Frank Giglio

  “Chef Frank”

We will cook up a storm with Frank.  We’ll talk fermentation and preparing meats, seafood and who knows what all we’ll get into.  Check out Frank’s work and you’ll agree whatever it is, it probably will taste delicious.

Show highlights:   

-Giglio means lily in Italian, giving his business name of Three Lily Farm.  A buddy of Daniel Vitalis.

-He’s been cooking since 1995.  Started at 15 as a dishwasher in a retirement home.

-Movement back to eating good quality food.  Tuning in to what’s good right around us.

Best sources for seafood?  Pacific Northwest, and Maine to Canada, which has clean cold waters.

-How to get the most taste out of meats?  The tendency in the US is to stick with lean meat and avoid dark meat, which doesn’t deliver the whole profile that meat can deliver.  Nutrition comes in off-cuts such as short ribs, meats needing long-slow cooking with good fats, aromatic herbs, onions.  Cheaper cuts have more nutrition.  Eat more organ meats.

-Mask liver in a pate.  Saute onion, garlic in butter until caramelized, set aside.  Add more butter, cook liver until medium rare, set aside, deglaze pan with red wine and cook down.  Then blend all up, adding a stick or two of butter, thyme, rosemary,and sage.  Pour into a jar and refrigerate.  Eat with bread or a cracker.

-Making head cheese – tastes like slow cooked shredded meat.

-Has created recipes for two cookbooks:  Clean Eats with Alejandro Junger, and Eat Fat, Get Thin with Dr. Mark Hyman.

-What does Frank think of grain avoidance?  He likes to work with a wide variety of ingredients.  Believes avoidance is a reaction to using poor quality grains and breads, and overusing grains in the diet.  He will buy a local sourdough bread, makes his own pasta.  Tries to buy Maine sourced foods.  Doesn’t like making everything with almond flour because “wheat is bad”, or using cauliflower as a substitute ingredient.  Acorns are the answer to a gluten-free diet.

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-Chicken feet and pigs feet are loaded with collagen.  Super nourishing.

-Is Frank talking about pork or beef liver?  Does it make a difference which one?  Not for the pate.  If cooking as a piece of meat, flavors will be more intense in pig liver.  Recipe for chicken livers:  marinate livers in shoyu sauce, chili powder, garlic, wrap in bacon and bake.  Recommend soaking liver in milk 2 hrs. to overnight for less intense flavor.  It’s key to not overcook liver beyond medium rare.  Less cooked is more mild, has less texture.

-In a sushi restaurant, they freeze all fish first to kill off parasites, also works for raw meat.  For a nearly-raw steak, sear in a hot cast iron pan to just warm through.

-Don’t want to overcook fish so that the white fat flows off.  Can prepare fish with flavored butter or pesto, cook at 350 for 8-12 minutes for a 1/2-1″ thick piece.  Let sit a few minutes.   Or if sauting, baste fish continually with butter.

-Pressure cooker?  Used an Instant Pot this winter for the first time.  Get full array of flavor.

-Meats cooked in a crock pot?  Least amount of cooking retains the most nutrition.  But cooking will unlock some nutrition you wouldn’t get otherwise.

-Wild game?  Most wild deer or turkey are eating out of corn fields, and it’s probably GMO corn.  Because of chronic wasting disease, advised to limit wild game liver to one meal a month.

-Bone broth.  Start with good quality ingredients, lots of cold water, with a splash of unpasteurized apple cider vinegar.  Add carrots, celery, onion, or take from a frozen bag of vegetable scraps and herbs.  Don’t add brassicas, potatoes, rutabagas.    Add dried turkey tail, chaga mushroom, culinary herbs, astragalus root, strip of kelp.  Longer, slower is better.  Don’t need to go 42 hours.  Start in morning, cook all day, refrigerate overnight, cook more the next day.  Can concentrate the broth by cooking off some of the liquid.

-Is it recommended to roast the bones first?  Get a deeper, richer flavor.  Roast raw chicken bones first until dark.

-Acorns from which trees?  How does he cook them?  Is there a  source besides foraging?  All acorns, which come from the oak, are edible.  All acorns require leaching.  Two methods: hot water – boiling acorns, changing water, boiling again, for 7 to 8 different boils.  Or cold water leaching.  In Maine, he uses northern red oak.  Also have black oak vs. white oak (fewer tannins) acorns.  Dry acorns in the sun until shell will crack to open.  Store in a bucket with a screw top lid.  Can store for years if shell isn’t cracked.  Frank has a machine to shell acorns – that’s the hardest work.  Grind acorns in a mill, put in a bowl of water, change water every day 3 days to a week.  Bitter tannins slowly leach out.  Once bitter tannins are gone, use the flour for anything you’d use a grain for.  He makes 50/50 acorn flour/buckwheat pancakes, use acorn meal instead of bread crumbs.  Doesn’t have gluten, so breads will be more dense.  Preparing acorns requires a lot of time and effort, but is comparable to the effort to maintain sourdough cultures and kombucha.

-Frank prefers fishing and foraging to maintaining his own garden and livestock.  He can patronize many local farms in Maine.  Lives near Belfast, ME, the Berkeley of Maine.  In the winter, he does crafts such as wooden spoons, snowshoeing, tree work.  Has a wife and 6 year old and 18 month old boys.  Does catering seasonally, education, weekend retreats, online classes, fermentation classes.  Films live for his courses.

 Visit Frank’s website   

Chef Frank with great ideas, tips, recipes for cooking some yummy meals, October 19, 2017