Charcuterie Sunday August 31 2008

There's been a whole  lot of preserving and not enough meat curing going on in this blog . So after getting my first round of preserving out of the way, we finally had a charcuterie sunday this past week. Even though most of my cook cronies were hungover from there weekly afterhours binge, they still managed to show up, albeit, some 2-3 hours late, but we still managed to get everything i wanted to done. The day began at 11 am. My first priority was getting the alcohol...these guys dont work for free you know. One by one they trickled in, each one looking worse then the last until there was 4 plus myself. We had a busy day planned. I had most of the meat butchered and ready to go and was just waiting for the casings my buddy Guy was bringing. After a beer and a not so quick catch up, things got underway. I like to tackle days like this like im prepping for a station. Get the big things started first and squeeze in the little things somewhere in between. First we all cleaned up our meat to see where we stood with weigh outs. Everyone was given a sheet of recipes (i don't believe in keeping recipes secret) and began gathering there ingredients while there meat chilled in the freezer. We had a big list including smoked venison, horse bresaola, venison bresaola, beef and dill, soupie, pickled cauliflower, romanesco, roasted peppers, and duck prosciutto. My girlfriend Rita showed up with pizza for the boys and a brief break and  eventually we were on a roll and moving forward. We took turns on the grinder and stuffer and lost some salami makers along the way as they ran out of steam or had girlfriend's to tend with. Rita, the best girlfriend around and new to the kitchen, preserved the peppers and then stuck it out in the pit for a couple hours which at the end of the day is the one job no one wants to be doing for free. Luckily, she enjoyed the use of the spray nozzle, until she too retired to her civvies. Before i knew it, it was almost 5 in the morning and i was still labeling and weighing salami's. I left the kitchen as clean as i could after 17 hours and left the salami's out to ferment in the warm kitchen. Once they lose about 35% of there weight i'll post some recipes.