Atlanta Underground Market 01/29/12

Towards the end of January we had another opportunity to participate in the Atlanta Underground Market. Unlike all the previous markets, including the one that we had done, this was going to take place on a Sunday at Brunch time. All the others had been Saturday evenings. We felt like whatever we may have learned about the diners' habits last time might be thrown out the window with such a change!

Piccalilli and Henderson's Relish

This next market took place in a Midtown location even more centralized than the previous. For this market we kept with the original charcuterie+offal plan and we upped the ante by one more dish for variety. Our charcuterie dish requirement could technically be met by any of the three dishes we did that night. The last job I had before leaving Chicago was at Pleasant House Bakery, an English themed savory pie shop on the Southside. So I chose a couple dishes I had done there. First was a sandwich of English Rashers (back-bacon) served on H&F BreadCo. ciabatta with a piccalilli, another saucy pickled vegetable topping that is popular across the pond. This sandwich is traditionally called a Bacon Butty. I was first exposed to it as such when I staged at St. John Bread & Wine in London (served there with ketchup, the piccalilli came on something different).

Atlanta Underground Market 01/07/12

In my research into Atlanta when Rebecca and I started considering a move to The South I came across a monthly event meant to bring home cooks to a common area to share their goodies. The Atlanta Underground Market was a place where non-licensed cooks could go and sell/share their treats with those who were willing to look past legal requirements and rules for selling food to the public. To do so, attendees had to sign a waiver agreeing that they knew what they were getting themselves in to. They couldn't hold anyone responsible for anything that might have gone wrong, and in exchange they got to try foods that might not have been available from regular restaurants around town. Organizer Michaela Graham was big on unusual foods (bugs, offal, etc) and was really pushing for those foods. But she seemed to find a plethora of baking goddesses instead!

We went to our first AUM in November. It was held in a church gymnasium in a near-south suburb of ATL. There was a good deal of everything available from the approximately 30 vendors there that night. A couple were already legal local restaurants and caterers, others were immigrants cooking their comfort foods and some were actually cooking up some offal dishes. I loved what I saw and enjoy (almost) everything we ate that night. We wanted in! After contacting Michaela and ironing out some details (she didn't want direct competition with her charcuterie guy though there were 3 cupcake-esque joints there that night) we were welcomed into the next event. Since we were going to be out of state for the next event, we signed up for the January date.

The Booth

Meat butter on bread, or Roasted Bone Marrow and Parsley Salad

Since you are on a blog that focuses on charcuterie and other meaty items, it is likely that you've been around the web once or twice reading protein enriched writings. And it is also probably safe to assume that since you are media savvy and like smart-alec cooks telling stories that you are at least familiar with Anthony Bourdain. And since you likely have at one point been entertained by his musings, you have probably read his thoughts on Chef Fergus Henderson and that little restaurant he runs across the pond, St John. Well I certainly had when I was living in Toulouse, France and decided to be the ultimate tourist and visit Dublin for St. Patrick's Day. But being on a budget I had to go about it in an affordable way, and by affordable I mean budget airlines and cheap lodging. The budget airline took me from Toulouse to Dublin, via London. But the connecting flight was the following day each way. So I found myself having some time to kill in a city I had yet to visit, except of course, during lay-overs.

But after having read so much praise from Bourdain and so many other lesser known food-writers out there, I was very eager to give St John my sparse coin. After reading nothing but positive reviews and deciding that I could almost afford a lunch there after the horrible exchange rate, I set out that morning to eat nose to tail. And of course I had to have the oft written about signature starter of Roasted Bone Marrow with Parsley Salad. I had never eaten bone marrow, and usually avoided that part of the steaks that included a slice of bone when younger. But the descriptions I had been reading tantalized my taste buds.

You've got the brains, I've got the brawn.

When working in the second restaurant during my stage in France, I had my first experience with fromage de tête, what we Americans call head-cheese, or as I learned later while staging in London, the Brits call brawn. I now see some humor too in the Pet Shop Boys song (Opportunities) that mentions, much like the title here, brains and brawn, but in a much different sense. My Apple dictionary might help explain...


brawn |brôn|
noun1 physical strength in contrast to intelligence :commando work required as much brain as brawn.2 Brit. meat from a pig's or calf's head that is cooked and pressed in a pot with jelly.I will admit that the first bite was quite off-putting many years ago. It was rather indescribable at the time. It was like pork times 100, an unusual pork taste times 100. It was served with a sauce ravigote (mustard, vinegar, shallot and capers). But less than a week later I was found snacking on the scraps every time I had to slice it for service. So when I made my last batch of Bath Chaps I picked the remaining meat morsels and decided to make a mini-brawn.

Tongue-in-Cheek cuisine.

The English seem to have found a slightly more appealing way to name what some might consider some less-desirable seeming food objects. Brawn fills in for head-cheese, a terrine shaped dish made from the meat of a pigs head that is set in a sort of meat-jelly resulting from the head's cooking process. Or within the same category, take the English term offal, pronounced perhaps without coincidence the same as awful. It is a way of saying variety meats, fifth quarter, organ meats or simply innards. And since I am a little less hesitant than most to try things of this nature, when I was offered some Bath Chaps during a recent stage in a London kitchen, I jumped at the chance to give them a taste. As I learned as I took my first bite, Bath Chaps are a preparation of the pigs jowls, or cheeks, that have been brined, poached, often rolled up with the poached tongue, sliced and pan fried. And let me tell you, they are fabulous. Nice visible layers of fat and lean with a little bit of skin and tongue.

As you can see in the photo, this one from my dinner at Hereford Road in London's Notting Hill neighborhood, that it almost resembles a cross between pancetta and fried bacon, only sliced thicker. Both places I enjoyed this, Hereford Road and St. John Bread & Wine served their version with a small green salad with a mustardy vinaigrette.