Out of The Can: Hormel Black Label Canned Ham

Dat Ham

Canned hams have a terrible reputation, and if you've ever had a bite of a really cheap and nasty slice of canned ham, you'd feel that the reputation is actually too kind. I know because I've had some totally unpleasant canned hams.

And now, you're looking at that picture above or a Hormel Black Label canned ham and thinking to yourself, "What a nasty-looking chunk of pink meat." You might even be inspired to try vegetarianism, thanks to that photo.

Well, I have got news for you, my friend. Hormel's Black Label canned ham is surprisingly good - I might even say very good. I prepared it just as described on the label and although it still wasn't much to look at when it came out of the oven, it sliced beautifully. If you've ever had a really expensive deli ham - say, a Boar's Head or Krakus ham - you'll know what to expect from the Black Label. It was firm and delicious, and quite similar to a traditional cured pig laig.

Kudos, then, to Hormel. Finally, I get to review a canned meat that is worthy enough to be actually eaten rather than enter long-term storage in a bomb/zombie apocalypse shelter as a survival food of last resort. We had the ham with peas and scalloped potatoes and it was a great family meal.

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Review: Pride of Szeged Rib Rub

I can not remember a time in my life when the word "paprika" was not virtually synonymous in my kitchen with the tall red-and-white tins, imported from Hungary, containing Pride of Szeged brand paprika. Both my mother and Maryanne's always had a tin of it in the kitchen - in the refrigerator door in case it "spoiled" before it could all be used - and when we got married, we kept up the tradition. Well, not the part about the refrigerator. There's never any question of our paprika going stale - we use it up far too quickly to worry about that.

Over the years, the Pride of Szeged brand has expanded to include other products, all of which are seemingly packaged in the same sort of traditional tall spice tin (for while other companies, including those in the US, have long since turned to cheap plastic bottles, Pride of Szeged continues to use lithographed spice tins with pretty much the same graphic design that they've always had.) There are rubs for beef, pork, chicken, and fish, as well as something they call "Pisa," which is a pretty damn delightful oregano-heavy Italian seasoning.

Yesterday, I found myself with three racks of ribs and no rub to season them with. Worse, I was short a few ingredients in the pantry, so I couldn't just make up a batch from scratch. Maryanne, Lynnafred, and I headed out to the supermarket to pick up what we needed, but those plans were immediately abandoned when we passed down the spice aisle and found a full selection of Pride of Szeged, including Rib Rub. The ingredients looked good and simple (Salt, Paprika, Garlic, Mustard, Sugar, Spices) and although I couldn't bust a tin open and give it a sniff, my lifelong reliance on Pride of Szeged as the House Paprika helped me decide to give it a try.

I rubbed each rack of ribs generously with the spice blend and let it sit for about an hour as I got the smokehouse preheated and ready. When the box had heated up to about 250 F and the smoke generator was pumping out a good stream of hickory smoke, I put the ribs in for the long, slow cooking time that would turn them into tender delicacies. It took about three hours.

I was very happy with the results. The Pride of Szeged Rib Rub is flavorful and enhances the pork without covering up the flavor - a nice mustard flavor, not too spicy despite the paprika, and not too sweet despite the sugar. At first taste, it does seem to be a bit heavy on the salt, but after an application of good barbecue sauce and some crisping time on a hot grill, the saltiness also blends into the overall flavor and comes into balance.

It's fairly economical as well. The five-ounce tin I bought was more than enough to liberally coat all three full racks of ribs with enough left over to do a couple more, for a little less than four dollars. I'm saving the rest to mix with some Bell's poultry seasoning and apply to a bone-in pork loin roast. I bet it will be awesome.

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State Fair Food at The Big E: Pulled Pork Stuffed Corn Cake

Second in a series about State Fair Food as served at the 2012 Big E (New England's Great State Fair)

Lunchtime at a state fair is nothing if not a world of possibilities, and not all of those possibilities are deep-fried. Sometimes, you can find something interesting where you least expect it. 

As an example, we were passing through a section of the Big E fairgrounds on our way elsewhere, when Lynnafred stopped dead in her tracks, eyes wide. She was gazing at a cinnamon bun concession as she said, "Dad. Pulled pork stuffed corn cake. It looks...terrifying."  Terrifying things are often rewarding, though, so we approached for a closer look.

Each Pulled Pork Stuffed Corn Cake starts with a big scoop of sweet corn cake divoted down in the center to form a well. This is topped with a scoop of cole slaw, then piled high with slow-cooked pulled pork and squirted over with a big dose of Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce.

When I ordered, I asked that the slaw be put on the side, because I'm deeply suspicious of cole slaw that is not of my own creation lest it ruin the overall enjoyability of the dish. My suspicions were, however, unwarranted.

