Spring is a time of renewal, of rebirth, but so far Spring 2011 has left a lot to be desired. Yes, it’s been almost two months since my last entry, but blog updates have taken a back seat to real life lately. I apologize for the lack of updates, but it’s been a sad couple of months.

I lost my grandmother a few weeks back, a wonderful little old lady named Wanda. She was a little spitfire of a women that succumbed to double pneumonia at the ripe old age of 77. A life long Texas Rangers fan, Memaw, as she preferred to be called, loved animals, sweets, watching TV, and hanging out with other little old ladies. She was an amazing person, and I’m glad to have known her for a little while.

Just a couple of weeks ago, my cat Fey was diagnosed with mammary cancer. She underwent a lumpectomy, and despite a great initial prognosis, stopped eating and began to fade away. Additional tests showed us that her lungs were filled with tumors, which all but ruined any hope of recovery. We did our best to make her comfortable and get her to take food and water, but she continued to waste away. We didn’t want her to suffer needlessly, so once it was clear that she could not recover, we had her euthanized. She died in my arms, curled up, sleeping like a baby, as she’d done thousands of time since she came in to my life 12 years ago.

I’ve lost quite a few family members, immediate and otherwise, throughout the years, but Fey’s loss hit me harder than most. She was an amazing cat and everyone that ever met her loved he immediately. To say that she’ll be missed is an epic understatement.

This too shall pass, and when the pain has faded we’ll probably rescue another kitty. Not as a replacement for Fey, but because there are so many other great cats (and dogs!!) out there that deserve a good home.

I guess the moral of this story is to make every day count with your loved ones, both human and non-human, because life is too short. To make a donation to Austin Pet’s Alive in Fey’s honor, click here

Despite an epic pre-move purge, we were worried that our stuff wouldn’t fit in to our new, smaller home. Fortunately, we were able to make it all work, but the wife had to sacrifice her crafting space in the process. She’s making due with with the lack of proper crafting facilities, however, and has jumped right in to the Austin craft scene.

As for my new job, it’s a lot different than my old one. I perform a similar function, but the end game is vastly different. It’s a change I needed, as I was burned out and frustrated with my professional career and needed to shake things up. Still, I long for the day when I can leave corporate America behind and cook for a living, but that day is far from now.

Speaking of cooking, I bought a fancy new pellet smoker so that I could expand my BBQ repertoire. More on this development later. Isn’t she pretty?

I’ve been cooking quite a bit lately, but haven’t bothered taking many pictures, hence the lack of blog posts of late. The new kitchen is cute and all, but a bit frustrating to cook in due to lack of counter space and its poor layout. Still, I’ll make the best of it for as long as we’re in this house, and I’ve got a lot of cooking and canning projects to bust out in the coming weeks.

As for the rest of the house, well it’s pretty darn cute too.

So life in Austin is progressing. Sure I miss sidewalks, trees, the best neighbors ever, and living in an amazing community, but Austin is a nifty place too with great food and music scenes. I look forward to getting involved in my new community and putting down some roots.

From out of no where, I got great job offer from a video games company in Austin, so the wife and I packed the house and pets, said good-bye to the best damn neighbors ever, and set out on an epic 4 (6) day 2,600 (3,700) mile road trip with a new life waiting for us at the end. And that was that, more or less.

The whole experience has been an adventure, and the road trip deserves its own post, but I’ll briefly summarize the highlights for you:

Packing sucked. We have / had too much stuff, despite our best efforts, to sell, give, and donate much of it. Some how, some way, we managed to cram all of our worldly possessions fit in to 800 cubic feet. Barely.

I have the best in-laws ever. We couldn’t have done this without their help, and I can’t thank them enough for everything the did.

While our rag-tag bunch of dogs and cats brings us much joy, moving them (+ worldly possessions) that far was not fun.

Driving a 16′ box truck through the Siskiyous in January could have been worse.

New Years Eve was spent eating In-N-Out and drinking cheap sparkling wine at La Quinta in Redding, CA. We were asleep by 23:00.

The further south we got on I-5 in California, the more assholish the drivers became.

Puck was lost in El Paso. He sneaked out of the hotel room as we were getting ready to leave. We spent hours looking for him to no avail, so we left our information and his crate with the hotel staff and pushed on with a heavy heart. I called every few hours asking for updates, but there was no sign of him. 36 hours after we left El Paso, I got a phone call from a railroad worker staying at our hotel. He had found Puck holed up in the dresser, in the room directly under ours. I drove back to El Paso post haste and found the little bastard waiting for me in his crate. After thanking everyone profusely, I got a few hours of sleep and headed back to Austin.

