The View from Silence

When I was a kid, I found myself one night in a cabin deep in the heart of Tanzania at 2 o’clock in the morning. I will never forget awakening to the deafening sound of . . . silence. It was a silence so acute that you couldn’t even call it silence: it was the utter absence of sound. One felt suddenly rendered deaf. It made me very nervous, as if a vengeful god had plucked the drums from my ears.

But what was infinitely, horribly worse, was the darkness. It was so dark in that room that I felt as though I had suddenly had my eyes removed. I just wanted to go to the bathroom, but the thought of getting up from the bed and feeling my way through the thick, indifferently silent miasma of inkiness was extremely unnerving. None of the lights worked. It was a safari camp — everything was switched off at 11.

“Geoff,” I pleaded in a drawn whisper to my older brother who lay in the bed next to mine, “Wake up!” But he wouldn’t.

I thought I was losing my mind until my ears and eyes finally registered something: a hiss and some lights through a window. It was the camp owner’s jeep, making a routine patrol through the camp. Buoyed that I was not an ocularly-challenged deaf person, I somehow made it to the bathroom.

Now, here, I sit on a futon in semi-rural Japan at 4 o'clock in the morning, a few hours after having spent 20-odd hours on planes, trains and automobiles. Coming from a place ten minutes by bus from Guy and St. Catherine, the silence here is awesome, mind-bending. In Montreal, there is never the absence of sound. It is a deep hum that continues, day in, day out, all day, all night. The rush of a truck three miles away, the quiet eternal roar of Decarie Expressway.

And even in the wee hours, the sky is ablaze. An apocalyptically orange pall casts its light over everything. Even having dark curtains never prevents this baleful glow from seeping in through every crack.

Here, although I type on a black laptop keyboard, I can see it in the dim light of the ubiquitous fluorescent ceiling lamp that I’ve dimmed to its lowest setting. And the silence, while deafening, is tangible. There is the calm, inexorable hiss of the hard drive. If I strain, there are tiny noises from around the neighborhood, occasionally, as if to reassure me that I still have ears.

But I am reminded, in this suddenness of suppressed senses, of that Tanzanian night, and I wonder if somehow, in the presence of light and sound, I’m missing something.

Tipping Points

I'm definitely not against tips. But to force someone to work for them — that I am against. I'd prefer that my server was getting a decent wage to begin with. Then if I liked the service, I'd give them a tip. In Japan, it's considered gauche to tip a restaurant server. Admittedly, the prices of meals there might be somewhat higher than in the West, but no longer by much. And I've tipped servers there anyway; you kind of have to force it upon them, but they hardly ever refuse, assuming it's just between you and them and not in front of a table full of customers.

I was reading a blog from my erstwhile "hometown" of San Francisco that led to a blog by the local critic (scroll down and you'll see a discussion of what various restaurant employees get paid) that led to an article about tipping being abolished by one of America's most famous chefs and it raised anew my wonder at this tipping practice in North America.

I think a server who doesn't have to worry about tips will be a happy server. He knows that even if you, as a fickle member of the public who is known within your circle of friends as "famously cheap" — and I have known quite a few folks like that — withhold his tip for some imagined slight, he won't get totally stiffed on the 5-course dinner he has just served you. He may have done his best but you just didn't like the food — which of course was Chef's fault, but Chef gets paid his regular salary anyway. So I think a regular, living wage plus whatever the public wants to give in tips is a good idea all around.

Actually, if I had my way, I'd tip in advance. That way, you'd be SURE to get better service.

Unspoiled Brats and Other Sausages

The ingredients for a sausage-making session

My old meat grinder, actually quite a fragile thing (Krups Butcher Shop) gave out on me several months ago. I didn’t realise how annoying this was until I contemplated buying the same old store-bought ground beef/pork/veal/you name it. You have no idea where this stuff comes from — some fright ads want you to believe that the meat of 1,000 cows could be in your hamburger — so if you’re used to grinding your own meat, as I had come to be, it was quite intolerable.

Let me get something quite straight for those folks that read the preceding paragraph and then moved on because the whole idea of grinding meat at home just seems to be too much trouble. Let me tell you what’s too much trouble. Too much trouble is baking. Anything. Why the hell are you going to devote an entire afternoon to assembling some baking project, the easiest of which is going to be some store-bought cake mix and the most difficult a levain bread made from your own starter, when you can go to the local baker and buy an excellent cake or a brilliant baguette for less than a few dollars?

But try going to the neighbourhood grocer and get a hamburger that was ground that day from meat that was all in one piece at the time (not assembled from “trimmings”) or a sausage that is not composed of — and this is almost 100% certain — some proportion of mystery meat. You can’t get sick from an underdone loaf of bread, but you sure can from mystery meat.

So why does grinding your own meat fall under the same umbrella of fear-of-cooking as, say, deep frying, pastry-making or pickling?

