southernfusionfood

Making Mayo

After putting it off for years, I finally learned how to make mayo. It turned out to be very simple, IF you have fresh eggs, and a stand mixer. I am being slowly covered by an avalanche of eggs, coming from our chicks, and I have a 30+ year old Kitchenaid, so it was time for this confluence to happen. This recipe also let me get rid of three eggs. Read some of Julia Child’s thoughts and experiences making mayo, for pointers.

Ingredients (all should be at room temperature)

3 Eggs (not just yolks)

Salt to Taste

Juice of half a Lemon

1 and 1/2 cups of Vegetable Oil (I used Peanut)

Most recipes call for a mild olive oil, but I live in peanut, not olive, country, so I went local. It worked well–the best supermarket brand of mayo uses soybean oil!

Grab the wire whisk attachment for the stand mixer, and beat the hell out of the eggs, at highest speed, for a couple of minutes. Add the lemon juice and salt, and then SLOWLY add the oil, a drop at a time at first. The more oil you add, the thicker the mayo will get, until you add too much, which apparently causes the mayo to break. If it does, throw in another egg, and slog on.

This process takes some time, but the result is this-3/4 of a quart of mayo.

Now I have another processed food to take off my grocery list. The chickens get an extra treat today.

The End of Tomato Season

Make hay while the sun shines, the old saying has it. Our Festhalle Farmer’s Market is down to one seller of fresh tomatoes, and it is time for the frugal to put away food for our admittedly mild winter (This farmer starts his tomato plants every year in January). Our current count is eleven quarts of tomatoes, and four pints as well. Our intention is to add more every weekend until the first freeze.

My specialty is jams and preserves–the serious canning is done by Melanie Jane. Her mother, Agnes Olga, was such a planner that she had index cards with the exact quantities of every vegetable to preserve written on them, to prepare the family for the winter. We just preserve whatever we can.

That giant twenty two quart pressure cooker/canner was actually a gift from a colleague at a college I taught at years ago. He literally was the foreign language department there, as he taught both French and German. Most of my vocabulary of German obscenities came from him as well. There is nothing like a well rounded scholar.

Linguine alla Carbonara

The great Calvin Trillin once joked that the national Thanksgiving dish should be Spaghetti Carbonara, instead of turkey. I decided to make some, because of that, and I hated it. We still have turkey for Thanksgiving.

Then last week, Melanie Jane said we had to use some of the increasing pile of eggs that our chicks produce, and she found a recipe from Lidia Bastianich for Linguine alla Carbonara. I made it, and it was literally one of the best things I have ever eaten.

The difference? Instead of supermarket bacon and eggs, I had local fresh bacon which I had marinated myself, and eggs from our chicks. The dish is very simple to make.

Ingredients

Pasta Water (Water as salty as sea water)

Linguine (dry or fresh)

Two slices of thick Bacon

1/2 of a small Onion, chopped

Chicken Stock

Two Egg Yolks

Grated Parmesan Cheese

This sextet of ingredients will taste like a symphony if cooked properly. Start with the pasta water, and fry the bacon in a brasier/pasta pan (not pot). Here’s ours, but a skillet will work fine as well.

The ladies who own our local Le Creuset store in Birmingham picked this one out for me, so my addled brain was not taxed. When I told them it was a present for my sweetie, they went through an entire stack of boxes, to find the best one. I left as a happy consumer.

Fry the bacon while the pasta is cooking. Remove the bacon when it is crisp, but keep the fat, and cook the onions in that. Add a little chicken stock, and I mean a little, and add the chopped bacon, and the pasta (strained) once it becomes al dente. Is Al Dente related to Al Fresco?

Stir those together, and then here comes the only tricky part. Turn off the stove and add the raw yolks. Yes, I said raw yolks. If the heat is just right, the hot sauce and pasta will cook the yolks. If too hot, you have scrambled egg pasta. Too cool, and it’s yuck city.

Grate some good Parmesan over the whole thing, and there you have it. I splurged on some real Reggiano. That didn’t hurt any either.

