Double bellied asian pastrami pig...wha?

I will not apologize for the lack of posts these last couple of weeks.  I also will not apologize to those who find the pig to be an unnaturally dirty animal.  Pigs don't go out of their way to smell, they will do what's necessary to survive and humans found out that letting them sit in their own feces on concrete floors does not harm them as it might some animals.

Last summer I had the pleasure of visiting local, sustainable farms throughout the Skagit Valley and several of these farmers raised pigs.  The pigs were allowed to eat grass and walk around large enclosures.  They were also given feed and shelter. While the pig prefers to hang around their own and close to shelter, it does not purposely roll around in it's own feces as some imagine. They roll around in dirt and mud to cool themselves.  They don't smell great, but what farm animals do?  Ever smell a male goat in rut?  Ever clean out a chicken coop?  Perhaps been on the wrong end of a cow?

Now I will apologize.  This post isn't supposed to be a rant about the pig.  It's actually meant to be about the Pig Roast that me and my unsavory group of friends just put on.

This 6th annual event featured a pig with some interesting changes I hadn't played with before.  The first few times we followed the Cuban method to a T including the marinade which features a lot of garlic and sour orange juice called Mojo.  Last year I did 3 pigs for various events and for all three did more classic american bbq flavors.  This year with the help of Sous Chef Jude Cruz, we went for Asian flavors.

In past years I've received the pig the night before in order to splay it open and marinade it.  This year I decided to give myself an extra day to let the pig sit in a cure consisting mainly of cilantro, salt and water.  The cure was rinsed off the next day but I found it did a good job of getting some salt deeper into the meat.

Another big change was the addition of a second pork belly.  The belly itself was butterflied so that it would stretch over the already butterflied big.  This gave us a huge pocket to stuff the pig with all manner aromatic and flavorful veggies including lemon grass, garlic, ginger, daikon and galangal.

Last but not least, the curve ball.  Being the great communicator that I am, I did not tell Justin(Pig Roast Host Extraordinaire) about the plans for the pig.  In uncanny Justin fashion, the man managed to get a free pastrami from the folks at Roxy's Diner.  I was promptly contacted and told to add the pastrami in the pig.  Conflicted about adding a Jewish cold cut to my Asian pig, I pushed back.  Surely this marriage had never occured before and would not work.  After some fighting that mimcicked Restaurateur v. Chef, the man with the pocketbook won.  If I were any chef worth his salt, I would've flipped the pig off the table onto the ground and stormed off in a rage of expletives, french ones at that.  It's best this didn't happen, as it turned out the pastrami was the best part according to a lot of people.  C'est la vie et merde.

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Below are some pictures.  If you feel uneasy about whole dead animals, get over it and enjoy.

 Covered inside and out with cure

 Rinsing cure off

 Butterflied

 My oh my, it's pastrami

 Massive goodies

 Belly up, double down

The finished product

Street food showdown #2 - Brick meets mortar

It should be no surprise to most that I like street food. I like the idea of trucks moving around the city giving people a different options for lunch on the fly. The worst part of getting lunch when you've worked at the same office for three years is trying to find somewhere exciting and new to eat when you only have half an hour. I don't have this problem anymore but I know it's a real one.

While I love the idea of owning a street truck, I also realize there are many issues associated with a moving kitchen that a brick and mortar operation do not have to deal with. Some follies include; knocking the ventilation hood off the roof while going under a low hanging tree branch, forgetting to fill the water tank, engine breaking down, sub-frame of airstream trailer cracking. These are all issues I've heard of first hand from the owners and all of these can lead to a day or more of lost business.

So what do you once you've made it big? You open a joint that no big bad wolf can blow down. Enter our two contestants, Marination Station and Skillet Diner.

Marination is not your typical taco truck. They are a Korean taco truck with the aloha spirit of Hawaii and the spam sliders to drive the point home. Then there's Skillet doing what they do best, anything they damn well please.

Marination
I had all four different types of tacos as well as a couple bites of Jill's kimchi fried rice. The four tacos served are; kalbi beef, spicy pork, miso ginger chicken and sexy tofu. The kalbi had some sweetness to it and a lot of earthy flavor, it was quite greasy. The pork had an interesting lingering spice, not spicy though. The meat had a re-fried granular texture and It was greasier than the kalbi. The chicken had the sweetness of white meat chicken, but the sauce was seriously lacking in flavor. I could barely taste either the miso or the ginger and this made me sad. Finally the sexy tofu. You're really going to have to try hard to convince me that your tofu is sexy and let's just say the effort was lacking. The kimchi fried rice was good but the rice was slightly under cooked and although we got the fried egg to top it, I wish there was more egg involved.

I honestly think that my experience here was due to poor execution. All of the food needed more salt besides the fried rice and the chicken taco, which just needed more miso. The sauces that accompanied the taco fillings just needed the extra flavor that salt helps bring out. Granted I'm addicted to salt and I've been trained to salt things within a couple of grains of over-salted, there was room for more, far more. Anyone serving spam on their menu should know this.

Skillet Diner
I'm not really a sweets guy. Generally when I go out for breakfast I like the savory stuff like biscuits and gravy. About once a month I get a weird itch for something sweet and nothing can stop me. This month it was pancakes.

I arrived first on a quiet Wednesday morning when most people are starting their 9 to 5. One thing I love about diners is the booths. These booths were comfy. The whole place was comfy. A modern diner for sure, but a proper diner none the less. So I grabbed a comfy booth and waited for Jill to show up. In the meantime I ordered one of their fresh made agua frescas, pinneapple-strawberry-basil. Yum. #$*!ing yum.

Jill showed up and we ordered. I ordered the flapjacks with rhubarb compote and lemon zest butter while Jill got a chopped green salad with an egg on top. If you haven't noticed a pattern, Jill likes an egg on top. It's a solid move and it impresses the wait staff almost every time.

The flapjacks were great, a good combination of fluffiness and density. The edges were ever-so-slighlty-yet-magnificently crunchy from all the butter used to cook them. The lemon butter was subtle, but a very nice touch. My only complaint was with the rhubarb compote. I believe there are two camps on rhubarb, those that want it to retain some of it's tartness, and those that want it sweetened to the point that your teeth disintegrate upon contact(there is a third camp actually, my dad, who thinks that rhubarb and mallard ducks are the devil). Personally I'm in the tart camp, and this compote was just a little too sweet for me.

There was no real competition here, Skillet walked away with this one. Marination has the motto of doing one thing well while Skillet wants to do everything. You would think this would give Marination the upper hand but it doesn't. When you fall into the monotony of doing the same thing every day over and over, you're bound to get lazy and it showed in the tacos. I won't give up on Marination, I know they can do a great job because they wouldn't be this far in the game if there wasn't something to their formula. Perhaps they just misplaced it and forgot to add the salt.

The Hangover 3

I'm done complaining about The Hangover 2. I promise. I did however have a killer hangover this morning thanks to a night out with the dudes at Tilth. This morning I woke up to bright sunlight piercing my eyelids making my headache feel that much worse. I drank some water, took some ibuprofen and tried to sleep it off. I awoke famished and in all my clarity decided to make the masterpiece you see below.

The irony of being a cook is that you can't afford the food you make. What we have here is chicken and waffles. Two Eggos with a chicken tender in between, basted egg on top, garnished with goldfish and finished with a swoosh(a horrible one) of Aunt Jemima maple syrup. Double Faceplam. At least the egg came from one of my chickens.