Author: nick

These are incredible. Flavorful with some nice color and density provided by the sweet potato. Let’s go.

Ingredients

Beignet part:

• 1 cup beer (I used a pretty standard Texas beer, don’t need to go too fancy here)
• 1 cup flour
• 2 tablespoons barely melted butter. Either melt it on a double boiler or just slightly in the microwave
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • If you don’t have baking powder, you can make some at home if you have baking soda and cream of tartar. Two parts cream of tartar for every one part baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg white
• Frying oil

Sweet Potato part:

• 1 medium sweet potato
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/8 cup cream cheese
• 1/8 cup whipping cream

Finishing Dust

• 2 tablespoons powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg

This isn’t as much work as the ingredients list would suggest.

First, make the batter. Put all of the beignet ingredients into a mixing bowl and combine. Once combined, slowly pour in the one cup of beer (while stirring) as well as the butter (while still stirring). Once all of those ingredients are combined, store this in the fridge. This needs to rest for about 1 hour.

Next, dice the sweet potato and drop in to a pot of boiling salted water till they’re soft. Once soft, put into a larger mixing bowl and smash just as you would mashed potatoes. While smashing, include the butter, cinnamon, salt, brown sugar, and nutmeg. Once they’re well combined put this in the fridge or freezer to cool. If you have more than 30 minutes till your beignet mix has cooled, then put it in the fridge, less than 30, then use the freezer.

While you wait, create the dust by combining all of the ingredients and put in a sifter for later use. Also, go ahead and pull out your egg white and whip it until you can form stiff peaks. Finally, put a pot on the stove and get a good deep layer of oil. If you have it, go for a good 4 inches of oil. Get this to medium high heat.

Ok time for the fun part. Pull out the sweet potatoes and drop in the cream cheese and the whipping cream and mix well. Then, pull out the beignet mix and fold in the egg white. Once that’s combined, slowly mix (spoonful by spoonful) the sweet potato mixture into the beignet mix. Get them combined and with a nice orange hue.

Using a large spoon, slowly spoon the batter into the hot frying oil. Think of this like a pancake where you create the “beignet” by layering the batter ontop of itself and as it hits the oil it forms one singular body. I usually aim for about a 2 inch diameter.

As this cooks it will get a great brown color with a very slight roasted sweet potato coloring. Using a slotted spoon remove and hit with the dust. Rinse, wash, repeat.

Serve with vanilla ice cream to take it over to the top.

You can do this. Also, once you do – you’ll never look back. You’ll never look at a case of cured meats and think of them beyond your grasp. As always, let’s get to work:

I ran two duel tests. One test with Cure #1 and one test with Cure #2. This walkthrough is for pancetta cured with Cure #1, and it’s meant to be cooked before using.

First and foremost find a local butcher. Do not go through all of this work and effort and skimp on the quality of the product. Pancetta highlights the beauty of pork, not mask it. Make sure what you’re starting with matches that sentiment.

Worksheet:

Before I go any further, when in doubt, this website was my Bible: http://curedmeats.blogspot.com/. If you run into any in-depth questions or want to browse through all of the interesting comments it’s a great read.

On to the pork!

I used roughly 2.5 lbs of pork belly purchased from Salt & Time in Austin, Tx. Again, even though the worksheet says Cure #2 I made this version using Cure #1 (it’s the same measurement). Cure #2 is for pancetta meant to be eaten raw, which we’ll get to on a different post.

Feel free to tweak your recipe as you see fit other than the Cure. The Cure is .26% of whatever the weight of your meat is.

First, combine all of your spice ingredients into a bowl or baggy and use an object to ground as much as possible. Cure #1 on it’s own is not something you want to eat raw, so don’t use a pepper grinder or anything you plan on using again to grind ingredients. I like putting it all in a ziploc and running a rolling pin over it a couple of times.

From this point on you can choose to go professional (vacuum sealed bags, curing chambers, exotic spices you may have never cooked with before like juniper berries) or you can go home cook “I don’t want to invest till I get a couple test runs in” style.

