January Throwdown methods and such
The appetizer platter is built on Smoked Cured pork trotters, a smoked
chipotle chicken drumette selection with an asian smoked chile plum sauce, a
smoked duck potsticker featuring a potsticker wrapper using smoked flour and a spanakopita make by smoking salt, then finishing the puff pastry on a pizza
stone in a weber kettle set to hickory smoke the dish.
First the Cured smoked trotters. I trim up the trotters and prepared a red pepper sorghum based cure using sodium nitrite. The trotters are cleaned and cut in half with a cleaver. Then they are placed into the cure in a ziploc bag and moved to the cooler for 36 hours to cure. They are finished with a long low smoke. 8 hours at 200 F to create the breakdown required to allow a person to pick the meat off them.
After they are removed, they are allowed to dry for about two hours prior to hitting the smoke.
After drying they are smoked in the low and slow method described above. I use hickory wood anything I am curing ham.
The next offerings is a smoked duck pot sticker featuring smoked ingredients in many forms. The flour to make the pasta for the potsticker was smoked in cherry wood prior to hickory being added for the trotters. The duck was smoked, and the royal fig was diced and smoked in cherry wood also. This allowed the smoke to carry through the appetizer. The duck is stripped and rendered down... I render until it is damn near dry, I add stripped duck leg and breast meat after using the food processor to puree it. With the stripped meat added to the base puree I fold in the diced royal fig that has been smoked and the California mission fig compote to the meat. Salt and pepper to taste, and then balance the five senses with hoisin sauce. Roll out the pasta and use my pot sticker mold to form the pot stickers. Into the steamer for 16 minutes and you have smoked duck potstickers.
Smoked flour
Smoked flour close up. The flour absorbs the smoke nicely, but you must stir the flour several times during the smoke.
With the flour smoked we are ready to build the pasta. I assume you all know how to fold the flour, salt and egg together to make the noodle. Basically just make the flour into a bowl on the work space, place the eggs in the middle, sprinkle the salt and start folding it together until it forms a dough ball. Roll them out and cut the circles. Stuff them and fold them in the edge folder. One half of the circle gets an egg wash and seal it.
Rendering duck
Stripped smoked duck meat.
Smoked diced royal fig with California mission fig compote and hoisin sauce. Ready to add to duck base and stripped duck meat. DUCK FAT RULES!
Stripped smoked duck and base combined and ready for pasta.
The sauce for the chicken drumettes was also made to handle the Smoked Duck pot sticker. It is a Asian Garlic Plum sauce with hot chile in it.
Which brings us to the next part. Chipotle brushed chicken drumettes smoked and served with an Asian Garlic Plum sauce with hot Thai chiles.
These are pretty easy, I just purchase whole wings and separate the segments. Then coat them in a little chipotle adobo sauce and add some wasabi powder to it. Smoke them off and stack them up.
Don't have a whole lot of pictures of the wings. Done to many to
remember to document correctly. But here is the charbroil offset doing its thing to them.
You see the diced royal fig meat smoking for the duck dish. The chicken wings and drumettes and the pork trotters all starting to get the magic. I was also smoking some seasalt crystals for the spanakopita dish.
The spanakopita. As the rules stated outside the box counted for a lot I figured I would add to the duck pot sticker outer box thinking by also adding a traditional oven dish and take it to the smokers. Of all the appetizers I did I liked the way this one came out the best. Right behind the duck pot stickers. This was an idea I really wanted to work but anytime you take puff pastry into a different environment you are taking a chance. However, the ever perfect Weber Kettle once again proved a most versatile tool of the backyard kitchen! I have three and would not give up one. Some day I will afford that big Weber called the Ranch Kettle. Anyway a Weber can be fitted with your average pizza stone if you know what you are doing. Put the stone in when you start to heat and don't use starter fluid.
I removed the large sea salt crystals from the smoke. This is 10 hours of work in the salt. Of course I did three pounds while I was making it, but it is still interesting to do... this has to be done with nothing else in the smoker so the moisture does not dissolve your salt. It is done in a pan on an elevated rack to condensation does not screw the crystals up.
Sorry its a little blurry, sometimes I am drunk by the time this stuff it
done. Sure looked and think and I drunk you am,.,,,, errrr....
Anyway better pictures next time I make it. The kettle fires up and starts to heat the stone. Mean while I steam down my spinach and lay out the puff pastry. After that I add the feta cheese and fold the puff pastry over. Then onto the pizza stone in the kettle lid on with the vents wide open. You are using the kettle as an oven that smokes like mad from the hickory.
Would have looked a little better on the stone if I had my peel with me. But it is down at the commercial kitchen. So I kind of flipped it onto the stone and stretched it a little.
It is finishing nicely on the stone and the smoke is really getting to the
puff pastry and the feta cheese.
When puff pastry finishes correctly you can cross cut triangles into the
finished product without the stuff flying apart or tearing from chewy gooey
pastry being soggy below. This cut nicely I was very happy with it. The only thing I did not like was this final picture stainless was two bright. The green onion is really for the duck pot stickers since they are designed to be a Peking Duck dish in a pot sticker. But I am sure everyone figured that out already that eats Chinese foods.
I really had fun making the stuff... with the game tomorrow I decided to
trash all this and just make ribs since Sam's club had them so cheap.
Single plate picture was taken hedging in case the puff pastry turned into a disaster. If it had you would have only looked at this picture!
Hope you try something outside the box... it is worth the points in your own cooking toolbox.. so do it.