As long as our chicks keep clucking, this is on the permanent menu. I had five eggs from six birds yesterday, and it appears home made mayo is the next project. Or anything else that uses eggs.

Optimus 11 Explorer–One of the Last of the Great Swedish made Multi-Fuel Stoves

Sweden has also been overtaken by globalization, like everyone else, and the once mighty camp stove manufacturing centers have been reduced to one, the great Trangia company. Perhaps the saddest of all is the Optimus company, which manufactured some of the most sought after stoves on the internet. Even the most iconic Swedish stove, the SVEA 123, has had production outsourced.

Maybe I did over prime my Optimus 11 Explorer for dramatic effect, but that stove can take it. I’ve cooked literally hundreds of meals on this stove, and it is a hoss. Possibly even a boss hoss.

This is the stove before the conflagration. It has the classic Sherman tank of a Cobra silent burner, combined with a miraculously clever modern fuel storage system. No plastic pumps here–This one is almost all metal.

Strangely enough, the other side of the pump says “Off.” To turn off the stove, simply flip the bottle over. That system also allows all the gas in the fuel supply line to burn out, which means no spilling when the stove is disconnected from the fuel bottle, and packed for travel (The stand folds flat). And this stove is designed to cook, from simmer to blow torch.

The stove burns kerosene as well as it burns white gas, and apparently is more than adequate at burning alcohol. It certainly puts out the heat, and is the hottest burning outdoor stove I have, other than my 30,000 BTU propane cooker, which will deep fry a twenty pound turkey–the difference being that the latter requires a giant tank of propane to do that. The 11 only needs that one small fuel bottle.

These stoves are somewhat scarce as they had a short production run, preceding the equally trailblazing Optimus Nova. One half-witted reviewer found the stove to have too many parts. If a writer can’t handle two main parts, a stand, a windscreen, and a regulating key, they shouldn’t be left alone with even a tent stake.

The review that sold me on buying this stove as soon as it was introduced, marveled at its bomb proof construction. It is also very simple to maintain and rebuild, after it has been scorched by a few hundred meals. The review concluded that this stove would be “a friend for life.” Those are always a good thing to have.

Mildewed Eggs and Other Hoya about Chickens

I have been amazed by the number of stories about mildewed eggs on the interwebs, about eggs that have mildewed both on the inside and outside of the shell. While I am certain that could happen if you left the eggs out for six months or a year or so, I have this to say about that–Hoya!

As a teen, I gathered upwards of a thousand eggs, literally ever day, as we had ten thousand chickens who laid hatching eggs. We were forbidden from washing the eggs by our corporate masters, as that would have affected the hatching rate. We never had a single egg with mildew, and I am guessing that I personally gathered tens of thousands of eggs.

Now that I have downsized to a flock of six happy chicks, I read a quote from a chicken prof who said that eggs taken out of a fridge and then stored in the kitchen, would mildew. Hoya! Anything will mildew if you leave it out long enough.

Just eat the eggs, the fresher the better.

Traditional Farmer’s Omelette with All Local Ingredients

To celebrate a drought busting two inches of rain, and to challenge myself, I decided to make a Farmer’s Omelette the traditional German way, using only local ingredients. In fact, they were so local that all but one ingredient came from within a hundred feet of our front door.

The brilliance of this recipe is that it only calls for three main ingredients–bacon, potatoes, and eggs. Everything else is optional, and subject to improvisation. This is a jazz recipe, and I always follow my use what you have rule. Here is today’s version.

Ingredients

One slice Bacon

One skillet full of Yukon Gold Potatoes, cubed

Four Eggs

Two small Tomatoes, chopped

One sweet Banana Pepper, chopped

Garlic Chives, chopped

Salt and Pepper

The only ingredient we didn’t grow ourselves was the bacon, which came from just across the Mulberry River, from my home county of Cullman. The county happens to be named after its founder Colonel Johannes Gottfried Kullman, though he was actually a Colonel in one of the failed German state revolutions of 1848. Hence his removal to the United States.

This is also no ordinary bacon

The bacon is so large that eight slices made a pound, and I had to cut one slice into three pieces just to make it fit my omelette skillet. These slices of fresh bacon were marinated for six days in a Saumure Anglaise.

