Deep fried apple pie

BARREL AGED

Lots of people are doing lots of cool things with barrels these days.

Of course people have been doing cool things with barrels for some time: wine, balsamic vinegar, sherry. But some new fads have emerged of late that seem destined to join American food and drink culture permanently. Craft breweries are aging their beers in spent Bourbon barrels and any mixologist worth his mustache curl has had a negroni sitting in a barrel behind his bar at some point in his career. Some of my favorites are coming from Steve Stallard, proprietor of Blis right here in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Steve makes a long line of really astonishingly good things to eat, including smoked roes from wild caught char and golden trout, to white truffle oil, to a growing cadre of things aged in spent Heaven Hill barrels.

Some notables are Michigan maple syrup, sherry vinegar, and now, hopefully soon, fish sauce. The fish sauce is from a company called Red Boat, which our faithful fans may remember from the pig tail post. Red Boat fish sauce is made on an island off the coast of Vietnam using very traditional methods. Black anchovies are caught, salted and aged in cypress barrels and the resulting liquid is bottled and sold. It is excellent. We’ve been using it for a few months at the restaurant and has made fish sauce one of my latest obsessions (I have to admit, I hadn’t had that much exposure to fish sauce and at first found it a little aggressive — but now I can’t get enough).

As it turns out, Steve knew about this great sauce as well and decided to put it into one of his barrels. He brought us some to try not too long ago which gave us the opportunity to sample them side by side and get a clear picture of the effects a barrel can have. The barrel aging tamed the salt and brought in a bit of sweetness. It brought the complexities of the wood: oak, vanilla, smoke, and of course Bourbon. The sauce morphed into something very different but still kept a sense of itself. The real struggle for us is how to use it. It’s one of those ingredients you wouldn’t always want to use in the way you might typically use a fish sauce, to deepen the flavors of a broth or soup or a salty punch to finish your Pad Thai. We feel compelled to leave it alone and really let it shine.

One way or another you’ll be seeing it around here a lot when it finally comes to market. Thanks again, Steve. You are truly a chef’s chef.

The Tail: The Chicken Wing of a Pig

Our menu has been changing a lot lately.  I like to think of it as an evolution.  We tweaked things going into ArtPrize, and now we’re being hit with the end of summer and the transition into cold weather vegetables.  This is probably the last week for heirloom tomatoes, but the Brussels sprouts and cabbages and kales are coming in beautifully.

With all these changes the one I am most excited about, that I tell everyone they have to try, that I brag to my distant relatives about is our deep fried pig tails.  Crispy skin, succulent sticky fat, and the porkiest bits of meat pulled right off those tiny little bones.  Just like a chicken wing but so much better, because it comes from a pig.

With all these changes the one I am most excited about, that I tell everyone they have to try, that I brag to my distant relatives about is our deep fried pig tails.  Crispy skin, succulent sticky fat, and the porkiest bits of meat pulled right off those tiny little bones.  Just like a chicken wing but so much better, because it comes from a pig.

1. Chef was excited about some naturally fermented soy sauce being made in Kentucky and aged in spent bourbon barrels. Bluegrass soy sauce.
2. I was dying to buy some fish sauce I had heard of being made the traditional way on an island in Vietnam, simply black anchovies, salt, and time. Red Boat Fish Sauce. When I called to order it the owner of the company answered.  He told me he had come to the U.S. as a refugee in the late 60s and had never been able to find fish sauce as good as what he remembered back home.  Together with his uncles he started the company to produce and import “extra virgin” fish sauce.  If you like Southeast Asian food you really need to buy some of this.
3. I brought about a dozen deep fried pig’s feet to Chef’s birthday party this summer.  If you want an amazing meal, go to a chef’s birthday party.
4. We had a growing collection of pig tails in our freezer from all of the whole hogs we had been butchering.

Chef put it all together.  First brine and then confit the tails, and finish with a 350 degree fry in our lard filled fryer.  The dipping sauce is made with the Bluegrass soy sauce, Red Boat fish sauce, raw garlic, sherry vinegar, riesling, honey, chili peppers, and some ground black pepper that Cuong, the owner of Red Boat Fish Sauce, sent us that is grown on an island in the waters where the anchovies are caught to make his sauce. 

We have sold out of pig tails every week so far.  The farm who supplies us, Gunthorp Fams, just over the Indiana border, only slaughters so many hogs per week, and each one only has one tail. They deliver on Thursday so your best bet is to come on Friday night to get one. 

• deep fried
• pig
• pork
• red boat fish sauce
• tail