It all started in Sinapore when I discovered the Joseph and Mei Leng would travel to Duke the same week I would be there. Josh, the master chef, might possibly be able to display a bit of southern hospitality, particularly if I paid the bills. So he planned a dinner for 5 - and it turned out to be home made sausage, pretzels with grilled peppers and onions at his small home on Oak St in Carrboro.
To start the day - he was caught sleeping in the quilt Ellen recently made and presented to him. After some coaxing from folks unnamed - the official caption is "Josh, suffering an extreme agony inflicted by The Bean's quilt gift to him."
The quilt, Josh and Ellen, on display. After all, what is a grandmother living in Singapore to do with her time other than quilts for the kids and grand-kids?
We went to Cliff's for a shoulder and managed to spend 20 - 30 minutes talking about the old days when Cliff supplied 1/2 pigs, shoulders, hams and chickens for those occasions when Marvin and I grilled stuff for our friends. (This was an annual affair at Marvin's place on Mt. Carmel Church Road). Taking the deboned shoulder home, Josh cut it into strips and I started grinding. Josh did not understand the nature of low light photography and to complicate things, I'm working at such speed that its all a blur.
However with the deblurring flash on - here I am - a bit surprised but with the 1st grind of the port oozing out of the grinder.
Here is Josh demonstrating his superior skill
Superior concentration
ANd a small smile
and a not so small smile - whilst putting gentle pressure on the meat to feed it into the grinder
More intense concentration and gentle pressure
Extremely intense concentration and increasingly less gentle pressure
Now for the serious work - that of loading the sausage wrapper onto this nozzle
Side view
Step 1 - open the wrapper
and place around the nozzle
Then really gently slide the wrapper toward yourself
Then gently lead the wrapper (slightly moist)
Sliding the wrapper toward yourself
And continuing
The last segment
The fully loaded wrapper
with Josh about to start the stuffing process. First remove any air from the system
The air is apparent with the ballooning of the end - not the sausage within the nozzle indicating that there are no blockages
More ballooning and loading more sausage into the grinder
Now applying gentle pressure on the mound of sausage and grinding, you can see the sausage entering the wrapper - every so tentatively
Continued rotation, the sausage wrapper begins to seriously fill
Now the critical moment - not to overfill and rupture the wrapper. Tender care and feeding of the wrapper required here
Now the sausage begins to take the shape of a serious sausage
With continuous cranking by me, and Josh managing the wrapper system, a long sausage emerges and now we are beginning to think, how to test the quality of our product?
Makng sure the end is securely tied
COntinued cranking and continued extension of the sausage
Now, remove the residual wrapper and tie the end
A little twisting action to segment the long sausage into shorter links
A mightly pleased Josh
An extremely pleased Josh
Now the veges to be grilled - onions and peppers
In addition - pretzel dough for the bread
Rolling the dough to make pretzels
THe raw pretzels
And the initial preparations for dinner
The kitchen setup - Juicer, pretzels, onions and peppers and stuff + chef Josh
Bioling pretzels
Turning pretzels
Removing pretzels
Removing pretzels
In addition - frying pancetta - which Josh prepared several weeks ago. His colleagues in the lab at UNC have wonderful refrigeration facilities for his kitchen experiments
The look of pancetta gently frying away in the pan.
Our salad
Starting the fire
The smoke of the fire
Looking from inside Josh's home
In parallel - removing the pretzels
Hot pretzels
Cooking the onions
Nothing like veges on the grill
Joseph - director of HR in the Duke-NUS Singapore program.
Josh preparing the sausages - half spicey Italian and half bratwurst
Adding the sausages with Joseph offering some help
Strategically placing the sausages on the grill
The orientation of the sausages and veges
The master chef
Our team - Josh, Mei Leng, Joseph and Ellen
Turning the sausages
with several hungry admirers
The sizzle of sausages cooking
Turning
Our dinner
Turning the sausages
Mei Leng offering transporation service to move from grill to dinner table
Like a dance for two
All smiles form Mei Leng
A smiling Joseph
Dinner
Then after dinner - a short concert of Bach and Elgar
By Josh
C. Frank Starmer