The German method of cooking this is to fry the bacon while simmering the potatoes in water for eight to ten minutes. The bacon is then removed from the skillet, and the potatoes are browned in the bacon fat. I added the peppers as well. Chop up the bacon, and mix the eggs. I put my tomatoes and garlic chives in with the eggs, and then the bacon. When the potatoes begin to brown, add the egg mixture, and stir to evenly distribute the ingredients.

I did depart from the norm, and finished the omelette in the oven at 400 degrees F. While I cooked, Melanie Jane turned on Beethoven’s Emperor Piano Concerto. We ate while listening to one of my favorite recordings, the Bavarian State Orchestra performing Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, conducted by the incomparable Carlos Kleiber. We also had a Bavarian flag hanging off the balcony above our dining room table, in honor of Oktoberfest. One of our semi-domesticated wolves, aka a dog, ate the leftovers.

As the salt was not mined, nor the peppercorns picked, anywhere locally, I will admit that this was only ninety nine percent local. But that is still ninety nine percent better than food that has been trucked across a continent.

Uncured Bacon in a Saumure Anglaise

That’s an English Pickle, for the Francophobes

Joel Salatin, aka “The world’s most famous farmer,” up there in Virginia, wrote an entire book about “the pigness of pigs.” Yesterday at the Festhalle farmer’s market I ran across one of my favorite sellers, a young woman who usually has one of her five children with her (this is Alabama). Instead, she had a big cooler full of fresh local pork that she had grown. Here was some real pigness of the best kind.

When she said she had fresh uncured bacon, I nearly had an infarction. I bought a pound, and she instructed me about how to cure it. My response was I always use a Saumure Anglaise when I cured pork like that.

Now, everyone usually looks at you like you are a snake with two heads when you use French in this part of the South, as opposed to New Orleans or Mobile, the two oldest French cities in the region. However, she looked impressed, and said I obviously knew what I was doing. I told her this wasn’t my first rodeo.

Here’s my version of this Saumure, adapted from Jane Grigson’s monumental book on French charcuterie.

Ingredients

Water

Handful of Salt

Handful of Brown Sugar

One Bay Leaf

Sprigs of Fresh Thyme

Peppercorns

Four Cloves

Fragment of whole Nutmeg

I omitted the nitrates (pink salt) from this recipe, as this is going to be eaten in short order. Boil this combo, and then let it steep until cool. Pour it over the bacon or other fresh pork you have, and throw it into the fridge.

For how long? That depends on how brave you are. I let mine go for at least a couple of days, and thicker pieces, like fresh ham slices, for around six. Sugar and salt are decent preservatives on their own, and I’m still kicking, so there’s anecdotal evidence to prove it’s not deadly to avoid the nitrates. Just check out some of the furry Italian sausages sometimes to see if nitrates have to be used.

The bacon will not be furry, but it will be tasty. And it will be cured the natural way.

Lard Help Us

Not having much else to do one day in one of my writing classes, I brought up the controversial subject of lard. Always being of an ironic frame of mind, I told the following anecdote.

Me: “I can tell you from family experience how dangerous lard is. My Grandfather had a bucket of lard under his sink, and probably never ate anything that wasn’t cooked in it, and he barely made it into his late nineties before it killed him.”

The students who understood irony laughed at that, and I had a very polite young woman who grew up in Brazil in the class, and she raised her hand to say something. I told her to go ahead, and she said:

Brazilian: “In Brazil, we keep it under the stove.”

Lard. Worldwide for a good reason. Healthier, apparently, than butter, and you can make it yourself without a churn, or a cow.

The key to good lard is to render it yourself, and at a very low temperature. Commercial lard is yet another industrial product to avoid, as it’s bad rap comes from it being cooked at too high a temp. So here’s what you should do.

Ingredients

Slab of Pork Fat (My local butcher sells it by the pound)

That’s it. Cut the fat into small chunks, and throw them into a cast iron skillet on the smallest eye of your stove. Let it render down at the lowest possible setting. This is another gem of slow food methods. When you have a big skillet of liquid lard, and nothing left but some cracklings, you’re done. I store mine in mason jars. It will keep a year in the fridge, three in the freezer.

