Scribbles & Munch

      Welcome to October...which, in the world of Z.D. Gladstone, is essentially one long countdown to Halloween!
      I love Halloween. Always have. Which - I fully recognize - is utterly ironic considering I am a wimp who can't even watch the trailers for scary movies. I'm even scared by some horror movie spoofs, that's how much of a wimp I am! But for me, Halloween has a dark, creepy, macabre romance to it--just like an old Victorian-era ghost story. It's about restless spirits wailing in the distance, empty houses with lights flickering in the windows, mists clinging low to the ground under skeleton trees and glowing moons, and every supernatural thing daring to peek out of the shadows. I love carving pumpkins. I love sharing candy. I love wearing costumes. And I love decorating my home. Basically, Halloween is my favorite holiday.
      So to get the mood going, I've decided that in addition to my usual pie updates (and yes, there will be one later this week) I will also post a weekly recipe with a creepy twist throughout October. After all, my current literary project is about zombies...so why not take this opportunity to explore some of the less common body parts available for consumption?

(Insert evil cackle here)

      Most Americans likely go their entire lives only eating the most common meats, which are typically skeletal muscles (like chicken breast) or slices thereof (like a porter house steak).* Which is interesting, when you think about it, because a much larger percentage of animals is edible. A hasty internet search as to the causes behind these trends yielded a number of historical and economic factors that essentially boil down to this: in America, meat is cheaper, and has been since the old days. That means poorer people were able to buy more expensive animal parts. In the past, only the wealthy could afford meat, leaving the lower classes to munch on tendon, offal, etc. Americans got the in the habit of just cooking up the cuts of muscle, and the ranching and meat packing industries accommodated. They also encouraged us, and they were successful. To this day, Americans consume more meat than anywhere else in the world, and most of us eat anywhere from two- to five-times as much as the recommended daily allowance.
      But health risks like cancer and cholesterol are a different kind of scary, so we'll save that for another day. For now, let's focus on this week's recipe:
Sliced and boiled skin!**

     Chicken skin, to be exact. And the best known name for the result is schmaltz.

      If you've not Jewish, you've probably never had schmaltz, and you are missing out. It became a regular star in my kitchen mainly for economic reasons; oils and butters add up after awhile when you do as much cooking as I. Rendered chicken fat is a tasty grease that can be substituted for oil in a lot of savory dishes. It has a nice flavor, freezes well, and you'd be amazed how much money it can save you over the course of a year. Like all fats, of course, you want to use it sparingly, but a little bit is no worse for you than a little butter or olive oil--especially if you're using skin from free range, organic chickens.
      Here's how it works: you buy chicken parts and trim off the skin. The chicken gets cooked into a stir-fry or a curry or braised in spicy tomato sauce, however you want. The raw skin gets chopped into roughly one-square-inch pieces (the exact size doesn't matter so much, you just want all the pieces to be close to the same) and stuck in a big tupperware container in your freezer. When you've got at least three cups worth of skin (any less and you're really go to a lot of trouble for very little schmaltz) you thaw it out, dump it in a big, heavy pot, and add cool water just to cover.

Mmmm...looks frighteningly slimy!

      Now you bring the pot to a boil over medium-high heat. Once the water is at a full boil, decrease the heat to a strong simmer, and just let it go. Stir every five to ten minutes, just to make sure nothing burns on the bottom. What's happening here is that the fat is melting out of the skin into the water, and the water is boiling away. Eventually, there will be no more water, and instead you'll have bits of cooked chicken skin sizzling in chicken fat.

Double, double toil and trouble, stove-top burn and cauldron bubble!

      Once your bits of skin are golden brown, turn off the stove, and let things sit for about ten minutes to cool down (remember: fats and oils hold heat much more effectively than water, so this will be scalding temperature for awhile). Stick a fine-mesh sieve over a bowl, and pour in the contents of your pot. The liquid schmaltz will drain away, but it takes some time, so just let it do it's thing for about thirty minutes.

The skin does start to stick to the bottom about halfway through cooking: just scrape and stir, scrape and stir!

      What to do with the leftover crispies? Some people like to eat them--traditional Jewish schmaltz is made with onions in with the chicken skin, and the flavor is gloriously savory. I prefer my schmaltz unflavored, so the crispies aren't nearly as num. To me, at least: my cat thinks they're the best treats in the entire universe, and if I let her she'd probably jump on the counter and devour the entire thing. So I give her a few, and toss the rest in the trash (so the stray cats can find them and make a mess).

Best pet treat ever!

      As for the honey-colored schmaltz, I pour it into small jars, label it with the date, and stick 'em in the freezer. I use it for cooking eggs in the morning (yum), sautéing vegetables (especially mushrooms, yum), and greasing the pan for just about any chicken dish. When I'm roasting a whole chicken, I mix in spices or herbs and salt, then rub it under the skin of said chicken for extra basting juices. This is also a brilliant technique for your Thanksgiving turkey: slather that breast with herb-laden schmaltz and there will be way less risk of dry white meat.

Liquid Love, Baby!

      And just in case you need more prompting, there is an entire cookbook of schmaltz recipes (including a more traditional recipe for making schmaltz) by Michael Ruhlman entitled - appropriately - The Book of Schmaltz: Love Song to a Forgotten Fat. Yes, I have made some of the recipes, and I highly recommend the Roasted Red Pepper Schmaltz Scones.



*At least, to the best of their knowledge: anybody who consumes hotdogs, sausages, or fast-food burgers might be surprised to learn just how many "exotic" animal bits they've consumed.

**Don't think skin is all that scary? You're clearly unfamiliar with The Silence of the Lambs.