Perfect Capicollo

Sometimes. It just doesnt get better then this.

This is a monster cap off a berkshire from Fred at perth pork.

This guy hung for about 4 months and had a beautiful 5 spice added to the cure and the aroma makes me salivate everytime i smell it.

Using good pork makes a world of difference. The fat in this is incredible. Luckily i have about 40 more still hanging.

Larzo

This is Larzo. Yes i've made this word up. And you know what, im gonna copyright it. Right here, right now. March 24th 2010. Larzo. Blam!(<-kitchen slang)

I've always disliked Lonzino, Lonzo, Lonza, Lomo, cured pork loin.

I've cured it numerous amounts of times and have never really fallen in love with it. Theres always something that has been missing. Its always very blah to me, regardless of the aromatics i've added. What really sold me on my dislike for this cured meat was when i tried some iberico de bellota lomo, it was ok, but it was ridiculously priced at like 250 a kilo.

And then there's Lardo, I love lardo. who doesn't? Well, a lot of people. It breaks my heart when i see pieces of yummy, melty, strips of cured white back fat coming back on a charcuterie plate and into the waste basket. What is it about cured fat that turns some people off? I mean look at our blueberry bison salami, its littered with cubes of fat but people eat that up like msg laced doritos. Perhaps people feel guilty about eating straight fat. I guess i can understand that. Well i cant, but i can try.

So this here Larzo, a cross between cured pork loin and cured back fat, is the answer to my dilemma of the two when cured separately. You have the leanness of pork loin that takes on flavor easily but you have the finish of the Lardo which keeps it moist and offers richness on the tip of your tongue. We dont screw with it much. We dont clean it up, we dont take off the strapping, it comes right off the bone and into the salt. It cures for 14 days and hangs for 3-4 weeks. To do it right, you must weight it during the salting stage so you get a flat compressed brick. It slices well and has the richness of prosciutto, only richer. Do everyone a favour and dont use shitty pork for this. This is only good with the best pork possible. If you can, use whey fed pork. the whey goes straight to the fat and makes it like butter rather then that typical pork fat with a chew. Enjoy!

Pancetta/guanciale

Decided to try something a little different this time around. i like guanciale, but slicing the skinny pressed piece of fat can get annoying. This time i decided to roll it like pancetta and press it. Hopefully it stays nice and tight. 

Boning Prosciutto's

So today we started our day off early again. Alfredo, an artisanal prosciutto maker north of the city invited us up to show us how to debone a prosciutto. He starts his day at 7am. We made it up there by 11 30 :) It was one of the funnest experiences i've had not to mention uber informative. We walked around his curing room as he talked about prosciutto's, how to tell when to cover them in paste, how to spot one starting to rot ( and how to save it, but thats a secret i can not pass on i was told) He also showed us how to deal with prosciutto's when they begin to bloat and how to rest them to release any air that might be locked in. We walked, we smelled, we squeezed and most importantly, we listened. I have a how to video we filmed but I am having problems uploading to my mac. If and when i figure out why its not uploading, i will be sure to post it. 

Here's Colin (current stage, soon to be payed employee) rockin the metal vest. Alfredo said we had to wear them so we dont stab our stomachs. I dont remember a time where i thought the knife would have slipped and stabbed me, perhaps it was a joke, but i enjoyed the feeling of heavy metal plates on me. It fit right in with the medieval theme.

me

Alfredo cleaning off the flour/water paste

All chained up and removing the H-bone

And the press

Prosciutto's salting. Real Italians use Table salt.... Table salt??? what's that?

Alfredo's private stock. He makes these for himself. Lucky guy!

Curing room

The smell was so good in here. 

Noisette Round Two

I really enjoyed the Noisette i made a couple months ago, the only problem is that it went too quickly. So i made a huge batch and screwed around with it in several forms. i had these bladder casings just ligering amonst some salt in the fridge i wanted to use up. I'm not sure if theres a traditional recipe one would use to stuff these with, but pork, roasted hazelnuts and fresh tarragon sounded good at the time. It was my first time using them and it was fun to see how big they stretch out to be. By the end of it i couldn't stop thinking to myself what the heck am i going to slice this on. Either way, it was fun, an experience, and something i needed to educate myself on. They look weird hanging in my fridge and the lining is really thick. It was tough to get the meat really compact so i hope there's minimal gaps between the meat. 