Deep frying. Hot oil! Burn. ER. Greasy black things floating in vat of burned oil to clean up.

Pastries. Millions of bowls, flour everywhere, hot ovens, tons of greasy utensils and pans to clean, not to mention directions so precise that if you miss by 1/4 of an ounce you’ll end up with a bathroom sponge.

Pickling. Don’t make a mistake on the sterilization of that jar, dude, or C. Botulinum might be tickling your cucumbers. Plus, wait a month before you can taste your project.

I’ve done all that stuff, and the only one of them that consistently wins in the Reward-for-Amount-of-Effort-Expended-with-Least-Hassle department is grinding your own meat.

The pork

I don’t eat meat a lot, probably not even once a week. Sometimes not for a couple of weeks. Chicken is good. Fish is good. Vegetables are good. So when I do eat meat, I want the best. I don’t go to fast food places to have a hamburger. If I’m going to eat some fattening, cholesterol-laden meal, let it be on a field of battle chosen by myself. I’ll choose the cheese. I’ll choose the meat. I‘ll know exactly what’s in it.

So after a couple of months of going without my homemade ground-meat selections, I began to hunger for a burger or the simple pleasure of a sausage, and bought a new meat grinder. This one promised to kick some major ass on my old one, so I put it to the test today.

Project: three different sausages. Number 1, the old standby, hot Italian. Number 2, bratwurst; a first. Number 3, Thai chicken-turkey, also a first. Why three? Because getting the grinder out and assembling and cleaning and producing is work, so you might as well do as much as you can while you’re at it. It might not come out again for three months, but guess what? You might still have the results from last time in the freezer.

It’s fun. And portable. And durable. You can’t haul your latest pastry creation cross-country and expect it to survive, but you sure can carry twenty frozen sausages and have them taste the same as the day you made them.

So this is how it went: I bought a Waring Pro MG800 for about $120. This bastard will grind your fiancé’s diamond ring down to a nub. I went to the butcher and bought all the ingredients for the project: two pork-based sausages and one poultry-based sausage. Recipes will follow, but I want to get the ground rules down first.

Pickling, you don’t have everything sterilised, you die. Sausage-making, you don’t die, but you have to outsmart the enemy, which is germs. Key here is cold. Cold, cold, cold at all times. Everything cold. And no cross-contamination. Don’t grind turkey in the same grinder as the pork before it without a thorough washing. Imagine you’re a surgeon about to operate before you make each sausage and you’ll be on the right track. That doesn’t mean sterilize, it just means clean; hands clean, tools clean, vessels clean, machine clean. Meat cold.

Par-freeze the meat before grinding. This means freeze it until it’s half-frozen. It makes it easier for the machine to grind and keeps everything a lot more sanitary. Bacteria double every 20 minutes at room temperature. Only a few really drunk ones venture out when it’s 1 degree centigrade.

Grinding chicken and turkey

Assemble all the other ingredients before even breaking the meat out of the freezer. This is so simple it’s pathetic. Often, it’s a list of powdered spices, sugar and salt. Then all you have to do is grind the meat, mix the spices in, and voilà, instant sausage. Bring the meat out of hibernation while it’s good and half-frozen. Grind it with the spices or grind it and then mix in the spices. Use your hands. Wash them thoroughly before, but then be a kid and mix all the gooey stuff together. Warning: if you’re doing it right, your hands will get unbearably cold. This is good. Warm them up under the tap and resume.

Once everything is thoroughly mixed, it’s taste time. Make a small patty of the meat mixture and fry it up. Make sure it’s completely cooked through. Brown it nicely. Taste. While you’re doing this put the meat in the refrigerator. Keep the bugs hanging out at the bar, not going to see what’s going on outside.

Adjust the seasonings. At this point you might want to retire the meat to the fridge for the night. But don’t wait past tomorrow.

Time to stuff! Your grinder will have a stuffing attachment. You will have bought the casings from your butcher. This is not scary. They’re just medium hog casings, which means that they look like tapeworms swimming in salt water. You’ll load them onto your stuffer horn after washing them through the tap and then you’ll stuff. Then you’ll twist and make links and then you’ll you’ll semi-dry the sausages (that you made!) on racks in the refrigerator overnight.

Stuffed, rested overnight and ready for the freezer

Then you’ll grill, broil, poach or sauté them, or freeze them to be consumed at your leisure for three months or so.

One afternoon. Less hassle than baking a chicken pot pie or making minestrone soup. But here’s the best part, the part I was saving up. It’s not just that you made it yourself. It’s not just that you know exactly what’s in it. It’s not just that it really wasn’t very difficult, and that you don’t have to even be a totally incompetent moron to do it. It’s that it tastes amazingly good. Not just regular good. Light years beyond anything you will have tasted before you did it. 100 times better than any store-bought product. 50 times better than any restaurant-eaten product. And this is just if you blindly follow instructions! If you get creative, well, the stuffing’s the limit . . .