May the Lard always be with you.

Optimus 45–The Boss of Kerosene Stoves

Being a gear head is better than being an alcoholic, in that the gear is still there after you finish playing with it. This Optimus 45 is technically my Christmas present, but Melanie Jane wanted me to test it out before it got boxed up until December 24 (yes, we are both of German extraction, and Christmas Eve is when the celebration really happens).

All I did to this ancient Swedish made device was lube the pump, and soak the burner in mineral spirits. No repairs necessary. And boom! It was burning in no time. And does it ever burn.

The stove is primed using alky-hol, but is powered with inexpensive kerosene. In many places, this was more of a household than a camping item. Elizabeth David, while she worked in Egypt in the 1950’s, had a Greek chef who did all of his cooking on two of the practically identical Primus versions of this stove. A great design is timeless. Strangely enough, this stove is engraved in English, Swedish, and Arabic.

Alas, these are no longer made in Sweden, but ebay has loads of them. This design is also popular throughout Asia, and near identical copies are manufactured in India and Malaysia. I am considering buying one of the silent burners for this made in India, but right now, I just love to hear this thing make noise. They don’t call the burner a roarer burner for no reason.

Cullman Oktoberfest 2019

Courtesy of the Cullman Oktoberfest Facebook page, here is the schedule for this year’s Oktoberfest. The primary locations are the Cullman County Museum, and the Cullman Festhalle, said to be the largest timber framed structure in the Southeast. Prost!

Monday, September 30, 2019

9:00 AM – 2:00 PM School Tours at Cullman County Museum

9:00 AM – 2:30 PM Wolfgang Moritz at the Cullman County Museum

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM Nimble Thimble Quilt Guild Display at Cullman County Museum

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM St. John’s Church Oktoberfest Dinner

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

7:00 AM – 2:00 PM Farmers Market at the Festhalle

8:30 AM – 2:00 PM Wolfgang Moritz at the Cullman County Museum

9:00 AM – 2:00 PM School Tours at Cullman County Museum

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM Nimble Thimble Quilt Guild Display at Cullman County Museum

10:30 AM – 2:00 PM Freddie Day Catering at the Festhalle

5:00 PM Busy Bee Café German Menu

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

8:30 AM – 2:00 PM Wolfgang Moritz at the Cullman County Museum

9:00 AM – 2:00 PM School Tours at Cullman County Museum

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM Nimble Thimble Quilt Guild Display at Cullman County Museum

10:30 AM – 2:00 PM Freddie Day Catering at the Festhalle

5:00 PM Busy Bee Café German Menu

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM Sacred Heart German Dinner

5:00 PM – 10:00 PM Carriage Rides

5:00 PM – 10:00 PM Cullman Oktoberfest Biergarten

6:00 PM – 7:00 PM Opening Ceremonies at the Festhalle

6:00 PM – 10:00 PM Children’s Activities at the Cullman County Museum Parking Lot

7:00 PM Paper Airplane Contest at the Cullman County Museum Parking Lot

7:00 PM – 10:00 PM Terry Cavanagh & the Alpine Express at the Festhalle

7:30 PM Pickle Eating Contest (Ages 14 & Under)

8:00 PM Best German Costume Contest & Longest Beard and Braid Contests

9:00 PM Stein Hoisting Contest

Thursday, October 3, 2019

7:00 AM – 2:00 PM Farmers Market at the Festhalle

8:30 AM – 2:00 PM Wolfgang Moritz at the Cullman County Museum

9:00 AM – 2:00 PM School Tours at the Cullman County Museum

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM Nimble Thimble Quilt Guild Display at Cullman County Museum

