The Whole Hog

The Whole Hog

On Caye Caulker there is this delightful restaurant called La Cubana. As with many places it has a pitchman outside luring tourists in. No exception here. The pitchman was Adam – someone who seemed to know of every activity, every scam, every fun thing to do on the Island. Gaunt, irrepressibly vivacious – almost manic. He can never remember the actual details of the stories, but it doesn’t matter they are such good ones. Every night La Cubana offers a whole roasted pig.

That means that every day a pig gets roasted. So, around the back we went to find Marlin and his lads roasting a pig over a pit. They take turns at the spit, rotating the pig slowly for several hours. Starting at 8am and the beast is ready for serious eating at about 5:30. Oh yeah.

Of course we (The Beard, The Little Fella, and I) get there on the dot of 5:30, after all there are only 2 ears and a small quantity of jowl meat on a single pig and we wanted more than our share.

It was lean, succulent, delicious. Who cares about sides when there is this exquisite porkiness to be had? The jowls were to die for. Warm pork fat trickling down my arm as I shoveled the tender meat into my mouth. And then some crispy skin to act as a contrast? The ears were great too, that wonderful cartilaginous texture – again a contrast with the softness of the jowls, but with a very pronounced porkier flavor. Probably because they didn’t have the same amount of fat to baste them, so they were done more. Whatever, they were delicious.

You can’t leave a hog without going after the belly though. So of course we had to have some of that too. Another entirely different taste/texture contrast. Almost a bit gamey – and that’s fine by me.

The next day at lunch time – Cuban sandwich from the previous day’s leftovers. And of course a Belikin. The finest 24 hours of anticipation and eating imaginable.

Best Local Food in Caye Caulker Belize. The Budget Man.

The Budgetman

We (Chef D, The Beard, and myself –The Birdman) took a recent trip to the remote island of Caye Caulker, Belize for some quick sun, Belikin, and new food finds.  We never planned ahead for meals, or really anything for that matter, but the reoccurring question that always came up was “Where should we have lunch?”

And every day we came back with the same answer. The Budgetman. So for the 6 days on Caye Caulker, we had lunch with the Budgetman for 5 of them. The one day we were out fishing so missed him.

Everyone on Caye Caulker seems to have a self given nickname. Charles Coote is no exception. By day he is Budgetman and by night Charles (never Charlie, always Charles). His superhero costume is a floppy chef’s hat over the top of a baseball cap. He’s got himself a pretty nice life. He rocks up at about noon, sets his table on Front Street located right on the main beach, has a couple of the local lads put up a tent to keep himself in the shade.  Yes, even the locals in Belize like the shade.

He dishes food (15BZD for one protein, 25BZD for 2) into Styrofoam (made in China of course – like much that is sold on Caye Caulker) plates. There’s always rice, always some kind of seafood, always some kind of animal protein, vegetables and coleslaw. Sometimes its jerk pork or chicken, sometimes curry.

Sometimes with coconut, sometimes not. What are consistent are the flavor and the quality. The vegetables were stewed every day – always some potato and garlic, sometimes plantain. Other occasional mysteries. Every day this simple food tastes wonderful.

Belizean jerk meat is different from Jamaican. In Belize it always seemed to be stewed or braised with achote, while in Jamaica it is usually a dry rub and grilled. Either/any way is just fine by me.  The bold hot flavors coating my mouth, staining my shirt as I greedily scarfed down the whole plateful. And the portions were huge. Didn’t seem to matter, I always finished mine.

What’s his secret? I guess there are several. Tireless self promotion – and always in the 3^rd person; really well prepared food that doesn’t have to be done at the last minute; little or no overhead other than the cost of ingredients. He arrives with the giant pots filled with goodness cooked at home, lays them out and he is open for business. The food is never hot, nor cold. It is sold at street temperature. Sometimes a little Marie Sharp habanero sauce, but on the better days he brings his own, home made, hot pickled onions. Oh yeah, on top of the coconut curry chicken, I am still tasting it.

