About 2 weeks ago (has it only been 2 weeks? it feels like ages) Stephanie and I hosted the latest in our series of food-themed parties, this time centered around the humble “slider” (or mini-burger). However since then life intervened in more ways than one, so I haven’t had a chance to post about it until now.

Let’s jump straight to the food, shall we? Other than ordering 100 mini brioche rolls from La Boulange, we made pretty much everything from scratch. I turned a 7 pound pork shoulder into NC-style pulled pork, made lamburgers with shallots and herbes de Provence, and roasted mini portobello mushrooms.

Along with that we had a whole bunch of homemade condiments: the previously blogged-about pickles (which turned out amazingly, by the way), aioli made in a mortar and pestle, coleslaw made with homemade mayonnaise, caramelized onions, and the pepper jack I made back in August. In addition to the usual finger foods, Stephanie had two Chaource-style bries she’d made a few weeks beforehand, as well as some olives and salami (Bâton de Berger) that we’d brought back from France. It was a feast!

I wish I’d had time to take pictures of all this wonderful food, but the light was low and I was busy ushering people into and around the apartment—over the course of the night we managed to pack in more than twenty people. However, my camera did make the rounds, so here’s a taste of the photos I found on it the next day:

Did I mention we got two Twitter testimonials? Thanks quasistoic and claudinerlco.

I skipped out of work a little early on Friday and drove down to Pinnacles National Monument with Stephanie and Marcia for a two night camping excursion. Let me just say, what a difference leaving on Friday makes to a weekend overnight adventure.

We got there before the sun set, set up camp and grilled some corn on the cob, pork chops, and peaches. On Saturday we woke up with the whole day ahead of us, without any pressure of having to travel back home. We cooked up some scrambled eggs and Canadian bacon for breakfast and spent the rest of the day hiking the loop Stephanie and I had taken just before New Years 2008: Pinnacles in a day.

That night we grilled some vegetables and sausages right on the coals, randomly stumbled upon a preview of the upcoming Kens Burns documentary in the amphitheater, and went to bed pretty exhausted. We packed up Sunday morning and got home surprisingly early, just after 1pm, feeling like somehow we’d squeezed an extra day out of the weekend. A pretty nice feeling.

I should also mention that I had a new camera with me, Pentax’s flagship DSLR, the K-7, which happens to be my first SLR, digital or otherwise. With it I had the Pentax DA Limited 35mm f2.8 Macro lens. It has a 53.5mm-e field of view, in other words, a standard perspective—very different from the wide fixed focal length (28mm-e) of my Ricoh GR Digital II. The DA Limited 35mm is the type of lens you want to take pictures of people with. And that’s just what we did.

Some fun pics from Kyle’s 30th birthday. Yeah, that’s Shaft on the TV. And Pong on the Atari. It was a 70s-themed party. Complete with Swedish meatballs, rumaki, and a jello-mold in the shape of a fish. Viva 1979!

On Tuesday, Stephanie and I met up with Andy, Meredith, and Jonathan over at Bloodhound for the third in a series of butchering demonstrations/cookouts held there. The first one I’d heard about from Andy after the fact, and the second one I was out of town for, so I was very happy that I’d finally be able to get in on the fun.

Whereas the two previous events involved a whole pig (ah, memories), this time they were working with a side of beef hung from the ceiling. Stephanie and I arrived just as the two chef-cum-butchers (Ryan Farr from 4505 Meats and Taylor Boetticher from the Fatted Calf), were taking it apart. Over the course of an hour they disassembled the side into various cuts, while all the scraps and fat went into a meat grinder to make sliders.

The whole thing was kind of a spectacle. It was way off the hipness charts, even by San Francisco standards—so you can probably imagine the orgy of cameras, DSLRs, and iPhones all snapping away. I have to admit I did feel a little self-conscious, but I still managed to get a few good shots of the carnage.

While we were watching, they were bringing around homemade corndogs and these amazing grilled peaches wrapped with pancetta and basil to whet our appetites. By the time the meat came off the grill, the place had devolved into a kind of feeding frenzy. They’d bring out trays of food which would be completely picked clean in a matter of seconds. I didn’t get much of a chance to appreciate the various cuts of beef that they’d grilled up, partly because it was such a madhouse to get any. But the sliders—omg they were awesome. I probably had three.

Those last three remind me of pat’s vs. geno’s.

Last night Stephanie and I hosted our latest in a long line of food-themed parties, this one to unveil the cheese we’ve been making lately. All told we had seven different kinds of cheese, made from a variety of types of milk.

An hour before people arrived we were actually making some fresh cheese. Stephanie whipped up a whole milk Ricotta, and I made Mozzarella with milk from Straus Family Creamery. It’s amazing how much Ricotta a gallon of whole milk generates. It was a surprising cheese for most people, as fresh ricotta is so light and fluffy, it almost has the consistency and richness of whipped cream. We have a lot left—I see homemade ravioli in our future. Stephanie told me a lot of folks were really blown away by the mozzarella. Good milk = good cheese. The Straus whole milk was so rich and creamy that the mozzarella had a noticeable yellow tint. The cheese had just the right consistency, with a little bit of bounce, and a lot of creaminess.

This past week Stephanie made 2 batches of chevre (goat cheese). One she made early in the week with the intention of it being a little firmer and riper for chevre chaud, and one batch towards the end of the week, which she seasoned with herbs de provence. It’s one of the easiest cheeses to make—thanks to Trader Joe’s carrying Summerhill Dairy goat milk. Everyone who likes goat cheese seemed to really dig it, as it was gone in a flash.

Stephanie put grillmaster Kyle in charge of cooking up the brine-aged Halloumi on the raclette. Having never grilled it ourselves we weren’t quite sure what to expect, but eventually the slices of cheese had perfect grill marks. It’s a strange cheese in that it doesn’t melt when heat is applied, it just browns, almost like chicken or tofu. We served it warm with a leaf of fresh mint (as recommended by Wikipedia) and it came out perfectly! It had a great rubbery bite with an addictive saltiness. It’s one of my new favorite cheeses.

Finally it was time for the harder cheeses. It was strange to cut into these wheels of cheese that we’d been so patiently aging in our cheese cave. Considering that the Cheddar and the Gouda were encased in wax—we had no idea what they’d look like on the inside. I cut the rounds in half and passed them around so everyone could get a good look and a smell. The Manchego was not waxed (Stephanie had simply rubbed it with olive oil after a week of drying) so it looked the most like what you’d see in a nice cheese shop. It had a hard rind, and a pungent smell (even before we cut it open). Both the Gouda and the Cheddar were surprisingly white and moist on the inside, and they pretty much smelled the same. Both were made with homogenized whole milk, and we’ve since learned that unhomogenized milk (aka cream-top) results in a much firmer curd, which we’ve since been using exclusively.

How was the taste? Could we even tell them apart? I tried the two month old Cheddar first, and it tasted young, with a slight acidity. I thought it’d be more like store-bought mild cheddar, because I’d read that the sharpness develops with age, but no, our farmhouse Cheddar definitely had a sharp kick. Then I tried the Gouda, a washed curd cheese, which had a milder taste. It was very smooth, which I think most people preferred to the Cheddar. We’re definitely going to be making more of that. Finally the young cow-goat Manchego, a softer version of the traditionally hard sheep milk style, had a very subtle flavor, almost like Swiss, with a slight tang from the goat milk.