Each of the components of the pulled pork stuffed corn cake are very good:

• The corn cake is actually a sweet corn cake, similar to the kind you can make from a mix available at the supermarket under Hormel's Chi-Chi's label. It's very moist and rich and studded with kernels of corn, and makes a good base for a dish like this.
• The cole slaw is mostly slivered cabbage with a small amount of carrot, very little sugar, and a healthy shot of horseradish, making for a more savory than sweet slaw.
• The pulled pork is very tender and nicely done, though it is a little on the light side when it comes to smoke flavoring. I have a feeling that it's done in an oven rather than in a barbecue pit, but I'm not going to complain because it's moist and porky and I'm eating it at a state fair, not at Little Bubba's  BBQ Pit somewhere.
• The whole pile is topped with Sweet  Baby Ray's barbecue sauce, which isn't a super premium homemade sauce, but it isn't totally heinous.

So, what do you get when you take four kinda ordinary ingredients and combine them on a paper tray?  You get magic is what.

The overall effect is just awesome.  Every component of the dish works with the other parts in a way that makes them better than they are alone. Even the cole slaw was a great addition, because the sharp horseradish modulates the sweetness of the BBQ sauce and corn cake.

If you're looking for a break from the relentless parade of fried fair food, you could do a lot worse than this.

Pulled Pork Stuffed Corn Cake.  $10, Sold by Scirrotto's Cinnamon City at the 2012 Big E, at the southwest corner of the Young Building.

Review: Burger King's Memphis BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwich

Burger King has taken a little break from slavishly copying McDonald's McCafe beverages to introduce several new BBQ specialties, one of which is the Memphis BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwich.  I stopped in to the local BK yesterday to give it a try.

Here's what it looks like in the advertising:

Photo by Burger King

And here's what it looks like in real life:

Now, I've acknowledged before that comparing real fast food to advertising-agency-styled fast food is a cheap shot, but trust me - this sandwich is so completely disgusting that the way it looks is only the beginning of how shitty it is.

There was no meaty pile of pulled pork on a crusty split-top bun. It was a small - significantly smaller than the diameter of the bread - knot of crappy, low-quality meat on a squishy oversized burger bun.  Even though I actually looked at the contents of the sandwich when I took this picture, I still mustered up the courage to take a bite.

The pork was drenched in cheap, sticky BBQ sauce that tasted mostly of corn syrup and artificial smoke and it was the texture of shredded flannel. And worst of all, the entire interior was completely smothered in mayonnaise. So not only did the sandwich look like someone took a dump on a hamburger bun, it tasted like an overly-sweetened old washcloth sopped in slime.

For the first time in the history of Dave's Cupboard, I was unable to stomach so much as a single bite of a review subject. This heinous wet lump of filth was so horrendous that my first and only bite was instantly interrupted by my gag reflex and I spit the gnarly bolus back at the cardboard clamshell in which it was served.

On the other hand, the sweet potato shoestring fries that I got as a side were pretty good. So the visit wasn't a total loss.

Walkerswood Jerk Seasoning

I've tried a lot of Jamaican-style jerk seasonings in search of something really authentic, without too much luck. But recently, my friend Roger discovered Walkerswood Traditional Jamaican Jerk Seaoning, and I think my search is at an end.

Unlike so many other jerk seasonings out there, Walkerswood is a paste made up of hot peppers, scallions, black pepper, onions, salt, allspice, nutmeg, cane sugar, and thyme. It's made in and imported from Jamaica, and it's the most authentic jerk seasoning I've found.

It's easy to use - just rub some into the meat and let it sit a few hours (though overnight is best) before grilling or roasting. I've used it on chicken and pork so far, and it's AWESOME. (I'm considering making some beef jerky with it to see how it turns out.)

Walkerswood also understands that not everyone has a high tolerance for hot and spicy food., so they make a mild version that has the same authentic jerk ingredients with a little less hot pepper added to the blend. Don't get me wrong - Walkerswood idea of "mild" still might ring your bells if you are a complete pepper wuss, but it does have quite a bit less kick than the hot and spicy stuff.

Availability varies depending on where you live. I had never noticed it at all until just a little while ago, when Roger brought some back for me from a recent out-of-state trip. Since I've actually started looking for it, I've found it in a couple of ethnic markets (like Food Zone International on Belmont Avenue in Springfield MA) and supermarkets (I think ShopRite carries it in Enfield CT.) If you're a fan of jerk cooking, it's well worth the search.

Pekarski's Sausage, South Deerfield MA

Lynnafred and I were headed north on US 5 in Western Massachusetts on other business when we spotted a small hand-lettered sign at the junction of US 5 and MA 116, promising us a visit to a smokehouse if only we would take a short 2-mile side quest.

That was too tempting to resist, so off we went.

Sure enough, we soon found Pekarski's Sausage, a small company that makes good, honest sausage and smoked meats in small batches by hand.

