Roman Bacon: Part 2

The roman bacon was ready.

Unfortunately I had quite the time getting it out of my storage closet.  I have lived in my apartment building for seven years.  I have had a key to my storage closet kicking around solo for seven years.  I have never lost it, or misplaced it, ever.  When do I lose it?  Yeah, that's right when I have a pig cheek hanging from the ceiling.

First, I searched.  Nothing.  Second, I fretted.  That also did nothing.  Third, I posted an ad on craigslist looking for a lock pick.  Again, nothing.  Fourth, I attempted to pick the lock myself from the oh so useful collection of youtube videos on lock picking.  Can you guess? Nothing.  But, as I am attempting to pick the lock, I notice a gap at the top of the closet!  Is it possible?  Will the cheek fit through?  Eureka!  My pig cheek is rescued!

And then my love affair began...

I danced around my kitchen after unwrapping my guanciale, oohing and ahhing.  "My God, you are beautiful!" I exclaimed.  "Oh my Lord, I think you are luscious!"  I ran my fingers over the pork fat and it melted at my touch.  I felt like the poet Petrarch who wrote 366 poems to a woman he had only just glimpsed.

How will I feel once I taste it?

I have big plans for this guanciale.  A small piece is being used in the morning to make breakfast for my brother - it's his birthday.  It will also become pasta carbonara.  Having recently bought locally grown and milled flour I am also making the pasta.  This will be a meal to remember and a post to look out for.  My father might even get a chunk for father's day or at least a meal because I am not sure that he will know what to do with a piece of pig fat.  Subscribe to my blog to learn the fate of my little pig cheek.

"Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music."

  -Angela Monet

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Shonagh writes An Offal Experiment - exploring the guts of food

My Food Library: Odd Bits

I was signed up to volunteer the other day at the Grape Juice Wine Auction with Big Sister's at the Ferrari-Maserati dealership on Burrard.  I've been a Study Buddy with Big Sister's for five years and do whatever I can to help this organization raise money.  Arriving early for set-up I was told that they had enough volunteers so I had an hour to entertain myself before the event started.  What does a food lover do with a free hour when they are at 3rd and Burrard?  Anyone who lives in Vancouver knows that they visit Books to Cooks.

This was no idle visit, however; I knew what I was looking for - a book about offal. 

My experiments with organ meats so far have not gone well.  The internet is useful but not thorough and cobbling together random recipes has resulted in some questionable results (stinky beef kidney, overcooked goat heart, disgusting liver soup, rubber tire pork liver).  Because I'm trying to develop a taste for organ meats, eating bad organ meat is very counter-productive.  I needed a passionate expert to hold my hand and I found her in Jennifer Mclagan.

As soon as I stepped into Books to Cooks I was greeted warmly and within moments was ensconced at the book bar, piles of offal-centred books grew around me.  Being a student I'm very careful about spending my limited budget and after chuckling through a few pages I knew that Odd Bits fit my bill.  Within a few days I had almost finished reading it, bringing it with me on my weekend trip to Vancouver Island.  Who brings a cook book with them to read on vacation?  Guilty as charged and I unabashedly admit to relishing every page.

This book will be an incredibly valuable reference book and source of inspiration (see a future post on turkey neck soup, a delectable and meaty odd bit).  For anyone who is serious about expanding their palate and celebrating every part of the animal, Odd Bits is an essential addition to their food library.

Roman Bacon: Part 1

I first heard about guanciale on Chopped.  It was a secret ingredient and for some reason I decided to look it up.  Oh my goodness!  Luscious pig jowl washed with wine and scented with black pepper and thyme.  This was something I had to try.

The word guanciale comes from 'guancia', which means cheek in Italian.  The jowl is the lower part of the cheek, the part that droops down, all fatty-like.  Mmmmm...  Supposedly the taste of the jowl is intensely porky, I would imagine because it gets a good workout from the pig chewing all day.  I won't know for another couple weeks though, when my guanciale is ready.

To make the guanciale I cobbled together several different recipes (see my reference list down below).  My method relied on sensuality rather than strictness.

1. The first step: purchase the jowl.  I called my local butcher and they brought one in from Gelderman Farms.  It weighed about a pound and a half.  Once I arrived home, I unwrapped the butcher's paper and found a very fatty and very hairy piece of pig cheek.   Hmmm...  What to do with all this hair?  Rather than look it up, I decided that I would tweeze out all of the hairs.  Yeah, tweeze them out.  After tweezing for half an hour and making some but not a whole lot of progress I decided to leave it hairy (see notes).  I figured the salt and sugar and/or final cooking would disintegrate the hair and if not, I would either remove the skin or just eat the hair.

2. The second step: bathe the cheek in wine.  Not being a wine drinker I wasn't sure what kind of wine to buy.  White I decided, because I didn't want the pig flavour overwhelmed or the fat stained burgundy.  I chose the brand to inspire my guanciale process - Barefoot.  Any suggestions for better wines to choose are appreciated.  I massaged half of the bottle into the jowl, taking my time.  The beauty of home cooking, or one of many, is the ability to luxuriate over the process.  There is no head chef barking at me to finish with my cheek already or a customer distracting me with an order.  It's just me and my pig cheek and a bottle of wine on a sunny day in early spring.  Lovely.

3. The third step: cover with cure.  The cure recipes I found contained sugar, salt, thyme, and black pepper.  Normally I like to fiddle around with my spice combinations but not so with my guanciale.  It seemed like the spicing was the essence of the charcuterie, as if I couldn't call it guanciale without using the correct spices.  I used equal portions of salt and sugar, a solid amount of freshly ground black pepper and several sprigs of thyme (picked fresh from my garden).  All of this went into a ceramic dish with the jowl and was popped, covered, into the fridge.  It was supposed to be left for 5-7 days but mine got ten and was flipped half-way through.

