cook until you achieve the desired gravy thickness.  This gravy will be lumpy anyway, so I crumbled up some bacon to add a little flavor and crunch. Split your biscuits in half and ladle your gravy over them.  Add some bacon to the plate and you have your own tasty little heart attack waiting to happen.  

I only made a quarter of my bacon, because I live alone.  If you made the whole pound, you’d want to increase the flour and liquid accordingly.

A few notes about saving money.  There are all kinds of generic brand foods that are just as tasty as the name brands.  There are also some foods you just cannot skimp on.  I have learned that coffee is one and boxed macaroni and cheese is another (Annie’s is good, but Kraft is “the cheesiest.”)  I probably had learned and forgotten that bacon is also something you never want to skimp on.  I fell for the tricky “Sale $3.99″ sign this time and regretted it as soon as I opened my package and saw that my “side meat” was almost entirely side fat.  Lesson (re)learned.  You can save a lot of money buying generic foods and cooking with bacon grease instead of throwing it out, but don’t torture yourself.  Spend that extra dollar and get the good bacon.

Meaty Capellini Bolognese and Ma Joad Meets the Company Store

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

“’Ever’body wants meat—needs meat. That hamburg is purty nice stuff. Use the grease that comes out a her for gravy. Purty nice. No waste. Don’t throw no bone away.’ ‘How—how much is side-meat?’ ‘Well, now you’re gettin’ into fancy stuff. Christmas stuff. Thanks-givin’ stuff. Thirty-five cents a poun’. I could sell you turkey cheaper, if I had some turkey.’ Ma sighed. ‘Give me two pounds hamburg.’ ‘Yes, ma’am.’ He scooped the pale meat on a piece of waxed paper. ‘An’ what else?’” From The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Everything at the company store costs about 5 cents more than it does in town and of course, the company doesn’t pay you in money but in slips that you can only redeem at the company store.  And the meat that she buys “looks all full a fat an’ gristle.”  So it’s akin to mystery meat, which is why I never cook with “hamburger.” This is a good segue into introducing the meat that I used in my bolognese.  I defrosted the ground up chicken that I’d reserved for that purpose, but it didn’t look like enough to make a really meaty sauce, so I defrosted another ziplock of mystery meat.  I foolishly didn’t label it when I’d stashed it in there, so it was either pork or veal leftover from my British sausage making days.

Meaty Capellini Bolognese

About 2 cups of minced cooked chicken

About 1/2 lb of ground beef/veal/pork or whatever else you might have lying around (I don’t recommend Spam for this one)

2  jars of pasta sauce

3 cloves of garlic, pressed

1/2 onion minced

Basil and Oregano to taste

Olive oil to fry the onion

1 box of capellini  

Shredded Parmesan to taste (I was given a great imported Parmagiano Romano for my birthday, so I used that, but ordinarily I would have just used Kraft)

Saute the onions in a pan over medium heat, add the raw meat and brown it.  Add the garlic and herbs and stir in the cooked chicken.  Add the jars of sauce and simmer until the flavors are mixed in.  Boil the pasta according to the box’s al dente directions, drain the pasta, ladle some sauce over your pasta portion, and serve hot with Parmesan on top.

Again, this was an extremely inexpensive meal.  The mystery meat was already in my freezer, but 1/2 lb of any ground meat is not usually too expensive to acquire and the blending of flavors, whatever the second one was, was delicious.  Usually, I make my own tomato sauce with canned Romas, but this time I was feeling a little too tired and hungry to take all the time for that, so I bought some Prego.  I haven’t actually done a cost analysis of whether making sauce from jarred tomatoes is cheaper, I just don’t like the store bought sauces because they tend to be too sweet for my taste.  I certainly could have used a cheaper Parmesan, but it was delicious.

That’s a wrap on the original roasted chicken; I finally used it all up.

