On Thanksgiving day, the cook in me wouldn’t sleep in, so I awoke at four in the morning to begin cooking.  I love Thanksgiving, and this year, since I had been away from home for so long, I truly had a lot to be thankful for, right to home-cooked food, which I find preferable to dorm food.  No wonder I couldn’t keep out of my kitchen–like my gramps said, my pots and pans were wondering where I was and were ready to be used!

Although I couldn’t get my head on straight right away, I began by making a basic bread dough, to which I added poppy seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, and chopped walnuts.  I let the dough rise while I began with my other preparations.

The previous day, I had gotten started on and finished a few other projects:

• I made an apple pie and a pecan pie with wondrous crusts–not only did I use lard and butter in them, but I also chose to use duck fat and some vodka in the pecan pie crust and Gjetost cheese in the apple pie crust.
• I prepared the pumpkin tiramisu that I have made before, a la the request my mom made not to have pumpkin pie.  I made the lady fingers myself, and I topped the whole thing with crushed gingersnap cookies.

While my dough rose, I pulled an extra round of pie crust out of the fridge and decided it would make fine cheese straws for our Thanksgiving hors d’oeuvres.  They did.  I spent the rest of the day making a leek and mushroom stuffing with truffle butter (my mom and my favorite), a sweet potato casserole with streusel, and two roast turkeys.

Perhaps my crowning dish was a throw-in that I wanted to make but was unsure about: a jell-o mold.  Instead of making a normal mold, I made a panna cotta flavored with spices (cinnamon, allspice, and cloves), orange flower water, and almond extract.  I put that in the mold first, and then made a pomegranate and clementine jello.  After the panna cotta set, I put sliced almonds and dollops of thyme and honey flavored ricotta on top of it and then poured over the jello and let it set.  It was my own version of a medieval blancmange, and I loved it.

My mom made mousseline mashed potatoes, a turnip gratin, sauteed pearl onions, and cranberry sauce.  Everything was going great, and then I realized I still had to make the Brussels sprouts…so I chopped up the meat roulade that I made and sauteed it.  I added the sprouts and sauteed them in the rendered fat and then flavored it all with Pimenton de la Vera and Sherry vinegar.

YUM!

After some back-and-forth with the owners of the Piggery, I was able to obtain a pig head,with which I made headcheese and a homemade salumi!

Backstory:

I have been getting pork from The Piggery at the Ithaca Farmer’s Market for the past few months and started to wonder what happened to the heads after the pigs went to slaughter.  Even though I’ve seen cheek cuts on the menu at the market, I emailed the owners to see if I could snag a pig’s head.  I had seen Chris Cosentino make a stellar pig’s head salumi on his website, and I couldn’t help but envision myself cooking that awesome looking hunk of meat.

After I talked to the owners, I set a date to pick up my lovely little piggy head and some pork shoulder from them.

The day I went to pick up my order, I was taken by how large the head in question was.  In its cryovac package, it fit in my tote bag OK, but it weighed twenty or so pounds.  No matter; I did not have so much trouble lugging it back to Cornell campus–it only became a trial of my strength when I had to walk up the slope to my dorm.  After wielding some Herculean muscle power, I found myself in my dorm kitchen, pondering over this pig’s head.

I could not make the same salumi as Cosentino; the FDA does not permit The Piggery to de-hair their pigs in hot water but rather skins them.  Therefore, I was dealing with a skinless split skull:

pig head

The image may be shocking to you, dear reader, but the real-life experience was more humbling than the virtual image.

Holding another creature’s head in my hands was not how I expected it to be.  Yes, I have decided to play my role in the food chain as hunter-gatherer and forfeit the sadness many choose to experience as animals perish to fuel our hunger.  However, the sight, feel, and smell of having a dead pig’s head in my hands was something indescribable.  It’s not the cut and dry experience I anticipated–a little blood, some smooth flesh, and a face: there are different odors, textures of fluids, and parts of the inner head that go beyond.  After all, a living being is not merely a frame covered with skin that breaths and acts; it is an intricate thing.  Glands, veins, brains, and slimy stuff are a part of all creatures–and I beheld this prior to my cooking experience.  Seeing, feeling, and smelling all this makes the chef want to cook with respect, and I believe I did.

The head, as I mentioned, was large.  I used Cosentino’s guidelines in his demo video to remove the flesh from the skull and freed two nice pieces of meat from the head, both of which were like the one shown below.

