Le Snax

As many of my readers know, I enjoy making meals, and especially snacks, that I imagine to be quintessentially French. This is my latest iteration thereof: A little slice of a baguette. Beef terrine (a chunky paté that I got at Butcher and Larder, a trendy butcher shoppe that just opened down Milwaukee). Parmesan from Le Trader Joe's. A sliver of Black Spanish radish, which is really cool-looking.

A note about Butcher and Larder: meat-eaters reading this in Chicago should totally check it out. I was concerned about prices and/or excessive trendiness when I went there, because of how much hype it's gotten, and how they chop up one animal at a time and sell it bit-by-bit, etc., but it was actually pretty affordable and the people there were nice. I got a hunk of terrine, a hunk of Italian-style head cheese, and a big Italian sausage for under $10 total, and they answered my many questions about weird meat concoctions.











The terrine.












The Radish.












Here's kind of a cool one I made while writing this post, for which I sliced the radishes super-thin.












EDIT: This is the head cheese, which is much tastier than it sounds, and can also be eaten with bread and radishes.

Braised lamb shanks (and no famous pizza)

So the other day I had just gotten back from MOSES, this organic agriculture conference in La Crosse, WI, and it really had me in the mood to eat some meat that was grown around here. Whenever I get reminded that I'm a small farmer, it makes me want to go buy stuff from other small farmers. Plus, ever since I stopped being a vegetarian three years ago, I've been on a quest to get better at cooking meat that I never used to eat before I became vegetarian. Anyways, I went over to the Dill Pickle and got some lamb shanks from Mint Creek Farm. They were actually pretty reasonable priced, I guess because shanks are supposed to be tough and not a choice cut, as it were.

I wanted to braise the lamb and I wanted to involve root vegetables, preferably celery root (which I hadn't eaten since I had bad experience trying to bake it into bread a few years ago), so I found this recipe and followed it very loosely. Braising is really easy, I discovered, and I don't think there's any reason to really follow a recipe, except to find out how long a particular type of meat should cook. Here is what I did.

I took my two lamb shanks (about one pound each), and rubbed them with lots of salt and pepper and a few Tbsp. of oil with chopped onions, garlic, and rosemary mixed in. I let that sit for about three hours, though the recipe said to marinate for up to 48 hours. I wish I had had the time, but I think it was fine anyway. Later, I seared the shanks and some more onion and garlic in a pan, and then put them in a casserole dish with diced parsnip, celery root and some City Farm carrots I had lying around (I meant to put in potatoes, but ran out of room and am kind of glad). I covered all this with chicken stock and some (not-so-good) hard cider I had made a while back, and put it all in the oven, covered, for about 4 hours. Because I started it late, I braised at about 325 degrees rather than the called-for 275 degrees. I think that was fine, but I'm looking forward to braising other stuff at lower temperatures for longer times. This was really good, though. I ate it standing up in the kitchen at about 11:30 at night, and felt French. Ah, and I also made a potato-celery root puree that served as the bed for the lamb, etc.


In other food news, I stopped in Madison on the way home from the conference, to go to the Capitol and stand in solidarity with with the workers and protesters there, and also to eat a slice of the now-famous donated pizza from around the world and put it on my food blog. Unfortunately the Capitol had been locked by the time I got there and I was unable to enter. Still, long live the struggle and long live pizza!