I can't even begin to list all the products they had available, but I can give you an idea of what they had in the twin display cases running the length of the store...along with a few reviews, since we bought a bunch of stuff to try out.

In photo of the meat case on the left, you can plainly see their kielbasa. It's awesome. The spice blend and smoke is absolutely perfect. Many commercial kielbasas are either runny with grease, or so dry that they crumble. Kudos to Pekarski's, because they have the most ideal ratio of fat to meat I have ever tasted in a kielbasa. 

In the background, just barely identifiable, are Daisy Hams.  If you're from New England, you might be familiar with them - in the 1970's, they were very cheap and common in the supermarkets here. They used to be a boneless pork shoulder, rolled tightly, cured and smoked, and they were sold in tight little plastic-wrapped cylinders that needed only to be boiled with some spuds, carrots, and cabbage for a traditional New England Boiled Dinner. As time has passed, Daisy Hams have gotten a lot more expensive, and a lot crappier. The last time I bought one in the supermarket, it seemed to be a conglomeration of meat scraps and chunks of random pork fat, and it wasn't very good.  Not so here at Pekarski's. Their Daisy Hams are rolled and smoked in a mesh sleeve, and it is totally obvious that they're making them the old-fashioned way, out of boneless pork shoulder. We didn't buy one on this trip, but we plan to pick one up next time.

Pekarski's slab bacon is excellent - much better than the usual supermarket bacon, and easily the equal to my own homemade dry-aged bacon. We bought a pound of it and had the butcher slice it at nice and thick. Next time I think we should get two pounds.

On the other side of the case were various sausages and links.

Their breakfast sausage is, to use a wicked overused term, amazing. The links are roughly twice the size of ordinary breakfast sausage links - about the same size as a hot dog. They fry up wonderfully - moist and delicious and not at all greasy. The spice blend is excellent; I was able to identify sage, thyme, and maybe a bit of coriander and some pepper. Really top-notch.

Lynnafred couldn't resist picking up some chorizo, which turned out to be far and away the best tasting chorizo EVAR. Plans are in the works to use Pekarski's chorizo in a batch of arroz con gandules.

Also available the day we were there: Back bacon (aka Canadian bacon), bratwurst, unsmoked (fresh) kielbasa, fresh pork ribs, smoked pork ribs, smoked pork chops, whole smoked chickens, and whole smoked Cornish game hens. And probably more stuff that I either didn't notice in my wide-eyed wonderment or have forgotten about.

I spoke to the butcher when we were there, curious to find out where they are sourcing their pork. I sometimes have trouble finding good quality pork belly when I make my bacon, and was wondering if they had a local source. They told me that most of their pork comes from farms in New Hampshire. Cool - keeping it regional.

Seriously, Pekarski's is a hidden gem of the Pioneer Valley, and even though it's a good forty-five minute drive from my house to get there, the trip is worth it (and besides, if you get off the highway and take MA 116 all the way there, the back-country drive is gorgeous.) The prices are slightly higher than what you'd pay for mass-market stuff in the supermarket, but the vast improvement in quality and freshness more than makes up for that.

There is plenty to do in the area if you want to make a day trip of it. You can wander around in the Yankee Candle store, smelling Man Candles and more until the overwhelming scents give you a headache. There's Historic Deerfield, where you can wander around in the village and take tours of the cool old Colonial-era houses.  And if you're into bugs flying all around you and landing on you and crawling up your arms and whatnot, you can also visit the Magic Wings Butterfly Conservatory and Gardens, which is a big damn glass building filled with flowers and butterflies which delight in invading your personal space (yeah, I know - they're butterflies, so what's the big deal? Well, butterflies are still BUGS, dammit, and I don't want dozens of them on my SKIN, thank you. I'd go again if they'd only let me in with that can of Yard Guard I brought.)

Pekarski's Sausage

293 Conway Road (MA 116)

South Deerfield, MA 01373

413.665.4537

No credit or debit cards accepted - cash or check only.

Off The Cuff Recipes: Chopped Ham and Ham Salad

I don't always have recipes for the stuff I prepare at home. When I was learning how to cook from my mother, there wasn't always a recipe to follow - she would put in "a little of this and some of that," and when suppertime rolled around, the meal was on the table.

Nowadays I still cook like that, though when I'm going to write a blog post about it I try to pay attention as I go along and write down notes with specific measurements and steps to make it easier for readers to recreate what I've done. But some "recipes" are so simple that I don't really need to do that.  Chopped ham is one of those recipes, so I'm using it as an inaugural post for what I hope will become a semi-regular feature called "Off The Cuff Recipes." I'll present the recipes exactly the way I do it so you can use the post as sort of a "rough draft" towards making your own, or as a springboard for discussion in the comments about how you go about making a similar dish.