I then took one half and a piece of pork shoulder and formed a roulade with rosemary, sage, fennel seeds, pepper, and salt to season it.  After wrapping it tightly in foil many times, I cooked it “sous vide” in a 180 degree (F) pot of water.  I did this for two and a half hours, although I wasn’t entirely sure what the optimum cooking time was.  I wanted to cook the meat and break down some fat in the shoulder without making it tough.  It came out as shown below.  Ultimately, I ate it sliced, and it was delicious, and then I used the rest diced up and sauteed with shredded Brussels sprouts on Thanksgiving, which I seasoned with smoked paprika and sherry vinegar.

I made the most delicious head cheese I’ve ever tasted with the other half-head and the rest of the shoulder.  I am serious when I say how good it was, and I am not bragging.  I am glad I could have used the head in a way that it was honored and even tasted so good my family ate it!  First, I cut the rest of the head into manageable-sized pieces first.  I had roasted the skull and made a pork stock with it after I took off the meat, so I braised the head meat and shoulder in the stock.  I braised this for a good five or so hours, and then I reduced the stock until it was shiny and I could tell it would form I nice gelatin when cold.

After cutting the pieces of head into bite-size pieces and pulling the shoulder into shreds, I put them in a container and poured over the stock.  A few hours in the fridge set the whole thing up, and although I had a very thick layer of fat on the bottom, the head cheese was fantastic!  I sliced it up and served it with hors d’ourves on Thanksgiving, and everyone went nuts!

You would think I would throw out the meat that was enveloped in all that extra fat, now, wouldn’t you?  Well, dear reader, that’s not how I roll.  Instead, a few hours before the end of my holiday break, I made some supreme nachos and used up the rest of the meat and fat!

Here’s how:

I sauteed up the fat-encased meat until all the fat melted, and I poured off most of the fat.  I added a mixture of mirin, sriracha, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, fish sauce chipotle adobo, and rice vinegar to the pan and simmered the meat until the liquid was a thick glaze.

I layered chips with cheddar, caramelized pearl onions (from Turkey day), pulled pork (dinner leftovers), and salsa.  Then, I poured the hot, sticky glazed head and shoulder meat over the nachos, topped with more cheese, and then put slices of headcheese on top.  After 15 minutes in a 425 degree oven, the nachos were glorious and lip-smacking good.  My Uncle, a nacho fanatic, claimed they were the best nachos he’d ever had.  With head cheese?  Imagine that!  If only I could have gotten a picture of them before we scarfed them all down!

This past weekend, I was in New York City with the Cornell Hotel Society for the annual Javits Center Hotel Show.  During the weekend, we had an agenda, but I had plenty of free time to hit up old favorites as well as to experience new flavors.

Figure 1: The hotel show, where a man was making porchetta.  Peter enjoyed this:

On Sunday, we attended a reception at Tribeca Grill, since Drew Nieporent is an alumnus of our school.  We had delicious tamarind-glazed pork ribs, some very good cod, DIY shrimp and chicken soft tacos/burritos, and beet and oxtail gnocchi.  Everything was very good, and the reception was a lot of fun.

After the reception was over, I took my friend, Peter, restaurant hopping; he had never before been to NYC.  Since he is a foodie as well, I wanted to show him some of the best.

We started at wd~50, where we went for an appetizer and dessert but ended up getting something more like a small meal.  Everything was phenomenal, as always: scallops with mustard, white chocolate, and beer; cuttlefish with rootbeer gel and cashew; cold fried chicken with honey-tabasco sauce; gala apple sorbet with rum-caramel filling; sake sorbet with licorice and bartlett pear; and pistachio cake with melon ice cream, chartreuse foam, and meyer lemon.  For something so spur-of-the moment, this meal was again one of the best I’ve experienced; alas, what less can I expect after many awesome eating experiences at wd~50?

After thanking the chefs, we headed out to walk around and decided to hit up Momofuku Ssam bar next.  We were already getting full, but we split the beef tendon with green mango and peanuts.  This dish was tender beyond what I could have expected, and the spiciness with the mango and peanuts was addictive.

After our dish, we went next door to the bakery, and I sampled the stuffing soft serve, a tribute to Thanksgiving.  Again, I could not have dreamed of an ice-cream more true to its flavor, and had I not been concerned that my gut was about to bust, I would have had a cup of it with caramelized corn bread and dried cranberries on top.

