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Sausagetown, population us!

Hello, lovely people!

You may be confused, given the title, when I tell you that we’re not having sausage made for the forseeable future, but this is actually great news! We love to make sausage patties, and we are consistently out of ground pork which which to do this, so we thought we’d share our love of the creative possibilities of sausage patties with you.

Sausages need to be made in 10 lb packages, and they’re all the same. Same, same, same. Sausage patties, however, are made on the spot out of ground pork, and they are DELICIOUS. We make ours using a base of pork, salt and pepper, a handful or two of instant oats (to hold fat, which increases juiciness), and usually some grated onion and garlic. From there, we add such things as:

  • curry powder
  • juniper berries (chop them small, go easy, it doesn’t take much! They’re available at the health food store in Sooke)
  • sage
  • chopped bacon
  • barbeque sauce
  • honey and even more garlic. No, more than that.
  • italian seasoning (usually fresh oregano, parsley, basil, fennel or cecily seed, and thyme from the garden)
  • maple (with dark maple syrup and fresh parsley, or with fresh blueberries. Great for folks that don’t eat pancakes but miss the blueberry/maple combo.)
  • saurkraut and smokey paprika
  • sesame oil, soy sauce, and chopped ginger (if patties are thin, pat in sesame seeds before cooking)

It is a wonderful thing, to be able to tailor sausage flavours to the people that will be coming to dinner. Making your own patties makes it easier to take care of food sensitivities and allergies, and gives us all the ultimate control over what we put in our bodies. You can make a simple patty for the kids, and go wild with the curry powder and chopped spicy peppers for the adults. It takes an extra 10-20 mins, compared to defrosting a package of ready-made sausages, but I’d really recommend you give it a shot.

We’ll have lots of ground pork available in early August. We’re taking larger orders now ($100+), and will be available to take smaller orders once our pork comes in.

Image from another delicious-looking pork patty recipe: <https://www.recipecommunity.com.au/main-dishes-meat-recipes/perfect-pork-patties/7uffk9wz-27e60-516403-cfcd2-7gpyt1yd>

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Holiday meals for the creative and ham-strapped

It’s that time of the year, when people want ham, and we have sold it all already. Sorry, folks! We do have apple cider in 5L boxes, which is lovely either mulled and shared, or gifted. Send us an email to <castironfarmsooke@gmail.com>, and we’ll arrange pickup before Christmas.

I am reminded, though, of the year that my brothers made a Meat Beast out of a roast, some sausages, and possibly some crab legs. It was a monstrosity, and I bring you the story to inspire you to similar heights of creative hilarity.

Take 1 pork roast, and add varying amounts of bacon, back bacon, and sausage to it using toothpicks and creative positioning, to make the beautiful horror of your dreams! Startle your family! Ensure that either you are never allowed make the holiday meal ever again, or that everyone tries to top your efforts for years to come! (we still have roasts, bacon, back bacon, and pork chops, if that brings ideas)

Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of the exact beast that my brothers made, but here are a few pics I found on the internet for your delight and inspiration. Happy Christmas, all, and please send pics!

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Apple-finished pork, only available in the fall!

If you’re a neighbor, you may have seen our gigantic apple trees. These trees have been here for decades, feeding farmers, then cows, bears, deer, and birds. There are three different varieties: Gloria Mundi (big green), King of Tompkins County (the two on the corner of Phillips and Shambrook), and Wealthy (little red/yellow striped). We harvest as many apples as we can for pressing (juice available at our farmstand, Saturday 9-11), and the rest we feed to our pigs until they’re all gone.

Spring apple flowers

Our pork is not the same as you’d find in the grocery store – there’s more marbling, and a thicker rind of vitamin D-rich fat on the edge. Heritage breeds, a varied diet, fresh pasture, and the Sooke sun&rain work their magic on our pork; our butcher completes it through careful cutting, smoking, and brining. Our pork chops are thick-cut, for juiciness, and our hams usually have a bone inside, so you can finish enjoying your ham by adding the smokey flavoured bone to beans or soup.