The finished product

New York-Style Spicy Hot Italian Sausage
3 lbs. pork butt
3/4 to 1 lb. pork back fat (unsalted)
1/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes in oil, drained and chopped fine
3 tablespoons anise-based liqueur, like Sambuca
2 tablespoons anise or fennel seeds
2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 tablespoons red pepper flakes
4 teaspoons kosher salt
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons coarsely ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground cayenne
1/4 cup water, as needed
Medium hog casings

Grind the pork and back fat with the rest of the ingredients through your medium (not coarse and not fine) grinding plate, adding a little at a time of each. No need to be precise. After everything is ground, remix with both hands until thoroughly combined. Make a small patty, fry it up and taste. Adjust seasonings. Stuff or refrigerate overnight and stuff the next day.

Fresh Farm Garlic Bratwurst (Sheboygan style)
1.5 lbs. pork butt
1 lb. veal shoulder
1/2 lb. pork back fat (unsalted)
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons finely chopped garlic
2 teaspoons coarsely ground black pepper
2 teaspoons ground mace
2 teaspoons ground caraway seed
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 cup whole milk
Medium hog casings

Grind the pork and back fat with the rest of the ingredients through your finest grinding plate, adding a little at a time of each. After everything is ground, remix with both hands until thoroughly combined. Make a small patty, fry it up and taste. Adjust seasonings. Stuff or refrigerate overnight and stuff the next day.

Thai Chicken and Turkey sausage
1.75 lbs. boned chicken thighs with skin (very important to maintain the proper fat content)
1.75 lbs. boned turkey thighs with skin
1 bunch of fresh cilantro, stems and leaves, chopped finely, about one cup (may need more after tasting)
1/2 cup finely chopped fresh purple basil, or green if you can’t find it, chopped (may need more after tasting)
1/2 cup finely chopped fresh mint, (may need more after tasting)
1/4 cup Nam Pla (Asian fish sauce) do not skip!
1.5 tablespoons grated fresh ginger or galangal
3 tablespoons of Thai green curry paste (available at most grocery stores, do not skip)
1 tablespoon kosher salt or to taste
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon coarsely ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground cayenne
Medium hog casings

Grind the chicken and the turkey through your medium or coarse plate. Add remaining ingredients and combine thoroughly with hands. Make a small patty, fry it up and taste. Adjust seasonings. Stuff or refrigerate overnight and stuff the next day.

Notes:
It’s incredibly important to taste the sausage mixture before you stuff it. One very crucial ingredient is the amount of salt. Remember that you can always add more, but not take away. Depending on the fat content of your meat, the apparent saltiness can vary wildly, even though you’re sticking to the recipe. The judicial addition of sugar will generally offset too much salt, but once there’s a certain amount it’s past the point of no return. You don’t want to go there.

Sausage recipes are as different as pickling recipes. There are no amounts graven in stone. One butcher will tell you never to put veal in the bratwurst and another will tell you to make it only of veal. Find a recipe you think you can trust, make it, fiddle with it, then make it your recipe. Some people put bread crumbs or eggs in hamburgers. Some people don’t. They taste different, but not including one or the other isn’t going to kill you. So experiment. I love garlic and heat, so I’ll double or triple the garlic in a recipe. Likewise for the peppers. The thing is, if you’re like me, you’ll never find it like the way you make it on the commercial market. Few people like high-octane food, so no commercial producer in their right mind will make it that way. That’s why I make my own sausages.

Death, Ray

Is it just me, or does anyone else despise Rachael Ray? I used to watch her occasionally, but the way she talks just grates like hell. If I hear “yummo” or “delish” or “eevoo” one more time, to quote Jack Torrance, I’m going to bash someone’s head right the fuck in.

Okay, I guess it’s not just me.

Who knew?

A hilarious report on CFCF news names “Elio’s” as the best pizza in Montreal. Can’t remember number two, but BM pizza was number three. Don’t know about Elio’s, but BM is one of those places whose menus you find shoved in your mailbox. The kind who also make steak subs and egg rolls. Not good.

How do these people arrive at such results? Simple: the voting public. The lowest common denominator. Drag 50 people off the streets and McDonald’s will win Best Fries every time.

Well, it’s my opinion that there is no best pizza in Montreal because they’re all so mediocre, but I can assure you they’re not going to be found at Elio’s or BM pizza.

While I’m on the topic of hilarity, it’s really funny to see these huddled holdouts sitting on terrasses outside coffee shops that still have chairs outside, smoking their cigarettes. In my neighborhood, a lot of them are Arab. I wonder if they’re still going to be out there, earnestly arguing and puffing away, come January.