 

Curried Chicken Soup And Pa Goes Out for Neck Meat

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

“’Got ta make us up a little stew,’ she said. ‘We ain’t et nothin’ cooked right sence we come from home. Pa, you go up to the store there an’ get me some neck meat. Make a nice stew here.’ Pa stood up and sauntered away.”  From The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Ma Joad really starts to boss her man around in the middle of the book,  ”Pa sniffled. ‘Seems like times is changed,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Time was when a man said what we’d do. Seems like women is tellin’ now. Seems like it’s purty near time to get out a stick.’ Ma put the clean dripping tin dish out on a box. She smiled down at her work. ‘You get your stick, Pa,’ she said. ‘Times when they’s food an’ a place to set, then maybe you can use your stick an’ keep your skin whole. But you ain’t a-doin’ your job, either a-thinkin’ or a-workin’. If you was, why, you could use your stick, an’ women folks’d sniffle their nose an’ creep-mouse aroun’. But you jus’ get you a stick now an’ you ain’t lickin’ no woman; you’re a-fightin’, ’cause I got a stick all laid out too.’”

I love that woman.

Curried Chicken Soup

6-8 cups of chicken stock

2-3 medium red potatoes

1 medium onion

2 large carrots

3 cloves garlic

2 cups cooked rice

Madras curry powder

As much crushed red pepper as you can stand (some like hot!)

Extra corriander, cumin, turmeric, etc. to spice it up as you see fit

Bring the stock to a boil and add the spices.  Add the vegetables and cook until they are tender.  Add the rice and serve hot with bread or crackers, or just enjoy it plain.  

There are numerous variations on this soup.  You could add other Indian spices, if you have them around, like fenugreek.  Also, fresh ginger or powdered would taste good too.  You could add some coconut milk for a creamier broth… and those are just some Indian-spiced variations.  You could just as easily make a more standard chicken soup and add celery, parsnip, turnip, just about any vegetable, really.  You could substitute noodles for the rice (I contemplated using a cup of the mini stars instead).  You could make drop biscuits and cook them on the top of your soup… This is what makes a good chicken stock so invaluable, you can do anything with it.

For me, it was remarkably inexpensive because I already had everything in my kitchen, most of it was leftover from the dishes I’d previously cooked. Depression cooking may get a little repetitive (I’ve finally run out of carrots, so don’t expect to see any more for a while – I’m not the biggest carrot fan even when I haven’t been eating them for 2 weeks!), but it sure is cheap to keep up with.

Hearty Stock Made with Ma Joad’s Chicken Feet

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

“‘Sure,’ said Joad. ‘I wonder Pa went so easy. I wonder Grampa didn’ kill nobody. Nobody never tol’ Grampa where to put his feet. An’ Ma ain’t nobody you can push aroun’, neither. I seen her beat the hell out of a tin peddler with a live chicken one time ’cause he give her a argument. She had the chicken in one han’, an’ the ax in the other, about to cut its head off. She aimed to go for that peddler with the ax, but she forgot which han’ was which, an’ she takes after him with the chicken. Couldn’ even eat that chicken when she got done. They wasn’t nothing but a pair a legs in her han’. Grampa throwed his hip outa joint laughin’. How’d my folks go so easy?’”  From The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

I didn’t really make my stock with chicken feet.  I defrosted the bones from the chicken I’d cooked earlier.  I love Ma Joad.  She is quite the firebrand woman.  She threatens her whole family with a car jack handle when they’re about to split up on the road and each and every one of them backs down to her.  It is hard to imagine her allowing some bank man to come onto her property and tell her she’s got to give it up and go.  But, really, none of the Joads paid that any mind until a tractor ran their house off it’s foundation and they had no choice but to go.

Hearty Chicken Stock

Bones of 1 chicken

1 onion quartered

3 cloves of garlic peeled

Spices of your choice (I used rosemary and thyme this go around, I didn’t have any bay leaf left, but I usually use that)

Salt and Pepper

Boil until the water runs down and then boil some more 

I don’t think there’s any way you could possibly make this any cheaper.  You could make it fancier:  I know some folks have fine ideas about a nice clear broth made up with a bouquet garni and some vegetables that you barely boil and then throw away, but I enjoy a thick, hearty stock.  I don’t know where I got the idea that the stock had to boil for hours and hours, or whether I just made it up, but I mostly let mine boil until the onions are almost melted clear away into the broth.  Tomorrow I will drain off the fat and make this into some kind of tasty soup, not sure yet what kind, but I still have leftover potatoes and carrots which will get a feature spot one way or the other.