Our new house is super cute. We rented it sight unseen, so it was a huge relief that we liked it. We’re still not sure about the neighborhood, but so far it’s okay. Good Mexican food anyway.

A lot happened in Seattle before I left. There were going away parties, pot lucks, and a holiday or two. My neighbor Kelly hosted a Cuban themed supper club pot luck at her house, and I killed it with a drunken Cake de Ron, ropa vieja, and papas bravas (complete with homemade garlic aloi and pimentón-infused olive oil). There was was finger licking good praline cheesecake with caramel sauce at Clay and Marcia’s Thanksgiving day feast, and an artery clogging mac and cheese for our last little soiree with BFFs / neighbors Chris and Kristen. Our out neighbors Kristen and Brian hosted a farewell cocktail party and feast at their place, to which I brought a selection of charcuterie from Rain Shadow Meats and cheeses from The Calf & Kid. I made yeast rolls for Thanksgiving, in addition to my usual spread of turkey, dressing, etc, and we had a two amazing Christmas meals with Kiki and her family and Kelly’s unforgettable lasagna. For that little shindig, I made a batch of mascarpone, and turned it in to the most delicate and delicious tiramisu.

Whew. All that and we moved across the country on just a few weeks notice.

For my birthday cake, I decided I wanted to do a traditional white cake with a chocolate butter cream frosting. After much research, I found a recipe for a Golden Vanilla Cake that struck my fancy on the King Arthur website. This recipe was different than most I had seen, and the process was more like making biscuits than a traditional sponge cake. The finished product turned out very biscuit like in fact, but not as heavy as a biscuit or scone, and had a fabulous crumbly texture. For the icing component, I went with no nonsense chocolate frosting, also from King Arthur that could have been better, but was still delicious.

A couple of weeks later, some folks from the ‘hood got together and threw a good ol’ fashion wine tasting. Everyone in attendance brought a bottle of wine or two as well as an appropriate snack. Once again, all the denizens of 35th Ave S out did themselves and delivered an amazing spread of food and booze.

For this event, I decided to try my hand at a little pâte à choux action, which is a traditional French pastry dough. More specifically, I bought some nice Gruyere from a local cheese monger, and made a pretty decent batch of gougère:

The recipe I used came from Thomas Keller’s French Laundry book, and is nothing more than a basic pâte à choux mixed with the grueyer and piped in to small mounds to form bite sized puffs. Despite the best efforts of my crappy oven to sabotage my baked goods, the gougeres kicked ass! While the cheese puffs didn’t get as golden brown as I had hoped, they were very well received by the neighbors and everybody loved them. I also made a batch of shortbread, some of which I dipped in Scharffen Berger chocolate. My shortbread cookies also kicked ass.

Somewhere around early October, I made a batch of buttermilk banana bread. I’ve used this recipe a lot, and along the way have tweaked the recipe a bit by adding some spices to the mix and substituting turbinado sugar for the white. Using turbinado sugar gives the banana bread a rich, molasses-y texture and taste that really compliments the tang of the buttermilk and flavor of the bananas.

Apple season is in full swing here in Washington, so an apple pie seemed like a no-brainer. I’d successfully made pie dough (AKA Pâte Brisée) once before using my KitchenAid, but I was still apprehensive as pie dough can be touchy and gets tough if you handle it too much. I read that you could use a bit of cider vinegar to help with the flakiness, and it did seem to make a difference in the final product. I found thousands of different apple pie filling recipes, and frankly, it was a bit overwhelming trying to decide which one to use. In the end, I went with the Joy of Baking version, which produced a very tart, almost apple butter like filling. It was delicious, and the crust turned out fab. Not bad for my first fruit AND double crust pie!

My most recent baking endeavor involved coming up with a dessert for our Halloween pot luck at work. I wanted to do something interesting, something a bit different than what folks usually bring to these types of work functions. Back in September, I picked up some funky pink salt, but hadn’t had a chance to use it. So, with the pink salt burning a hole in my cupboard, I decided to do a few batches of Kate Krader’s salted fudge brownies:

I’d made these rich, sticky brownies before, but only had kosher salt on hand and they were to die for as-is. With the addition of a complex salt, like the pink stuff, the brownies were out of this world. The chunky grains of minerally salt were especially satisfying to bite in to, and the sharp salt sting were a nice balance against the richness of the fudgey brownie. Special thanks to my crafty wife for the killa sign.

