RVANews

The perfect slider

Chris Mattera — Mon, 07 Sep 2015 13:05:21 +0000

Original -- June 30, 2010

Maybe it's out of nostalgia for my early childhood in the great state of New Jersey, home of White Castle, or maybe I just have lowbrow tastes, but I love a good, thin somewhat greasy cheeseburger. Sliders have become the "in" thing, but no fancy-pants foie gras and kobe burger will ever match the simple pleasure of a well-done, extra-thin patty between two soft buns with cheese. Recently, I have undertaken the challenge of replicating my favorite style of burger without heating up the kitchen. These sliders are sure to impress a hungry crowd at a summer BBQ, but you shouldn't have too much trouble knocking out at least a dozen at a time.

To make your own White Castle style sliders you will need:

1 pound good quality ground beef, preferably local and grass-fed (We use Gryffon's Aerie from Crozet -- easily the best ground beef ever)
1/2 medium sweet onion, chopped very finely or grated
1 pack Martin's Dutch Potato Dinner rolls, split horizontally in half, with tops connected on one side and bottoms on the other.
6-8 slices, cheese (American for authenticity, but sliced cheddar works as well)
1/4 cup water
Salt and pepper, about a teaspoon each or to taste
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Equipment

1 cast-iron griddle
1 barbecue grill, preferably charcoal
2 large spatulas
Large cutting board
Rolling pin or wine bottle
Plastic Wrap

Method

Light the grill. If charcoal, start the charcoal and when glowing, distribute along the edges of the grill. If using a gas grill, heat to medium high. Place the cast-iron griddle in the middle of the grill and allow it to preheat.
Mix the ground beef, chopped onion, salt, pepper and water in a bowl. Knead by hand until the water is incorporated and the mixture feels somewhat wet, about 30-45 seconds.
Line the cutting board with a single piece of plastic wrap and turn the meat mixture onto the plastic wrap-lined board.
With clean, wet hands, spread the mixture out into a rectangle approximately 80% the width of the buns. Top with another piece of plastic wrap.
Using the rolling pin, gently spread the meat out until about ¼ inch thick and about 15% wider than one sheet of buns and twice as long.

Oil the griddle. Remove the top layer of wrap and, in one motion, invert the board over the griddle so the sheet of meat mixture lands squarely on the griddle's hot surface. QUICKLY remove the second sheet of wrap.
When the top of the meat sheet begins to get slightly grey in spots, use the two spatulas to flip it over. You may need to cut it into two pieces to do this. This is alright, as long as it is cut evenly in half.
Allow the meat sheet to finish cooking, about 1 minute. Once cooked through, top with cheese, using the cheese squares to obtain even coverage.

Lay the sheet of bun bottoms upside down on top on the melting cheese.
With two spatulas and the aid of an assistant, invert the burgers onto a cutting board.
Top with the sheet of bun tops, and cut between the buns with a sharp knife.

Serve hot with ketchup, mustard, mayo, and plenty of very cold beer.

Makes 12, serves 4-6 (with sides).

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Meat: In defense of trades

Chris Mattera — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 10:00:57 +0000

Welcome to the latest installment of our series in which some of Richmond's greatest food artisans share what they love about what they do. Here, charcutier Chris Mattera shares his thoughts on why he loves what he does... and offers up important points about trades in general.

I love that what I do for a living involves tactile and sensory experiences on a daily basis. Judging that a sausage is sufficiently mixed by looking at it and seeing how it sticks to a gloved hand. Knowing when there’s enough wine added to my grandmother’s sausage recipe by the way the raw meat mixture smells. Measuring spice blends by filling my cupped my hands in an imitation of the person who taught me how to make it. I think these experiences, and knowing how to interpret them, are what make my work interesting to me.

Another thing that makes my line of work so fulfilling for me is the sense of tangible accomplishment that accompanies almost every day spent making something. The knowledge that, if nothing else, I have created something delicious and tangible as a result of my labor is enormously gratifying. I touched on this in my last contribution to the Artisan Series, but I think it bears mentioning again.

So few occupations in our time involve physically creating anything. Most of my friends from college work crunching numbers or tweaking other people’s ideas. At the end of the day, they don’t have a pile of anything to point to as examples of what they have completed that day. In fact, a number of my friends cannot even describe what it is that they do with their days at work, beyond sending and receiving emails. I, on the other hand can tell people exactly what I do. I make sausage. My job description is a present tense verb.

Verbs as occupations seems to have gone out of style over the past few decades. How many people do you know whose job title ends in “-maker” who are under 65 years old? I understand why this is, believe me. Many times I have been tempted to trade in a title that ends in ‘-maker’ for something a little bit more refined, more genteel. Like ‘Insurance Agent’ or ‘Adjunct Professor’. But every time I got serious about leaving my trade to pursue a white collar profession, I was drawn back by the dignity and tangible nature of the work. Sure, air conditioned offices with comfy chairs are nice and come with a much lower risk of bodily harm than a butcher shop or sausage kitchen. But for me, they lack the satisfaction that comes from creating something with my own two hands.