The weekend was a  great success, and I am glad I spent some time eating at my favorite restaurants–it brought me right back to my days outside of Ithaca.

After a visit to the Ithaca farmer’s market on Saturday, I made some awesome bacon chocolate chip cookies!  This time, however, I substituted lard for half of the butter.  Besides giving a slightly different flavor, the lard kept the cookies a little more structured (like Crisco does) than butter alone.  The bacon was also very delicious, especially with 60% Ghiradelli chocolate.

A few days ago, I also made a pumpkin semifreddo.  The backstory is that I don’t have an ice cream freezer, but I really wanted to do something with pumpkin creme anglaise.  So, after making the anglaise, I beat two or three eggwhites and sugar to a meringue and folded in about half to two-thirds of a cup of the creme anglaise.  This gave a lighter but spiced and definitively pumpkin flavor and froze very well; it was not crystalized at all.  I plated it with an apple cider reduction and salted pumpkin seeds.  Not only did they make for great presentation, but it was a tasty combination!

I recently found a tidbit of time to go to a Grocery store and to the Ithaca farmer’s market.  At the grocery store, I bought some Murray’s organic bone-in chicken breasts and some couscous.  At the farmer’s market, I got some apples and squash as well as some purple potatoes.  I haven’t yet made the squash or potatoes, but I have made:

Morrocan spiced chicken breast with raisin and pumpkin-seed couscous.  The chicken was juicier than a lot of chicken breast I’ve ever had.  I rubbed it with cumin, allspice, thyme, and cinnamon.  After searing it, I finished it in the oven.  Along with the couscous, it was delicious:

I also made cookies for Halloween to continue the spirit in the dorm.  Here are some of the delicious sugar cookies, both jack-o-lanterns and beer bottles (college style):

I did not have a pastry bag, so you’ll forgive their inherent flaws…at least they cannot get eaten by squirrels.

This morning, after waking up at six and showering, I found the time to make an apple pie.  I used the rest of my lard from The Piggery in my crust, and the filling had sliced granny smith and a Japanese variety of apple.  I was curious about Jeffrey Steingarten’s assertion that using spices in apple pie detracts from the apples’ flavor, so I only added some lightly spiced cider reduction that I made the other day, along with some flour and sugar.  The pie baked up beautifully, with a crust that is more delicately flaky and crisp than anything.  Here it is, presented on my cluttered dorm room desk:

I hope I can keep up the cooking; my new strategy involves cooking very early in the morning–the time other students use to sleep–this seems to justify my alternate use of time when I am not studying!  I’ve also devised the best method for enjoying breakfast: eating with a bamboo spork in a warm hat.  It makes me feel comforted for at least a small part of my day:

Bon appetite!  I have to go study…

Here is a list of my current culinary muses and wanderings:

1)  Yesterday, I got in the Halloween spirit.  After watching It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, I made a pumpkin cake decorated as a jack-o-lantern:
2)  After helping out with Cornell’s homecoming tailgate, I took the extra hotdog buns home to make bread pudding.  Not just any bread pudding–cinnamon-chocolate-cayenne with bananas, chocolate chips, and caramel bread pudding!

3)  My favorite new farm that supplies at the Farmer’s market is The Piggery.  Last time I went to the market, I bought pork belly from them and roasted it to go with my homemade applesauce.  This applesauce was smoked (because I burnt the bottom and saved the rest).  Mistakes are the mother of invention.

4) You might be wondering how I am faring with the dining hall food.  It is mediocre, I have to admit.  The main problem I have with it is that there is no friggin meat worth consuming!  Incinerated burgers? No.  Chicken nuggets?  No.  Gross tasting grilled chicken.  No.  ”Pork” casserole with chips and rice?  Does that count as meat?  The only protein I get is from chickpeas and cottage cheese.  Help!

I  cannot assume a cake-atarian lifestyle, and I’m not a fan of eating pasta every night…or stir fry.  It’s as though my meal plan is forcing me off a healthful diet unless I only want to eat fruit, oatmeal, and salad.  Joy.

5) I am excited for Thanksgiving.  That is a day of good eating.