I turned 35 last week and I’m not really sure what I think about it. The only thing that really bugs me about this particular birthday is that I no longer fall in to the 18-34 category (i.e. young adults). Getting older doesn’t really bother me, since there’s nothing I can really do about it, but I’m going to cling to my youth for as long as possible.

In neighborhood news, my fabulous neighbors, Brian and Kristen, recently held their annual pig roast. Two eighty pound pigs, three kegs, and a couple of hundred people were in attendance to help Brian and Kristen celebrate their third wedding anniversary. Brian was gracious enough to let me help prep the pigs, which consisted of injecting each of the carcasses with a Cuban-style mojo brine. I had a good time, despite the fact that we kept spraying ourselves with marinade and pig juices (syringe malfunctions). Brian cooked the pigs in Chinese-style pig boxes, which is nothing more than a steel-lined wooden box that’s topped with a steel tray for the charcoal. The pig start off inside-up, but you flip the pigs to crisp up the skin about half an our before you serve. It’s a neat process and it this particular cooking method makes the most amazing chicharróns I’ve ever had. I hope to borrow one of B & K’s boxes to do a whole goat (barbacoa style) next spring, but we’ll see if I can make that happen.

The party started before noon and kept going until after midnight. The weather was redonkulous, the beer flowed, and we feasted on swine, chicken (smoked by yours truly), and a plethora of potluck offerings provided by friends and neighbors. I was particularly proud of the chickens, which turned out so perfectly that people were picking bits from the decimated carcasses well in to the night.

Here’s Kristen tending to one of the honored guests:

It was an epic way to end Summer.

I’ve used the grinder tens of times in the last couple of months, but I hadn’t used the sausage stuffer before. I was a little apprehensive with dealing the whole stuffing process, but after watching a few how-to videos on YouTube, I felt inspired to give it a go.

I’ll spare you the gory details for now, but suffice it to say, cleaning hog intestines is pretty nasty work. I also had a lot of problems keeping the sausage mixture cold during the stuffing process (the KA grinder/stuffer combo sucks) and the texture of my sausage suffered for it. Regardless, I knocked out a pretty decent batch of Texas style hot links for our annual Oktoberfest party and had a good time doing it.

Texas style beef hot links (adapted from the Texas BBQ King)

1 cup ice cold water
3 tbsp sea salt
3 tbsp paprika
4 tbsp fresh ground black pepper
1/4 cup red chili flakes
1 tbsp onion powder
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp ground coriander
1 tbsp ground marjoram
1 tbsp ground savory
1 tbsp ground sage
7 lbs beef chuck (cut in to 1″ cubes)
1 lb beef fat (cut in to 1/4″ cubes)
Several feet of hog casings

Wash the casings thoroughly under cold running water. Be sure to flush the insides of the casings with lots of water or your sausages are going to be funky, in a bad way. Soak the casings in the fridge overnight, and when you’re ready to do the stuffing, rinse the casings one more time and place in a bowl of warm water.

Mix the meat, fat, and all spices together with your hands until everything is very well incorporated / distributed (at least 5 minutes) then place in the refrigerator to chill overnight. Grind the mixture through a course plate and place back in the ‘fridge until very cold.

Smear shortening or veg oil on the stuffer and slip on the casings on the horn. Drizzles the ice water over the meat mixture, mix gently, then stuff in to casings as quickly as possible. You want the meat to remain cold throughout the stuff process, so place the meat in the freezer whenever there’s a break in the action.

Twist the sausage every six inches to form links. Fresh sausages should be dried before cooking, or the fat will render out along with blood and other fluids during the cooking process. Hang the links in a cool dry place for an hour or two until links they are very dry.I wrapped a broom handle in aluminum foil and hung the links in the shower, but whatever works best for you.

Smoke the hot links at 200 degrees until the internal temperature reaches 160 degrees. Remove from the smoker and shower the links with cold water until they hit 100 degrees internally. Serve with spicy mustard on a soft, chewy roll.

My smoker was tied up with a brisket, so I took the hot links over to my buddy’s house and finished them on his Treager, which was loaded with mesquite pellets. While I prefer my Weber Smokey Mountain to pellet-based smokers for most of the things I do, the Treager sure is a sweet machine. It’s ability to maintain a steady, constant temperature makes smoking things a breeze. Sure beats having to get up every 2 hours to check the temperature of my WSM in the pouring rain.

Good luck with your own sausage making adventures.

