Mortadella (Lucky Peach 4)

Bologna a la Bologna, Marco Canora

 Mortadella (Italian pronunciation: [mor-ta-ˈdɛl-la]) is a large Italian sausage^[1] or cold cut (salume /sa-'lu-me/) made of finely hashed or ground, heat-cured pork sausage, which incorporates at least 15% small cubes of pork fat (principally the hard fat from the neck of the pig). Mortadella is a staple product of Bologna, Italy. It is flavored with spices, including whole or ground black pepper, myrtle berries, nutmeg and pistachios, jalapeños and/or olives, though those with flavours other than ground pepper and myrtle are not made with the original recipe from Bologna.

Okay, sure, I agree now that mortadella could be made with olives.

• 1 3/4 lbs fatback (1 lb cut into 1 1/2" cubes, and the rest cut into a 1/4" dice)
• 2 egg whites, briefly beaten
• 1 C pistachio nuts
• 5 pounds pork shoulder, cut into 1 1/2" cubes
• 18 g pink salt (aka curing salt)
• 65 g kosher salt
• 2 T paprika
• 1 nut nutmeg
• 1 t almond extract
• 1/2 C dried milk powder
• 2 C frozen whole-fat milk
• 4 T black peppercorns
• Amaretti liqueur [I couldn't even bring this up on Google and wound up just using Disaronno instead.  Hey, it worked.]
• 100-mm-wide collagen casings, or plastic wrap

An untrimmed, bone-in pork shoulder.

The trimmings and the major bone.

Mise en place.  After a lot of hunting, I eventually found fatback at Savenor's in Beacono Hill.  Of course they have fatback and caul fat and all sorts of things I might employ someday in my cooking.

Blanch the diced fat back for 3 minutes.  This somehow firms up the fat a big.  I did the same thing to the pork rind before I scraped the fat off for chicharones.

Fatback is preferable in the dish in the first place because it is so firm and definitely not adjacent to any muscle unlike belly or fat from any other part of the pig.

Blanched fatback and pistachios tossed in egg white so they stay in place when the mortadella is sliced.

The larger pieces of fatback and the shoulder tossed with the dry ingredients.  The single teaspoon of almond extract was supposed to get in here, but I failed to remember while measuring the rest in a single pint container.

A measly teaspoon wasn't going to ruin my product, surely.  Even when all along I thought it was a tablespoon.  Ha.

Grinding meat: pretty much a nightmare.  I managed.

Season with liqueur and process as finely as possible with frozen milk.

Looking a hell of a lot more like lunchmeat.

Fold in the pistachio mixture and peppercorns and cure for 4 days in the fridge.  Where it wound up getting even more brighter pink.
And all these years of wondering whether Oscar Meyer dyes their bologna.  They probably do?

One portion was obviously way bigger than the other.  I barely managed to squeeze the two babies in my stockpot.

Casings totally burst from my sausages.  Hey, it was my first time out.  The meat is simmered until the internal temperature reaches 155 degrees.

Plunge the mortadella in ice baths and cool completely.  I was tired and they were still giving off heat after I had put them in the fridge.  Oh well.

Harold's Mortadella with Wilted Dandelion Greens

Top Chef: The Quickfire Cookbook

Dieterle's Quickfire win from Season 1, Episode 7

• 2 slices sourdough bread
• 1/2 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 ounce oyster or stemmed shitake mushrooms
• Salt and pepper
• 1 handful dandelion or other bitter green [I found some bagged blened of baby kale, spinach, and chard and figured I was close enough.]
• 1 1/2 tablespoons mayonnaise
• 1 1/2 tablespoons tapenade
• 1/4 cup sliced red grapes
• 3 ounces of mortadella
• 1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley [As usual, I didn't have any]

Mise en place.  Look at that beautiful meat.  Most of the supporting players hailed from Trader Joe's: grapes, tapenade, sourdough, greens.

Sautee the mushrooms.

Wilt the greens.

Mix mayonnaise and tapenade together.  Layer mushrooms on one side.

Followed by the greens and grapes.

And then the star: my HOMEMADE mortadella.

