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DISH: Making Food from What Breaks Us
A bone of contention. Bare bones. A bone to pick. Most idioms about bones have negative connotations. And I can’t help but think about many of them when I reflect upon this year, which has certainly stripped the juicy meat from our lives. For Betsy and me, a good portion of that meat was our vocations. The pandemic’s carving knife went straight for our businesses, and it didn’t stop slicing until it hit, well, bone.
Even after the pandemic is over, I’m not entirely optimistic about the recovery of all of our individual hustles. Betsy’s floral and event-planning business will no doubt bloom in 2021 as the virus fades. But I truly believe that my days of restaurant criticism are dead, along with so many of our beloved eateries.
In fact, COVID-19 finished what Instagram influencers started. Before coronavirus, the dining audience was already starting not to care if the unidentified meat on that perfectly lighted plate was beef, pork, or lamb, as long as the Vanna White of the hospitality scene presenting it was wearing the right Hermès bangle.
Now, we’re so tired of cooking everything ourselves that we will do anything to save our restaurants. That certainly doesn’t include paying someone to critique them, even when it’s constructive. The system has become obsolete. Budding restaurants that can’t go the mile will drop off the tree to make way for healthier fruit.
Still, 2020 has thrown us some bones, so to speak: Neoteric technology. An increase in skill sets. Turning long-held hobbies into career pivots. They are like the gifts that cooks have always mined from the remains of a roast or a bird, that are revealed to students in culinary school: Here’s how to roast a bone for the marrow that spreads like truth on toast; here’s how to make stock to flavor everything from stews to rice dishes. You have to work a little harder, go an extra step to have them on hand. But they become foundational for you in the end, and you cease thinking about the learning curve.
Speaking of fresh proficiencies, some home cooks figured out, in the interests of scaling back this Thanksgiving, how to spatchcock a bird. This year I saw an awful lot of removed backbones and splayed poultry on social media, which I thought was an interesting but entirely unappealing trend. I’m not sure it saved any time, either. After all, you still have to cook through the same amount of material, with the exception of a backbone. It’s just in a different shape.
Rather than do that, for the upcoming December holidays, I’m going to roast a wild boar rib rack, along with some of the hugest short ribs I’ve ever seen, on the grill, from our favorite local provider Gaucho Ranch. Betsy may do something like the pork shoulder she did below, only larger because neither one of us knows how to downsize or cares about it when it comes to food. Why? Like most of you, we’re not having huge family gatherings. But we do like leftovers, making the aforementioned stock (see below), and batch cooking whenever possible.
In fact, for Thanksgiving, we both made 15-pound organic turkeys that cooked an hour faster than they should have. My sister-in-law’s 19-pound bird (for two people, and maybe a couple of scraps for two very lucky Golden Retrievers) was 90 minutes ahead of itself. It seems as though turkeys in general have gotten leaner, given that more people are concerned about their health. Additionally, ovens have become more efficient. It’s clear, from this year’s and prior years’ experiences, that generic guidelines need to be updated from the old 15-20 minutes per pound.
Fortunately, the lack of a large gathering made indiscreet timing a non-issue. I also made an enormous amount of food, cooking for all different kinds of diets in this house of four: vegan, gluten-free, egg-allergic, and just plain picky. I should note, though, that my son is home from college. Dispatching vittles is never a problem when he’s around.
As a bonus, I also have my own turkey carcass to steep into stock. I’ve never been shy about my love for bones. I’ve been known to take the remains of hams home from friends’ Christmas gatherings to make split pea soup and steaks from restaurants – most memorably, a specimen as long as a sword from the tomahawk ribeye at Quality Meats – to turn into beef barley.
And if there’s one thing we’ve learned about this year of bones, it’s that it’s far past time to make something with it.
JK
DISH: Recipes
Stocking Up
If I’d known that you could rename stock into bone broth and sell it for a lot of money… Well, you know how that adage goes. Stock and broth, they are one and the same. They are essentially made from scraps for the best flavor and bang for your buck. I keep roasted chicken carcasses in the freezer until I’ve got enough bones to brew up a batch or combine with some fresh chicken. Stale or limp vegetables are a fine addition (and making stock rescues them from the compost heap). Onions don’t necessarily need to be peeled except for aesthetics. Below is a benchmark recipe using the bones from a 15-pound turkey. A few pounds of chicken necks and bones, or a 3-5 pound stewing bird, plus roasted bones from another two will work just as well. If you want to get fancy, roast 5 pounds of the bony pieces of chicken for an hour at 375 degrees before throwing them into the soup pot (turkey parts like wings will need lower heat and longer in the oven). Here’s my best broth/stock/liquid gold no-recipe recipe.