Curren$y – Pilot Talk

An up-and-comer from the 504. Spitta, as he is known, has the most ridiculous flow ever. It’s all about getting money, smoking weed, etc. Highly recommend.

Tame Impala – Innerspeak

Psychedelic rock band from Australia. Booty shaking, hippy noise. In a good way.

Wild Nothing – Gemini

80s esque-pop. Catchy, fuzzy, and dreamy (the music, not the dude).

5 – 5 years of Hyberdub

2:56:53 minutes of hyperdub. Burial, Kode9, Zomby, you get the picture.

The Books – The Way Out

I have no idea how to describe The Books. If the idea of ‘folktronica’ appeals to you, then you will like this album.

On a side note, the 40th annual Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival is taking place this weekend at the Seattle Center. I dropped by on Saturday for a bit and caught HEALTH, Atlas Sound, Jamie Lidell, Justin Townes Earle, and Solomon Burke, and a few other assorted sights and sounds.

I’m constantly trying to coerce friends and family in to canning with me. So, in celebration of Canning Across America’s Can-O-Rama, an event designed to “celebrate the art of putting up food”, I held a little canning party for a few friends & neighbors. We kept it simple and decided to do a variety of jams; strawberry, raspberry, and apricot.

Pete and Jen picked up ten 1 lb containers of strawberries for $10 bucks, so we did strawberry jam two ways. The first was using Sure-Jell’s low sugar pectin, which is my default pectin for quick fruit jams. The second batch was an “old-fashion” long cook jam, which turned out a much deeper red than the pectin-added variety, and lost a lot of the fresh fruit flavor in the process as well. Ailene came uber-prepared, and had already cooked her raspberries and sugar. We simply needed to bring it to a boil, ladle it into jars, and process in the 4 gallon pot I use as a water-bath canner.

My project for Can-O-Rama was apricot jam. I’ve been planning on making some for years, but just hadn’t gotten around to it until now, despite my wife requesting it every time I start a canning project. I dropped by MacPhersons, an excellent fruit and vegetable stand near our house, to grab 10 lbs of apricots, which I got for a very reasonable $1.49 per lb.

The thing about apricot jam that made me shy away from it in the past was the prep work. While you can leave the skins on and make a damn fine jam or preserve with peaches or apricots, I prefer the look and mouth-feel of the skinless variety. So, in order to peel the apricots, I woke up early on the big day, put a big pot on to boil, and scored each apricot in an X pattern with a sharp knife. Once the water came to a boil, I dropped the apricots in (in batches) for 30-45 seconds, then fished ‘em out and dunked them in an ice-water bath to stop the cooking process. The skin slipped right off, and I was able to pry apart the fruit and pull out the stone without much effort. I roughly chopped the apricots, tossed them in 1/4 cup of lemon juice (to prevent browning), and found that I had approximately 3 quarts of fruit with which to work.

The recipe I used is from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving and is another “old-fashioned” style of jam that you cook for a couple of hours. I scaled the recipe based on the amount of fruit I had on hand, and calculated that I’d need nine cups of sugar for my jam.

I placed the apricots in my big, non-reactive stock pot, added the sugar and turned on the heat. It took forever for the apricots to start breaking down, but once they did it took another hour or two until some semblance of gel-stage was reached.

Once the jam was ready (it could have spent a bit more time firming up, but we had other jams to do and I don’t mind the texture), we ladled it into hot jars and processed them for 10 minutes in my water-bath canner.

We’re actually working on strawberry above, but you get the idea.

We spooned some left over, still-hot jam into a bowl to cool, then took turns scooping spoonfuls in to our mouths. It was sweet with a bit of lemon tart, creamy in texture, and full of apricot flavor. It’s also the most obscene orange color I’ve ever seen and I wish I could paint my house to match.

Pete, Jen, and Ailene were great to can with, and they all pitched in and helped clean and cook until we ran out of fruit. We spent five sweaty hours in a hot kitchen on an even hotter July day, but in the end we produced 37 jars of delicious, all-natural, homemade jam. It was a tremendous amount of work, and worth every minute of it.

See you for Can-O-Rama 2011?

I’ve had plenty of great pork shoulders in my time, but it’s just not my thing. Ribs I’m very particular about, and if your idea of great BBQ ribs are babybacks from Chili’s, I want you to stop reading right now and never come back. Truth is, I will eschew ribs at any BBQ joints unless they’re of bovine origin, though I might make an exception if I found myself in Memphis.