The sandwich itself is a pretty fantastic utilization of the meat and I never really thought I'd ever make the sandwich (I read the cookbook close to when I started cooking many years back) until 2013. 

I wish I could've sliced the mortadella thinner, but I am not master.  Also not an owner of a $600+ food slicer (though sure, I wish I was).  The combination of the two condiments were really stellar, the mushrooms added lovely texture, and the grapes were this fantastic, juicy, fresh counterpoints.  The greens were also essential and I'm sure the sandwich would've been ever more lovely if I had dandelion.

And what of the mortadella itself?  It is pretty awesome and the whole process of producing lunch meat is pretty zany.  I've been plotting for a while the fact that I would attempt to make sausages this year (I have this charcuterie book all lined up on my Kindle.  Cured meats, here I come.).  Lo and behold, Lucky Peach publishes an article on mortadella.  Mortadella was something I'd heard of occasionally (probably initially from this sandwich on TV) .
I knew it had something to do with bologna.  And bologna is...  Something I have just never understood.  I love roast beef (boursin, caramelized onions, tomatoes, horseradish...) and can endure the rest of the array, but I've always objected to baloney.  It had always seemed essentially flavorless and textureless; a whole lot less "real" seeming than even process turkey, chicken, and ham.  "Salami" was just bologna with some pepppercorns stuck in it.  And why was it so pink?

After laboring for hours and hunting and ordering the ingredients for weeks (I hardly used a tablespoon of the pound of curing salt I bought and am not sure when I'll use my 100-mm collagen casings again), this mortadella was certainly not a sheer waste of time.  Even though the casings burst and I forgot the almond extract, the mortadella was still very extraordinary.  I was extremely proud of myself before I even tasted it (the day I finally cooked it).

Fish Couscous (BRW)

• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 dried hot red chiles
• 1 large onion, peeled and quartered
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 2 celery stalks, chopped
• 2 medium potatoes, preferably waxy, peeled and cut into chunks
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 2 tomatoes, cored and chopped
• 1 teaspoon saffron threads, optional [Basically a whole Trader Joe's jar worth.  Since this saffron is so cheap, it can't possibly be real saffron, but whatevs.]
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• Cayenne to taste
• One 3-pound red snapper, grouper, black sea bass, or other firm fish, gilled, gutted, scaled, and cut crosswise through the bone into big chunks
• 2 medium zucchini, cut into chunks
• 4 cups cooked couscous
• Chopped fresh parsley leaves for garnish

Mise en place.  I figured I could deal with the zucchini and the fish while dealing with other things.

I'm figuring that it's hard to find whole fish unless one goes to Chinatown which I didn't have the time for today.  After sticker shock at Whole Foods, I wound up buying tilapia at Stop and Shop.  Tilapia didn't really strike me as a particularly firm fish, but it seemed like my best option.

Cook oil, garlic and chiles until aromatic.

Add onions and cook until translucent.

Stir in carrots, celery, potatoes, bay leaves, and cumin.  Add 1 quart water, bring to a boil and then simmer.

Add tomatoes and saffron and cook until the tomatoes break down.

Add zucchini and fish and cook until the fish is cooked through.

A satisfying and interesting dish?  For sure, but I could've lived without the endless picking out of all the little bones.  Plus it probably would've been markedly better with the right type of fish.

Stir-Fried Pork, Eggplant, and Onion with Garlic and Black Pepper (CATKTV)

Sauce

• 2 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
  
• 2 1/2 tablespoons low-sodium chicken broth
• 2 teaspoons juice from 1 lime
• 1 teaspoon cornstarch

Pork and Vegetables

• 1 (12-ounce) pork tenderloin, trimmed of fat and silver skin and cut into 1/4 inch strips [I used pork loin because the only tenderloin at Stop and Shop is pre-marinated.]
• 1 teaspoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon fish sauce
• 3 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
• 12 medium garlic cloves, minced or pressed through a garlic press (about 1/4 cup) [Peeling and microplane-ing this amount of garlic took ridiculous amount of time.]
• 2 teaspoons ground black pepper
• 1 medium eggplant (1 pound), cut into 3/4-inch cubes
• 1 large onion, halved and cut into 1/4-inch wedges
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
  

Between peeling and finely grating the garlic, hand-grinding the black pepper, and picking off cilantro leaves, the prep involved was INVOLVED.
The other prep was a breeze later in comparison, and stir-fries are the opposite of a 3-hour braise.


