Sic Semper Porcus

Vietti Perbacco 2004

I made an executive decision to include some of my other loves into this blog about pork.  What a natural choice that I should pick wine to begin this new trend.  The wine in question is Vietti's 2004 Perbacco.  This wine is such a pleasure to drink.  It's 100 percent Nebbiolo from the Langhe Hills, specifically from the Barolo zone and yet it is classified as Langhe Nebbiolo.  Think of this wine as a baby Barolo, it has those characteristics of any good Barolo, ripe cherry and strawberry with that wonderful tar and funk on the finish.  This wine worked wonderfully with dry-cured sausages that we just finished.  The salty, spicy, slightly smoky flavor of the chorizo paired well with the fruit in the wine.  I could just imagine sitting on a nice small Italian plaza with a bottle of the Perbacco and an array of sausages and spending the whole day savoring those flavors.  Our sausages turned out a little dry because the humidity in our apartment was a little too low.  They did have good flavor and the next endeavor will involve a curing box where we can better control the humidity.  And on a final note it's my younger sister's birthday today; Happy Birthday Sarah!

Bacon Success!

The bacon that we were curing has turned out spectacularly and we have been cutting big chunks off of both the regular cured and also the guajillo bacon. Neither are smoked because of weather issues, but certainly the next batch will be.  The guajillo cured bacon is not as spicy as I had hoped, but perhaps next time I'll add more guajillo and briefly toast the chiles before grinding them for the curing rub.  After your pork belly has cured for about 7 days in the fridge, take the finished product out and rinse it clean and remove the skin from the top of the belly, revealing the glistening fatty top of your bacon slab.  Next, either smoke or bake it at a relatively cool temperature (below 200 degrees F) for about two hours.  Then you're free to cook with your bacon in any number of ways.

The great thing about making your own bacon, aside from the fact that it will be better than most of the bacon you buy in the store,  is the versatility it provides.  When you have a bacon in slab form your can cut off standard slices for your breakfast, make lardons for classic French dishes or give it a name and constantly apologize to it for hacking it apart (note: this is not advisable as unhappy bacon will never taste as good)

Whatever you choose to do, you should know that there are endless uses for bacon and variations on the cures.  So try something new and redefine your view of bacon.  Stay tuned for our pancetta.  Below are the two cures we used.

Regular Bacon Cure

5 lb pork belly
1/4 cup of kosher salt
10 teaspoons sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons pink salt
2 tablespoons crushed peppercorns

Guajillo Bacon

5 lb pork belly
1/4 cup of kosher salt
6 teaspoons sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons pink salt
3 dried guajillo peppers, stemmed and partially seeded and ground
4 dried chiles de arbol, ground

Ham

    The ham that was previously only known as a shrouded specter in our fridge was finally unveiled the other day.  There are few things finer than a well cured ham. It is comfort food.  Something that reminds us of holidays and gatherings of the past.  It is adept at combining both the savory with the sweet, as it is often glazed with items like brown sugar, honey and maple syrup.
    With great anticipation we began the process of preparing our ham.  We removed the ham from the fridge and washed it off and prepared to slow cook it with a mustard glaze.  We decided to prepare the ham in this manner rather then smoking it because of the reality that Chicago winters make it very unpleasant to stand outside and smoke a ham for 6 hours.  That being said, the ham came out of the oven 5 hours later and looked and smelled spectacular.  We thought we had finally broken the ham hoodoo that had plagued our household.  Unfortunately it was not to be.  Despite the first four inches of the ham being cured properly and having a succulent firm texture, when you got closer to the bone the brine hadn't penetrated and so all we were left with was slow cook pork butt.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it wasn't ham.  We served all this wonderful porcine product with two of the classic pairings: mashed potatoes and rosé wine, a nice Cote d' Provence and a portugieser rosé from Pfalz, Germany.
    So it appears as though it's back to the drawing board.  After reflecting on the near success, we decided that the brine clearly wasn't able to get through all the meat and so with a little bit of research we found that we can inject brine into the center to aid in more consistent brining.  In addition, next time we might de-bone it and truss it up, also in an attempt to help with brining and cooking.  As for the flavor of the ham that cured properly, it was a just a touch too salty for my taste but the glaze worked out very well.  My guess as to the reason why the cured part was slightly over-salted is the obvious fact that the brine was not properly dispersed.  Furthermore, with the next brine I think we'll add some additional spices, like garlic and sage  Below is the recipe we used for the brine and the glaze.

Ham Brine

1 gallon water
1 cup of kosher salt
1/2 cup of sugar
8 teaspoons pink salt

Reserve some of the brine to inject in the ham.  Allow the ham to brine, refrigerated and covered, for anywhere from 8-10 days based on the size of your ham.  After brining, rise the ham and allow it to sit before cooking.

Mustard Glaze

2 tablespoons stone ground Mustard
6 tablespoons beer (we used PBR)
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons caraway seeds, toasted and ground
3 tablespoons vinegar (either malt or apple cider)
1 1/2 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs yolks
1/2 teaspoon brown sugar

Combine all ingredients and cook over indirect heat (if you have a double boiler this is optimal) stirring constantly until the sauce thickens.  Apply to ham and cook away.

Upcoming Projects

This may seem like an odd picture.  Yet, under that plastic and inside a large stock pot is a wonderful little half ham that we are brining.  It's been in there for a few days and should be ready this Friday.  To fill you all in, our previous attempts at making hams have been checkered at best (TOM!).  We're hoping the adage "third time's a charm" holds true.  Stay tuned...

In addition, in the next day or so Tom and I will be venturing into the realm of patès and terrines.  We have a whole pork liver and another good chuck of pork shoulder.  It will result in Patè Grandmère.  Also I will soon be posting the actual recipes that we are using.  I figured that would make the site a bit more useful rather than just a collection of my random musings.