The latter is the style I chose.

Meaning, using ziploc bags, a baking sheet with a cook wire rack, and a cleared out bottom shelf in my everyday fridge.

Second, once your spices are ground, completely cover the pork belly in them. Rub into every nook and cranny. Date a ziploc bag and place your pork belly in. Go ahead and pour in whatever spice rub that didn’t stick to the pork the first time. Place this beauty in your fridge and try and forget about it for 10 to 14 days.

After your 10-14 days are up, pull the pork belly out and wash as much of the spice rub off as possible. Make sure to use cold water since pork fat melts at a relatively low temperature and you don’t want that happening. Pat the pork belly completely dry and ponder existence. While pondering, decide whether you want to add another coat of rub or go simple. Many add red pepper flakes and other seasoning at this point. I went with a simple later of fresh ground black pepper – that’s it.

Prepare a cookie sheet and place a wire drying rack inside of it. Get one with as much clearance as possible (the important part here is airflow, you want there to be as much of it as equal as possible.). The cookie sheet will help keep the bottom of your fridge shelf clean from potential fat dripping or spice rub falloff. Get a piece of tape, write the date on it, and place on the cookie sheet.

Third, place your washed, dried, and re-seasoned pork belly back into the fridge on your wire rack/cookie sheet contraption.

Finally, let it slowly dry out and finish it’s curing process for a minimum of 2 weeks (I’d say max 1 month before you taste the thing). Slice thin, chop up, quick fry and toss in some homemade pasta and you’re in serious, serious business. You’re also probably now addicted to what my butcher romantically called “the good fats”.

Note: If you’re using Cure #2 your curing time is different. It usually lasts about 1 month minimum but is more often a result of the weight of the pork belly reducing by 20%.

This one has very few ingredients, so make sure they’re quality. Fresh pasta is a must here.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup chopped asparagus
• 4 large fresh basil leaves
• 2 tbsp butter
• 6 tbsp heavy whipping cream
• 3 slices of pancetta

That’s it.

Start by getting a pot of water for your pasta boiling with some salt.

First, render the pancetta a bit in a small pan. Just when they reach a nice light tan color (and before they get too crispy) remove them from the pan but leave the fat. Throw your chopped asparagus into the pancetta fat with a little bit of salt and pepper and cook quickly at a high temperature. You’re not looking to cook the asparagus the whole way through, just enough for them to pick up the flavor of the pork fat, salt, pepper and to tenderize a little bit.

At this point, dice the fresh basil leaves as fine as possible and measure out your other ingredients to have on hand. Once everything is ready and available for your use drop your pasta in the water.

Once the pasta is al dente, which if you’re using fresh pasta is going to be damn near immediate, drain the water out of the pasta pot. There’s two ways to do this. You can A) use a colander to slowly pour your pasta out while retaining about 1/8 of a cup of pasta water left in the pot or B) use a slotted spoon to hold back the pasta while you tip the pot and pour out the water to drain. Many people will judge you regardless of which route you take – I’m not one of them. End goal is pasta in your pot with about 1/8 of a cup of pasta water left in there – don’t care how you get there.

Return the pasta to the pot and cut the heat. Now, quickly drop all of the remaining ingredients you so carefully prepared ahead of time into this pot. Mix well, make everyone become friends. This should only take about 3 minutes max.

Pour into a bowl and serve immediately.

I’ve used this brine on turkey, frog, and chicken. It’s the real deal and works like a charm.

Ingredients:

• 1 qt buttermilk
• 1 shallot
• 3-4 garlic cloves (depending on size)
• 2 tablespoons salt
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 tablespoons paprika
• 1 1/2 teaspoons pepper
• 1 teaspoon cumin powder

This might seem like a ridiculous way to measure things, but I like keeping it simple: This brine measurement is made for a 1 gallon zip loc bag worth of protein. Dice your shallot and your garlic cloves and mix everything in a medium sized bowl with a whisk. Once combined, pour into a 1 gallon zip loc bag and fill with as much protein as you can stuff.

