Chicken and pork, a chiporken?

A couple of years ago I cooked a turducken for Christmas. This year, for something a little different, I decided to try a chiporken. I bought a large and a small chicken and boned them both leaving the wings and legs on the large bird. I made a stuffing based on Jamie Oliver’s recipe, from diced leg pork, bread crumbs, sage, nutmeg, salt and pepper and 3 rashers of smokey bacon. I ran this through a blender, and then stuffed the small chicken.

Next I wrapped this in my favourite smokey bacon,

then put it in the large chicken,

and sewed it up.

As is usually the case, Christmas day was hot, hot, hot in Queensland, so I cooked this in our kettle BBQ, which isn’t ideal, but at least it’s outside. It’s hard to get an accurate and consistent temperature in the BBQ, and I usually have trouble judging cooking times. So I cooked the chiporken for a little over 3 hours, at some largely unknown and varying temperature, until a meat thermometer told me it was 175°C in the middle. As it turns out, that meant it was somewhat overcooked on the bottom, a regular feature of roasts done in my BBQ (maybe it’s me?),  but it sure looked good from the top!

It wasn’t as tasty as the turducken, but was pretty good, certainly an improvement on plain chicken. And if I do it again, well definitely at least twice as much bacon wrapped around the inside bird.

Camel pie

   Thousands of camels were imported into Australia between 1840 and 1907 to be used as transport in this country’s vast arid inland regions. In the 1920’s there were estimated to be 20,000 domesticated animals here, but by 1930, improved rail and motor transport made them redundant and they were released into the bush, where they bred prolifically. The estimated population of one million feral camels in 2009 (and increasing by 10% each year) has a major impact on outback Australia’s native vegetation. Australia has the only wild population of one humped camels in the world.

So, what’s my point? This is a food blog after all. My point is, with all these camels roaming the country, eating native vegetation, damaging waterways, knocking down fences, colliding with cars etc. why is it so hard to buy camel meat? Well, finally, after a year-long quest, a local butcher got in some camel mince and sausages. I missed out on the sausages this time, but there was one pack of mince left.

I’ve written elsewhere on this blog about a kangaroo and emu pie (Coat of Arms) and for the camel pie I used the same recipe, although I only cooked the camel in a pot for about 20 minutes before thickening it a bit with cornflower and filling the pie. A pie looks like a pie, so I didn’t bother with photos, it looked just like the other pie but without the coat of arms. I even resisted the temptation to bake humps into it or make it toe-shaped………….

Camel pie is good. I like strong flavoured pies and the camel meat has a gamey flavour without being overpowering. It is meant to be low in fat, but it had a fatty taste to it (not a bad thing). Was it worth the wait? Yes, although it wasn’t as good as the kangaroo and emu pie. I would certainly like to try the sausages, or some other cut of camel if it becomes available. And it might make an interesting burger.

 

Chicken hearts

I’d had a pack of chicken hearts in the freezer for quite a while, so finally it was time to try them. They’re not much to look at, but a lot of the things I eat are worse looking than this. They had been prepared by the butcher, with the tops cut off, removing any veins, and some of the fat.

I found quite a few different ways to cook the hearts, but I was hungry, so I took the easy option, and just pan fried them in oil, with garlic, until they browned up nicely.

I think they look a lot nicer cooked than raw! And they are so good to eat. A little bit chewy cooked this way, but by no means tough, quite a nice texture really. They had that lovely chicken skin, fatty flavour that I love. I saved a few for the next day and ate them cold, and what a great snack they are. Delicious with a cold beer. It’s a pity that they are high in cholesterol, or I’d eat them often.

Rolled pig’s spleen

This is a recipe from Fergus Henderson’s book ‘Nose To Tail Eating’, and is something I have wanted to try for quite some time, but I’ve had a lot of trouble getting hold of pig’s spleens. Finally, after waiting about 2 months, a butcher managed to get me some. I have never seen a spleen before, so I was a bit surprised at how long they are, the biggest one was over 45cm.

They had a layer of fat on one side which I cut off, you can see in the photo above where the fat was attached down the middle of the spleen. With the spleen laid flat, it was easy to place several sage leaves along it, then a couple of slices of smokey bacon with the rind removed were laid lengthwise on top. It was then easy to roll it all up and push through a skewer to hold it in the roll.