An amazing sense of power flooded over me

An odd thing happens when meat intrigues you as much as it does me and Tom, you end up with meat that you don't know how to prepare.  In the past I would simply grind it up and throw it in a sausage.  However, In this situation there is an interesting twist.  In addition to all the other meat we bought to explore the art of charcuterie, we also ended up with a pork heart.  It poses a pleasant puzzle as to how best transform it into something edible that also retains it's unique characteristics; for this reason I didn't want to disguise it among other things in a sausage.  I know what to do with cow hearts, the classic Peruvian dish of antecuchos immediately leaps to mind.  Its swine counterpart has me a bit stumped.  I'm going to keep thinking about it, but if anyone out there has a suggestion, please contact me.  At the very least, it is a lot of fun to hold it in your hand...

Curing Salt (Pink Salt)

Pink salt is salt containing small amounts of sodium nitrite or sodium nitrate. It is essential in the preserving and curing of meats, and of course everyone's favorite, sausage making. The nitrate component inhibits the growth of bacteria, most importantly botulism.  In addition it preserves the color of cured meat because food should be appealing as well as tasty. Curing salt containing sodium nitrite is the more commonly used of the two and is used in most of our recipes. Sodium nitrate has the advantage of breaking down more slowly and for that reason will preserve meats for longer periods of time, this is especially useful when curing a whole muscle rather than a few pounds of sausage.  In small quantities neither salt is harmful, however, it is colored pink so that it is not mistaken for other types of salt because in large quantities it can be dangerous.

Bacon will bring about world peace...

(Tom is clearly excited by the prospect of homemade bacon)

Bacon must be the food of the gods.  I've known several die hard vegetarians who have turned back to meat because of the enticing joy of well prepared bacon.  Bacon is so simple to make you'll never buy that mediocre crap they sell in commercial grocery stores again.  In addition, once you master it, you won't have to pay exorbitant prices for the well made stuff.  Bacon is pork belly (which you can get at any good butcher) that is heavily salted and allowed to cure in a cool place.  It's so simple we decided to make three kinds.  A classic bacon with salt and pepper, Italian pancetta and our own recipe, a guajillo chile bacon.  The same culprits are involved in the curing process: salt, curing salts and whatever spices you choose to throw on.  Spread your rub on the bacon, grab a 1 or 2 gallon ziploc bag toss it in the bag and throw it in your fridge and a week later you got bacon.  Wipe off the rub and smoke it for that classic smoked bacon taste or just roast it at a low temperature and then slice it up for any number of mouth watering dishes.

(Your humble author and our attempt at pancetta)

Hey Itsa Peperone!

Oh we're on a tear here.  That's what happens when you buy forty pounds of meat.  You have to use it up quick.  Unless you're feeding an army, or get you kicks from binging and purging, forty pounds of meat is a lot to eat before it goes bad.  Well much like our ancestors did, we are curing it all so it can feed us for a while.  The next endeavor was an all beef peperone.  Most people are only familiar with the crap peperone that they find on their local Dominoes Pizza.  Peperone can be just as delectable as it's more famous counterpart, salami.

Again, this is the same process as the Spanish chorizo.  We made our mixture using beef chuck and the final product had a wonderful accent of fennel and a touch of spice.  Interestingly enough, when we sauteed a bit of the mixture to test for seasoning it tasted very similar to a savory Italian sausage rather than all the peperone that I've had over the years, which I suppose bodes well.  The only difference between this and the chorizo is that the first night of drying the peperone should be in a slightly warmer and wetter environment than the one you'll use to dry it.  This to to help facilitate the culturing of the bactoferm.  In a pinch, we used our oven (turned off) accompanied by a container of hot water.  The peperone should be ready in 12-18 days.

 

Spanish Chorizo

  Most of you who know me know that I think sausage is a revelation in culinary arts.  Take the cheapest, most unappetizing parts of the animal, combine it with spices and stuff it back into entrails and your result -  a delectable treat with thousands of variations.  Well, Tom and I have made plenty of fresh sausages before and were fairly confident in our abilities, so we decided to throw an unpredictable element into the most recent batch - bacteria and time.

The basic process of making dry-cured sausage is similar to that of making fresh sausage, with the most notable differences coming from the increase in salt, and the addition of two key ingredients: curing salts (sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate) and bactoferm, which is a live culture that feeds on the sugars within the meat and produces lactic acid that can kill nasty bacteria that could ruin your sausage.

We ground up pork shoulder and mixed it with our spices that included some ground up ancho chillies  for a slightly different take on the Spanish chorizo.  It was a pretty coarse grind, perhaps in retrospect we should've made it finer, but from all my experience with chorizo you should avoid emulsifying your meat as the final product won't have that wonderful texture of dense meat with suspended chunks of glistening fat.. So after putting together our mixture we add the curing salts and the bactoferm dissolved in water and mixed the bad boy together and pumped it through our sausage grinder (you can do this by hand, but the problem is this results in more air pockets in the sausage).

All that was left to do was tie off the sausages and hang the to dry.  Ideally you want to hang them at 60 degrees F and 60-70 percent humidity.  We're hoping that our kitchen pantry will be adequate but obviously this is all a learning process.  The chorizo should be ready in 16-20 days.

In addition, something that is keep to all this dry curing is sanitation.  Any nasty bacteria that might get in will have a perfect environment to fester and ruin the sausage or possibly get you sick if you attempt to eat it.  Both Tom and I have had or fair share of bacteria and parasites from eating bad food during traveling but it's still never fun.  So keep it clean and monitor the sausages.  If they look bad, throw them out...

thus always pork

this will initiate a brilliant endeavor on our parts to document our feats of swine manipulation.