Depending on what you’re making or what your desired end result is you can either wash the brine off after around 18-24 hours or you can simply pat it as dry as possible and cook with some of the brine still wanting to get involved.

You ever want turkey that goes boom? Take one of the breasts, shred, and make turkey mole enchiladas. This sauce works great in pork or chicken tacos as well.

Don’t let the long ingredients list intimidate you, while this sauce is a bit time consuming this recipe makes enough for leftovers and multiple uses so you get a lot of bang for your time-buck.

Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 cups chicken broth
• 2 cups good orange juice
• 1 1/4 lbs yellow onion (diced)
• 1/2 cup almonds (chopped)
• 6 garlic cloves (chopped)
• 4 teaspoons cumin
• 4 teaspoons coriander seeds
• 4 ounces dried pasilla chiles (tops chopped of and cleaned of seeds)
• 1 ounce dried guajillo chiles (tops chopped of and cleaned of seeds)
• 1/4 cup golden raisins
• 1 1/2 teaspoons dried Mexican oregano
• 2.5 ounces of pumpkin seeds (out of their shell)
• 1 3/1 ounce disk Mexican chocolate (see example here) broken into individual triangles

Directions:

First, in a small side pot combine the chicken broth and the orange juice. Bring to a simmer for about 15-20 minutes and allow it to reduce.

In a different, larger pot, heat the olive oil and saute the onions till the develop a deep brown caramelization (about 20 minutes). Once the onions are ready, reduce the heat to low-medium and add the almonds, garlic, cumin and coriander seeds. Mix and combine these for about 5 minutes in the warm pot. Once these are combined, add in your cleaned chiles and allow these to soften for an additional 5 minutes.

You now have two pots, and really most of the difficult work done. At this point, take your OJ and chicken broth mixture and pour into your chile pot. Add in your raisins and oregano at this point as well. Bring this all to a simmer and cover for 30 minutes.

Once the mixture has simmered for 30 minutes, cut off the heat and add in your chocolate disk pieces. Mix well and let stand for 15 minutes.

Take your mixture and pour it into a blender. Blend this really well in order to get it as creamy as possible and break up any almond or garlic bits that remain. Salt and Pepper to taste. Viola!

Keep it clean, keep it simple.

Ingredients:

• Really, really good pasta (just make your own already)
• 1 1/2 cups Parmigiano-Reggiano (grate it yourself)
• One slice of pancetta per person, diced
• 3 egg yolks
• 1 whole egg
• 2 tbs butter
• 3 cloves chopped garlic
• Salt & Pepper

Once this one starts cooking it moves very fast, so make sure you do all of your prep work beforehand. Pick out a good, very large bowl as the location for where you do all the final prep work.

Get your pasta water going over very hot heat, make sure to salt it. In a small pan start to fry your diced pancetta in low heat. As your water is getting going and the pancetta is starting to fry and render prep your eggs and Parm. First, whisk your 3 yolks and 1 whole egg. Next, dump in 1 cup of Parmesan (reserving the remaining 1/2 cup). Mix this well to form a sort of egg/parmesan glorious paste.

Right about this time is when you pancetta should be ready. It’s crisped, the fat is rendered, but it’s not burnt. Remove the pancetta but leave the fat in the pan. Once you’ve moved the pancetta to a side bowl throw your diced garlic into this hot rendered fat. Cook briefly to roast the garlic. While cooking toss in a little bit of salt and pepper for taste. Remove the garlic once it’s roasted and place in the same side bowl as your pancetta.

Here’s where things move fast. Cook your pasta al dente and drain via a colander, don’t wash the pasta. Quickly move the pasta from the colander to the “finishing bowl”. If the pasta hasn’t fully drained that’s even better, since a little pasta water only improves flavor.

Once the pasta is in the finishing bowl immediately toss in the pancetta, garlic, egg/parmesan paste, and butter. Use tongs to quickly lift and mix all of the ingredients. Toss for 2 or 3 minutes, careful to get the butter fully melted and the eggs combined – but not scrambled. Salt and pepper to taste. Plate and eat immediately.