Duck Prosciutto..

Here's a riddle for you:

What has a road flare kit, a spare tire, tire iron, duck proscuitto air drying, my old softball mit, and is part of my car?

Thrown by the tire iron?

The answer is (of course) the trunk of our car!

So yeah..I let my duck proscuitto air dry in a propped open cooler in the trunk of our car..can you imagine the gatherinf of squirrels, ferrel cats, and whatever else wild animals prowl during the nights here on the north side of Chicago all gathered around our car during the nights like some sort of weird pagan ritual?

On to the process! After reading a few postings on making duck proscuitto over at the "Paupered Chef" (http://www.thepauperedchef.com/) by both writers on that site (Blake and Nick) and after getting my copy of "Charcuteries (http://www.amazon.com/Charcuterie-Craft-Salting-Smoking-Curing/dp/0393058298/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206570634&sr=8-1) I was good to go!

First off, if this sort of thing interests you in the least (salting, smoking, and curing meats) please check out "Charcuterie" the book..well worth the investment.

Ingrediants are pretty straightforward: duck breast (I ended up with a frozen one from Whole Foods-but next time will go direct to China town), kosher salt (about 3 cups), some crushed peppercorn, thyme, a little cumin, and a small amount of white pepper (black is OK if thats all you have).

Equipment: non reactive dish ( I used a 12" pyrex pie pan), cheescloth, some twin or other way to suspend meat for approx one week.

Process: lay down an base layer of salt in your vessel, pat dry the duck breast and lay (fat side up) and cover fully with remaining salt, cover with plastic wrap. Refridgerate this for 24 hours to allow the salt to cure the meat.

After 24 hours remove, rinse breasts well off with tap water and pat completely dry. Once dried sprinkle with pepper and suspend in cheese cloth for 7 days (for approx 2 lbs of duck breast) at a tempeture around 50-60 degrees in a fair amont of humidity (not extremely wet, but also not extremely dry).

A quick note of the tempeture for line drying the meat: I actually left it to dry out in my trunk for a week which included some wild temp swings..from the low 30s for a small window up to the 50F mark...and my stuff tastes fantastic.

..I need a disclaimer after that though..please be careful and follow your best judgement (..if should be better than mine :) ).

After one full week (give or take a few days) remove from cheescloth and prepare to be turned off by the weird dark ruby colored meat and glistening duck lardo...but get ready for some amazing tasting meat as well!

Slice thin and serve as you see fit. Personally I enjoy the "gamey" taste of mine and eat it sliced and straight up.

Cheers!

Quiche...

Well as you can see it's pretty damn snowey for the 2nd day of spring here in Chicago, so on a Saturday morning that we were definetely not going out into I thought I'd give my first quiche a shot...

Pretty straightforward recipe: eggs, milk, cheese, portabello and spinach as the "meat", 2 kinds of chese (sea chedder, and gruyere), salt/pepper, and some spinach tossed on the top baked in a pie tin at 350 for around 25 minutes.


It came out pretty well, my only complaint is that I tried to cook the portabello a little before baking the quiche in the oven..which ended up adding a little too much moisture to the final product..making it kinda soggy, but still tasty.


In the future I think I will cut down on the egg/milk ratio for the filling. This time around I went with 4 eggs to 3/4 cup of reduced fat milk. Next time around I'll be aiming for 1/2 cup milk to cut down and cook time and also to dry the quiche up a bit, and hopefully in turn making it fluffier.


..Also it occurs to me that I should go with a deeper pie tin (and make my own dough) rather than using one specifically put out for use with pies..you just cant fit that much stuff in there :)

Cheers!

Chamomile Wheat Ale..

I've always been a big fan of Chamomile tea..so I suppose it was inevitable that I end up brewing a beer with this tasty, yet subtle, little flower...

Really straight forward brew here..an even mix of Belgian Pilsner malt and Wheat malt (5 lbs/5 lbs) and about 1/2 lbs of rice hulls to avoid the probable clogging of my mash tun had I not added them..