Chopped ham is super easy. Just get some leftover ham - or even some "ham ends" from the deli - and run them through a food chopper. Chop as much as you want. Measure out the chopped ham and for every cup of ham you have, add a couple of tablespoons of sweet pickle relish. Toss them together well and refrigerate for a couple of hours to let the flavors blend.

You can eat the chopped ham just the way it is, or add a little mayo to it and spread it on rye bread for sandwiches. It's pretty awesome.

Note:  Food choppers are different than meat grinders.  Read about the difference here.

Tennessee Pride Fully Cooked Sausage Patties

I have only one rule about buying sausage at the store: Don't ever buy fully-cooked frozen sausage, because it is never any good.

And yet, when I saw these Tennessee Pride fully cooked sausage patties at ALDI the other day, I bought them against my better instinct. After all, Tennessee Pride is a solid brand - I've had other products put out by them before, and was never disappointed.

But those products were never fully cooked and frozen.

I opened the package to find the eight patties had been put into sets of two, each set enclosed in a plastic pouch. It seems that these were portioned to microwave two at a time and be served with a couple of biscuits. Sure enough, the package instructions were all about microwaving.  But I was feeding the family breakfast aqnd wasn't interested in an individual serving to heat-and-eat. I unwrapped the lot of them and put them in a frying pan over low heat to warm up, and served them alongside eggs and homefried potatoes

I really like the flavor of Tennessee Pride sausage. The spices are well balanced, and the result is really delicious. But the spongy texture, too wet and too chewy, put all of us off. It's the same reason I won't ever buy Banquet Brown 'n' Serve sausage - nothing against the flavor, everything against the mouthfeel.

I don't think I'd buy them again unless they were wicked cheap.

Dale Earnhardt Jr Vending Machine Sandwiches

So, having neglected to bring lunch to work last week, I was forced to venture out to the lunchroom and survey the offerings in the vending machine. I found a few cans of Chef Boy R Dee (seriously) and some Kellogg's cereal cups, and multiple instances of microwaveable sandwiches bearing the "Dale Jr." trademark so familiar to NASCAR fans.

You just know that with Dale Jr.'s name and likeness on the wrapper, millions of them are going to sell regardless of the quality. And, to tell the truth, they didn't look all that appetizing sitting in the dark little pockets of the machine.  Some testing and reviewing was obviously in order here.

There were three varieties of DaleChow available for purchase, so I bought one of each and resigned myself to vending machine food for the next few days.

I found all of the sandwiches I bought to at least meet minimum standards of flavor and edibility. To be honest, I didn't have very high expectations for any of the three, so it was easy for them not to disappoint. I was, however, surprised that they actually tasted fairly decent considering what they were. 

We'll start with the appropriately-named "Double-Dog Dare," twin hot dogs in buns, topped with chili and mustard.

Chili dogs are one of my favorite lunches when they are made with high-quality natural casing franks and slow-cooked beef chili sauce. But vending machine food is more about maximizing profits than providing an optimal dining experience.

The hot dogs are really low-grade skinless franks mostly made of mechanically-separated chicken with some beef, and they taste like the cheapest generic bologna - even Vienna sausages have a better taste profile. The dogs are dressed with a line of standard yellow mustard and then covered with a thick layer of chili sauce made from spiced beef and TVP.

They actually look better in the package (above) than they do after heating (right.) The buns get really soft and squishy after they're heated, and unfortunately the hot dogs don't heat up quite enough by the time the buns are almost mushy.

Surprisingly enough, though, the chili sauce has a fairly decent flavor. While spicy, it isn't too hot and on it's own (or on a better quality hot do) it wouldn't be too bad. Luckily, this halfway decent chili sauce masks the nasty bologna flavor of the hot dogs. The mustard is hardly noticeable, although I guess it's applied unevenly, because every now and then a bit of a hot dog provides a blast of mustard flavor, which isn't really compatible with the chili.

I just can't resist showing you this cross-section. That mustard really looks sick, but the part that really concerned me was the hot dog. I never did figure out what all those little white bits were.

Overall, I give the Double-Dog Dare a grade of 5 on a 1-to-10 scale: Not entirely horrible, but not my first choice for lunch.

Next up is the Dale Jr. Cheeseburger.

This is a big and substantial lunch, weighing in at over nine ounces (which is big for a vending machine sandwich.)  It seems to be pretty standard - sesame seed bun, a patty which is advertised to be "made with 100% BEEF," cheese, ketchup, mustard, and pickles.  The ingredient panel, though, reveals that the 100% beef is "seasoned" with hydrolyzed soy protein - a source of filler as well as MSG - and is flavored with beef broth.

Freshly out of the microwave, lifting the lid on the burger reveals just what kind of lunchtime nightmare it really is. The processed cheese turns into a viscous pool which collects in the artificial "grill lines" which have been etched into the surface of the pale grey burger. What I didn't show was that the bottom surface of the sandwich was coated in a thin, sticky film of ketchup and mustard; it must have spilled or been misapplied during manfacture, and it resulted in a messy, hard-to-hold product.  It was icky enough that I decided to cut the burger in half to make it easier to hold and eat.

