EricMBloggie

Do you eat meat? Please read the article, “Boss Hog,” that Jeff Tietz wrote for Rolling Stone in 2006.

Smithfield Foods, the largest and most profitable pork processor in the world, killed 27 million hogs last year. That’s a number worth considering. A slaughter-weight hog is fifty percent heavier than a person. The logistical challenge of processing that many pigs each year is roughly equivalent to butchering and boxing the entire human populations of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Detroit, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Columbus, Austin, Memphis, Baltimore, Fort Worth, Charlotte, El Paso, Milwaukee, Seattle, Boston, Denver, Louisville, Washington, D.C., Nashville, Las Vegas, Portland, Oklahoma City and Tucson.

Read it. Then go buy some responsibly raised dead animals and eat them.

It’s not just pigs, by the way. Animals turned into an industrial product are all treated like shit to make a profit. I want to eat animals, not disease ridden, antibiotic pumped, shit wallowing, mutants.

Enough from me, take it away, Jamie Oliver, tell us about those cheap chickens.

This is the roast chicken from America’s Test Kitchen via Paupered Chef where you rub baking powder, salt, and pepper all over a thoroughly dried bird and let it dry brine in the fridge for a while. The skin comes out of the cold box looking pretty terrible, but it’s all good. The pan/oven method of the Zuni Cafe takes this crispy skin and plump chicken to new heights. It doesn’t hurt that it’s local, and free-range, and not a bland, once-frozen Purdue either.

I’m excited to keep trying variations on this method because it keeps me full of delicious chicken, and supplies carcasses for stock as well.

Before This chicken was roasted using a modified version of the Zuni Cafe recipe [Serious Eats] that I’ve been experimenting with recently. Yes, that’s a compound butter stuffed under the breast skin. Yes, it was delicious.

The first time I tried the recipe, I also combined it with America’s Test Kitchen’s baking powder skin [Paupered Chef] and a one day dry brine with better (excellent) results. After I try this combo method a couple more times, I’ll write up a recipe. The skin was super crisp, and the meat moist and seasoned throughout, despite being slightly overcooked (no one could tell anyways.)

The broccoli was boiled until tender and tossed with some butter, parmigiano-reggiano, salt & pepper. I went a little heavy on the sea salt (still figuring out how much is the right amount with that stuff), but it was still very good. The potatoes sat in a glass baking dish next to the chicken. They were in too long or something, because they developed too hard an exterior. I’m still figuring out those guys.

I just started Jeffery Steingarten’s book, “The Man Who Ate Everything,” and was surprised by a paragraph concerning cheese and lactose.

“Overnight, everybody you meet has become lactose intolerant.  It is the chic food fear at the moment.  But the truth is that very, very few of us are so seriously afflicted that we cannot drink even a whole glass of milk a day without ill effects.  I know several people who have given up cheese to avoid lactose.  But fermented cheeses contain no lactose! Lactose is the sugar found in milk; 98 percent of it is drained off with the whey (cheese is made from the curds), and the other 2 percent is quickly consumed by the lactic-acid bacteria in the act of fermentation.” (p.8)

I fell victim to this food myth as well, but wonder why some cheese gives me an upset stomach.  Maybe when I was eating a cheesy food like pizza, I was also overeating.   After all, should anyone actually be eating TWO slices of Lorenzo’s at 2:00 am?  I definitely get an upset stomach from drinking milk, but cheese is certainly getting reconsidered.  I’ll have to do a little research into this, and eventually update the post.