September 7, 2010

Sloan Bresaola, Etc.

I'm back at it over at JustPigs and I've just started my own Bresaola. I know that Jamie and Jim recently tried a new recipe. Since this is my first time trying Bresaola, I'm sticking to the Ruhlman/Polcyn recipe in Charcuterie. As I was preparing this one I remembered that Wayne had mentioned making Bresaola soaked in wine. Did we ever hear about/see the results? It sounded like a good idea, and I would be curious about trying it in the future.

Additionally, I've been cooking a bit of offal. I made a very good grilled lamb's heart salad. (more pictures when you click through)

I've also been experimenting with lamb's tongues in salads, stews and terrines.

We have two other meaty projects planned: Beef Heart Pastrami and Mortadella. I have half a pig on order and am going to order a bladder casing this week from Butcher Packer. I'll let you know once we get started with those.

Lastly, because I know how you people feel about pork porn, here's a pig's foot we recently used in a huge pot of soup. First we boiled it with veggies and white beans, then we put a southwestern style rub on it and bbq'd it, finally we dropped it back in the soup and cooked it just a little more to meld all the flavors.

July 25, 2010

Rosen Bresaola - Take 2

For some time now, an eye of round has, in the cold darkness of my freezer, been beckoning me to aid in its transformation into bresaola. The last time I tried to guide the fate of a similar piece of meat, the metamorphosis was less than stellar. I sought advice from virtual and human sources, and used the recipe from the Ruhlman/Polcyn book as my starting point. The product was fine, but the drying was slow and uneven, and it just didn't taste that great. So, a year-and-a-half later, I'm trying again.

[Interesting aside: I got berated by one local meat luminary -- Paul Canales at Olivetto -- for taking the advice of another local expert -- Scott Brennan at Cafe Rouge -- to cure/dry the meat in a beef bung cap. This just goes to show that there's no right answer on this stuff, although there are some very strong opinions].

This time I'm using the eye of round again, but using a recipe from Ryan Farr (yet another local meat master that chimed in -- kindly I might add -- on my first attempt 18 months ago). The recipe is from Marissa Guggiana's upcoming book Primal Cuts (see: http://welcomebooks.com/primalcuts/), which Marissa was kind enough to share with me. Rather than spelling the whole recipe out, I'll make a plug for you to buy Marrissa's book (which you can get a very good sense from at: http://welcomebooks.com/primalcuts/lookinside.html).

One interesting difference to note between Ryan's recipe and Polcyn's is that the former calls for using sodium nitrite (pink salt/curing salt #1) while the latter calls for using sodium nitrate (curing salt #2). Given the relatively long cure of the meat (around a month), I'd expect the use of #2, but Ryan's more an expert than I, so I'll have to ask him the next time I see him (if he's not mobbed by greasy, meat worshippers). Or, perhaps he'll just comment on this post and tell us why. Ryan, what's the skinny? Or, perhaps, Mr. Polcyn, you'd like to chime in?

Anyhoo, enough text. Here are a few pictures of the start of the process: trimming the meat, making the dry rub/cure (including winging it on making up my own berbere spice, called for in Ryan's recipe), rubbing half the cure, and bagging it in the fridge for a week (to be flipped daily, then cleaned off, and the other half the cure applied, followed by another week in the fridge, then off to the curing chamber for around a month). More posts later.

Click here to download:

rosen-bresaola-take-2-MdXZhZAqboVhNHgk5YCf.zip (2626 KB)

November 13, 2009

Update on the curing

Hey guys,

Here is an update on the progress of my Tuscans and some other projects. My curing chamber has been holding pretty steady at about 65 degrees with a RH of between 64% and 70%. I took them out to give em a cleaning yesterday. I had some very minor, potentially bad mold spots on them. All is well now. Next to them, you can see a batch of saucisson secs which appear to be doing very well. If my untrained eye might say so. I added a couple of of tbsp's of brandy to the meat, so I am very anxious to taste these. They're about two weeks old. I'm guessing one more week and We're good to go. I also have a Bresaola about to finish its second week in the fridge. I soaked the meat in wine for about 12 hours before applying the cure. It smells awesome. After this week, it has 3 weeks of hanging out to do.

I'm not sure of the next class date, but I'm hoping to be able to bring all of these and some other goodies that I've been working on, for all of us to feast on. I'm especially excited for the Bresaola. Jamie, I dont know if you have a paticular item that you wanted to work on in the next class, but I'd like to let it be known that I'm Koo koo for Copa!

Cheers!

Wayne