That proved to be very entertaining. The pickles, which were hidden under the patty between the burger and the bun, were highly resistant to cutting. As I sliced through the sandwich, the blade (which was gliding effortlessly through the meat and bread) "caught" on the pickles and dragged them out against the blade. I popped one into my mouth and found that it seemed to be made of pale green plastic with a tougher, thicker green plastic rim. I could barely chew it

As you might imagine, this sandwich, like the hot dogs, was less than ideal. The cheese was lowest-common-denominator cheap American, and the burger tasted more like salt and cheap beef bouillon than it did like real beef. The complete flavor profile was something like what a food additive corporation would come up with if asked to make "cheeseburger flavor" for addition to other things. This product gets a 4 on a 1-to-ten scale. Edible, but it will never be a first choice.

Since I seem to be arranging these things in decending order of goodness, I suppose it's fitting that I finish off by describing the Dale Jr. BBQ Pork Sandwich.

It's basically a NASCAR-themed version of McDonald's McRib sandwich: a pork patty formed into a crude representation of a tiny rack of spare ribs, dressed with BBQ sauce and served on a club roll.

The sauce is thick and sweet and wet and makes the sandwich a little harder to handle than it might be, but it had a fairly good flavor which is similar to many inexpensive bottled barbecue sauces.

The patty is very mild with any pork flavor very efficiently subsumed by the sauce. I could handle that. It was harder to handle the texture - chewy, gristly, kind of lumpy, with a lot of what I earnestly hoped was cartilage. This pork patty was so inferior to anything I'd ever had under any other brand that I was surprised that any actual person would put their real name on the packaging. Dale, dude, talk to these guys. That's your [highly stylized and probably trademarked] signature on the cellophane - have you no pride?

If you're hungry - really hungry - the BBQ Pork Sandwich will probably score a 4 on a 1-to10 scale. But since I have some standards (and a stash of Cup-A-Soup in my desk drawer for emergency lunchtime hunger) I can't give it more than a 3.

Hormel Bacon & Pork Sausage

When I found these Hormel Bacon & Pork Sausages at Price/Rite for 99 cents, I had to try them out.  I could tell from the picture on the box that they probably wouldn't be very good - casingless sausage generally is pretty nasty stuff - but after all, I was only gambling a buck.

Since my expectations were pretty low, I wasn't too disappointed when I opened the box and found a block of bulk sausage meat that had been die cut to form "links."  Except they're not links, Hormel. If they're not packed in casing and linked together, they're not links.  Believe it or not, the picture here actually makes the sausage look better than it did in real life. They were lumpy and loosely formed, and the surface was white with congealed fat.

They were some ugly-looking meat sticks after frying. Several of them broke apart as they cooked because the meat was packed too loosely to hold together. And, of course, there was all that fat.

The flavor was...unique. Vaguely porky, a faint whiff of smokiness from the bacon, and an overwhelmingly cloying flavor of fake maple flavoring. I took a bite of one and that was all I could take. Luckily, the dogs thought the sausage was awesome and that 99-cent box of cheap meat gave me a day's worth of treats for Zim and Iris.

There is nothing worse than fake maple flavoring. I hate the way it tastes, but I hate the way it smells even more. It reeks like boiled-over automotive antifreeze, and it lingers forever. The stink of it hung in the house for days. Fortunately, feeding the "links" to the dogs made them fart, which covered the smell. 

Subway's Pulled Pork Sandwich

Photo by Subway

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Subway BBQ Pulled Pork Edition.

The Good:

Close examination of the pulled pork reveals that it is actual slow-cooked pulled pork, fairly juicy. Even when not dressed with the barbecue sauce (I got it on the side) it had a bit of smokiness (not that I believe for a minute that Subway's little tubs of commissary-pulled pork are done in a pit.)

Subway's bread is decent. Pulled pork should be served on good soft rolls and Subway delivers.

The Bad:

That barbecue sauce is totally generic. Cloyingly sweet (thank you, high-fructose corn syrup) with bottled smoke and a limited amount of spices lending flavor. It tastes like every other cheap fast-food barbecue sauce you've ever had.  McDonalds McRib? Gotcha. Burger King "barbecue" dipping sauce? Yeah. Wendy's whatever-the-hell-completely-forgettable-BBQ-crap-they've-done? Tastes just like it.

The Ugly:

If you like a dab of pulled pork with a metric ton of lettuce and onions to make the sandwich look big, this is the lunch for you. Subway's photo ads are the biggest liars in fast food marketing. And really, every time I've been to a good BBQ joint, my pulled pork sandwich has had nothing on it but decent sauce and some sweet bread-and-butter pickles on top. Lettuce and dill pickles? WTF, Subway?

