It all started with a short sentence in a cooking mag -- famous chef said he liked to grind his own meat, but the food processor was not the correct tool. Lightbulb! I'd tried "grinding" chicken and pork with my processor, but managed only an uneven shredding. Hmm.
Flashback to my mom's kitchen and the sturdy hand grinder she used, not for meat, so far as I remember, but nuts and dried fruits for our Christmas cookies. To my own earlier grinding attachment to my Kitchenaid, which I'd passed along to my son-in-law.
Enough to propel me to Williams-Sonoma in search of the hand-grinder mentioned by famous chef. Wow! A hundred and fifty dollars? But there was a shiny new Kitchenaid attachment for forty-nine or so. Deal.
Took it home, it was useless for the pork shoulder Larry had acquired from Cash and Carry for the freezer, and the ragu we'd planned for that evening's dinner. The knife blade was unable to slice through the meat that worked it's way through the turn screw, and a most unpleasant mess of mashed meat was all the thing could accomplish. And yet, it did a great job on some citrus and on those nuts and dried fruit.
On to the web, where a hundred sad stories of hand-grinder failure littered the screen. Haven't solved this yet, but now we move on to the main theme. Sardines.
Larry had expressed a desire for the sardine sandwiches old Doc Peterson across the street from his childhood home ate. Always willing to help, I'd ordered some sardines along with other frozen sea food from a purveyor I'd found out of an Alaska fishery. Alas, the reality didn't live up to the nostalgic longing, and it became clear that the last sardine in the first tin he'd opened would live in the refrig until I could toss is some dark night when he was away.
But there was that mashed, mangled pork for the ragu. Obviously we went on with the all-day recipe, which promised to be gorgeous. Until I had my bright idea.
We've learned from Marcella Hazan that many an excellent dish can start with a bit of anchovy mashed in the skillet with some olive oil, which melts into a delicious undertone -- giving up its own identity in service of the greater good. Well now, why not employ that lonely sardine in the same fashion. One tiny sardine in several quarts of ragu?
Here's why not. The damn thing took over, not just the sauce but the kitchen. Hours later, we'd walk in and be smitten with that awful sardine smell. And taste! No giving up for this fish.
Okay, what to do? The recipe had included hot Italian sausage, which had completely surrendered to the sardine. But it has fennel in it, and so I added a hefty teaspoon of the spice. Nada. More red pepper. Oregano. Lemon juice. Even milk, thinking to turn this into a Bolognaise. Nope.
But lying in the drawer next to the fennel was fenugreek. I don't think I'd ever used it, don't know why I had it. But it smelled lovely, said it was to be used in Indian cookery. Might as well. To my eternal surprise, it did the job, almost. The sardine was still there, but at least not on the front of the fork.
It's my hope that some tenure in the freezer will continue the process the fenugreek started, because we have a boat-load of the stuff.
I'll let you know what happens with the meat-grinder in the next post.
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