 

 The spleens were then placed in a casserole dish, covered with chicken stock and into a medium oven for 90 minutes. They were then left to cool in the stock before slicing and serving cold.

Anyone who likes liver will enjoy these as the taste is similar but not as strong. They are probably more like chicken than lamb liver, with maybe just a hint of pork flavour. I would have expected the bacon to overpower the spleens, but it didn’t. I think that is the genius of Fergus, he gets a fantastic balance of flavours. The amazing thing about the spleens is their texture, so soft and creamy, just like a really good pate.

 

Crispy pigs ears

These don’t sound very appealing to most people, particularly dog owners who buy dried pigs ears for their dogs to chew on. But two of my favourite cook books, ‘The Entire Beast’ and ‘Nose to Tail Eating’ have recipes for them, so that’s good enough for me. The pigs ears I bought were clean and hairless.

 I put them into the slow cooker with onions, garlic, fennel seeds, thyme and a bay leaf. The plan was to cook them until soft, but I had to go out before they were done, and by the time I got home they were very soft, possibly overcooked. I removed the ears from the liquid, at which stage the skin came away from the cartilage very easily if not carefully handled. After drying the ears with a paper towel and cooling (between 2 plates to stop them curling), I sliced them into strips. I then spread them with Dijon mustard and rolled them in breadcrumbs. I don’t have a deep frier so I pan fried them.

They ended up a little oily, but I think that’s a technique thing (or in my case, a lack of technique thing). The bread crumbs were crispy and the ears were soft inside , with the cartilage being a little harder, but not at all chewy. An interesting combination of textures. I thought they might have a stronger flavour, but there was just a slight hint of pork taste to them. Interesting, but not something I’ll cook again in a hurry.

Chivito sandwiches from Uruguay

Here’s something I hadn’t heard of last week. Then I watched an episode of Anthony Bourdains TV show ‘No Reservations’. He was in Uruguay, and judging by the amount of meat they eat there, it is where I should live, or at least visit. Anyway, the chivito sandwiches looked pretty good, so I googled a recipe and got into it. A trip to my new favourite butcher, Master Meats at Mooloolaba, and I had bacon and ham, both smoked on site and delicious, and grass fed eye fillet steaks from King Island. A couple of large white bread buns from the bakery next door and I was ready.

Bacon was cooked until crisp and then set aside. Steaks were about 2 cm thick, so I butterflied them and pounded them to under 1 cm thick before cooking for a couple of minutes on each side in the pan the bacon came out of. I also cooked onion, and fried eggs until the yokes just turned hard.  Tomato sauce and mayonaise were mixed together and spread onto the bottom half of the bun, then lettuce was added. Next was the steak followed by 3 slices of bacon and a couple of slices of ham. Then the onion and sliced tomato were added and the lot was topped with sliced mozzarella and placed under a grill to melt the cheese. Then the egg was put on top, with more sauce and mayo, and the top of the bun put on.

As you can see, this was a big, full sandwich (really more what we would call a burger) and it was necessary to cut it in half to have any hope of eating it.

The combination of tastes were amazing, with the steak and ham complemented by the bacon (and what doesn’t taste nicer with bacon in it?) The sandwich was big,  juicy, messy and extremely filling. An awesome meal, I can only imagine how nice real Uruguayan chivitos must be.

Tripe and onions

This is a dish I remember from my childhood. I think we had it fairly often and I always loved it. Tripe seems to be out of fashion nowadays, and when I cooked some a year or so ago I didn’t much like it, it was rubbery and not a particularly nice taste. But I just had to try it again. The tripe I bought was the honeycomb tripe, apparently from the second stomach. I googled a recipe and pretty much stuck to it, first placing it in cold water, bringing to the boil, then draining and rinsing before cutting into 2.5cm pieces. I then put tripe, onions, milk, a bay leaf, salt and pepper into a pot and simmered for almost 3 hours. I then melted butter in a pan, added flour and cooked for a minute or two, then stirred in the cooking liquid, and cooked until it thickened. The onions and tripe were then added and reheated.

The verdict?   Maybe slightly more palatable than last time, but still rubbery and not a really nice flavour (and it really doesn’t smell nice while cooking). I can’t imagine that I would have liked this all those years ago if it was like this. Makes me wonder if tripe has changed a bit, now that it is probably from feedlot cattle, fed grain and very little if any grass. I’d be interested to hear opinions on that.