1 chicken, 5 pounds of bony part or a combination, roasted or not
1 onion, halved
2-3 carrots in logs
½ head of garlic, halved (at least a few cloves)
1 celery stalk in logs, plus a bunch of leafy stalks if available
2 parsnips in logs
1 teaspoon peppercorns
2-inch chunk of ginger, peeled (optional)
1 turnip (optional)
Throw the whole mess in a large stockpot and cover it with water. Bring it to a boil, then simmer for at least an hour (for cooked bones) or 90 minutes for a whole chicken. The chicken will have most of the flavor cooked out (use for bland recipes like chicken salad), but then again, the broth will be delicious. It will need salt when using for soup or sauces.
BK
Good Bones
Good bones make for good roasts. In better times (was that just a couple of years ago?!), I was delivered a reminder of how delicious a Sunday supper could be when I ordered the daily roast at a pub in Ireland. Even September had a damp quality in the air, so I channeled my inner Irishwoman and chowed uncharacteristically on slow-cooked pork neck. You read that right: neck. Bones, plus meat, plus fat tendrils and cap. That must be why a roast earned its place on the Sunday menu. Asking the local Ohio butcher for a neck seemed excessive. But number one son came home with a 5-pound shoulder blade, which seemed promising and more appropriate size-wise. It’s good for two meals for a family of four if the first meal has sliced meat and the second has the meat combined with veggies for taco night.
5-pound pork shoulder or blade on the bone
4 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon rosemary
1 tablespoon thyme
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/3 cup olive oil
In a bowl, blend all of the ingredients together except for the pork. A Ninja or hand blender can work. Makes slices through the fat cap on an angle, 1 inch apart. Angle the knife 90 degrees in the other direction to make diamonds along the top. Try to get close to the meat. Smear the marinade in every nook and cranny. Let marinate at least for a couple of hours. Overnight is even better.
Preheat oven to 300-325 degrees.
Bring meat closer to room temperature before cooking, about ½-1 hour. At 300 the roast may take 5-6 hours, at 325 about 4 hours to cook through. Test to 180 degrees in multiple spots through the meat and close to the bone. Let it rest for at least 15 minutes before slicing.
*Note: All spices are optional. Salt and time in the oven make a great roast by themselves.
BK
TILL: Garden Party
It’s finally time to start planting in South Florida, now that the rains seem to have stopped (although the skies are darkening as I write this). So this past Saturday, the Preston B. Bird and Mary Heinlen Fruit & Spice Park held a plant sale, featuring all kinds of garden starters. We bought most of ours – tomatillos, four different colors of heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers, three chile peppers, strawberries developed specifically for the climate here, several types of lettuces, a couple of herbs, and more – from Bee Heaven Farm, for which I hosted a CSA for 10 years. That was back before kale chips and kale Caesar salad and kale slaw, when no one would eat the stuff and we were left every weekend with pounds of it to cook and freeze. I’ve hated kale ever since. Driving down to Homestead brought back memories of strapping two very small children into car seats with promises of strawberry milkshakes and cinnamon buns from Knaus Berry Farm if they let me pick up coolers filled with mustard greens and daikon radishes without incident. Usually, it worked. So for old times’ sake – okay, for gluttony’s sake – we also went to get cinnamon and pecan rolls. These pastries are legendary. You can’t go down to Homestead and not wait on line for them, pandemic or no pandemic.
JK
DISH: Where to Find Us
This past month, Betsy has been in the digital world teaching food, drink, and flower skills on her own and with @Alicestable, which has partnered with Harry & David. You can hire her for classes by contacting her through Dishtillery or by email at betsy@theportablegarden.com.
This past month, Jen’s food and food-related health writing has been published in Allrecipes.com and Insider. Her poetry has appeared in the journal One and been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. Find some articles and a poem here and see more articles and poems at her website. You can hire her for writing by contacting her through Dishtillery or by email at kavetchnik@gmail.com.
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DISH: Poetry
A lot of us were missing our relatives this year. We didn’t visit, and we didn’t get visited. So I offer this poem as a salve to remind you what houseguests are really like – just a bit of literary humor to lighten the spirit.
On Fish and Houseguests
After some time they tend to stink,
a notion attributed to Ben Franklin
though English author John Lyly
said it first: Fish and houseguests
in three days are stale. Yet at this meal
I have before me all good companions
—succulent snapper, supple conversation—
bathed in aromatics, the one
resting in witty shrimp chowder, the other
washed down with Grüner Veltliner,
a bisque of flowers and herbs
lending strength to the Polish proverb:
Fish, to taste right, must swim three times—
in water, in butter, and in wine.
My visitors have ordered the same dish
as if to prove how much we are one flesh,
measured and molded to consistent form.
I pierce the yuca crust, my fork held firm,
the last bite of yellowtail my only grief,
final buffer between houseguests and teeth.
You can find this and other food poems in Brie Season (Kelsay Books, 2014).
JK