For an emergency BBQ fix, Subway's got you covered. Tell them to leave off the lettuce and dill pickles and you can almost make believe that you're at a real BBQ place, if real BBQ places used the cheapest sauce they could scrounge.

Kielbasa from Strum's Deli & Meats, Holyoke

Strum's Deli and Meats is a little hole-in-the-wall butcher shop on Westfield Road in Holyoke.  Lynnafred and I visited it last week when, after months of having driven by the place and saying "Hey we oughta stop in there sometime," sometime finally arrived.

It's a decent store, much bigger on the inside than it looks from the small storefront. They've got quite a variety of cuts available, and they do some sausage making as well.  I'll write more about the store in coming weeks - I want to go there again and sample some of the other stuff they offer - but today I'm going to tell you about their kielbasa.

Strum's kielbasa is very good. The spice blend is traditional and not too salty, and the smoke is well-balanced and not overpowering. The pork they use is high-quality without gristly bits being evident. It's a bit less fatty than I'm used to, which makes for a dryer sausage, but being a little leaner didn't detract from the flavor or enjoyability of the kielbasa - and it made it somewhat easier to grill without huge uncontrollable flareups.

Seriously, if the only kielbasa you've ever had is the crap packaged by Hillshire Farm, you owe it to yourself to find a good, small-label kielbasa, and preferably one that's made practically in your backyard (like Strum's if you live in Holyoke, or Janik if you live a little south of there in Enfield.) You'll be blown away by how awesome the local stuff is, and you'll wonder why you put up with that mass-marketed garbage for so long.

Strum's Deli & Meats

502 Westfield Road

Holyoke, MA 01040-1633
(413) 532-8020

Hénaff Pork Pâté

This morning, I posted a picture of a French pork product, Pâté Hénaff, freshly tipped from its tin onto a festive and colorful paper plate.  It looked pretty awful plopped down like that. Perhaps some of you wondered what it tasted like.  Never having been one to let a can of good pigmeat go to waste, I invited the somewhat fatty puck of pâté to lunch.

Other than the thick and drooling crust of pork fat on the surface of the pâté when freshly freed from it's steel-clad prison, the Serving Suggestion on the lid of the can is remarkably faithful to the real thing, right down its depiction of what the typical slice looks like in cross section. There seems to be little (if any) photoshopping involved.

Pâté Hénaff is a reasonably decent chopped ham product. It is both less heavily-seasoned and less fatty than Hormel's SPAM, but don't let that fool you; there is still plenty of fat to go around here.  The can says "ready to eat, cold or hot," but Pâté Hénaff is less than optimal when cold - the fat is unpleasant and the texture slightly grainy. It's much better sliced and fried, when it becomes rather pleasant, with a crispy browned crust over a tender hammy inner core.  It was okay for what it was, but if I feel the overwhelming need to buy highly processed canned pork loaf product again, I'll probably get SPAM instead because it's less expensive and the square can makes it easier to get uniform slices.

Out of the Can: Henaff Pork Pate

Henaff Pork Pate,  a kind of French version of SPAM.

Snacky Bones

One of the reasons Stop & Shop is one of my favorite stores here in Enfield is because of their awesome Pork Policy. There are a lot of folks in town who make their own sausage, and Stop & Shop caters to them, selling hog casings, and pork fat, liver, and skin.  And along with this offal, they also sell random pork bone trimmings.  Sometimes they're neck and back bones (great for making stock) but sometimes, they're rib trimmings.  This might not sound like a big difference, but rib trimmings are excellent for making little pork snackers - and Stop & Shop sells them pretty cheap.

What follows is a basic recipe for Snacky Bones, but it's more of a method and guideline than it is a true recipe.  The instructions section will include suggestions and options.

Snacky Bones

Makes 1 batch

Meaty pork bones, rib trimmings suggested, any quantity

Salt, pepper, other seasonings

Put the bones in a shallow roasting pan and season with salt, pepper, and a flavorful seasoning blend of your choice.  Bell's makes an excellent Onion & Herb seasoning ostensibly for chicken, but it's awesome on pork as well.

Roast the bones in the oven for about 50 minutes at 350 F.

Remove the roasted bones to a dry skillet on the stovetop. Without adding any oil or fat - there will be enough on the bones to do the job - pan fry them over medium heat to crisp them up.

Just before they're done, I like to splash the ribs with some brandy, bring the brandy to a sizzle, then tip the pan to flame off the alcohol.  The brandy gives an extra dimension of flavor to the pork, and the blue-and-yellow fireball is frigging awesome and impresses the hell out of visitors who might be hanging around the kitchen getting underfoot while I'm trying to cook.