I have always admired people with physically demanding skilled jobs. Bricklayers are among my favorites. When these people show up for work, there is nothing but a pile of rocks. When they leave, they leave behind a building. Or a wall or a fountain or a driveway. They create order from chaos, something from nothing. Trade work is the tool by which humankind realizes its vision of a future world, whether by building a bridge over a span of years or preparing a dinner over the span of an hour.

Work like that, and the work of other skilled trades-people involves many of the attributes that make us human: tool use, labor division, communication and working together toward a common goal. It’s a shame that the trades suffer from such an image problem. To the best of my knowledge, American parents aren’t clamoring for their children to take up car repair, blacksmithing or for that matter, sausage-making upon graduation from college. And maybe they are right not to do so. After all, white collar jobs are generally better paying, offer benefits, and typically involve the prospect of advancement over time, all of which are attractive attributes. But for me, and for other skilled tradesmen and –women, the sense of satisfaction gleaned from working with our hands to make, repair and reshape even a small piece of the world is worth a lot, too.

Chris Mattera (a gentleman we refer to as “The Sausage King of Richmond”) is co-owner of the nascent Sausage Craft LLC, a Richmond-based gourmet sausage producer, providing high-end meat products to Richmond area restaurants and retailers starting this fall. In addition to making sausage and cured meat for a living, he has shared his culinary know-how with the likes of Food & Wine and Richmond Magazine.

Meat: How I got here

Chris Mattera — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 10:00:11 +0000

Welcome to the latest installment of our new series in which some of Richmond's greatest food artisans share what they love about what they do. Here, charcutier Chris Mattera gives a firsthand account of how he ended up making sausage, both professionally and recreationally.

I have always cooked. In fact, my whole family has always cooked. I can’t conceive of my life without food, without the smell and taste and feel something delicious and real as a driving force behind nearly every action. I remember spending snow days in the sixth grade cranking out fresh ravioli. Summer afternoons in high school passed making fresh sausage. I catered my own senior prom: chicken involtini with mushroom sauce, pasta with fresh pesto and a mixed green salad for 14. In college I spent $50 (nearly a week’s pay as a part-time bus driver in Blacksburg) and an entire night trying to make mozzarella from scratch. It didn’t work out, but the next day I cranked out pizza for 60 people from my apartment’s galley kitchen and melted the heating element in the flimsy oven.

In looking at it now, it seems foolish that I never wanted to work with food professionally. I went to college and studied Sociology, with an emphasis on Labor Relations. I thought I would head to grad school, get a white-collar job and be content cooking for family and friends on the weekends. Maybe sneak in the occasional dinner party to show off to coworkers. I wanted to be the guy who could cook, not the guy who was a cook.

During college, I spent two (non-consecutive) years as a vegetarian. I was vegan for five of the longest days of my life. The whole time, all I wanted to do was eat hot dogs. I did a lot of reading about vegetarianism, animal rights, and the ethical implications of being an omnivore. What I realized is that I don’t object on moral grounds to the killing of animals for their meat. It’s what we do. Humans (and a whole host of other animals) kill things so that we may eat them and continue living. It just seems to make sense to me and it can even be a sort of sacred thing, the absorbing of one living thing by another. What I do object to, however, is the unnecessary sadism with which industrial meat production accomplishes that natural goal. The relationship between humans and the animals they eat began to fascinate me. Also, those animals can be outrageously delicious, and after a year of vegetarianism, the urge to make and eat sausage, pork chops, steak, and especially hot dogs returned with a vengeance.

At about the same time I realized that sensible meat-eating on my part was probably not going to bring on the end of civilization as we know it, I began looking at job prospects for my post-college life. I spent some time during one summer working in the basement of an office building, dressed in khakis and a polo shirt, alphabetizing employee files in a windowless room full of cabinets, so I knew that office work was not my cup of tea. I looked into jobs with the National Labor Relations Board, but found that they required a) quite a bit of travel and b) the wearing of ties. By this point I was already working in two restaurants in Blacksburg, washing dishes and making pizzas. Afraid of getting stuck as a minimum-wage line cook, I enrolled in culinary school in France. Paris was a dream come true for a recently-reformed-vegetarian-aspiring-chef. France (like Italy and Germany and Spain) is a nation of meat-eaters who take their flesh seriously. Pates and terrines, galantines and ballotines, stuffed cabbages, and sausage, sausage, sausage. The French even have a word for this whole class of animal-derived deliciousness. It’s called charcuterie, from the old French for cooked meat. I ate whatever I could get my hands on and tried to learn as much as possible with my reasonable but limited French language skills.

When I got back from Paris, I took a job in a small European-style bistro where I worked five lunches and two to three dinners a week. The work was hot and the hours long and my love affair with restaurant work was quickly over. I will be the first to tell you, I don’t have what it takes to excel in a professional kitchen. I began to think of the beautiful and delicious meats I had seen in Paris and to imagine what it would be like to open a small butcher shop here in Richmond where I could make and sell all of my favorite foods. I mentioned this idea in casual conversation to an acquaintance and the next thing I know, Tanya Cauthen called me on the phone. Turns out, she was in the process of actually opening just such a place and was much further along than I was. We spoke a few times, and I agreed to come work with her at Belmont Butchery.

