Peter the eater

It is the same balancing thing here. I guess I'm just jealous. In Ottawa, it is very hard to find fresh seafood, let alone anything cheap coming from the sea. I like the idea of using the skin to wrap the bits of meat you can salvage from making your broth... I think I'll steal your idea... that means a lot of meals out of only one duck! ← Finding good groceries at good prices is my idea of fun. Our regional version of Loblaws (Canada's largest retailer ahead of WalMart and HBC) is Atlantic Super Store (ASS?). My store always has lots of 1/2 price red meat and poultry. It's usually smaller market stuff like lamb, goat and offal. Sometimes it's just to make shelf room for incoming orders. If something looks and smells suspicious I won't touch it, especially seafood. Beef, on the other hand, is almost always underaged and actually gets better with time in my fridge. I usually hit the markets 3 times a week so the "cook right away" thing works for me.

It's always a balance between quality and price -- if it's strangely inexpensive you must ask yourself why? I could see from the time-stamped packaging that this duck came from Mike Oulton's farm in Windsor, NS less than an hour away from me. I know his farm well and when I see the retailers slashing prices to move the produce, well that's the time to pounce. Like anywhere, some things here are a bargain (usually seafood) and others are not (beef, tropical fruit). Roll with the seasons, buy local and stay educated. That being said, I left way too much fat attached to skin. I originally thought I'd roll the assembly over in the rendered duck fat in a skillet, sear up the seam, etc. I think I should've plopped the whole thing into a loaf pan.

A good one from Vancouver is Murchies.

What's better than a whole free-range duck for $9.00? That same duck at half-price because, according to the vendor, it needs to be cooked or frozen within the next 48 hours: He's a little beat up but basically intact. I took the skin and legs off: The breasts got marinated in orange juice and olive oil for a future barbecue: The carcass, wings and legs went into the steamer while the breasts overnighted in the fridge. The cooked wing and leg meat was set aside and the steamer broth was filtered and frozen for a future soup. I chopped up the the cooked meat and mixed it with onions, garlic and bread crumbs to make a stuffing to be rolled in the skin -- which I think qualifies as a gallotine. I baked two skin-clad rolls at 375F until they looked golden and crisp. The wife took my camera to her soccer game so there's no final reveal. One roll looked fine and sliced well, but the other one arched and contorted as it baked. I'll use string sutures and less stuffing next time.

I think if I had to eat an animal nose to tail, the penis would the very last part. I always soak organ meat -- probably more than I really need to. Getting the blood out, yes, but also to remove whatever fluids that may linger depending on the organ. It's critical for kidneys -- the "off odor" is nasty. The only place I've seen penises for sale is at the pet store. They're brown, stiff and leathery and intended to be dog toys called "pizzlers" or something like that. There's also somebody who makes walking canes out of them, they're four feet long with a glans handle. Not everyone can pull off an accessory like that.

I found some rice at The Bulk Barn called Emperor's Green Rice. Being a bulk food store there wasn't much info about the product, only how to cook it, and the adjective "young" was used: So now I'm reading a library book called "The Essential Rice Cookbook" (Whitecap Books Vancouver 2003, ISBN 1-55285-495-7) and there's no mention of green rice or Emperors. The books says on page 8 that "Rice is eaten daily by over 300 billion people." How the hell does that work? They must have meant 3 billion. There are some good recipes and images, though. The rice pictured above was cooked in slightly salted water for 25 minutes and came out beautifully -- toothsome and flavourful. Anbody have experience with or information about Emperor's Green Rice?

The artist formerly known as Prince?

They look fantastic. Have you tried leaving the skin on?

That's a female lobster (looks like an H. americanus or H. gammarus) with a healthy amount of fertilized eggs. In Canada it's illegal to harvest a mother-to-be like that one in order to keep the wild population up. Lobster fishermen will only keep females when the eggs are still inside (i.e. not visible). The females carry thousands of tiny black eggs inside for a year and then outside for another year tucked under the swimmerets on the tail's underside. Those eggs above look pretty big and may have been ready for release as larvae. When a lobster is cooked, most thing turn pink including the eggs. I find just about everything inside a lobster to be delicious. Lobsters here are currently being sold with a recommendation not to eat the eggs or the green tomalley because of the possible exposure to PST (paralytic shellfish toxin). Health Canada says there's been no reports of sickness this year but they leave the warning in place just to be safe. I think you have to eat like a dozen a day for a month to get sick. By that point PST wouldn't be my biggest concern because I'd be so fat and broke. AFIC you'd be dishonouring that lobster's family by not eating all those yummy eggs.

My market gets lamb fries from time to time. I've never bought a pair (they always come in pairs, how 'bout that?) nor have I ever seen them on a menu or at somebody's place for dinner. I don't need a dedicated cookbook but I will give them a try one of these days . . .

