Culatello or the King of Prosciutto

If culatello is the king of prosciutto, what is the queen?

This was the first question that struck me as I started to read and learn about culatello.

After just a little thinking and reading, the answer became obvious: Jamon Iberico de Bellota.  A Spanish variety of cured, dried and aged ham.  So what makes Jamon Iberico de Bellota the queen?

Let's start with the pig, a gorgeous black color.  The pig version of the little black dress.  The thigh itself is large with fat winding its way through: Can you think of a more feminine image than a luscious thigh?  The process itself is simple, some would say almost self-contained, there's none of this dicing and slicing and wrapping in a bladder.  It is the thigh and salt, like a woman with character, nothing else is needed.  And of course, it's pricey.  Jamon Iberico de Bellota, the queen of cured ham.

Unfortunately, for this post I am playing with the king.  For several reasons.  He's smaller.  The culatello cut is only part of the back leg, the rump if you like, or the ass if you're feeling a bit spiteful.  It is deboned making it far more manageable, a puppet king one could say.  For my first attempt at a prosciutto, small and manageable seemed appropriate (and less wasteful if it all goes to heck).

I trotted up to my butcher, where I originally heard about culatello, to pick up my delightful little rump. They even managed to bring in a bladder for me, and a mighty big bladder it is.  Once I arrived home I unwrapped my meat to find it tied beautifully, unfortunately, I had to cut it apart because the skin was still attached and Ruhlman clearly says in his new book Salumi the meat should be skinless.

Just to brag for a moment, I am getting darn good at skinning pig meat.  The key is a sharp knife and a watchful eye.  You can see my directions here.

Once the meat hunk was skinned, I tied it back up in a rather unartful fashion.  But it was my first time and your first time is always a bit sloppy.  Once it was tied, I took several large handfuls of salt and coated the meat, massaging it in.  Then into the fridge it went for just over a week.

After a week and a quick bath in some white wine, it was ready for wrapping and hanging.  I soaked my pig bladder in hot water for several hours until it was nice and soft.  Then I cut it open, slipped the meat hunk inside and sewed it up.

Funny story.  I needed a trussing needle and yelled downstairs to my mom (it's Christmas, I'm at the 'rents and that's where I'm hanging my culatello) to see if she had one.  She did.  But it was my late Grandpa's.  For some reason, while he was in his old folks home he asked my mom to bring him a large needle.  What did he use it for?  None of us know...

Anyways, to tie the culatello, make several loops around it lengthwise and then twist twine horizontally through the loops.  Think of it as a net for your meat.  I hung mine in a cleaned out storage closet in my parents basement.  There is also rosemary, thyme and lavender hanging so my culatello feels like it is in Italy.

My parents live in North Vancouver and our climate is Coastal Rainforest meaning the air is quite humid so I am just going to leave the space as is with no extra sources of moisture.

Check back in six months when it should be ready.

The Verdict

The process is fun...  What will it taste like?

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Shonagh explores the guts of food in An Offal Experiment.

Eating a Pig's Foot

As I packed my freezer full of basil cubes, I found two pig's feet.  Being rather large, they took up a fair amount of space and I decided that it was time to pull them out of the deep freeze.  But what on earth was I to do with two piggy feet?  Looking at the leg end of the limb, they looked quite meaty, and somehow the blogosphere took me to an asian pork hock recipe.  Pork hock, pig foot, close enough.  Braising?  Always a good thing.  Asian flavours?  Ditto.

I was set.

My day started early with work in the morning.  Once I got home, around 10:30am, I set off to my local Asian market to gather a few ingredients not in my pantry.  I had everything but the coriander root, the black cardamom, the white peppercorns, the cane sugar and the young coconut.  That tells you how many spices this recipe calls for.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find any coriander root.

The black cardamom is very different from green cardamom, a spice I am familiar with.  At first, I thought to just use the green, but once I smelled the black, I realized it was necessary.  The two are not at all alike.  Black cardamom has a strong medicinal smell, with hints of eucalyptus and spice.  It's intense.  The white peppercorn is brighter than its black counterpart, with hints of citrus.  And the young coconut water is just beautiful, fresh and juicy smelling, far subtler than coconut milk.  It's also quite fun hacking into the coconut to release the water!

Directions

1) This is not a recipe to rush or skip steps.  Pork feet need time and moisture and heat to bring out their beauty.  If any food item is an ugly duckling, it is a pig's foot.  Start by boiling your feet in water and salt for three minutes.  This gets rid of impurities or another way of looking at it, washes your feet very well. As they boil, skim off any foamy material that might rise to the top of your pot.

2) After three minutes in the boiling foot bath, dump the contents into a colander and let your feet drain.  You are about to fry them in hot oil and want the skin as dry as possible to avoid splattering.  As the feet are drying, heat up the oil in a heavy bottomed pot or wok.  Take one of the feet and delicately dip a toe into the oil, if it doesn't make a loud frying noise then your oil isn't hot enough.  Let it heat up more.  Once your oil is nice and hot, fry all sides of your pig feet so that they are a crisp golden brown.  A side benefit to the deep frying is whatever remaining hair might be on the pig is fried to bits!  Please see exhibit b to your left.

