Preserving

Andouille Sausage

In our quest to reach the bottom of the deep freezer before I need it for a wedding cake, Todd pulled a precious pork roast along with two variety cuts - hearts and kidneys - that he'd decided would make fine andouille sausage. It's about this time of year when we start hankering for sausage - and so he cracked open our water-stained copy of Charcuterie and went to town.

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Pickled Chinese Mustard Greens

I was rummaging through some second-hand bookstores this weekend looking for a copy of an out-of-print book when I came across this handy little book called Creative Pickling at Home, by Barbara Ciletti. It's one of those workbook-looking paperbacks that are usually destined for a home at the bargain bookstore. I have one somewhere in my storage locker that was published by Ortho - the pesticide people - and it was a brilliant cookbook for me when I was learning how to cook with more exotic ingredients, like preserved ginger (this was in like 1992, when that was still interesting).

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Pickled Carrots and Raisins

Todd's been enjoying the pickles from the Boat Street Cafe, especially their carrots and raisins (I had a pickled fiddlehead at a dinner there recently - it was lovely). We knew we wanted to make our own pickled carrots, but we have such lousy luck in the garden with carrots. Not enough heat, hungry critters, you name it. But this weekend we got lucky. We took a stroll through the U-District Farmers' Market and came upon some real beauties that immediately made it into the pickle jar.

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Head Cheese #2: The Results are In!

So after a few lovely days in our fridge...we managed to work the loaf out of the pan and voila!

Our head cheese is a little fragile - the gelatin isn't that strong, and there are a lot of other things in the loaf that may have caused it to break apart a bit. The flavor is quite porky, once you get past the shallots and apples, and it's served best with a good mustard, cornichons, and some crackers.

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