Braised cabbage with eggs

Totally winged this one, based only on a rough description of a similar cooking technique, but it was good. Serves 2.

1 smallish onion

1 tbsp schmaltz + 1 small handful gribenes (or 2 slices diced bacon; basically you want some animal fat and associated little bits of meat)

1 tbsp bland cooking oil

1/2 a medium head of green cabbage, in 1-cm-wide strips

3 sprigs fresh dill

2 c water (or broth, beer, or wine)

2 eggs

Cook down the bacon, or melt the schmaltz; add oil, then gribenes and onion, and stir. When the onion’s clear, add the cabbage and dill and stir in thoroughly, along with a bit of salt. When it all hits cooking temperature, add the liquid. Bring to a simmer, then make two little depressions in the stuff and crack the eggs into them, breaking the yolks. Grind black pepper over the top, cover, and let it simmer on low until the eggs are cooked, at which point everything else will be done too. Serve with bread for soaking up the juice, and a decent strongly-flavoured beer — Dunkelweizen, perhaps, though the doppelbock was pretty good too.

Possible variations: Cantonese-style with laap cheong, rice wine, and no dill, served over Chinese rice; or using butter instead of meat fat.

Mussels: a note

We bought a kilo of frozen New Zealand greenlip mussels ($7) over the weekend at Ai Hoa Market in L.A. Chinatown. The brand was Sanford Sustainable Seafood (http://live.isitesoftware.co.nz/sanford/).

Today I cooked half of them, very simply: I sauteed a half-cup or so of minced shallots in a tablespoon of butter, added a cup of white wine (Charles Shaw chardonnay) and the frozen mussels, and simmered them with the lid on until they were done. Then I served them with some Berbere bread from Elat Market.

We added some lemon-garlic spaghetti (with Sciabica olive oil, thanks Dad!) and a salad with lettuce, mung bean sprouts (aka Asian iceberg lettuce), a handful of salted fennel tops, and tangerine vinaigrette. Also a couple of glasses of the chardonnay that I’d opened.

Seriously, these were the best mussels either of us have ever had. Big and juicy, just a little chewy, very clean flavoured, with an incredibly rich, complex, almost mushroomy aroma and a lingering sweetness about them.  The broth was heavenly. I cannot overstate how good these mussels were — and I wasn’t even all that terribly hungry, as I’d already taken the edge off with the salad, so it wasn’t just that. I could eat so many of these. I’m noting it here so that I remember the brand and store.

Also, the Charles Shaw chardonnay put in a lackluster performance when we first tried it with pasta carbonara, but in this dinner it was excellent. It seems to suit seafood and citrus flavours very well.

Things to do with meat

The recent spate of neighbors moving out has left us with a great deal of scavenging to do. In addition, a dinner we did back in October at my parents’ place left me with a whole lot of chicken bits. This forced me to figure out what to do with various kinds of scrap meat. Here I am recording some of the things I tried.

From 4 dozen bone-and-skin-on chicken thighs which we skinned, deboned, and de-fatted:

• Femurs go for stock. Note: next time do not use cabbage, as it emitted a noxious fume some time about 12 hours after initial boiling. Experimented with cracking the bones to allow the marrow to perfuse the liquid; this has certainly done no harm, though it hasn’t been cooked long enough for the bones to soften up yet. Will clarify in the fridge and then freeze, as before.
• Fat and skin chopped fine with an onion, rendered, then strained, yielded about 3 cups of very nice schmaltz and 2 cups of gribenes. Salted these immediately, then refrigerated them to use as crunchy pseudo-bacon bits. Note: Running the skins through some kind of food processor or grinder rather than chopping would be a much, much easier and less unpleasant experience, as well as yielding more uniform gribenes.

From ~2 lbs lean pork steaks, looking a bit gray and sketchy when I moved it from the fridge to the freezer:

• Cubed the frozen pork into 3 cm chunks for carnitas; added cumin, coriander, salt, pepper, frozen roasted peppers (3 jalapenos and about 2 poblanos), a few bay leaves, trimmings of an onion, and 8 cloves of garlic that had started to sprout. Cooked in slow-cooker on high until the meat is very tender, then picked out the meat and fried it (with fat and broth skimmed from the cooking pan) in a pan until brown. Daniel says it’s very good and not at all sketchy-tasting; I didn’t try any, as the taste of pork does not make me happy except in very small quantities. The cubes are now freezing individually, to be added to beans and such for a touch of pork flavour. The leftover broth is cooling; I’ll strain and freeze it in the morning, maybe eventually use it as a base for making Mexican rice or something.  I would use a pressure cooker to really sterilize this meat, given the choice, but I don’t have one. (ETA: I did use it to make Mexican rice, and it was very good and not excessively porky.)

From about 1 lb ground pork, frozen:

• 1/2 mixed with 2 cups bulgur into sort-of kibbeh patties, but seasoned with shallot, sage, and thyme. This was reasonably good, but not stellar.
• A large batch of (modified) ragù alla napoletana is on the stove right now; I’m letting it sit overnight to let the flavours mingle, and tomorrow will freeze in 2-serving-size increments. I got some top-notch organic celery at the farmers market, which was part of the impetus. Besides 6 stalks of this, also 2 onions and 2 carrots and olive oil for the soffrito; a large can of whole tomatoes plus 8 rather unfortunate-looking fresh romas, 2 cans of tomato paste, a good bit of scraped nutmeg, pinch of oregano, 1 T butter, a half-cup or so of over-oxidized red wine, and a whole lot of fresh ground black pepper.

Still have a block of what looks like frozen chicken breasts; not sure what to do with that.

Incidentally, I should remember that fennel tops, sliced thinly (greens and stalks), salted, and refrigerated, make a lovely salad dressing combined with lemon juice and Sciabica olive oil. Not what I’d planned to do with them, but improvisation once again wins out.