10:00 AM – 11:30 AM Terry Cavanagh & the Alpine Express at the Festhalle

10:00 AM – 2:00 PM Senior Day at the Festhalle

10:00 AM – 2:00 PM Cullman Oktoberfest Biergarten at Senior Day

10:30 AM – 2:00 PM Freddie Day Catering at the Festhalle

5:00 PM Busy Bee Café German Menu

5:00 PM – 10:00 PM Carriage Rides

5:00 PM – 10:00 PM Cullman Oktoberfest Biergarten

6:00 PM – 6:45 PM Cullman Community Band at the Festhalle

6:00 PM – 10:00 PM Children’s Activities at the Cullman County Museum Parking Lot

7:00 PM Paper Airplane Contest at the Cullman County Museum Parking Lot

7:00 PM Candlelight Walking Tour (Beginning at the Cullman Depot)

7:00 PM – 10:00 PM Terry Cavanagh & the Alpine Express at the Festhalle

7:30 PM Pickle Eating Contest (Ages 14 & Under)

8:00 PM Best German Costume Contest & Longest Beard and Braid Contests

9:00 PM Stein Hoisting Contest

Friday, October 4, 2019

8:30 AM – 2:00 PM Wolfgang Moritz at the Cullman County Museum

9:00 AM – 2:00 PM School Tours at the Cullman County Museum

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM Nimble Thimble Quilt Guild Display at Cullman County Museum

10:00 AM – 8:00 PM Arts & Crafts Show at Depot Park

10:30 AM – 2:00 PM Freddie Day Catering at the Festhalle

3:30 PM – 12:00 AM (overnight) Cullman Oktoberfest Biergarten

4:00 PM – 10:00 PM Children’s Activities at the Cullman County Museum Parking Lot

5:00 PM Busy Bee Café German Menu

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM Wine Tasting at the Biergarten

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM Christ Lutheran Oktoberfest Dinner

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM Avenue G at the Festhalle

5:00 PM – 10:00 PM Cullman Oktoberfest Classic Car Show

6:00 PM – 8:00 PM Living History Cemetery Tour (Every 30 Minutes; Departing from Festhalle)

7:00 PM Paper Airplane Contest at the Cullman County Museum Parking Lot

7:00 PM – 9:00 PM The Overtones at the Festhalle

7:30 PM Pickle Eating Contest (Ages 14 & Under)

8:00 PM Best German Costume Contest & Longest Beard and Braid Contests

9:00 PM Stein Hoisting Contest9:00 PM – 12:00 AM (overnight)My One & Only at the Festhalle

Saturday, October 5, 2019

7:00 AM – 9:00 PM Farmers Market at the Festhalle

8:00 AM Oktoberfest 5K & 10K Run

8:00 AM – 8:00 PM Arts & Crafts Show at Depot Park

8:00 AM – 10:00 PM Children’s Activities at the Cullman County Museum Parking Lot

8:30 AM – 9:00 AM East & West Elementary Singers at the Festhalle

9:00 AM K9s-4-A-Kause at Depot Park

9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Cullman Middle & Cullman High School Singers at the Festhalle

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM Nimble Thimble Quilt Guild Display at Cullman County Museum

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM Oktoberfest Junior Sidewalk Art Show

9:00 AM – 10:00 PM Carriage Rides

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM Wallace State Singers at the Festhalle

10:00 AM – 11:59 AM Cullman Oktoberfest Biergarten

10:00 AM – 7:00 PM Bingo at Sacred Heart Church (Concessions Sold)

10:30 AM – 2:00 PM Freddie Day Catering at the Festhalle

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM Wallace State Jazz Band at the Festhalle

12:00 PM Lions Club Bed Races at Depot Park

12:30 PM Bratwurst Eating Contest at the Festhalle

2:00 PM Round 2 at the Festhalle

2:45 PM Paper Airplane Finals at the Cullman County Museum Parking Lot

4:00 PM – 7:00 PM Corn Hole Tournament at Goat Island Brewery Sponsored by St. Paul’s Lutheran Church & School

5:00 PM Busy Bee Café German Menu

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM Wine Tasting at the Biergarten

6:00 PM Blind the Sky at the Festhalle

8:00 PM Best German Costume Contest & Longest Beard and Braid Contests

10:00 PM Stein Hoisting Contest

There’s still time to practice your chicken dance, so go ahead and shake those tail feathers.

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