Cooking through the slivers of pork in about 2 minutes.


Browning the eggplant until it is no longer spongy. I saw some graffiti eggplant at Trader Joe's yesterday. I wish I had been playing with that.




In goes the onions.
Also keep in mind, that everything is being cooked in stages over high heat. Most things cooked in just a couple of minutes. The eggplant just took a few minutes longer.


Clearing out the center of the pan and cooking the aromatics (in this case, garlic and black pepper) in the center of the pan seems like it's a pretty classic technique for cuisines ranging from Southeast Asia to Italy.


A strong stir-fry. It didn't wow me, but it certainly tasted cleaner than oily thing I might hope to expect to order in a restaurant.
Plus there's about 3 more recipes worth of pork loin in my freezer now.

Maple Bacon Sticky Buns

from the Better Bacon Book iPad app
courtesy of Heather Carlucci of Print in New York

• 1 3/4 cup whole milk
• 4 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon fine sea salt
• 6 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 2 cups maple syrup
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/2 pound thickly sliced bacon

Mise en place.


Heat milk very slowly to 105 degrees F. I think I was at least ten degrees above this, but I manage to proof (not kill the yeast) for the directed 10 minutes.


Yeast, milk, and eggs.


Add the butter and the flour and mix until the dough pulls away from the bowl.


Dough on my "clean" work space.


I think either Carlucci or the editor neglected to note that the recipe would make at least 2 rectangles 12 by 6 by 1/4 inch.


Here's the other half with brown sugar patted down and cinnamon sprinkled onto its surface.


Tried to pinch it up as well as I could. It became easier after I chilled it in the fridge.


I had to proof the dough in a warm space until doubled for 20 minutes. I decided to heat the oven for a few minutes and then turn it off and used that.


Cutting the rolls would've been such a pain in the ass if I hadn't read ATK's technique of cutting the sticky buns with floss. It was mint-flavored, but there was no aftertaste to the sticky buns.


An awful lot of maple syrup. Dark Grade A from Trader Joe's.


Ready for the oven. The buns are sitting on a glaze of maple syrup and butter.

Frying the bacon.


Fried bacon.


Cutting the bacon into a small dice while the rolls baked.


Maple syrup, bacon, and butter.


Bake for 25 minutes at 350 degrees F.


Everyone loved them. New roomie Marc H had two.

Recipe as requested by Brittney G.:

1. Warm the milk in a small saucepan over very low heat until it reaches 105 degrees F (use an instant-read thermometer to measure), then add the yeast and let it proof for 10 minutes.  our into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a  dough hook, add the eggs and salt, and stir until combined.  Add the flour and the stick of softened butter and continue mixing until the dough is silky and pulls away from the sides of the bowl.
2. Transfer to a clean work surface and roll the dough into a rectangle 12 inches long, 6 inches wide, and 1/4 inch thick.  Sprinkle with the brown sugar and cinnamon, then roll up like a jelly roll and frigerate.
3. In a small saucepan over high heat, bring the maple syrup and remaining butter to a boil.  Pour a layer of glaze 1/8 thick into the bottom of a 10-inch baking pan.
4. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and slice crosswise into 2-inch rounds.  Arrange the piece 1/2 inch apart on the glaze-covered baking pan, then set in a warm place to proof for 20 minutes.
5. Heat the over to 350 degrees F.  Bake the buns for 25 minutes.  While the buns are baking, cook the bacon, in a skillet over medium heat until lightly browned but not crispy.  Drain on paper towels, cut into small dice, and add to the saucepan with the rest of the maple glaze.  Return the pan to a boil, then remove from the heat and keep warm.
6. When the buns are finished baking, immediately turn them onto a plate so that the glazed sides are facing up.  Top each bun with a liberal amount of additional glaze, and serve warm.