To serve:  Pile the bones on a plate and put them in the middle of the table. Make sure everyone has plenty of napkins or access to a roll of paper towels (we don't stand on ceremony at my place.)  You can serve them straight up, crusty with the herb seasonings you added, or you can dress them with a sauce (your favorite barbecue sauce if you like - or try some Japanese tonkatsu sauce, it's great) or just set out little bowls of sauce for dipping.

USDA Announces New Pork Cooking Guidelines

The USDA has finally updated their guidelines for cooking pork, announcing that an internal temperature of 145 degrees F is quite sufficient for cooking pork.

It's well known that Trichinella is killed at 137 degrees F; I and many others have been saying for years that it is unnecessary to cook the living hell out of pork.  Old cookbooks often advised people to cook pork to a temperature of 180 F, which makes it inedibly dry.

For me the issue with doneness of pork is a matter of texture.  When I make a pork roast, I generally cook it to an internal temp of about 155 F or so.  I find pork that is too rare to be uncomfortably "slimy" in mouthfeel.  (That particular quality disgusts me; it's why I hate gumbo and many types of sashimi.)

So, Huzzah! to the FDA for this sensible new guideline!

Dan'l Boone Country Ham at Dollar Tree!

My fascination with Dollar Store Meat continues: I found 3-ounce packages of real, honest, genuine (and delicious) Country Ham (aka American Prosciutto) at Dollar Tree.  At a dollar a package, it works out to a little over $5 a pound, a fair price, and not bad if you consider how incredibly hard it is to find real Country Ham up here in New England.

The ham in the packages - Dan'l Boone Brand - are pre-sliced, and it is the real deal.  And I kind of like the small packs because I can pull out a slice to accent a cold cut grinder, or add some to a pot of greens, or use up the whole pack at breakfast time with delicious biscuits.  Like many other Dollar Tree items, this one probably won't be around long, so if you have a hankering for the taste of real Country Ham, hie thee to a Dollar Tree with a refrigerated food section and grab a packet or two. I promise it's good stuff.

Dan'l Boone Brand is one of the labels used by Goodnight Brothers of Boone, NC to sell their ham.  According to the information on their web page, Dan'l Boone is primarily packaged for grocery store chains and is distributed by Sysco.  They package their product under other labels for different distribution networks, and that includes a brand they call "Hardee's Country Ham" which is packaged exclusively for distribution to and by Hardee's fast food restaurants.

Also of interest:  Goodnight Brothers is on Facebook.  Check out their page's photo album for a close-up look at how country hams are prepped, cured, processed, and packed. It's fascinating.

Dollar Store Scrapple

I never know what is going to turn up in the refrigerated section of Dollar Tree. This is the first time I found scrapple there.

Checking the label reveals that this scrapple was made at USDA Establishment No. 9520, aka Leidys, Inc of Souderton PA.  Take a look at some of the small-brand and store-brand scrapples in various supermarkets, and you will find USDA Est. No. 9520 on many of them.

The stuff cooks up pretty well - it doesn't get too runny or liquid as it fries - and it has a pleasantly peppery zing to it.  Good stuff.  But it's also an excellent example of how dollar store shopping isn't always the awesome deal that it might seem to be.

This five-ounce pack of scrapple cost a dollar, meaning that I'd need to pay $3.00 for 15 ounces (just shy of a pound) of it.  But scrapple made by Leidys can be found  in full one-pound packages in many supermarkets for about $2.50 or sometimes less. Everything at the dollar store might be a dollar, but not everything is going to be worth a dollar.

Ham Stock, Pea Soup, Lentil Soup - A Trio of Recipes

Photo by ALDI

As the calendar starts rolling toward Easter, hams start to appear on sale in the supermarkets.  The ALDI in my town had a great deal on their Appleton Farms spiral-cut hams a short time ago: $1.49 a pound for the ham, with $3.00 taken off the total at the register. I put a nice big one in my cart because if you're trying to stretch a tight budget (and we've been pretty tight lately) there are few things that give you as big a bang for your buck as a ham.  Besides the initial family dinner, a big ham will provide sandwiches for lunch, slices for breakfast, seasoning for peas and beans and such, and then there's stuff like chopped ham salad, ham-and-cheese omelets, croquettes, and hash.  Now, there's no need to eat ham for every meal until it's all gone, but seriously the $15 or so you'll lay out for a ham on sale really does go a long way.

And then, of course, there is SOUP.

Ham bones are laden with flavor and you can usually make enough stock for two pots of soup.  One night last week, that is exactly what I did.  From bone to bowl usually takes about eight hours, so you probably won't want to start at 4:00 in the afternoon after work like I did. But if it's, say, a rainy Sunday and you're not going anywhere anyway, you've got plenty of time on your hands to make a proper pot of slow-simmered soup.  (Yeah, for all the junk food and TV dinners I eat, the truth is I'm a big fan of Slow Food and I make most of our family meals from scratch.  Don't tell the Burger King, or he'll start creeping outside my windows again.)