I also borrowed a metel pole from a restaurant i used to work at to hollow out a few pork loins to stuff. This just isnt any 

metal pole its been sharpened on one end to cut through the meat. i slipped the cured pork loin onto the tube just like you would a casing and then piped the farce meat into the hole just like you would a salami. I then wrapped it up in cheesecloth and fermented it for a day then off to the curing fridge. i'm excited to see if it binds well in the interior. 

Pork Belly Pastrami

This is a really nice treat if your like me and have eaten many beef pastrami sandwiches. I do this for my restaurant but dont slice it thin. I generally cut it into big slabs of meaty goodness, score it like you would foie gras and sear it to order. You can follow any pastrami recipe you like so i wont right mine down here. Although i will tell you that i usually up the amount of pickling spice in the brine. 

First you want to start with good porkbelly. I'm not talking about the run of the mill skinny little bellies that look like they went on a fast before being slaughtered. I'm talking about  3 inch thick slabs of fat with a bit of meat marbling the interior.  I am currently using brookdale berkshire and i couldn't be happier with the end product. First you want to brine it for 7 days. I add pink salt to my brine to keep its nice colour, otherwise it ends up oxidizing way too quickly and

 the colour looks like crap when trying to serve it to a customer. After brining, i grind up equal parts black pepper and corriander seed and roll the bellies in this peppery goodness. I then hot smoke for a day and then chill the meat overnight. once chilled, i 'll take a hotel pan and put a rack on it with the bellies on top. I fill the container with water about an inch high and cover with saran wrap and then foil to lock in all that smokey goodness. I'll steam braise the bellies till nice and soft all the way through. It generally takes about 5 hours at 350 degrees. At this point its very very tender so let it cool before you try and slice it. 

Bearsoala

So i received three bear roasts from a friend who got them from a hunter. I traded him restaurant credit for 10 lbs of meat and we made it together. I had no idea what to expect from this meat. It was brought to me frozen and wrapped in butcher paper. i had it sitting in my freezer for a week before we made it. It felt like when my parents would put christmas presents out early and you'd have to wait days before you got to open them and see what was inside. I tried shaking the frozen meat but that didn't really give me any hints as to what was inside. 

The day finally came when it was time to open up this early christmas present. The meat was a deep red with the whitest fat marbling i had ever seen. It looked and smelled as if the bear had just been skinned it was surreal. I didn't know what bear would smell like but when i did take a wiff it was  exactly what i would have thought bear smelled like. It was gamey, but not in a lamb way, not in a bison or deer way either just bear. I had thoughts of it smelling like honey but perhaps thats from watching too many cartoons as a kid. One thing i worried about was whether it would smell like fish or berries, depending on what its diet was prior to its last breath. It would suck to have hints of lake trout in a bear salami. I concluded after many wiffs that it was perfect for curing. Unfortunately there wasn't any big meaty loins for making bearsola but i did manage to salvage a few small pieces. The rest got ground up for salami. I decided to do it in hog casings because i wanted to taste it as soon as possible. Both the salami and bearsola got bear minimal seasonings as i want to taste the bear meat with just the addition of salt, pepper and a little garlic powder. 

I'm very excited about the outcome and will report back as soon as its ready. 

Update - Lonzino

My lonzino turned out perfect... well maybe not perfect as the cocoa didn't really shine in the finished product, but there was the perfect amount of fennel in there. I have another batch of eight going which i plan to do different things to all of them. I plan to try a mole type pressed pork loin which is basically cured in chocolate and salt and then wrapped in a mole flavoured farce and then pressed. the others i'm not sure yet.... still pondering what to do with them so for now they're just in a basic lonzino cure. 

Testina

So the last pigs head that came in had a jowl missing. So Testina was out of the question. So i made guanciale with it and boiled the head for stock which eventually gets used in this recipe. This week i got a fully intact head and just happened to have a friend come into work with me for the day who just happened to be a butcher. So while i cured some other meats he was tackling the pigs head. Now taking everything off the skull in one piece is not as eay as some may think. Scott the butcher did a perfect job except for a couple missed grooves of meat. But he did it pretty quick and he was working for free so i forgave him :) The head went into a brine for a couple days. 

