Easy Breakfast

Granola, is surprisingly easy to make and versatile. Excellent with milk or yogurt as breakfast or crumbled over berries and ice cream for dessert - it become a household staple. Granola is also amenable to whatever we have in the cupboard, with maple syrup standing in for honey or a wide range of dried berries and even chocolate chips, the combination are endless.

Granola

3 cups oats
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
4 tbs brown sugar
1 tbs ground Cinnamon
1/2 tbs ground ginger
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup honey
2 tbs vegetable oil
1 - 2 cups dried blueberries or other dried fruit

1. Preheat oven to 300 F
2. Heat oil and honey in a small saucepan over low heat
3. Mix all other ingredients except the dried fruit
4. Mix in honey and oil mixture
5. Line cookie sheet with parchment paper and pour mixture in evenly
6. Bake for 35 minutes, stirring the contents every 10 minutes to ensure even cooking
7. Mix in dried fruit

Pork Butchery

There is nothing more primal than butchery. To understand where the animal comes from, every cut, every dish, is cooking at it`s purest. If you truly understand where your food comes from, you should understand that nothing should be wasted. It`s the understanding that an animal gave up its life for a meal and it behooves us to ensure it`s welfare and to not waste a single part of the creature.

I chose the pork course at Northwest Culinary school simply because I felt that it was a good sized animal to work with. Anything larger would be unwieldy while anything smaller would not yield quite as many interesting cuts.

Recipes

Tourtiere

Stuffing

1 tbs oil
1/2 diced medium onion
500 g lean gorund pork
1 tsp allspice
2 tbs flour
1/3 cup milk
salt and pepper to taste
1 large potato, cut into medium dice

Pastry

11/2 cups flour
150 g cubed, chilled butter
1/2 t salt
75 ml, cold water

Method

Pastry

1. Whisk flour and salt
2. cut cold butter into flour until pea sized
3. incorporate enough cold water to bind
4. wrap and rest in fridge

Tourtiere

1. Cook meat and onion, add flour to form a roux. Add milk and simmer for 5 -10 minutes, season
2. Add cubed potato and cook covered until tender
3. Cool mixture, fill pie, close lid
4. Bake at 400 degrees F until golder brown

Wiener Schnitzel

Pork or Veal
breadcrumbs
eggs, whisked
flour
salt and pepper

1. pound slices of pork until thin
2. season with salt and peper
3. dip in flour
4. dip in eggs
5. dip in breadcrumbs
6. Pan fry in a pan with about 1/2 inch of oil until golden brown

Pate or Terrine

2 Tbs Pistachios, chopped
1 egg
2 tsp flour
1 tsp salt
Qautre Epice as needed

Quatre Epice
1 cup ground black pepper
3 tbs ground cloves
5 tbs ground ginger
5 tbs ground nutmeg

Forcemeat
1 kg cubed pork 30% fat
70 ml Brandy
1 tbs quatre epics
1/2 diced onion
3 diced garlic cloves
1 tbs fresh thyme

1. Rub spices into pork, add brandy and marinate overnight
2. sweat onion and garlic in fat with thyme, cool and add to cubed pork
3. grind mixture in food processor
4. emulsify meat and keep cool

Recipe

1. Mix egg and flour into a paste
2. add 1 kg forcemeat, pistachios, egg, flour and salt
3. pack mixture in terrine and bake at 350 F until it reached 140 F
4. Cool and press pate overnight with cans

Sausage Party

I prefer my sausages a little bit rougher. The oscillation between meat, fat and spices can create a much more satisfying and flavourful experience as all parts can come into play with varying strengths. My palette never tires nor does it become inured. The recipes provided will all work with the following methodology.

Method

1. Soak casings in water for about 1 hour. Be sure to change the water as the casings will be salted. If there are any casings leftover, you can always place in a bag with a bit of water and freeze again. Sheep casings are the most common but it`s often best to match the casing to the meat filling
2. You will want a large sturdy working surface. Cover with a plastic sheet to ease cleaning. The meat can be quite greasy.
3. 2.Mix the spices with the thoroughly. Take a small batch, about the size of a fist, and drop it on the work surface from about 6 inches. Gather the ball, rotate a quarter and drop down again. As you continue to do this, the fat in the pork will break down and start to glue the meat together. As the ball of meat gets stickier, drop it from higher and higher heights until the ball will hold its shape. Continue with the rest of the meat.
4. Heat a small pan and cook a small amount of meat. Taste and adjust if required. If the meat is freshly ground, you can certainly try a bit of the filling raw.
5. Remove a casing from the water place over the spout of the stuffer. Try to get as much of the casing on the spout as possible and cut off any extra. Be sure to leave about 2 inches of extra material for tying off the sausages.
6. Slowly feed the meat into the casing and try not to over stuff the sausage. You will need to twist off the sausages and you do not want to burst the casings. here is where a manual stuffer works well as the flow of the stuffing can be better managed, however, it will require an extra set of hands.
7. Once you have filled a casing, lie the entire link on the work table. You can either twist the links at regular intervals to create sausages or you can braid them through each other. The former is much easier but is not as fast as the later.
8. Grill over a BBQ, enjoy and deal with the inevitable sausage jokes.

Recipes

Hot Italian Sausage

10 lbs rough ground pork
1 cup red wine (mix after the meat has been properly mixed with other spices)
1 cup chopped fresh parsley
5 tsp salt
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbs ground pepper
3 tsp cayenne pepper
5 tbsp fennel seed
2 tsp crushed chili peppers
5 tbsp paprika

Sweet Italian Sausage

10 lbs rough ground pork
4 tbsp salt
1 tbsp fennel seed
2 tsp ground black pepper
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp caraway seeds
1 tbsp coriander
3 tsp crushed chili peppers

Cotechino Sausage

10 lbs rough ground pork
1 cup grated Romano cheese
4 cloves minced garlic
4 tbsp salt
3 tbsp ground pepper
1 tbsp nutmeg
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tbsp cayenne
1 tsp ground clove

Moroccan Lamb Sausage

10 lbs ground lamb
4 tbsp salt
3 tbsp ground pepper
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp all spice
6 minced garlic cloves
1 tbsp ginger powder
1 tbsp coriander
1 cup chopped, dried figs

Lamb and Feta Sausage

10 lbs ground lamb
4 tbs salt
3 tbsp ground pepper
1 cup crumbled feta
1 cup chopped fresh parsley