Chef Bob Ballantyne
The Cowboy and The Rose Catering, Colorado, USA
The appetizer platter is built on Smoked Cured pork trotters, a smoked
chipotle chicken drumette selection with an asian smoked chile plum sauce, a
smoked duck potsticker featuring a potsticker wrapper using smoked flour and a spanakopita make by smoking salt, then finishing the puff pastry on a pizza
stone in a weber kettle set to hickory smoke the dish.
First the Cured smoked trotters. I trim up the trotters and prepared a red pepper sorghum based cure using sodium nitrite. The trotters are cleaned and cut in half with a cleaver. Then they are placed into the cure in a ziploc bag and moved to the cooler for 36 hours to cure. They are finished with a long low smoke. 8 hours at 200 F to create the breakdown required to allow a person to pick the meat off them.
After they are removed, they are allowed to dry for about two hours prior to hitting the smoke.
After drying they are smoked in the low and slow method described above. I use hickory wood anything I am curing ham.
The next offerings is a smoked duck pot sticker featuring smoked ingredients in many forms. The flour to make the pasta for the potsticker was smoked in cherry wood prior to hickory being added for the trotters. The duck was smoked, and the royal fig was diced and smoked in cherry wood also. This allowed the smoke to carry through the appetizer. The duck is stripped and rendered down... I render until it is damn near dry, I add stripped duck leg and breast meat after using the food processor to puree it. With the stripped meat added to the base puree I fold in the diced royal fig that has been smoked and the California mission fig compote to the meat. Salt and pepper to taste, and then balance the five senses with hoisin sauce. Roll out the pasta and use my pot sticker mold to form the pot stickers. Into the steamer for 16 minutes and you have smoked duck potstickers.
Smoked flour
Smoked flour close up. The flour absorbs the smoke nicely, but you must stir the flour several times during the smoke.
With the flour smoked we are ready to build the pasta. I assume you all know how to fold the flour, salt and egg together to make the noodle. Basically just make the flour into a bowl on the work space, place the eggs in the middle, sprinkle the salt and start folding it together until it forms a dough ball. Roll them out and cut the circles. Stuff them and fold them in the edge folder. One half of the circle gets an egg wash and seal it.
Rendering duck
Stripped smoked duck meat.
Smoked diced royal fig with California mission fig compote and hoisin sauce. Ready to add to duck base and stripped duck meat. DUCK FAT RULES!
Stripped smoked duck and base combined and ready for pasta.
The sauce for the chicken drumettes was also made to handle the Smoked Duck pot sticker. It is a Asian Garlic Plum sauce with hot chile in it.
Which brings us to the next part. Chipotle brushed chicken drumettes smoked and served with an Asian Garlic Plum sauce with hot Thai chiles.
These are pretty easy, I just purchase whole wings and separate the segments. Then coat them in a little chipotle adobo sauce and add some wasabi powder to it. Smoke them off and stack them up.
Don't have a whole lot of pictures of the wings. Done to many to
remember to document correctly. But here is the charbroil offset doing its thing to them.
You see the diced royal fig meat smoking for the duck dish. The chicken wings and drumettes and the pork trotters all starting to get the magic. I was also smoking some seasalt crystals for the spanakopita dish.
The spanakopita. As the rules stated outside the box counted for a lot I figured I would add to the duck pot sticker outer box thinking by also adding a traditional oven dish and take it to the smokers. Of all the appetizers I did I liked the way this one came out the best. Right behind the duck pot stickers. This was an idea I really wanted to work but anytime you take puff pastry into a different environment you are taking a chance. However, the ever perfect Weber Kettle once again proved a most versatile tool of the backyard kitchen! I have three and would not give up one. Some day I will afford that big Weber called the Ranch Kettle. Anyway a Weber can be fitted with your average pizza stone if you know what you are doing. Put the stone in when you start to heat and don't use starter fluid.
I removed the large sea salt crystals from the smoke. This is 10 hours of work in the salt. Of course I did three pounds while I was making it, but it is still interesting to do... this has to be done with nothing else in the smoker so the moisture does not dissolve your salt. It is done in a pan on an elevated rack to condensation does not screw the crystals up.
Sorry its a little blurry, sometimes I am drunk by the time this stuff it
done. Sure looked and think and I drunk you am,.,,,, errrr....
Anyway better pictures next time I make it. The kettle fires up and starts to heat the stone. Mean while I steam down my spinach and lay out the puff pastry. After that I add the feta cheese and fold the puff pastry over. Then onto the pizza stone in the kettle lid on with the vents wide open. You are using the kettle as an oven that smokes like mad from the hickory.
Would have looked a little better on the stone if I had my peel with me. But it is down at the commercial kitchen. So I kind of flipped it onto the stone and stretched it a little.
It is finishing nicely on the stone and the smoke is really getting to the
puff pastry and the feta cheese.
When puff pastry finishes correctly you can cross cut triangles into the
finished product without the stuff flying apart or tearing from chewy gooey
pastry being soggy below. This cut nicely I was very happy with it. The only thing I did not like was this final picture stainless was two bright. The green onion is really for the duck pot stickers since they are designed to be a Peking Duck dish in a pot sticker. But I am sure everyone figured that out already that eats Chinese foods.
I really had fun making the stuff... with the game tomorrow I decided to
trash all this and just make ribs since Sam's club had them so cheap.
Single plate picture was taken hedging in case the puff pastry turned into a disaster. If it had you would have only looked at this picture!
Hope you try something outside the box... it is worth the points in your own cooking toolbox.. so do it.
Chef Bob Ballantyne
The Cowboy and The Rose Catering, Colorado, USA