     

Once brined (which isn't a neccessary step) i split the head in 1/2 and halved each jowl to fold it over the other side to balance out the fat content. i did the same thing with the meat. if you have to remove the meat and filet it to make a nice even layer of meat, do so, it wont effect the finished product. I then heavily seasoned the meat with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, a traditional method i was told from a friend named Chris. I let that sit over night and then rolled each 1/2 head up with the rind on the outside and wrapped it in cheesecloth and tied it like a roast as tight as i could. 

I then brought the pigs stock from the other head up to a boil with a bunch of aromatics and lots of carrots as per Chris' recommendation. and poached the head for about 18 hours on a light simmer. 

Once fully cooked, i removed the two roulades and waited till they cooled a bit and then wrapped them tightly in saran wrap poing holes constantly to remove any air holes in the middle of the roll. Two rules here, you can never use too much saran 

wrap and never make too many holes to achieve a perfect roll.

Once fully wrapped, puncture a few last holes and press between two sheet trays with a good amount of weight on it. Let sit for 12 hours in the fridge, unwrap and you should be left with a nice looking testina. If its not perfect dont be too concerned. you turned a whole lot of nothing into somethin'. Slice and season with a bit of olive oil and sea salt and serve with some toasted bread. Yum!

2 Year Investment

So i received 1/2 a pastured Tamworth heritage pig the other week. I split the whole pig with a chef friend and the price was unbelievable for the quality. We bought it from John and Marcia at Blue Haven Farms and the size and colour was amazing. The ham was 35 lbs , 20 once trimmed for prosciutto, needless to say it was massive! It will definately take closer to two years of hanging, if it even makes it that far without spoiling. We will see... I like learning things progressively. So i just wanted to cure this ham with salt and nothing else. Actually, i'm lying. i through a little instacure #2 in last minute after thoughts of this beautiful piece of meat going rotten. Not that cure # 2 will give me complete piece of mind but it will definitely help. 

I used coarse salt. 4% of the weight to be exact. and 1 g instacure #2 per lb of meat. i split the salt and cure mixture into 2/3 and 1/3. I used the larger batch of salt and cure and rubbed it all into the ham. Most of it on the exposed flesh paying special attention in and around the bone as well as on the top. I also rubbed it into the skin but dont be surprised if it just falls right off!

I put the ham into a clean bus pan with a rack underneath so that the hams dont sit in there own brine. i also weighted it 10 kg of weight, in this case, a large can of sauerkraut i bought in quebec. This initial salting and weighting period will run for two weeks. Then i will gently rinse any remaining salt and repeat the process with the smaller amount of salt mixture i reserved and weight for another two weeks. Once thats done, it will go through a fermenting period and then a hanging period.  I'll keep you posted.

Fennel and Cocoa Lonzino

The great thing about coming from a progressive cooking background is that you look at things in different dimensions. My last chef and mentor taught me to look at things in a different light and to always think outside the box. An ingredient wasn't just an ingredient it was more of a playground of endless possibilities. Whether it was a technique, textural contrast or a flavor combination anything was fair game. So when i initially started curing this pork loin, i was thinking traditional lonzino because I have never actually made it despite its simplicity compared to a lot of charcuterie i've made. I wasn't sure whether i was going to hang it o'natural or spice it up with cayenne and paprika. But, I already had cappicollo smothered in that spice mixture so i did not want to duplicate flavors. So, as i was rinsing the cure off after 12 days or so of curing, it reminded me of a suckling pig roast we used to rub in fennel and cocoa nibs amongst other things. Had it been my chef in my shoes, i'm sure he would have had that same moment of clarity and redirect from his initial route. So i toasted off the fennel, ground it, added about the same amount of dutched cocoa, a bit of black pepper, and some corn syrup solids and rubbed it in. I'n excited to taste the finished product. I'm hoping that it will be a nice mixture of floral grassiness from the fennel mingling well with the sweetness of the cocoa. 

