When we last left our hero, he was having two problems - first, his salt mixture was not a good enough consistency to stick to the sides of the roast, and second, the amount of salt was probably insufficient to coat the entire roast.
I tried some half-assery for a while - piling the salt up, scraping some off the bottom... nothing really worked particularly well. Not only that, but the more I looked at the crust, the more I realized that I really expected something a bit more solid - the rock salt left a bunch of openings on the surface.
What was really called for here was some sort of spackle. I don't own any edible spackle, which means that this was a job for makin' it up - something that I enjoy doing. Okay, theory - if rock salt + egg are supposed to make my "cement", kosher salt + egg should make a decent spackle. Only one way to find out - otherwise I'm heading to the supermarket for another box of rock salt.
I took the whites of two more eggs, (running out of eggs!) and added salt until it turned into a paste. I started out with a fairly large amount...
And kept mixing, adding, mixing, adding, until I got the consistency I wanted. What I wanted, as it turns out, was about a pound and a quarter of kosher salt and two egg whites. At that point, the mixture was firm enough that it was capable of standing on its own. I made a snowball, went and washed my hands, and when I came back it was still standing.
Never let it be said that I haven't made a snowball out of salt.
Now, it was time to start spackling. Everywhere that looked like it needed more crust got some salt. I finished up with what I had made, and decided I still needed a little more, partly for aesthetic purposes, partly for cooking ones. I got out two more eggs, and mixed in the last of the box of kosher salt.
Don't eat the yellow snow.
Remind me never to do anything for aesthetic purposes - I had gotten some yolk in the mix, and as a result... well, you can see for yourself. In the end, this is what I wound up with:
I will be the first to admit that it is not the prettiest thing that I have ever seen. But still, once it got into the oven, I felt hopeful about the eventual result.
I'll know in about four hours!
If I had this to do over again, I would start with eight eggs, three pounds of kosher salt and three pounds of rock salt, and mix in extra kosher as necessary. I feel like that way you'd get the consistency of the kosher salt, but at the same time the solidity and volume of the rock salt. As it is, I've basically got a layer of kosher covering a layer of rock, which doesn't seem efficient.
I've also got a screaming baby in the other room. Not upset, not angry - just a baby who has decided that now is screaming time. This is why I haven't been posting much. Well, four dishes to go - I'll keep updating as things go in the oven.
Coming, my little master...
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