4. The fourth step: rinse and hang.  The last step before I eat my cured cheek is to let it hang in a cool spot for at least three weeks.  Oh the patience it takes!  I decided to use my storage closet in the unheated basement of my apartment building.  While it doesn't have the sweet Mediterranean winds blowing through, it is cool and close so it will have to do.  I tied up my pig cheek in cheesecloth with a few extra sprigs of thyme tucked in.

Check back in a few weeks to see what happens or better yet subscribe to my blog!  Thanks for reading!

Notes:

• Learn more about the awesome anti-microbial power of thyme here!
• Since making my first batch of guanciale I have bought Odd Bits by Jennifer McLagan and now know to shave the pig skin with a disposable razor or burn it off with a propane torch.  I will probably shave it because I don't like the idea of taking a torch to my little piece of piggie.

References:

Guanciale
Guanciale, The Magical Roman Bacon
The Art of the Cure
Guanciale from Babbo

Five Spice Duck Pancetta

It was time to play around with charcuterie again.  I have been contemplating making more sausage because I'm out, but I'm in the middle of training for the Spartan Sprint so having pound upon pound of delicious sausage tempting me off my strict diet didn't seem logical.  Ditto for three pounds of pork pancetta.

An innocent duck breast?  That's an entirely different story.  It's small.  And duck fat?  Is that ever a bad thing?  I'm sure it will just make me run faster.  So here is the story of my duck pancetta.

I started with a lone breast from Brome Lake Ducks.  In the future I want to find a locally raised duck but this was what my butcher had so I went with it.  This is the Peking duck variety so it suits my spice combination nicely.  Rather than just use salt, I decided to add a five-spice blend to the mix.

My spice blend is based on a Chinese five-spice adapted to my taste buds.  My background is in aromatherapy and perfuming so I always have that in the back of my mind when balancing my spice blends. 

Five-spice blend

2 ml pink peppercorn - milder than black pepper and a beautiful color!
2 ml cubeb pepper - mix between black pepper and clove, lends a beautiful richness
3 ml fennel seed - gives a gentle anise flavour
2 cloves - I find clove can quickly overwhelm so I just used two buds
2 ml cinnamon - probably cassia rather than cinnamon (that is what commercially sold "cinnamon" tends to be because cassia is cheaper to produce and tastes very similar)

I always toast my spices before grinding.  It refreshes them I've heard so these got a quick toast in a dry skillet and then into my mortar and pestle they went! 

I wish you could smell the toasted spices being ground.  Because of my background in aromatherapy I am very scent-driven, scent-delighted and I almost swooned when the perfume of the spices first drifted up to my nose.

The duck breast was rinsed, plucked (just a few little feather ends remained) and scored.  The kosher salt (use a good amount) was mixed with about a teaspoon of the spice mixture and packed into a ceramic bowl with the breast.  I felt quite strongly about using ceramic versus a metal or plastic container.  It just seemed more respectful to the duck.

And then into the fridge it went and I waited.

According to Michael Ruhlman, the breast only needs 24 hours of salt curing before being hung up to dry.  Once the curing period was over, I rubbed the remaining spice mixture into the breast gently, and left it in the fridge to dry out for a week.

I don't know if the difference between the breasts is obvious.  It dried out quite a bit, which I think is a good thing.  In the recipe it was hung up to dry in a cool spot but I don't have a cool spot so I decided to keep it in the fridge like I did with the pig pancetta.  That probably led to it drying out more than it should have but I've decided to use the entire breast in a braised dish so it should turn out fine.  I can't wait to try my first attempt at 5-spice duck pancetta.

Notes

• I will probably try a different (or no) spice mixture next time
• This really opens up the possibilities of what I can use to make pancetta...
• Speaking of pancetta, I just looked it up and the word originates from "paunch" or "pancia" in Italian, so I wonder if a cut of meat should be from the belly in order to be called pancetta?   

References

"pancetta, n.". OED Online. March 2012. Oxford University Press. 9 April 2012 <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/240770?redirectedFrom=pancetta>.

Duck Pancetta
Chinese Five Spice

My first batch of pancetta

Yay!  Here it is!  My first ever finished batch of pancetta!  I put ground black pepper and bay leaf in the middle and then rolled it up.

 People who make pancetta are probably thinking - that is a tiny roll.  You are correct.  After struggling to roll the darn thing up, I gave up, cut it in half and did two mini-rolls.  What can I say I have very small hands and they are a bit weak.  

This is just a small segment of it.  There were three pounds in total.  I just forgot to take a picture before chopping it up and freezing it in smaller amounts.

I am enjoying my pancetta tremendously.  Mostly I am cubing it and using it to flavour braised greens and brussel sprouts - that's my dish of the moment.  I'm also slicing it thinly though and eating it on sandwiches.  It's just so sweet and spicy and delicious.  I love the addition of the bay leaf.  Yummy and might I add a great gift for the holiday season.

My first attempt at pancetta...

 Mmmm... a fresh slab of pig belly...  3 pounds worth

 The first coating of salt

 Doused in brown sugar, salt, coriander, black pepper, lemon peel and maybe other things...  I can't quite remember.

After its first week of curing.  I cut off a slab to give it a taste test before drying it.  Sweet, herby, quite delicious. 

It is now rolled in two pieces and sitting in my fridge giving up its moisture.  I will post more pictures once it is finished.