Basic Lonzino Cure

3500g pork loin

125g salt

38g sugar

11.4g instacure #2

11.4g black pepper, ground

Horse Breasola

Whenever i talk about horse everyone always looks so surprised as if they are waiting for me to tell them that i am joking. I don't think there are many animals left that are not on someone's plate somewhere in this world. So why should horse be any different? I've eaten seared horse, horse tartar, even raw horse bits as i'm butchering. I've made a batch of horse salami that turned out great, but my favorite of all horse treatments is breasola. Air drying it really brings out the sweetness in this meat, which is very similar to bison i find, only a hell of a lot bigger!!

A typical horse striploin weighs about 9 kilo's, giving you approx. 15lbs of useable meat for breasola with a bit left over to make a terrine or small salami with. The waste isn't bad assuming you take care in cleaning it. i calculated just over 815 grams of waste. at 20 bucks a kilo, it gives me a decent net. I guess the only catch with horse, or any striploin for that matter is that the meat is very soft and it has a lot of little nicks and grooves that are not the best for breasola.

Unlike a round of eye of beef, which is one big solid hunk of meat, the horse striploin is a bit harder to deal with. You'll have to work around the sinew and silver skin within the cut and make sure you break it down strategically. Take your time and envision your end product. I've found that because it isn't firm like a beef roast and because it has so many grooves, it makes it harder to form a perfect cylinder without having a fold in the meat. To fix this, i usually cure, wrap in cheesecloth and then press it on a rack with a weight on it for the first 3 days. The ones that i didn't press that had a little more body to them i left circular. After drying, as i sliced into them there was white mold lines throughout. This wasn't a bad thing ofcourse as it was good mold rather then that bad stuff, but certainly under the wrong conditions, could ruin your product. Again I'm trying to measure my quantities and i guess ill have to wait till the end product to see if certain quantities should be adjusted. I find that if you dont put enough salt and dont leave it in its cure long enough, your meat will still air dry but it will be a little dull in flavor making the wait not so worth while. 

Horse Breasola

15lbs horse striploin

150 gr salt

150 gr sugar

20 gr instacure #2

25 gr black pepper, coarse ground

6 gr fresh thyme, chopped

3 gr cloves, coarse ground

4 gr nutmeg, rasped

15 gr cinnamon sticks, crushed

205 gr dry red wine

30 juniper berries

Make sure you rub this cure in really well. Place in ziplock bags with the red wine and store in the fridge for 10-14 days redistributing the brine every two days. I plan to cure most of this horse in mustard seeds and i will be sure to post as the recipe progresses. With any luck they will look like these in a couple of months. 

Consistency = Success

So today was duck curing day and i'm hoping these will be fully cured come opening night. Ducks are simple. There are a ton of different methods of curing them and i've done it a dozen times but never actually measured the amounts of ingredients i've used. I usually just mix enough confit salt with them and leave them for 7-10 days, rinse them and hang till dry. I always get a good product, but each times been different. 

So heres to consistency, which just happens to be one of the main reasons why restaurants stay in business. hmmm... First I started off with 10 Magret ducks. 7 of them got a regular cure. 2 got 

a dried cherry cure and the last one got a lavender cure. I've never done the cherry or lavender, but i've always thought about bringing some fruity floral notes to a proscuitto. 

           

Confit Salt     

250gr Kosher salt

50 gr Sugar, white fine

45 gr shallots, chopped fine

45 gr parsley, chopped fine

20 gr black pepper, ground

15 gr garlic, chopped fine

5 gr fresh thyme, chopped fine

6 bay leaves

Confit salt is a great thing to have in a kitchen at all times.

Heres what i did.... 

Duck prosciutto 

1 magret duck breast     

25 gr confit salt                                    

3 juniper berries                                

0.9 gr instacure #2

w/ Lavender

1 Magret duck breast

25 gr confit salt

1 gr dried lavender 

0.9 gr instacure #2

w/ Cherries 

1 magret duck breast

12 gr salt

3.5 gr sugar

1.6 gr black pepper

40 gr dried cherries 

0.9 gr instacure #2

Tomorrow i think i will take one of the seven regular duck prosciutto and up the juniper ante and throw in some orange zest. I'll check back in 7 days to see how they are coming along.