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Dinner Theater

It started innocently enough – Madame’s good friend Cathy announced that she wanted to do a dinner event for a group of high powered women. Madame thought it might be fun to do it at our house – after all we could surely do something at least as good as most restaurants – and for a lot less in a much more intimate surrounding. She can be VERY persuasive. I immediately enlisted help from Dave and sought input from Cathy. Cathy was no help! She gave us completely free reign, “You guys are the experts in the kitchen, surprise and delight me.” We took the admonition to heart and concocted a menu based around a few key ingredients and effects. The key ingredients were those Asian staples, Coconut and Kaffir Lime. We don’t have a coconut tree, but we have an elegant and much loved Kaffir Lime tree in the garden. He gives up his leaves for good causes whenever called upon. He was going to be in great demand. As for the effects, we wanted to make sure that the guests would have full, rich mouth experiences by varying textures, tastes, and temperatures.

We started with a cocktail of Kaffir Lime infused vodka, coconut water, simple syrup and vodka – an intensely chilled concoction full of flavor to offset the first, appetizer, course – Chiang Mai sausage.

Chiang Mai sausages are small, potent, delicious pork sausages served all over Thailand. They make great appetizers because they are easy to eat while balancing a cocktail, have enough flavor to work with strong drinks and they set your palate up for delights to come. However, there are a few challenges. The first is the pork. For these to work there has to be a significant amount of fat. Most pork we buy is too lean, but I discovered a cut that works perfectly. It is a ham. Now don’t be thinking cured and smoked and all of that – think a raw piece of ham, complete with fat cap. If you choose well, you end up with just the right amount of fat. In this case the piece of meat weighed about 2 ½ lbs and the fat about ½ lb. Also the fat is nice and firm – it grinds well without going pasty and nasty.

Recipe for Chiang Mai Sausage:

2.5 lbs. Pork,½ lb. Pork Fat,8 Kaffir Lime Leaves, Chiffinade,16 White Pepper Corns (whole, ground in mortar and pestle),16 Whole Coriander Seeds (ground in mortar and pestle),1 yellow onion (small diced), 8 cloves garlic, minced, 1 oz. Fish Sauce

On to the flavoring.

Red curry paste was a must – we need some of that heat. But the canned versions are a bit one dimensional. So we added Kaffir Lime leaves, salt (not fish sauce, but salt!), garlic cloves, white pepper, ground coriander, and onion to the mix. That brought it nicely into balance.

I have the most wonderful neighbors – and we share equipment that isn’t used every day. They have a meat grinder, I don’t. The rule is simple – I borrow the grinder, they get some of the resultant product.  All’s fair in the kitchen.

After removing the fat from the pork, and removing any skin from the fat, I ground the pork (twice) on the coarsest grind setting. The first grind was just the pork meat. None of the fat cap. No spicing either at that stage. For the second grind I added the minced Kaffir Lime leaves, the white pepper, coriander and onion interspersed with the meat. Helping to blend the spices into the meat. Then the fat. Mix the ingredients together – with a small can of red curry paste. It looked fabulous. Break a small piece off and fry immediately to check the seasoning. A little added salt, a final mix and it is ready for shaping. I had done the easy stuff. Now it was Dave’s turn – actually forming the sausage.

Cling wrap and skill to the rescue. Dave formed these beauties by rolling the meat tightly in the cling wrap – making sausages about 10 inches long and an inch in diameter. 5 of them! One of course had to go to the neighbor along with the return of the grinder. The sausages are poached in plain water (still in their plastic wrap) so that they partially cook through. Then to the fridge to rest and let the flavors blend.

All that was left was to bring them out of the fridge an hour or so before they were wanted and sear then gently on the flat top until they had some color and were warmed all through. It’s nice that these are served, like much Thai food, at room temperature. It’s important, of course, that they be thoroughly cooked. But they don’t need to be piping hot.

Served on Chinese soup spoons with a garnish of Thai basil, galangal and lemon grass they looked and tasted wonderful. Such a great start to a wonderful meal. Especially good with the robust cocktail. The evening was off to a wonderful start.

SOUP COURSE:

The ladies didn’t require much encouragement to come to the table where we served the remaining courses. The soup was a simple roasted eggplant/garlic/onion soup thickened with milk & splash of cream, and enveloping a sous vide chicken egg. This course was about mouth feel and aroma. It was silky smooth and by serving it in a double bowl – the inner bowl having the soup, the outer bowl had boiling water and rosemary delivering a rosemary perfume without actually adding rosemary flavor. The lushness of the soup was accented through the wine pairing of a Gewurtztraminer from Trimbach in Alsace.

