(Non-game) recipes

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(Non-game) recipes

Post by cleger » 08 Jul 2021, 11:45 am

One of the things I've noticed since I joined here is that there seem to be far fewer recipes posted than on other firearms-related boards I visit, so I'm going to share a few with you (in the selfish hope that someone will tell me how to make a proper meat pie.) These days, it's impossible to read a recipe online without first having to scroll past a great long blathering prologue, and mine will be no exception.

Clam Chowder

One of the staples of New England (and Canadian maritimes) cooking is "salt pork." I don't know that salt pork is sold at all in Australia, but it's basically salt-cured pork belly, and I see no reason why you couldn't substitute pork belly for salt pork. They taste the same, minus the salt. In olden times, "salt pork" was the functional equivalent of bacon around here - it was cheap, preserved meat, and it is the basis for a number of regional dishes, including clam chowder.

My family have lived in New England for over 400 years. I know how to make proper chowder, and in just a few minutes, you will too. Do it this way, and you could probably win an award. DO NOT PUT ANY SORT OF SMOKED AMERICAN-STYLE BACON IN YOUR CHOWDER. Americans who live outside of New England do this, and it is wrong. If you put bacon in your chowder, you will have failed, and made smoke-flavored clam-and-potato stew. For all I know, you can't buy smoked bacon in Australia, which is lucky where chowder is concerned, otherwise unlucky. The ingredients in real New England Clam Chowder are no more and no less than those I shall list below. Anyone who says otherwise is wrong. There are no leeks, or corn or, corn starch, or wine, or garlic, or olive oil, or (Jesus Christ) "herbes de provence" in chowder. Just what you can grow, or find, or dig-up in New England. Or Australia.

This will make over a gallon, which is a bunch of litres, or enough to fill a large stew pot. You'll need:

    1 kg of clams, or a pile about the size of a volleyball. Here, we use "littleneck" clams. From my reading, Australian "surf" clams are about the same thing. We'll substitute other types here in New England when we have to... no reason you shouldn't do likewise. Just get clams that you like.

    1 slab of salt pork or pork belly, about 500 grams, maybe a little less, diced into 1 cm cubes.

    1 half to 3/4 of a large yellow/Spanish onion, minced very fine. If your onions are the size of a cricket ball or smaller, use more than half.

    2 large Russet potatoes, diced into 2 cm cubes. We use Russets - use whatever white, fluffy potatoes you'd use to bake or make mashed. I've had potatoes in Australia plenty of times, and ours are the same.
----------
Heavy cream
Flour
Butter
Dried thyme, crushed to powder, about 1 teaspoon
Salt and pepper
optional parsley for garnish

Begin by scrubbing the clams under the faucet with a brush like used for washing dishes. This will clean the scum off of them, and also help you identify any dead ones. They should close when you touch their gooshy parts with the brush. Watch for movement. If any should just lie there with its shell hanging open, discard it outdoors. DO NOT put dead clams in the rubbish under the cupboard to sit for days.

Put the live clams in a large pot, and just cover them with water. Boil them until they open, usually 10 minutes or so. If any fail to open, it's because they were already dead, and now you have carrion broth. I told you to scrub them. I know I was pretty clear about that. Anyway, the water you cooked them in is now your broth, so don't lose it. Remove the clams from the broth with a slotted spoon, and set them aside to cool. There are liable to be bits of shell and sand at the bottom of the pot, so pour all but the last ounce of broth into another container, pitch the part with the shells and sand down the drain, and put the broth back in your pot. Set it aside, off the stove.

Saute the diced pork belly in a frying pan. It will cook in its own fat. Cook until crispy, and dry-looking. Remove the cooked salt pork with your slotted spoon, and add it to your broth, leaving the pork fat in the pan. Now saute the minced onion in the pork fat until soft and translucent. When the onion is done, likewise remove it with your slotted spoon, adding it to the broth, leaving the fat in the pan. Now you're going to make your "roux."

Add flour to the fat until it won't take any more. You're going to want about a cup of flour, so if you don't have enough pork fat, you can add butter. Sometimes I use most of a stick -- the amount of fat you'll get from salt pork is variable. The roux should start out dry and fluffy. As it cooks down, it will liquefy. Cook the flour/fat/butter over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it turns color. Flour cooked in this way will progress from pale yellow, to deep yellow, to brown. Cook it until it's deep yellow.

Return to your cooled clams. Remove them from their shells, and clean them of skin or membranes or what-have-you, until you have clean clams. Rinse them under the faucet to wash away remaining sand, chop them to 1-to-2 cm bits, and set them aside.

Return your broth to the stove, and bring it to a boil. Stir in the roux gradually until the thickness is as you like -- you won't need it all. Don't worry if it turns out a bit thick because you'll thin it with cream later.

Add the diced potatoes to your broth, along with the thyme, salt, and pepper. Everything but the chopped clams is now in the pot. Cook until the potatoes are just cooked. You want them the slightest bit "al dente" because you'll be reheating the chowder each time you serve it. It's a bit of a tough call, but don't over-cook the potatoes. Taste the broth and adjust seasoning as needed.

Once the potatoes are just cooked, stir in your chopped clams, and remove the pot from the heat. It's important to add the clams at the very last. You already cooked them, and cooking them too long makes them chewy and tough. You're going to risk that as it is, each time you reheat it to serve.

To serve, heat the chowder in a pan until it's just simmering, and stir in some cream. Use just enough to turn it white. Don't add cream to the entire pot of chowder - add it only to the portion you're about to serve, otherwise it will tend to separate from the rest of the broth in the refrigerator.

It's easier to make than the above might make it seem - boil, clean, and dice your clams, reserving the broth. Dice & saute your pork, saute onion in pork fat, add pork and onion to the broth along with seasoning, cook your flour in pork fat/butter, and add it to broth to thicken it, then add potatoes and simmer till "al dente," then add clams and remove from heat. Reheat and stir in cream to serve. It should look like this:

Image

That's how old time Yankees do it. Next up will be Chicken a` la Salt Pork, like mum used to make.
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Re: (Non-game) recipes

Post by cleger » 08 Jul 2021, 12:15 pm

Chicken a`la Pork Belly

You'll need

    1/2 kg chicken
    1/4 kg pork belly
    1 pkg small sliced mushrooms, ~200 gm
    1 small jar capers, ~100 gm
    1 can sliced artichoke hearts in brine, drained. 250-350 gm

also

    pasta
    flour

    2 lemons
    2 sticks butter
    Heavy cream

Cut pork belly into 5 cm slabs, and then slice those slabs into 3 mm slices... as thin as you can. Cook in your frying pan until done, remove pork belly from pan with a slotted spoon.

Cut chicken into bite-sized chunks. Dredge in flour, saute in pork fat in the same frying pan until done, remove chicken from pan.

Melt two sticks of butter in a saucepan. Add juice of two lemons. Add 1/2 cup of cream. Keep warm over low heat.

Add mushrooms, artichokes, capers to frying pan. Saute until mushrooms are tender. Add back your pork belly and chicken. Stir in half your lemon/butter/cream sauce. Remove from heat. The rest of the sauce will be used in your pasta.

Cook your favorite pasta. Put it on a plate, add some lemon sauce, and top with the chicken/pork belly. Looks like this:

Image
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Re: (Non-game) recipes

Post by cleger » 08 Jul 2021, 12:45 pm

Boston Baked Beans

Maybe you've had these from a can? Here's how to make the real thing:

    1 kg Navy beans
    1/2 kg (or more, if you like) pork belly, diced into 1.5 cm cubes
    1/2 cup molasses
    1/2 cup brown sugar - the sticky kind, not granulated
    1 tablespoon dry mustard or 3 tbsp prepared mustard
    One dozen whole cloves - on the stalks like you'd use for ham
    1 yellow/Spanish onion, cut in half.
Salt & pepper


Soak the beans in cold water overnight. Drain them and set aside, and reserve liquid.

Mince half the onion, very fine. With the other half, stick your 12 cloves into it, like you were decorating a ham.

In a large sauce pan, combine molasses, dry mustard, brown sugar, and about 1 litre of the bean water. Boil, and stir until sugar has dissolved.

Put everything but the left-over bean water in large cooking pot. (You can also use a "crock pot" or slow cooker for this.) That means the sauce you just made, plus the beans, salt pork, and minced onion, plus the onion half that you studded with cloves. Try not to lose it... you'll remove it later. Add enough bean water if needed, to just cover beans.

Bake at 150 to 160 deg C for about 6 hrs or until beans are tender. Check every hour, and top-off with remaining bean water as needed to keep things wet. After about 5 hrs, stop adding water and let the sauce thicken.

Remove your clove-onion, and discard. The result should look like this:

Image
Last edited by cleger on 08 Jul 2021, 12:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: (Non-game) recipes

Post by cleger » 08 Jul 2021, 12:48 pm

Now, how do I make a proper meat pie, like I used to buy from "Pie Face" in Brisbane? All the ones I've tried making from recipes came out tasting like ketchup.

Or do you only ever buy them?

Tell me, and I'll tell you how to make a Canadian meat pie, like we have at Christmas.
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Re: (Non-game) recipes

Post by bah! » 08 Jul 2021, 7:41 pm

cleger wrote:Boston Baked Beans

Maybe you've had these from a can? Here's how to make the real thing:


I do these myself with a pressure canner. After that they're shelf-stable for years, if my kids will leave them alone.
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Re: (Non-game) recipes

Post by boingk » 08 Jul 2021, 8:17 pm

cleger wrote:Now, how do I make a proper meat pie, like I used to buy from "Pie Face" in Brisbane? All the ones I've tried making from recipes came out tasting like ketchup.

Or do you only ever buy them?

Tell me, and I'll tell you how to make a Canadian meat pie, like we have at Christmas.


Mate, awesome recipes. Haven't had the first two at all but have made variations on the last without realising it was a regional dish. I'll definitely give them all a crack.

My wife does a cracker of a pie. Bear with me here, I'm going from the helpers perspective so it may be inaccurate.

First, dice a large onion finely. Brown that in a pan with some olive oil, then add a clove of garlic and throw in a half kilo (1 pound) of minced beef. We use basic stuff from the store, its advertised as 80% lean and 20% fat. Leaner is fine if you prefer, no problems at all. You can add a rasher or two of diced bacon if you so desire for a richer flavour.

Break that up in the pan with a wooden spatula or what-have-you. Salf and pepper lightly as you break it up. After breaking it up ad in a 1/4 cup of tomato sauce and a half cup of barbeque sauce. If you prefer you can use gravy powder and just a squirt of barbeque sauce, this will give a more authentic 'servo pie' type flavour with less sweetness than the sauce-based recipe.

Add liquid (water or beer are both fine) if using the gravy powder style to make a gravy slurry and reduce to thicken for a good pie filling. Salt and pepper to taste.

About this stage you can let it sit and work on your pie crust. We tend to just lay a sheet of puff pastry in a greased tin and pre-bake it until just ever so slightly starting to brown. Now fill with the mix, add cheese if you wish, top with a solid or latticed head as desired and bake again until golden brown.

There ya go, all sorted.

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Re: (Non-game) recipes

Post by cleger » 09 Jul 2021, 7:27 am

boingk wrote:Mate, awesome recipes. Haven't had the first two at all but have made variations on the last without realising it was a regional dish. I'll definitely give them all a crack.


Very regional. Boston was a player in the "triangular trade." They'd get molasses and sugar cane from the Carribbean, bring it home to make rum, carry that to Africa, trade for some slaves, carry them to the Carribbean, and repeat. There was a (locally) famous incident a hundred years ago in which a molasses tank ruptured and killed a bunch of people in town.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Molasses_Flood

Anyway, salt pork and molasses... doesn't get much more New Englandy than that.

The clam chowder is likewise very closely identified with this place. Loads of it is sold in restaurants - some good, some not so good. I consider myself something of a connoisseur. ;) Again, the thing that is absolutely key is the pork belly. Without it, the whole thing's off.

boingk wrote:My wife does a cracker of a pie. Bear with me here, I'm going from the helpers perspective so it may be inaccurate.

First, dice a large onion finely. ...


Thanks very much for this! I was making it more or less that way. Your post has (suddenly) made clear to me that the difference must be in the tomato (& BBQ) sauces...

The recipes that I found online and tried were all written as "here's how and American can make a pie," etc. Anyhow, let me ask; would these be OK to use? They might not be just what your wife uses, but is this the sort of thing?

https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/prod ... mato-sauce
https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/prod ... ecue-sauce

I think maybe my problem was using American "tomato sauce" which contains things like basil, garlic, and vinegar. If those Fountain products would be OK to use, I think I can approximate the tomato with what is sold here as "tomato puree." That might just be key to making a proper pie with foreign ingredients.

Meanwhile, here's how to make a Canadian pie...
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Re: (Non-game) recipes

Post by bigpete » 09 Jul 2021, 8:50 am

I wouldn't add tomato of any form till after its a pie...
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Re: (Non-game) recipes

Post by cleger » 09 Jul 2021, 9:21 am

bigpete wrote:I wouldn't add tomato of any form till after its a pie...


Do you use BBQ sauce?
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Re: (Non-game) recipes

Post by cleger » 09 Jul 2021, 9:30 am

My grandfather was from New Brunswick, which is just to the north of New Englans. These pies are very traditional, and commonly seen at Christmastime. If you try this, you'll be getting a very, very authentic Canadian culinary experience.

But it's not haute cuisine. When it comes to meat, I buy the absolute cheapest cuts available. These pies are rustic "peasant" food, and the Canadians would make them from whatever scraps they happened to have. I've seen them made with chicken, but I like 50:50 pork & beef, and that's sort of the standard way to make them these days. Don't buy expensive meat. You're going to boil the daylights out of it, and it won't make a difference.

They look a bit like Australian pies, but they taste rather different, since there's no tomato, and they contain a spice called "savory" (French Canadians call it "sariette") that has a very herbal sort of flavor. Candians put it in *everything.*

Now I'm afraid getting "savory" is going to be a trick in Australia. I can't find it at Woolworth's, though Amazon has it.
https://www.amazon.com.au/McCormick-Gou ... 311&sr=8-4
Is this stuff unknown in Australia? It's in every shop here. If you can't get it, you could substitute a tablespoon each of sage & thyme.

They're made "full size" and sliced. Our pans are 9 inches, or about 23 cm. This will make one 9" pie.

For the filling
    1/2 kg pork
    1/2 kg beef
    2 russet potatoes
    1 large yellow/Spanish onion
    2 tablespoons savory (or 1 ea. sage & thyme)
    butter for browning meat

Like boingk wrote above, bake your lower crust by itself until golden, so it doesn't come out soggy.

To make:

Dice your meat into 2.5 cm (one inch) cubes. Mince your onion very fine.

Brown the meat in a little bit of butter in a frying pan until it is just seared on the outside.

Put the meat, onion, and savory (or sage & thyme) in a stew pot, and add enough water to just cover the meat. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to barely simmering, and simmer, covered, for 1.5 to 2 hours, checking every half hour to add water to keep the meat covered as necessary, until a piece of meat will just about fall apart when you squash it with a fork..

Remove from heat, and pour everything into a collander to strain it. Let it cool in the collander while you prepare the potatoes.

Peel and dice 2 large Russet/Sebago potatoes, and boil them the same as if you were making mashed potatoes. When they're done, strain out the water, and mash them in the usual way. No lumps! Be thorough.

Return to your cooled meat. Examine all your cooked pieces, and scrape away or remove any fat or gristle that remains (most of it will have boiled away.)

Now put the meat/onions in a mixing bowl, and start adding potatoes, mixing/stirring as you go. You want to add enough that the filling is going to hold together when the pie is baked. These pies don't "slouch" the way Australian ones do. But add only the minimum potatoes necessary. You want to keep the meat-to-potatoes ratio as high as is resonably possible. Don't worry that the meat falls apart as you mix. It will do that. But do try to keep it as intact as possible, so there are some big chunks in each slice.

Image

Add salt and pepper. When the filling is mixed, and tasting good, fill your (pre-cooked) lower crust, add your top crust, cut some vents, and bake at 175 deg C until the top crust is done, usually about 40 minutes or so. Note that we use the same crust, top and bottom. No puff pastry here, but if you wanted to use puff pastry, I don't think it would spoil anything.
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Re: (Non-game) recipes

Post by Communism_Is_Cancer » 10 Jul 2021, 1:12 pm

Cheers for the recipe, I love a good chowder.
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Re: (Non-game) recipes

Post by cleger » 10 Jul 2021, 3:07 pm

Communism_Is_Cancer wrote:Cheers for the recipe, I love a good chowder.


You bet. Again, the key to New England style chowder is the port belly, and cooking the onions and flour in the pork fat.

That, and the cream.
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Re: (Non-game) recipes

Post by on_one_wheel » 10 Jul 2021, 6:32 pm

That's got the stomach rumbling !
Now I'm so hungry, I could eat the ass out of a low flying crow !
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Re: (Non-game) recipes

Post by Die Judicii » 10 Jul 2021, 7:06 pm


7 Hour Lamb with Mashed Potato


* Large leg of Lamb
* Garlic
*Onion
* Mixed Herbs
* Square of Pork Belly 150 mm square
* Cup of (good) quality White Wine
* Cup of Stock
* Chives (for mashed potatoe)

> Check to see if leg will fit into pot (maybe cut leg bone to suit)
> Stab the leg repeatedly on both sides, and insert small pieces of garlic clove, onion, and pinch of mixed herbs deep into each hole.
> Place square of Pork Belly (fat side up) in bottom of pot.
> Sit Leg of Lamb on top of Pork.
> Pour cup of White Wine over the Leg.
> Pour cup of Stock over the Leg.
> Cover with lid and place in oven at 120 degrees for 7 hours.
> Use large lifter to remove from the pot when cooked. >>>>>>>> BEWARE, THE MEAT WILL FALL APART OFF THE BONE.

Serve with creamy Mashed Potato with Chives mashed in.

Any leftovers tend to taste even better the next day.
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Re: (Non-game) recipes

Post by cleger » 11 Jul 2021, 3:07 am

Die Judicii wrote:
7 Hour Lamb with Mashed Potato


Ooo that looks good. What do you do with the pork belly? On the side?
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Re: (Non-game) recipes

Post by Die Judicii » 11 Jul 2021, 10:07 am

cleger wrote:
Die Judicii wrote:
7 Hour Lamb with Mashed Potato


Ooo that looks good. What do you do with the pork belly? On the side?


:lol: :lol: If there's room in the belly after the lamb,,,,,, eat it.
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