For hops I thought I would mix it up a little by using some Amarillo for flavoring, and a small mix of Magnum and Cascade for bittering

Note on the use of Cascade for bittering..if your savvy about the hop game right now you know this *should be considered a sin..using Cascade in this manor. Allow me to explain, I was using the last of my magnum (about 1/8 oz) for bittering and needed just a little bit more Alpha Acid to get my IBU's to where I wanted 'em...and knowing I would use the rest of the Cascade to dry hop..well there ya go :). Also please note that you will not see the cascade addition in the recipe below...I forgot.

Onward to the yeast..I really wanted to do something with a more clove/banana taste to go along with the chamomile and slightly fruity flavor put off by the Amarillo so I settled on White Labs Hefe yeast IV..which should (or "is") do the trick.

Chamomile was ala Trader Joes Chamomile Tea..which is delicious and actually manages to pull off a very present chamomile taste after using just one tea bag per cup o'tea. I had shopped around trying to find the "best" tea to use and I ran the gamete from loose chamomile flowers (whole foods), to their "yogi" tea..both of which were tasty..but on the same time extremely subtle and I needed some more chamomile (I need more cowbell!). Final addition was 12 tea bags of TJ's chamomile tea steeped at flame out and remaining through chilling to 68 degrees (about 20 minutes).

She's (just seems like you should call a chamomile wheat beer "she") has been in primary for a week and will remain there for one more at which time I will bottle.

..speaking of which I'm about to go into the brave new land of kegging...enough of this bottling bs :). Stay tuned for my conversion post, turning my Sanyo 4912 into a kegerator...

Cheers!

New website address!

Good day all!

I've picked up the domain : www.dailyikura.com for the ole blog. If you have me linked anywhere you're going to want to change it from www.breuni.blogspot.com

Cheers!

Vietnamese Pork Ribs and Pho..

I found this recipe off of a Whole Foods Video Podcast called "The Secret Ingredient", which is overall a great podcast once you get around the fact that they are obviously selling you Whole Foods products :)..maybe its my sales background that makes me sensitive to this..but hey everyones got to pay the bills right??

On with the recipe, its pretty straightforward-cure some baby back pork ribs for a few hours (sprinkled with kosher salt and peppercorns then wrapped up and set in the fridge), juice some coconuts (if you can find em-3 small/medium sized should give you 3.5 cups or so), add some dark sugar (1 table spoon), Vietnamese fish sauce (1/2 cup), garlic (5 cloves), and chicken stock (1 cup)..then braise for 1 hour at 350 degrees at which point you add some hard boiled eggs, cut ribs into 2 piece sectionns, and braise for an additional 30 minutes. Easy! And trust me its...delicious.

What you end up with is your ribs..which simply melt off the bone..but your also left with this amazing broth. What to do with it? Well thats your call..but here is what I did.

Take some fresh Star Anise, nutmeg, Cinnamon, and dark sugar, dump into a mortar and mix (about 1 tsp per for 2 servings), split up between 2 large soup bowls...cook some Pho noodles (rice noodles found in your local Asian market). Cut up some green onions, mushrooms, or whatever other veggie you think would work well (but does not require a long cook time) add to your bowls and pour the liquid left over from the ribs on top for each bowl, making sure that the broth is hot from the oven (this will release the flavor and fragrance from spices/veggies). Dump noodles on top, slice the hard boiled eggs in 1/2 and you've got your own version of Pho soup to go along with your ribs...good stuff.

The next time around I plan on using a sweeter beer (possibly a home brewed one) to replace the coconut milk..stay tuned.

Tips for this recipe...I wouldnt worry too much about having those exact spices on hand for the soup...think in terms of pumpkin pie spices and you'll be just fine..in fact you'll be making your own soup that way..no need to get hung up on the details :)

Also, I would focus on the quality of ingredients here (i.e. fresh coconut milk) but dont let that dissuade you..use what you have on hand and you'll soon be creating your own version of this dish. Take care!

Mixing it up!

..So I'm a big beer geek..also a big foodie..who loves to travel. I had given the idea of creating a new blog dedicated to only food/cooking/travel...but to be honest I would rather be able to park everything right here...so thats what I'm going to do!

I would expect one cooking entry to each homebrewing entry..maybe somthing like 1.5:1. My apologies to my handfull of homebrewing buddies in the blogosphere...but I promise to carry my homebrewing street cred during this small change to the site.....and will be striving to do my share of recipes that include beer..

Working in these new subjects brings me much joy....