Then on to the scallop course. For this course we made a taro root puree. Using small while taro roots, peeled, boiled and then pureed with some cream and finished with a little butter. An interesting flavor reminiscent of potato, but a little more musky/funky. Also a tamarind sauce – made simply by heating a tamarind block with enough water to break it down and straining the result to give a thick, sour tasting, fruity sauce to offset the butteryness of the scallop. A little grape tomato/Thai basil salsa, a blanched, seared baby bok choy leaf and a beautiful dish. Secrets to cooking scallops are A) make sure they are completely dry, B) season with salt and a little pepper, C) cook on a hot flat bottomed surface – not non-stick. In this case a cast iron flat griddle with butter and grape seed oil. Finally of course, don’t overcook them. These were big, “dry” packed scallops from Rex’s in Dallas.

During the menu planning, we had decided to do BEEF COURSE, which was a flank roulade with a green curry paste filling and served with shaved frozen foie gras over parsnips. That’s about as far as the planning had gone. Of course the plate needed more than that. But I am getting ahead of myself. I had a whole (almost 2 lbs) of foie gras in my freezer. So obviously I needed to somehow turn it into a torchon. Now foie gras isn’t the easiest substance to work with. It has deep embedded veins that must be removed. It has occasional little blood pockets that need to be removed. It also gets soft and mushy – like working with thick hand cream very quickly. Anyhow, I prepared the foie with a sake/Kaffir lime marinade, wrapped it in cheesecloth as tightly as I could and set it in the fridge on an upside down egg carton so it would hold its shape. When the time came to cook it, we poached it in the immersion circulator at 44C for about 15 minutes, allowed it to cool, and froze it. A lot of work, but so worth it.

I had been given a copy of Chef McDang’s wonderful book on Thai cuisine and set about making a green curry paste. I am simply glad that I am not a Thai grandma. The work required pounding the ingredients in a pestle and mortar would drive me nuts if I had to do it often. Still, it was well worth it. Simple ingredients – toasted whole coriander and cumin, a couple of chili varieties (green of course), galangal, lemon grass, shrimp paste, salt, white pepper. It all came together nicely and was ready for the beef.

Getting flank steak tender enough to make a roulade is an exercise in meat beating. It is a pretty tough cut and required a lot of pounding. Finally we had it thin enough. Coat with the green curry (thinned with a little oil to make it spread evenly) and rolled up, tied with butchers twine and refrigerated until its time in the bath tub.

Meanwhile, the parsnips were bagged and cooked sous vide with a little butter and lemon grass. After an hour in the water bath at 85C they were almost cooked. Finished in the oven to drive off some of the water and concentrate the flavor and they were ready to go.

Red rice was cooked, cooled and then pan fried with a little onion, finished with cilantro completed the ingredients. The dish was served on a paan leaf – the leaf much beloved in the Indian subcontinent for wrapping a chewing mixture.  The final presentation has curls of grated, frozen foie gras all served on a white rectangular plate. This was a dish for the eyes as well as the palate.

And then the piece de resistance. The guests had been quite lively and animated all evening. We decided to build up the dessert with some theater. As we cleared the plates from the beef course, we placed small round plates next to each diner. The dessert itself was to be served inside halved coconuts.

It was a variant on chendol – that sweet coconut based dessert or drink known as Lorchong Singapore in Thai. Usually it is made with green bean paste noodles, soaked in a sweetened coconut cream – sometimes with some fruit added. We chose to use tapioca based ingredients, noodles, pearls and strips. The intent of this dish was to have a wide variety of different textures in the mouth and a stunning presentation. For fruit we used rambutans (“hairy” in Malay). Each coconut base is filled with a little crushed ice and a piece of rambutan. Some of the tapioca noodles, pearls and strips added, a teaspoon of a syrup made from palm sugar and pandanas leaves (screw-pine) poured over.

Meanwhile the alchemist – Chef David was foaming coconut cream into liquid nitrogen. This left a very cold, intensely flavored ice cream. The coconuts were served with their lids on, the guests invited to remove the lids and some frozen, vapor surrounded frozen cream placed into the lids. The room went completely quiet as the theater unfolded. Guests hurried for cameras to capture their own photographs of the high art. A spectacular end to the formal dining.

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