Cooking with Zak Pelaccio's 'Eat With Your Hands'

[ChrisTaylor]

Had this book for a while. A lot of fun. A lot of attitude. Really enjoy the, 'oh, you need to consume several <cocktail with lots of rye and etc> before even starting this recipe' degeneracy.

Anyway. I've cooked a few recipes over the months, including the modified rendang (which I further modified for use in a slow cooker--not the best idea), but the pasta con sarde (jacked w/ Pernod-infused raisins) is the first keeper of the bunch. I've seen what appears to be a modified version of this recipe online: you want it.

[ChrisTaylor]

Tried a couple of recipes tonight:

• The roast chicken w/ turmeric butter and coconut milk. I don't think the pan sauce adds a lot to it but that's okay: this is a nice roast chicken. The celery mostarda is nice. Not as sweet as the commercial mostarda I've had, which is a good think. Zak's recipe: there's something about the texture of celery in this that works nicely.
  
• Radish and mullet roe salad. Works nicely.
  

[ChrisTaylor]

The green papaya salad, while having about ten thousand ingredients, is very good. Even when you're cooking while semi-intoxicated and figure maybe going for a full on julienne is a shit idea so mostly you just make thin slices.

[ChrisTaylor]

Bump. Saw a blog post somewhere the other day about this book and figured, hey, maybe someone else is planning on buying it. I've cooked a few recipes from this book and, to be honest, have had mixed luck.

The green papaya salad and beef rendang are very good. I've made the rendang a couple of times: as it should be made, not modified into a slow cooker bullshit recipe. The beef cheeks, braised with approx ten thousand ingredients, are great. There are a few duds, tho'. The master stock (used in the beef cheeks and the braised pork belly) is very good but the braised pork belly, which I just made tonight actually ... isn't.

Edited August 14, 2013 by ChrisTaylor (log)

[mache]

I did the brussels sprouts with bacon and chilli (also posted by the New York Times) for Thanksgiving and thought it was great. I will probably rework it to cut down on the bacon fat but still feel it will deliver most if not all of the flavor. I am also going to do his Fatty Brisket. I want to branch out from the more traditional smoked briskets I have done and try more Asian flavors.

-- Mache

Edited December 7, 2013 by mache (log)

[mache]

For all the effort required for the Fatty Brisket, including a smoking temperature of 190F, I was not impressed. 190F is a very low smoking temperature and after 21 hours, the flat area of my 16.25 pound USDA Choice packer brisket had an internal temperature 150F. I had to pull it off of the the smoker, foil it, and finish it at 300F in my oven. The wet paste and the dry rub did not add anything distinctive to what I have experienced with other briskets. Also, the flat was tender but dry. In future I will smoke at 225F, foil the brisket with some liquid when I hit the stall, and let it go to completion (fork tender at the flat). The Fatty Brisket is definitely not a keeper.

-- Mache

Edited December 17, 2013 by mache (log)

[ChrisTaylor]

Interesting. I've made two or three attempts at the smoke goat shoulder--once with lamb, I think, the other time with actual honest-to-God goat--and I wasn't very impressed. The book's recipes are hit and miss. When they're good, they're very good. When they're not they're ... not terrible, I guess, but forgettable. Almost as if these were scaled down or modified from a restaurant dish and no one bothered to do a few trial runs to iron out the kinks.