That's What Its All A-Trout!

And we're back from out little weekend hiatus.  So tonight we bring you some cornmeal crusted trout and farro with kale and sunchokes.  We weren't really sure what to do with the sunchokes when we got them in our share.  Neither of us had cooked with them before, so we turned to the interwebs for some assistance.  We came across this recipe that not only used the sunchokes, but also put our kale to good use as well.

If you're not familiar with farro, its a delicious little grain.  You cook it like rice until it gets tender.  It has a nice nutty flavor too.  So while the farro was cooking, we started on the other components of the dish.

We sliced the sunchokes and boiled them for about 10 minutes in some salted water until they were fork tender.  Then the kale was boiled for a few minutes, followed by sauteeing the onions in some butter and oil.

Then it was time to slice the sunchokes into smaller pieces, and pan fry them in a little olive oil and vegetable oil.  It didn't take long for them to become golden brown...maybe a few minutes on each side.  Then we tossed in the oyster mushrooms for a few minutes.

Then we tossed the other components back into the pan, including the cooked farro, and gave it a good toss, so everything was coated in the remaining oil in the pan.  All the flavors melded together, and we just added a little salt and pepper to season everything.  We did put our own spin on the recipe by adding a little bit of our porchetta.  It gave our side dish a nice savory, salty component.

While the finished the farro, Justin got to work on the trout.  He pulled out the few pin bones in the filets, then did a simple coating of salt, pepper, cornmeal, and secret hobo spices.

They went into a pan of melted butter, skin-side down, for about 4 minutes while the skin got nice and crusty.  With a quick little flip, it only took another 4 minutes for the other side to cook through.

It was a light, rustic meal.  I felt like I should've been sitting in a log cabin, in front of a roaring fire eating this meal.  With a little squeeze of lemon over the fish, the meal was complete!

California Christmas Recap

Now that we're back home in chilly DC, its time for a little recap of our culinary adventures in CA.

First, there was the pig head.  After 2 days in the fridge, our roll 'o head went into the oven at 325 degrees for 5-6 hours.  We rotated it a 1/4 turn about every 90 minutes in order to get all sides nice and crisp.

As it roasted, a lot of the fat seeped out, and the porchetta really shrunk down.  Once it finished roasting, it went back into the fridge, and we compressed it from all sides to squish even more moisture out.

Once it was completely cooled, it was ready for eating!  You can see all the fat marbling through, and all the meat that came off the face.  The really thin squiggly is the ear!  All that's left to do is slice it super thin and eat!  The seasoning was spot on and there was so much flavor imparted in the meat.

And so as not to waste any part of the head, we roasted the skull, and then simmered it in water to create a really rich pork stock.  A bunch of meat fell off the skull, so we ate those along the way, but now we also have a really rick, gelatinous stock for future meals.

Next came the joong.  Justin really had a knack for wrapping them, and they made the perfect snack/lunch when we got home today off the redeye.

Now that you're caught up on how those items turned out, I'll throw some new info your way.  We had some leftover lobster meat hanging out in the fridge, so Justin & I cooked dinner  for mom, dad and grandma, consisting of a simple salad, and lobster quinoa.  The lobster quinoa was super simple...cook up the quinoa, and in a separate pan, saute onions, garlic and ginger, toss in some mushrooms, deglaze the pan with Chinese rice cooking wine, add it some soy sauce, sesame oil, and sriracha, then toss in the lobster.  It was topped with some green onions and ready to eat!  It came together rather quickly and was a great way to use the leftover lobster.

 

But we didn't spend all of our time eating at home.  We hit all of our favorite restaurants: El Burrito Jr., In-n-Out, and A-1.  Plus, we tried out a really delicious Polish restaurant, some great tapas, a Top Chef contestant's bar, and a burger joint in the back of a liquor store.

And finally, Christmas gifts.  We were both really spoiled this year and received a lot of items to add to our pantry and kitchen.  I have a new All-Clad pan, along with cooking utensils and a wok.  We both now have a mortar & pestle, some squid ink, bottarga, and a variety of flavored salts.  And since Justin tends to be a little messy, a pirate chef apron was long overdue!

Face Off!

What better to way to spend Christmas morning than by defacing a pig, literally?!?! 

Justin was welcomed into the family by receiving a pig head for Christmas.  I guess its a replacement for a lump of coal ;) 

So after opening presents on Christmas morning, we set off to make porchetta di testa!

First, we needed to grind up our spices that would later be wrapped in the face.  With Justin's new morter & pestle, we ground up black peppercorns, coriander, star anise, bay leaves, red pepper flakes, and some juniper berries.

Next came Mr. Pig!

I gave him a quick shave to get rid of some of the longer facial hair.  He had a lot on his ears too.

Once he was clean shaven, and looking handsome, it was time to cut the face off.  I took the first stab at it (get it...stab...).  My cousin, Lauren, who'd taken a pig butchering class and learned how to make this, coached us along.  Using short strokes with the knife, and pulling the skin away, we just followed along the skull to release the face.  We were careful not to puncture the eyeball, and tried to keep everything in tact as best we could.

It was a little tough to navigate around the socket by his temple, but I managed to get the left side of his face off in one piece.  Next, it was Justin's turn to cut off the right side and the snout.





Then we were left with the pig face, in two pieces.  Since Justin cut the snout off, I had the pleasure of cutting out the tongue.

The next step in the preperation was to remove all the glands, lymph nodes, and other untasty bits.  We took off a fair amount of fat in the process, but there was plenty of meat left.  Before laying out the face to season it, we cut off one of the cheeks to make guanciale (more on that in a minute).  We tucked the ears through the eye sockets to fill the holes, and layed out the face.  It took a lot of flipping and turning of the face pieces to figure out the best way to layer the two sides so we could roll it into a fairly even log.  Once the pieces were in place, we massaged in our seasonings with Kosher salt, getting into all the little nooks.



With the leftover salt and seasonings, we packed it on top of the cheek we cut out, and placed it in a ziploc bag where it will sit in the fridge for a week.  When we get home we'll hang it up to finish curing, so we'll post an update when that's ready to eat.

Now, back to the pig face.  While removing the face was time consuming, it was quite a fun experience, while tressing it proved to be more difficult.  Essentially, we rolled our seasoned porchetta like a pork loin, but the uneven shape made it a bit of a challenge. It took me a while to get the hang of looping it around, but it turned out alright.

The porchetta is sitting in the fridge until tomorrow, when we'll roast it.  Once its ready for eating, we'll slice it thin, and treat it like charcuterie.  We'll let you know how it turns out!

And, so we don't waste any bit of the head, we're roasting it (eyeballs and all), to make pork stock.  It should make for some tasty dishes down the road.