Rainbow chard, onion, and butternut squash pie–  all local ingredients.  Even the crust is made with lard from The Piggery, a local pig farm.  It might be the best crust ever.  I seasoned the pie with a little nutmeg, salt, and sugar, and it is wonderful.

Feast your eyes but be sure to click on the pictures for maximum wow factor:

My next foodventure was to make two appetizers for a reception at the Hotel School following Irena Chalmer’s discussion of her book, Food Jobs.  I made brown-butter roasted radishes with sour cream on crostini and goat meatballs with roasted tomatoes.

This morning I woke up early and walked to the farmer’s market in Ithaca.  The walk there is all downhill (luckily, as most of the other places to which I desire to go are uphill.)  It is a calm walk, and today was a gorgeous day.  It felt like fall, as the morning temperature was about forty degrees.

Upon arriving at the market, I felt the buzz of a content colony of local foodies.  Ranging from young children to the elderly, the market-goers were all enjoying the present moment over cups of coffee and baked treats.

The abundance of amazing produce is overwhelming at first;  I was at once inundated with the names of various apples alone.

This farmer’s market is not home to amateurs; its vendors all have their crafts down to a science.  Farmers have perfect-looking squash, lettuces, tomatoes, and melons; cider makers have a variety of blends that they have composed for more complex tastes; and bakers have some of the most gorgeous breads and baked goods imaginable.  It seemed that I was in heaven as I walked through the market in a trance-like state.

Other vendors sell ethnic foods, and although I was tempted by the Cuban offerings, which included rice and beans; chicken fricassee; and yams and corn, I chose a fried contraption (for what else can I label it as?) from the Cambodian stand and some chickpea masala from the Sri Lankan stand.  The Cambodian fritter had carrots, onions, lentils, and either taro or potato.  This was served with sweet chili sauce.  The chickpeas were also good, especially with the three chutneys they offered.

Cambodian Fritter

chickpeas

Besides the ethnic food, I got some pork liver pate and some baking lard from The Piggery, apples, and some rye and pumpernickel breads from Fatboy bakery.I also enjoyed an apple cider donut.  Last weekend, I bought some beautiful yarn tagged with a picture of the sheep it came from!

I really am considering asking my parents to cut my meal plan next semester so I can just live off of the land.  It wouldn’t be a bad idea, but the market closes once winter hits.  For now, I’ll just do my best to take advantage of the season and enjoy!

One thing that’s beautiful about going to Cornell is that Ithaca has a ton of local farmers that sell their products at the farmer’s market in town.  This past week, I have been finding time in between my classes to cook my local ingredients as best i can with my limited kitchen facilities and additional ingredients.

This past week, I have made some delicious food.  Today, courtesy of my 11:40 classtime, I was able to make braised goat shank.  I bought the goat at the farmer’s market and cooked it with some blueberry wine that another vendor there was selling.  

the wine tastes like a light, dry red with some rounder flavors indicative of the blueberries it is made from.  the goat had a delicious flavor–very unique–and it went well with the wine.  

also, i made some creamed corn with a local grower’s corn.  my go to spice has been nutmeg; it is one of the only ones i have, and it goes well with this season’s foods.  i put it in the corn as well as in a delicata squash soup that i made the other day.

I topped the soup  with a sourdough and Pleasant Ridge Reserve cheese toast and sauteed hen-of-the-woods and oyster mushrooms.  Can you believe this stuff?  All made in the dorm!

This morning I also made a crustless (for time purposes) pumpkin pie.  I also made some pumpkin muffins.

Today was a pot luck meal for the Farm to Cornell club in which I am involved.  Since apples were the only local food that I had access to, I made a gratin out of some Paula Reds and some Gjetost cheese I had in my microfridge.  

At the potluck, it was a hit, especially since many were unsure of whether it was a side or a dessert.  

Even though the dining halls are OK, I am perfectly content with the ingredients available to me now.

So far, I have made apple pie, brownies, and bread.  However, recently, I have made a chicken dinner for a few friends as well as some intense peanut-butter cup and pretzel cookies.  As I have been craving cookies for days and avoiding the ones at dining halls, these did it for me.  

The chicken dinner consisted of a roast chicken from the Ithaca farmer’s market, purple potatoes, heirloom tomatoes, and fresh bread.  Unfortunately, my camera was not present at the table, so my crummy cell phone pictures must do.  

My cookies are amazing, as depicted in full glory below: