Smoked Pork Shoulder

This past Saturday Brandon and I, went out in search of something to occupy our day. Upon consulting with the food gods, we concluded that a smoked pork shoulder was best for their sacrifice.

A quick trip to the mexican market, and we were primed with fresh pork at a wonderfully cheap price. One of the things that I have learned in my travels is that immigrant communities have great food. Often times these various ethnic groups bring techniques, taste's, spices and ingredients from their native lands. They also tend to start off relatively poor, and subsequently the cost of feeding their generally larger families becomes an increasingly challenging task. High quality, affordable prices, and a grand variety is generally what I find when I end up in these markets. I've always joked at the thought of there being a "white people" price. However, I have never found concrete evidence on this. My father taught me that some of the best places to eat are where the cabbie's eat, not the tourists. Good food doesn't have to cost a lot, you just have to know where to go.

We chose to smoke out pork in hickory. Hickory is not a WOW wood, like cherry, apple or pear wood. Hickory offer's a nice balanced, concretely "smoked" flavor.

I choose to smoke in a much more traditional manner, with wood and charcoal. I use an all natural, wood charcoal, a few split logs, and hickory chips when I smoke foods.

These are all equally important. The natural charcoal, offer's a nice, consistent heat, which is free from glue's and chemicals. The logs, help to better regulate heat, as well as help with the effectiveness of the smoke. Lastly, the hickory chips, which is the foundation of the entire process. Wood chips need to be soaked in water prior to use. Otherwise, they burn at too rapidly of a rate, and the length of smoke is shortened drastically.

The smoker that I use, is a 15 year old, Home Depot special, that my father purchased when I was a kid. I still remember putting that together, and the curiousity we both had with the 6 extra pieces we had left over.

At one point, it had a propane attachment, for smoking or grilling, but that exploded at one point, and rendered useless. Now, it's a charcoal smoker and a damn fine one at that.

Back to pork.

The first thing that we did was dry off the shoulder. I then score the skin in a cross hatch, and pack the exterior with a dry spice rub, that I had made. More or less consisting, of paprika, garlic powder, salt, pepper, chili powder and cayenne pepper. I allow my shoulder to sit out side for no less then one hour. This is for two reasons. One. Smoke adheres to fat, forming a proper pelicle on the exterior of the meat is important, for achieving adequate smoke flavor. Two. Meat is refrigerated, and when you introduce a cold piece of meat, to a hot environment, the protein strands which make up that meat seize, leech out much more moisture resulting, in tough, dry meat.

While my meat is sitting out, I get a good hot fire going in the smoker. I want a good bed of coals by which to add my wet chips to in order to cause smoke. Most smoker's have thermometer's either built in or close by. But like, I said my smoker has been through a lot, and no longer has a working thermometer. A couple thousand pounds of meat later, my smoker and I are good friends. When my meat is around room temperature, I add the bowl of water to the smoker, fit in the rack's and put my meat in. 7-8 hours from now, dinner is going to be wonderful.

The fundamental principle in smoking is low and slow. I want to maintain a relatively moist, 250 - 275 degree heat to my meat. I'll do this, by watching my coals, maintaining an adequate amount of charcoal, wood and chips. I choose to add charcoal in smaller batches more often, and constantly maintain a log in the fire. I make sure that I have relatively constant smoke for at least 6 of those 8 hours of cooking. I know that my shoulder is done, when the meat begins to fall off the bone, ever so slightly. It's perfect, when I grab the shank, and it barely cracks away from the meat.

It was a great day of friends, food and cheap beer. One which we hope the food gods will bless us with again soon.

Sparkling Hard Apple Cider

As a culminating project for the Fall season of 2009, we decided to try our hand at making hard apple cider. Sparkling none the less. From scratch, no kit, no recipe, no real clue what we are doing... Well, sort of.

Brandon Lee and myself attended the CIA together from 2007 until 2008. In our time there, we were fortunate enough to do many crazy, wonderful creative and new things involving food.

For a period of time in all of that, we both sat on the board for the Brew club at the CIA. We did various things in the Brew club. We made beer, we drank beer, we went beer tasting, and yea. We drank beer. It was basically a drinking club, with an annual CIA budget and the kitchen space to do... pretty much anything that our heart's desired.... and desire we did. With the help of our colleague, Eric Matatics. Who's family has been making, beer, wine, and spirits for generations, in the good old hills of New Jersey. With Eric's generational knowledge, we stumbled our way through the production of brews all around. It was very interesting, learning the complex simplicity of brewing intoxicating liquids. Long story short, that was more then likely the seed which has brought us to this current food adventure.

We started out by going to Red Barn Produce, which is one of the produce purveyor's that I use at Vassar. They specialize in local produce. Kevin Terr is the owner and operator there. Kevin is truly a master of his craft. He will buy produce from anyone. So long as it stands up to his standards. No chemicals. Period. No bullshit, no "just a little". NONE. I have been at the farm while an old man in a beat up truck, pulls up and sells Kevin 50 pounds of organic butternut squash, and 15 lb's of broccoli that the guy had grown in his garden at home. From small independent operators, to the large, 1,000 acre apple farms that are up here in the Hudson Valley. If it meets Kevin's standards he'll buy it. Knowing this.... if Kevin has it. I'll buy it.

Three Bushel's of apples later we left the farm in hot pursuit of Whisky.

Yes, local whisky is the only thing to drink on a beautiful fall afternoon of juicing apples.

Brandon, Forest, Andrew and I all went to Tuthilltown sprits.
Tuthilltown spirits is the only producer of local whisky. They buy local corn, rye, apples and grain, from local farmers. Ferment that grain, and distill the mash in beautiful copper stills. Tuthilltown spirits makes some of the absolute best whisky in the world. Whisky lovers will love it, whisky haters will enjoy it. It is a beautiful, beautiful thing, which everyone must try for themselves.

Still #1 Still #2

Thank you Gable, Cathy and the entire Tuthilltown crew for doing what you do.

Whisky... Check Apples... Check

Time for some juicing.

First we went about sanitizing everything we were going to use. The tables, the knives, the cutting boards, the buckets, the juicer, the funnels. Everything that comes into contact with the apple juice needs to be sanitized.

Then we went about juicing apples... and apples.... and 3 hours later we were covered in apple, the kitchen was covered in apple, the living room was covered in apple, and yea, we were tired of apples!

Fresh apple juice from a juicer is rose in color due to the color of the skin's of the apple. The typical brown color of apple cider is caused from oxidization. Fresh apple juice is a very delicious thing.

We are going to double ferment out apple cider.

We will bulk ferment our apple juice (5 gal) with champagne yeast (5 g) for approximately 90 days. Why 90 day? I prefer a dryer cider with a higher alcohol content. The longer I allow the yeast to eat the sugar, the dryer the cider will be, and the higher the ABV.

After the initial 90 days, we plan on bottle fermenting the cider for an additional 90 - 120 days.

We are going to remove our cider from the 5 gal tank. (at this point, the cider is alcoholic, but relatively low. 3.5% - 4.0 %) Our next step will be to filter our cider, this will remove any dead yeast, and apple sediment which will have settled during the initial fermentation.

We will then add 5% total volume additional sugar to the cider, and an additional 5 gr of champagne yeast. This mixture of cider, yeast and sugar will then be mixed, and bottled. We are choosing to use Aqua Panna bottles, for a few reasons. 1. Aqua Panna bottles are clear, and we want to be able to see what is happening in side. 2. Aqua Panna is the water of choice at the CIA, and they are plentiful. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, Aqua Panna bottles are produced with cap's. Which mean's that they can easily be re-capped. Which is a necessity when making a sparkling beverage.

The theory, is that the additional sugar and yeast which is formally referred to as a dosage, will create just enough Co2 and alcohol to finish our cider to the complexity that we are looking for.

Here we are straining the juice through a fine mesh strainer. This helps to remove some of the foam, and extra pulp which accumulates on top of the juice when it is juiced in a commercial juicer.

In a very simplified explanation, alcohol works like this.

The yeasts that are on the fruit, or in the air, or that you manually add, "eat" sugar and excrete alcohol and carbon dioxide, or Co2.

Whatever the sugar content of the given liquid you are fermenting is will directly impact the alcohol content of the finished product.

Sugar is measured on a brix scale in this case.

Half of whatever the brix level is, will be the alcohol content.

Example:

23 brix = 11.5% abv

23 brix is a relatively sweet liquid. Something like a wine grape or tart cherry.

I do not own a brix scale, and I I honestly have absolutely no idea what the approximate brix level is on my apple juice. From having fermented apples in the past in the process of making apple cider vinegar. Knowing the approximate acidity of the finished vinegar, I estimate that I will have a finished product with an ABV of 7.5% - 9.0%.

Currently, our cider is fermenting. I very joyfully exclaimed this morning, noting on my way out the door, that the cider was foaming, and bubbling. I could see as very tiny little bubbles rose gently to the top the jug. I will keep this updated, as the process continues...