But apple-finished pork.. there’s a reason that’s a thing.

Want to try some? We have no sides available right now, but you can order packages for the next few weeks. If we sell out, we’ll close up our farmstand for the winter, but we may have enough to keep going for a little while.

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Easter Ham

Its a ham!

Easter is coming, and thoughts turn to ham. Actually, I think about ham a lot. We love ham, and tend to cook it with an eye towards a few meals: roasted ham, then leftover roasted ham, ham bits as part of an egg scramble, then ham soup. We have two primary ham-chefs, here at the farm, and recently I asked them for their favourite recipes.

Chef #1, and the most likely to make ham: Christiana! She uses her family recipe, and it’s simple, reliable, and so very good. She will often substitute jam for the fruit juice.

Johnson Family Ham

Chef #2 is Jeremy, who enjoys cooking big cuts of meat, and bringing us all to slow-roasted flavour-town for dinner. Last time he made ham, he used this recipe for inspiration.

Once we’ve feasted on ham, it’s time for the leftover-artists to take their turn!

Chef #3 is Erin, who doesn’t tend to cook a whole ham, but loves using leftovers. Last time she used ham, she used a ham bone to make broth, and then added the broth and remaining ham to cooked black beans, with onion, garlic, crushed tomatoes, salsa verde, peppers, and a mix of cumin, coriander, oregano and bay. This makes a thick smokey bean dish, inspired by flavours far to the south of Canada, that is lovely on rice bowls or in burritos.

Chef#4 is Tony, who makes a killer split pea and ham soup. This one is a staple here, and can be made with a ham hock, leftover ham bone, or whatever bits and pieces of smoked meat is hanging around needing to be used.

Quebec Pea Soup

Caveat: at Cast Iron Farm, we generally use recipes as inspiration, not flavour prison. These are some good starting places, so take the recipe that calls to you, and adjust as you like.

Share what works, because I’d love to hear! (Due to excessive spam, I’ve disabled comments, but you can always email us, or participate in the discussion on Facebook!)

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Guernsey Bean Jar recipe

At Cast Iron Farm, we love to collect recipes for Things To Do With Odd Bits. Trotters are the foot and ankle part of a pig, and are is full of gelatin, collagen, and might possibly be the fountain of youth (or so this article claims).. and are also one of the things people ask us about most often when we have it listed on our sale board (what is a TROTTER?!?). There isn’t much meat on a trotter, but with a pressure-cooker or slow-cooker, all the delicious goodness gets transferred into the cooking liquid. Anyone with joint issues should definitely be eating more trotter broth!

This recipe comes highly recommended by one of our wonderful trotter-loving farm-supporters (thanks, Fiona!). Do you have a favourite recipe for trotters or hocks?

Guernsey Bean Jar
Ingredients

  • 1 pigs trotter or shin of beef
  • 200 g (1 cup) haricot beans
  • 200 g (1 cup) butter/lima beans
  • 1 large onion chopped
  • 2 carrots diced
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 2 cloves of garlic (optional)
  • 1 litre beef stock or water
  • Salt & pepper

Instructions

  • Soak the beans overnight in plenty of cold water.
  • Drain and rinse the beans the following morning, then load them and all the other ingredients in the slow cooker/crock pot.
  • Cook on low for 8-10 hours, or high for 5-6 hours or until the beans are soft.
  • Switch off the slow cooker and remove the trotter and/or shin of beef. Remove the meat from both, discarding the bones, skin or gristle.
  • Pop the meat back in with the beans, stirring well and check seasoning adding more salt & pepper as necessary.
  • Serve with crusty bread and butter.
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Pulled Pork

https://blog.kingarthurflour.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/IMG_2478.jpg

One of our favourite things to eat is pulled pork, made in our pressure cooker.  Here’s Erin’s highly variable recipe for Cast Iron Pulled Pork.

Take 1 large pork butt roast.  It doesn’t matter if it’s still frozen, or perhaps it does, but Erin has no idea because it’s always still frozen.

