Day twelve: Meat glue
Posted on | December 28, 2009
There is something totally wrong with my refrigerator. I come home from school, and once I’ve dropped my knife kit, hung up my jacket, and thrown the mail on my desk, I go get a glass of water. But if I don’t do it with the correct supplication, my refrigerator will wait until I am halfway across the room, then it will literally throw another cube at my feet.
Seriously.
So I’ve got to do something about that. And, oh boy, I’ve got to clean my desk (well, I can only assume my desk is under all that), empty the dishwasher and fill it with the stuff in the sink (well, I can only assume my sink is … you know), and make the bed. See, I have to be at school by 7:30 am (And woe to you if you are not in the kitchen, four-way on, side towels tucked in, hat on head, knife in hand on time. Woe, indeed.) so ….
Bah. The chores can wait. Instead, let me tell you all about my day, starting with a familiar face we haven’t seen in a long, long time.
It takes 50 gallons of maple sap to make one gallon of maple sugar
Remember Vegan Gay Guy? The guy from the first term that insisted on pouring apple cider vinegar in almost every dish he made? The guy who was tormented equally by students and by Motorcycle Chef? The sweet, hard-working guy who happily took care of the tasks no one else was doing? They guy who was married to a woman, had a gay lover, and eventually transferred to the night class?
Yeah. Him.
Seems like he will be with us for three days to make up for the three days he will be missing in action when his class is doing the work we are now covering.
It was a pleasure to see him. But only for me. Because my fellow students were pretty happy to tease him mercilessly every chance they got.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
On average, the French eat five million snails per year
First thing we did today: Stuff the wascally wabbit saddles with the stuffing we made yesterday.
How, you ask, did we manage to stuff such tiny pieces of meat with anything? Well, we pounded them flat. Yeah? But that still does not give you much meat to stuff. True. This is why we glued the two saddle pieces together.
Glued?!
Yep. Glued. With a little something called transglutaminase.
Huh?
Transglutaminase is a protein deritive that is used in cooking to bond meat. And you’ve probably already eaten the stuff (Ever had Chicken McNuggets? It is supposed to be home to transglutaminase.) It looks like baking soda and feels like talcum powder until you get it wet. Then it feels like sticky Jello. Nasty stuff. But brilliant. I asked the Chef if I could do a meat sculpture. Yeah, no.
But, the possibilities, the possibilities.
The special sauce in a Big Mac is thousand island dressing
Next, we made a polenta, mixing in the shredded the meat from the braised legs and pouring it into a pie tin to solidify overnight. Tomorrow, depending on how hard it gets, we plan to saute it or grill it.
I’d love to try grilling it, but I’m a little scared it will fall apart.
There are 1,200 varieties of watermelon
Finally, we made a marinade for some raddichio (we each got a quarter of a head), consisting of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, shallots, thyme, salt and pepper. After it had marinaded for a bit, we grilled it on the two cut sides, then returned it to the marinade.
Then, tomorrow, we will cook our stuffed rabbit, the two forelegs, the raddichio, and the polenta and plate them.
During the American Civil War acorns were used as a coffee substitute
One of the downsides to this term is that we rarely get anything to eat. But, today, I had nearly two cups of leftover rabbit stuffing which I brought home. The only problem is, I had no idea what to do with it. But it is so tasty, I definitely want to do something with so I asked Twitter for thoughts and got some amazing ideas, including:
- Wrap it in won ton wrappers
- Stuff puff pastry cups with it
- Stuff a pork chop with it
- Stuff a rock cornish game hen (a baby chicken) with it
- Stuff a pepper with it
- Mix it with rice
- Mix it with kasha
Tune in for my next post, same bat time, same bat channel, and I’l let you know what I made. Right after I clean house!
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December 28th, 2009 @ 12:56 pm
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