That's a good idea. Like others, I've got a bunch of reusable grocery bags in the trunk but I've also got one that's made from quilted foil-like plastic material - prevents defrosting for 3 hours.

The back of my car has no food, just empty packages: little raisin boxes, water bottles, granola bar wrappers, juice boxes, etc. When I worked in Northern Ontario I used to drive around with an empty cooler and a fishing rod.

I don't really have a "sure thing" because I'm always going through some kind of new kick. These days I like to serve dinner guests something grilled, something steamed and something baked. I'm also a fan of having all the food on the table in communal bowls and plates. I give them smallish plates so they help themselves a few times, adds to the conversation. Can you provide more info such as occasion, type of cuisine, theme, etc? If I had 4-6 for dinner this weekend I'd give them: 1. roasted beef marrow bones (with herb garlic bread for smearing/dipping) 2. grilled fish steaks (like char, shark, halibut) 3. oven-roasted veggies (parsnip, beet, squash, sweet potato) 4. a grain (such as quinoa, green or red rice, couscous)

I filled a bowl with a spout to the brim with water. When I slipped in tonight's frozen flank steak, I collected the displaced water in a measuring cup: 0.295 kg = 0.375 L 1.00 L = 0.787 kg = 1.74 lbs Looks like 1 3/4 pounds a liter, for frozen beef flank.

It's probably common knowledge, but the actin-myosin interaction is the basis of all muscular movement and it requires ATP, where P is for phosphate. Rigor mortis is a lot like a simple muscle contraction -- but for the muscle to relax the animal has to be alive. . . or decomposing. . . or being manipulated by a crazed Charcutière.

That's like 2 1/2 gallons. That's a lot of links.

I do not know if more or less time would affect the taste. I do know that it tastes great. It would be interesting to test but I a bit leary. ← I love pickled fish, herring's my fave. The recipe above calls for a 2 day salt and water cure, followed by a 2 week acid/spice bath. The "brine" has no salt, so maybe it's not the best word. In my experience with herring and mackerel, it all depends on how big the fish chunks are cut. I'll bet the pike will taste pretty good after a week or even less as long as the mix has penetrated.

That baseball metaphor reminds me of the Yankee Stadium frank I had in 1992 -- the year my Jays went on to win the World Series. No time for nostalgia . . . There was an episode of Good Eats a few years ago where I recall Alton Brown explaining sausage science in some detail, including the "keep it cool" bit. It's an important question, I hope the experts here will weigh in. Like 98.6F? That's all I found in my brief'n'lazy online search.

You should try Banana Ketchup, a product I buy at my local Fillipino market ← I've had banana ketchup and it's good. I'd like it more if it wasn't artificially colored red to look like tomato ketchup -- like it's trying to be something that it's not, in a veggie burger kinda way. Ketchup is like cola or Hannah Montana -- suffering from over exposure.

Well put -- sausages can be low-tech low-brow mere sustenance, or they can be an absolute art form. I'm comforted to know it wasn't just me. Before I bought the plastic tube stuck on the front, I tried a very large plastic pastry bag with a 3/8" nozzle -- it worked rather well. Stuffing was a lot of fun, but before I do another batch or upgrade any equipment I'm going to hit the markets and find some artisanal charcuterie, study the appearance and aroma, then eat it slowly with my eyes closed. Plus take photos and notes.

Chris H, that's a handsome set-up. Have you tried taking the operation outside on a cold day so everything is hovering around the freezing point? Are the clamps in the background related to charcuterie?

This is all a bit of a revelation for me. For years I've made liver pates, terrines, sausage patties, hamburgers and meatloaf without ever thinking about emulsions. On many sausage sites like this one and this one you won't find the word emulsion, and they often recommend raising the temperature of the mixture so it'll flow better through the stuffer. My liver pate and ground beef meatloaves always seem to set properly and slice well without friability. Is there an image around that shows a broken sausage (other than mine above) illustrating the mealy look of a failed bind? Maybe "broken" is a continuum? Maybe coarsely ground sausages are more forgiving?

Thanks HKDave, it's all making sense. I can see why a large diameter, fine grain sausage relies on an good bind and intact emulsion. I imagine broken baloney with a 5" diameter would be granular and crumbly, and impossible to slice thinly without falling apart. There must be a subset of non-emulsified sausages -- including my attempt above. The fried version was just like any other diner breakfast sausage. How's this for a statement: A homemade hamburger patty is typically made by shaping ground beef into a disk. A processed hamburger patty is beef-based emulsion akin to a sausage.

Yikes! But for a chef to die like that . . . . there are worse ways to go.

OK, I'll bite. What is tiger butter, and how do you make it? Anything as good as you describe, I've got to try. ← Milking the tiger must be the rate determining step.