Put the roast in the pressure cooker with some variation on these ingredients:
– broth
– fried onions and/or garlic
– half a bottle of BBQ sauce
– molasses (not very much)
– garam masala, fried in a bit of coconut oil
– tomato sauce
– water to bring the level of liquid up to almost cover.

Pressure on high cook for half an hour.  Open the cooker and cut the pork up into chunks (maybe a couple of inches?) so it cooks faster.

Pressure cook for another half an hour.

Take pork out, skim the fat off the cooking sauce as much as possible.  Mix about half and half cooking sauce with barbeque sauce to make the pulled pork the right consistency.  Heat it all up together, and pull the pork apart into pieces in the warmed sauce.

Enjoy, either on rice, or on toasted buns, with cole slaw (or crunchy raw cabbage) on the side.

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Cast Iron Bannock (or, Bread Thingies!)

Cast Iron Bannock (or, Bread Thingies)

This is a favourite recipe in cold weather.  If you have less than 9 people (plus farm-helper guests) in your household, you may want to make a half batch.  This has been a great success with one of our farm people that is allergic to wheat.. she can eat things made from this dough after a few days of fermentation.

3 c warm water
1.5 Tbsp yeast
1.5 Tbsp salt
6.5 cups flour (at least 5 c white flour for best results, rest can be mixed other flours)

Mix the water and yeast in a big bowl, let it sit a bit so that the yeast dissolves.  Add salt and flours, mix.  Cover.  Place somewhere warm and ignore for at least 12 hours.  If you have a cold pantry where you can keep it, the dough stays usable for up to 5 days (after which it gets a bit too alcoholic), or you can keep it in the fridge.  For best results,  give the dough a bit of time to warm up if it’s kept really chilled.

Use resulting dough to make:

BREAD THINGIES: Take a scoop of dough, stuff it with whatever cooked ingredients please you. (Cheese and jam! Bacon and cheese!  Pork and leeks!  Chocolate and marshmallows!  Pulled pork!  The chunky bits from leftover stew!)
Fry in lots of fat (lard is best) until both sides are golden and it has risen a bit (at least 5 mins).

BREAD or BUNS: add enough flour to allow you to form it on a baking dish without being a sloppy mess, cook at 350-425 until done.  Very nice crust when you cook it in a pre-heated dutch oven, high heat, with the lid on.

PIZZA: Roll it out on a heavily floured surface, with lots of flour on top, so it doesn’t stick to your rolling pin.  Put pizza stuff on top.  Cook like pizza.

The possibilities are endless!!  Have you tried something like this before?  Tell us your secret recipe.. please?

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October Pork!

We have resupplied on all porky goodness, at least until you fine people buy it all again.  We have a few Family Packs available (27 lbs, variety of cuts, $250), and are happy to make you up a box of delicious pork to fit any budget.  Take a look at our price lists (above in the title bar) to see what could best suit your family.

We get a variety of breeds of piglet from different small local breeders, and these ones were a Landrace cross, meaning that the meat is a bit more lean than we have had in the past.  This is good news for meaty bacon lovers, but not so much for people that enjoy making their own lard. Let us know if you are interested in lard, and I’ll see if I can find you a good bag of pork fat – if not, we’ll have some in our next batch.  I usually include a bag of fat with every family pack.  Making lard is easy!  Lard is full of Vitamin D, and we use it as our main cooking oil.

Our pigs are fed lots of different kinds of food – everything from organic salad mix, to beets, to yoghurt, to chicken.  Pigs are omnivores, and do best on a widely varied diet.  We also give them a bit of bread and pig kibble, and occasionally cake or pie (they LOVE that).  They even get sushi!  Our animals eat near- or past-dates food from a grocery store – the food is on the shelves for sale in the morning, in the fridges at the back of the store in the afternoon, and in our truck headed back to the farm for sorting in the early evening.  It is more work for us, to feed our animals this way, but both for the quality of the animals and the saving of good food from turning into waste, we believe that it is well worth the effort.  If you want to know more about this program, ask a question – I can go on and on about how wonderful it is for small farmers, farm animals, grocery stores, and the planet 🙂