#crevallejack

I made it to the Vietnamese Market is NO East this Saturday.  I set my alarm for 5 am! When i awoke, i sat up with my feet off the bed and questioned my existence.  Was it even possible to be here, doing what I was doing, going to a market with intentions of buying things I had no idea how to cook.  “Why am I here?” i thought. No, “Why am I awake?” a more easily answered question to ask myself.  I was awake, and that is what mattered.  I dressed swiftly and made my way to the rendezvous with none other than the smoke master, the soil extraordinaire, Eric the Man.  We were both recently interviewed on a podcast by the way! check it out right here, http://bit.ly/omclocal . Shameless self-plug complete.  So we set out for New Orleans East to buy some fish and greens. As you can see, we did very well for ourselves.  The spread right here cost me a grand total of $40.  I wasn’t really sure what the fish was, but I knew I wanted to eat it.

The fish was a crevalle jack by the way.  It has super firm flesh with a dark color.  Scaling and filleting was as interesting as it is with any other fish, at least for me.  Lots of bumping up against bones and cursing, and I even found a scale on me hours later, yup classic.  In case you haven’t noticed, I hate wasting food, so it goes without saying that I was going to make a fish stock.  It’s still percolating away right now, a good 24 hours later. It’s going into a chowder for tomorrow’s dinner.

These are my B-E-Autiful fillets from the jack.

After cleaning up after the fish and stowing it for later I set about finally making breakfast.  This little diddy came about in order to tidy the fridge. I cooked some bacon to soft, not crispy then added chopped chanterelle mushrooms and sauteed them until they were just getting cooked. At this point I turned the heat down and added a healthy amount of cream and scraped the bottom of the cast iron.  I made sure to stir constantly so the cream didn’t scald.  When it started to bubble gently, I cracked 2 eggs into the liquid to be poached.  I waited until the edges started to whiten then sprinkled garlic chives on top, put a lid on and turned of the heat to let it steam finish.  Sorry it was too tasty, I didn’t get a picture of the finished product.

Lunch was a taste test of the jack.  Doesn’t it look like steak. Oh yeh buddy,

Full of fish, I set about making sausage.  This right here is 4 pounds of pork.  It’s heading into the freezer to get a bit chilled so it will grind better.

While the pork was chilling I gathered the other fixings.  Here, we’ve got thai basil, garlic chives, “hot” peppers, garlic, and scallions. The peppers were not as hot as I was hoping.  This recipe would be best with thai chilis or perhaps just good old cayenne if you can’t find them.

After grinding I added a touch of cane vinegar, and molasses, which is quickly becoming my favorite substitute for umame seasonings like Worcestershire.  I then had the bright idea to add a bit of ground fish to the mix.  Normal Thai sausage would have a healthy portion of fish sauce added, so I figured why not just add a bit of fish.  It worked so well, that I’m going to be making an all fish sausage, with beef fat, tonight.  It’s sausage week baby!

A delicious little patty cooked to perfect herby deliciousness.

ELC ULTRA STRICT ZONE:

6-20 breakfast:eggs: happy hens, mushrooms:thurs market(wild), chives:2 acre farms, cream: Progress dairy, bacon:Jubilee Farms

lunch: crevalle jack from NO East farmers market

dinner:pork: hollywood livestock, herbs: NO East market, scallions, peppers: thurs market, garlic: Envie Garlic Farm