A lot of states claim to have the best BBQ, and I’ve had a lot of good ‘que in all parts of the South. Yet, the truth is no one does beef better than Texas. To me, brisket is the bee’s knees and the center of my barbecue world. There’s something almost mystical about transforming a tough, fatty hunk of flesh (from the breast of the cow) in to a tender, melt-in-your mouth masterpiece. The truth is, however, making a mind-blowing barbecue brisket really isn’t that hard. A good rub, some hardwood smoke, and a lot of patience is all it takes to produce a bad-ass brisket.

I’ve been waiting for a break in the weather to bust out the smoker, but the crazy ass Seattle spring just wouldn’t let up. The smoker I use, a Weber Smokey Mountain, is excellent at maintaining a steady temperature, but only when the weather cooperates. Coolish weather isn’t the problem, but rain makes it almost impossible to keep a consistent temperature over the 12+ hours needed to properly smoke a brisket or pork shoulder. We had one of the wettest, coldest Mays on record in the Pacific Northwest, so busting out the smoker just seemed more trouble than it was worth until Kyle (one of my brewing cohorts and neighbors) suggested we throw a block party for to celebrate some neighborhood birthdays.

The other challenge was finding a brisket. In Texas, whole (flat + cap) USDA choice briskets can be found in any supermarket, but they’re nigh-impossible to find in Seattle, which offends me to the core. Most places only sell the ‘flats’, and even then they ruin it by trimming off the fat cap. It’s also very expensive, and a brisket flat typically runs 3.50-5.00 a pound, depending on the quality of the meat (standard vs choice) and locale. Fortunately, my neighborhood butcher, the excellent Bob’s Quality Meats, sells whole brisket at a very reasonable (for Seattle) of 3.39 a pound. You can make good barbecue brisket with just the flat, but it has to be a whole, untrimmed flat. If the fat cap has been cut off by an over-zealous (or novice) butcher, then don’t bother, or you’ll end up with a dry ass brisket.

Brett’s BBQ Brisket

12-14 lb whole brisket (flat + cap)
3-4 cups of rub
Flavorful hardwood (e.g. apple, oak, etc) in whatever form best suits your smoker
2 gallon zip-top bag

A note on rubs: Rubs can be very complex and contain a multitude of ingredients, or you can simply use plenty of salt and pepper, which is very traditional in some parts of Texas. I like my brisket with a thick layer of peppery, spicy, and slightly sweet bark, but use whatever style of rub you like.

Inspect the brisket for nasty bits, but do not trim any of the fat off unless the cap is thicker than an inch, or so. Rinse the brisket well and pat dry with paper towels. Cover the brisket liberally with rub on both sides, then place in the zip-top bag and stash in the fridge overnight.

Remove brisket from bag and give it a good dose of rub on both sides once more. Fire up your smoker, add the wood, and place the brisket on the grate with the fat side up. Cover and smoke at 225 until the brisket hits 190 degrees. I use a Polder probe thermometer inserted in to the thickest part of the flat to monitor the temp, and recommend you do the same. If you’re constantly opening the smoker to check the temperature, it will be impossible to maintain the steady temperature you need to insure a tender, moist brisket.

You can mop the brisket every few hours (cold coffee, cider vinegar, some beer, Worcestershire, and tobacco make an excellent mop) if you want, or use a spray bottle with any mixture of apple juice or cider, bourbon, and cider vinegar if that’s more your style. I don’t see the point of doing either, personally, and while I’ve tried both methods in the past, I don’t think it added much to the final product. Some folks turn their briskets occasionally, and even flip it at some point, but again, I don’t see the point.

When the brisket is done, you need to let it rest before you start slicing it. I recommend wrapping it in a couple of layers of aluminum foil followed by a thick towel, but you could simply tent it in foil until you’re ready to serve. I suggest separating the cap from the flat, assuming you started with a whole brisket, but it’s up to you. The most important thing to remember is that you must slice the brisket across the grain, or you’ll end up with tough, stringy slices of meat, and that’s no bueno.

If you started with a whole brisket, you could pop the cap back in to the smoker and make what barbecue aficionados lovingly refer to as ‘burnt ends’. Burnt ends make the best chopped barbecue beef, the kind that’s perfect for serving up on hamburger buns with a bit of sauce, some relish, and a thick slice of onion. As to the rest of the brisket, well… That’s up to you. I suggest slicing it up (against the grain!!!!), and enjoy as is, though a bit of your favorite sauce wouldn’t be inappropriate.