It has been nearly four years since the Butchery opened and in that time I have honed my skills and gained an even greater appreciation for the craft of charcuterie. In addition to Paris, I have been lucky enough to spend time in Italy, working with a fourth-generation Tuscan butcher, learning the traditional Italian methods of making fresh and cured meat products.

My job, and for that matter my whole life today looks nothing like what I thought it would when I was growing up. Even up through college, if I had been told that I would end up a butcher and sausage maker rather than an astronaut, cab driver, archeologist, private detective, tap dancer, zeppelin pilot or Batman (all actual former aspirations, some shockingly recent), I would never in a million years have believed it. I must say though, at the end of the day, it’s not a bad gig.

Chris Mattera (a gentleman we refer to as "The Sausage King of Richmond") is a charcutier at Belmont Butchery. In addition to making sausage and cured meat for a living, he has shared his culinary know-how with the likes of Food & Wine and Richmond Magazine.

Roast pork loin with crackling

Chris Mattera — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:25:57 +0000

Tired of turkey? Bored with beef? Try roasting a bone-in, skin-on pork roast for a delicious holiday change of pace. It's easier than you might think.

Feeds 8-10

Ingredients:

5-7 lb bone in, skin on pork loin (You may need to order this in advance from a butcher. Most commercially available pork is packed skin-off, much to my dismay.)
1 large or 2 medium white onions, peeled and cut into medium slices
1 TBS kosher salt
1 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp fresh rosemary leaves, finely chopped
3 large cloves, garlic
Olive oil
1/2 cup white wine (Pinot grigio works well, as does Chablis)

Instructions

Pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees

Pat the pork roast dry and score the skin about 1/4 inch deep, about every inch. (A box-cutter or Exacto knife works well for this. Otherwise use a paring knife, being careful not to cut into the underlying fat or meat.) Score again, perpendicular to the first cuts, to make a square or diamond shaped pattern of score marks. Set pork somewhere to come up to room temperature.

Meanwhile, peel the garlic and remove the small green sprout from the center by cutting each clove in half lengthwise and removing the sprout with the tip of a paring knife. Discard the sprouts. Mince the garlic, sprinkle with a pinch of salt, and work into a paste with the side of a chef's knife.

Mix together the remaining salt, the chopped rosemary, and the pepper.

Drizzle the olive oil all over the pork, and then massage with the garlic paste. Liberally sprinkle the salt mixture on all sides of the pork, including the bottom.

Place the freshly anointed pork roast in a roasting pan, and put in the oven for 30 minutes. Resist the strong urge to lower the heat and/or open the oven door.

After 30 minutes, lower the oven to 325 degrees, add the sliced onions to the pan, placing them next to the roast but not on top. Pour in the wine. Baste the roast with any fat from the bottom of the pan.

Roast an additional 15 minutes per pound of pork, or until a thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the meat, away from the bone, reads 165 degrees, basting at least once more.

Remove the roast from the oven, and allow to rest someplace warm for at least 15 minutes.

Carve off the bone and serve a piece of crackling (that's the skin) with each slice of pork. Sure to become a holiday classic.

Chris Mattera (a gentleman we refer to as "The Sausage Kind of Richmond") is a charcutier at Belmont Butchery. In addition to making sausage and cured meat for a living, he has shared his culinary know-how with the likes of Food & Wine and Richmond Magazine.

Breaded Grilled Chop

Chris Mattera — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:00:27 +0000

The following recipe comes from Chris Mattera, a gentleman we like to call "The Sausage King of Richmond." Chris is a charcutier at Belmont Butchery and has been featured in Food & Wine.

Although breading is usually reserved for fried foods, this pounded veal or pork chop takes to breading and grilling beautifully. The breadcrumbs adhere to the meat and pick up a toasty, smoky flavor from the grill while sucking up dripping as the chop cooks. Pair with a sautéed green vegetable (use a heavy pan directly over the fire on the grill – no need to heat up the kitchen too) and a glass of chilled white wine (albarino works well) and you’re all set for a summer evening.

Ingredients

2x 3/4 inch thick veal or pork loin chop, preferably center-cut
1 tsp salt
½ tsp black peppet
1 TBS olive oil
½ Cup unseasoned breadcrumb
1 TBS fresh parsley, washed, dried and finely chopped.

Directions

Lay the chops on a stable cutting board and cover with plastic wrap
With meat mallet, rolling pin, or wine bottle, gently pound the chops until they are evenly about ½ inch thick.
Salt and pepper both sides of the chop.
Rub both sides of the chops with olive oil liberally
Dredge the oily chops in the breadcrumb and parsley
Grill over medium heat to your desired doneness or 150 degrees for pork and 140 degrees for pork.
Enjoy!

Note:

Try accompanying the chops with greens or a salad and grilled potato wedges. To grill potatoes, cut 1 large baking potato in eighths lengthwise. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Grill over medium heat until tender.