Anyway.  Good soup starts with good stock, so let's start with ham stock.

Ham Stock

makes about 7 quarts

2 gallons of water

3 medium onions, chopped

3 or 4 large carrots, chopped

3 or 4 ribs of celery, including the leaves, chopped

1 ham bone with a little meat still on it.

Handful of parsley, whole

8 - 10 whole peppercorns

3 bay leaves

Put the water, onions, carrots, and celery into a large stockpot and bring to a boil. Add the ham bone, parsley, peppercorns and bay leaves.  Turn the heat down to simmer and allow the stock to simmer for 4 or 5 hours.  Add a bit of water now and then if too much boils off. Remove the bone from the pot at the end of the cooking time. Pick off the meat and reserve for inclusion in the soup, and toss the bone. (I usually save the cartilage, gristle, and other nasty little bits for the dogs.)

You may strain the veggies from the stock if you'd like. I take out the long stringy stalks of parsley, but generally leave the rest of it in.

You will now have somewhere between 6 and 8 quarts of ham stock - enough to make two pots of soup.  Or one huge pot if you're feeding a lot of people.

You can freeze stock for later use if you have the room in the freezer.  If you're the proud owner of a ham bone but lack the time to give it a proper soupination, you can freeze that for later too.  I had plenty of time on Soup Night, so I decided to just make two pots of soup side by side on the stove.

Green Split Pea Soup

Makes about 3 quarts

 

3 quarts of ham stock

2 carrots, chopped

2 onions, chopped

2 ribs celery, including leaves, chopped

1 bay leaf

1 pound green split peas

Salt, pepper, and seasonings to taste

Bring ham stock, carrots, onions, and celery to a boil; reduce heat to a simmer.  Add bay leaf and split peas and simmer for 2 hours, covered, stirring occasionally.

By the end of the two hours, the peas should be soft and starting to break down.  Add reserved ham bits from making the stock, some chopped parsley, and some ground black pepper.  Simmer uncovered for an hour and a half, stirring occasionally, to help thicken up the soup.

Half an hour before serving, taste to adjust the seasoning. At the very least, you should add salt to taste, but there are certain ingredients I always add to my soups to make them outstanding.  One of these is Maggi seasoning.  Not the crappy soy-saucy stuff you find in American and Asian groceries, but imported Maggi Würze from Switzerland. This is the original formulation as Nestle first developed it over 100 years ago, and the main component is an extract of lovage. It is amazing in soups and stews.  It's available online.  Another seasoning I use consistently is Vegeta, an eastern-European blend of herbs, seasoning, and MSG OMG.  Lynnafred calls it "magic powder" because it has such an incredible ability to flavorize soup and gravy.

After adjusting the seasoning to your taste, simmer briefly, stirring to distribute the flavors, and serve hot.

You can use any kind of lentil you like in this lentil soup.  My favorite are the tiny green Puy lentils from France. They take a little longer to cook because unlike common brown lentils they need to be soaked before using. However, they hold their shape even after having been cooked for hours and hours.  This quality gives the soup a heartier character.  You can find Puy lentils in the "gourmet" section of your local supermarket, or you can get them in bulk at many"health food" stores.

Lentil Soup

Makes about 3 quarts

1½ pounds tiny Puy lentils

3 quarts ham stock

2 or 3 carrots

2 onions

2 ribs of celery

2 bay leaves

1 can (14½ ounces) diced tomatoes

1 bag (16 ounces) frozen cut leaf spinach

Salt, pepper, and seasonings to taste.

Several hours before you start to actually cook, put the lentils to soak in plenty of cold water. (I start soaking the lentils when I put the ham bone into the pot to make the stock.)

Bring the ham stock to a boil with the carrots, onions, celery, and bay leaves.  Turn the heat down to a simmer and add the soaked lentils, stirring as you pour the lentils in.  Add the diced tomatoes and cover the pot, simmering for three to four hours.

Add the frozen spinach to the pot, and continue to simmer as you season the soup.  I use salt, pepper, Vegeta seasoning, and Maggi - at the least, you should add salt and pepper to taste.  When the spinach is tender, the soup is ready to serve.

Bon Appetit!

Quick Review: Tour Eiffel Pork Pate

Tour Eiffel Pork Pate is fairly good stuff for a lowishly-priced pate.  Even though it's made of pork, it has a delicate flavor much more in common with finer poultry-based products. It probably has something to do with the truffles that are in it (even though I strongly suspect that the amount of actual truffles in the mix would have to be spotted with a magnifying glass.)

Anyway, the 7-ounce package it comes in is just the right amount when paired with other appetizers for 4 to 6 people, it's good enough to leave you wanting more, and it won't cost you an arm and a leg.

Made by Charcuterie La Tour Eiffel Inc. in Quebec. Thanks, Canada!