3) Once your pig bits are fried, pull them out and drain all but a tablespoon of oil out of your pot.  Be careful, hot oil is hot!  Now add your ginger and garlic and fry until fragrant - this shouldn't take long.  Then add in all your spices with the exception of the white peppercorns and fry for another minute or so.  I would only use one black cardamom pod because they are quite intense.  The smell as you are add the spices is unbelievably delicious!  Star anise is one of my favorites and the black cardamom is darkly fascinating.  I'm not quite ready to say that I love it but perhaps with time.

Finally add the rest of the ingredients with the exception of the coriander leaves (cilantro), bring to a boil and add the pork feet back in.  Whoo!  You are almost done.

4) Turn the whole thing down to low, put the lid on and let it brew for as long as possible.  Pork feet are full of tendons and collagen so need low and slow heat to break this all down.  If you rush them you will have a rubbery gross mess.  The recipe calls for four hours of cooking.  I had a nice long bike ride that night ending at 8:30pm so my feet had about seven hours of cooking.

I arrived home starving and tired and a big pot of pork feet sounded quite delicious.  The meat was so soft that it actually fell off the bones (there are many) as I tried to pull the feet out of the pot.  Once I finished fishing all the bits and pieces out I let them cool a little and then took all the bones out.  I only have one thing to say - pig feet are jelly-like and fatty and full of collagen.  While I'm not quite at a point where I can slurp on a whole foot, once it is pulled apart and sitting like a luscious pile of fat on beautiful steamed rice I am pretty happy to eat it all down.

The verdict: I am excited to try pig feet again in the future.  This recipe didn't sell me 100% just because of the black cardamom.  It had such a strong menthol, medicinal flavour that it really overwhelmed the other spices.  If I was going to try this recipe again, I might try it with just one bulb of cardamom or with none.

As a side note - my thrifty Scot self also really likes this recipe because my butcher only charged two bucks a foot.  How can you argue with that?

As well, I fried the pig skin before eating it.  Flabby skin just doesn't sound or feel or taste appealing to me whereas fried pig skin is one of my favourite things.  It could be my favorite thing, besides sweet potato.  So yeah.  I recommend doing that.  I would love to hear about other pig feet experiences.  Do you have a favorite way of cooking with them?  Is braised the best choice?  Do they just seem totally disgusting to you?  Tell me all!

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Shonagh explores the guts of food in An Offal Experiment.

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

Sheep Tongue with Chorizo

The real offal experiment continues... with a sheep tongue.

My attempt with the brain was fascinating but not incredibly tasty.  Will the tongue taste better?  If looks are any indication then the answer is a resounding no!  Good god a tongue is an ugly piece of meat.  None of the silkiness of a prime cut.  No.  It's all ugly.  It's also a process.

To start a tongue needs to be brined - this is a familiar first step with organ meat.  I used a combination of sugar, salt and spices.  At that point, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with my tongue or I would have put a mexican spin on my spice mixture.  Instead I threw in a couple bay leaves, some black peppercorns, and some coriander.  To keep the tongue submerged I put a pretty blue cup on it.  And there is sat stewing for a few days.

The next step is to poach the tongue until tender using lots and lots of aromatics.  At this point I still wasn't sure about where my tongue would end up so I used the spices that Jennifer recommends in Odd Bits - onion, five spice, bay leaves, and black peppercorns.  I mean how this tongue had any tongue flavour left is not something I can explain.  It was loaded with spices.

Once the tongue was nice and soft, I poked it with a skewer, I removed it from the poaching liquid and very quickly peeled the now very bumpy outer layer off.  The process of peeling the tongue isn't too hard but is easiest when the tongue is hot so get on your rubber gloves and start tugging.

The after shot doesn't look much more appetizing does it?

I wasn't looking forward to eating the tongue until I remembered the secret to expanding my palate.  For some reason, early in my life, I became obsessed with learning to like a wide variety of foods.  The process is quite simple:

1. Start with small amounts cut into small pieces combined with food you absolutely love, love, love.  It is best if you cut the pieces of the food you don't like into a similar size as the pieces you love.  I call this step tricking yourself.
2. Practice step one for a long period of time, until you firmly associate the new food item with deliciousness.  At this point start decreasing the yummy food item and increasing the food you are hopefully starting to like at this point.
3. Continue to eat the new food item covered in yummy sauces.  By this point you should be starting to semi-enjoy the new food item and are well on your way to adding a new food to your diet.

In the case of sheep's tongue I decided to bring out the big gun - chorizo sausage.  Does anything taste bad when it's fried up with chorizo?  I would venture to say no.

Ingredients

• Onion - sliced thinly
• Jalapeno - sliced thinly
• Chorizo sausage - cut into small pieces
• Chili powder - 1 tablespoon
• Oil - for frying
• Poached and peeled sheep's tongue - cut into small pieces
• Salt to taste

Directions

1.  Put the pan on medium heat and give it time to warm up (about five minutes). Pour about a tablespoon of oil into the pan and add the onion.  Saute until golden brown.
2. Add the chili powder and continue cooking for a few minutes.  Now add the jalapeno peppers and chorizo sausage.  Normally when I cook chorizo I like to render out some of the fat.  Not when I'm eating it with tongue.  I wanted this to be rich and fatty and delicious.
3. Once the chorizo is almost cooked through, turn the heat down a bit and add the tongue.  Heat until the tongue is hot and the chorizo is done.  Mmmm... Chorizo sausage and tongue.

I served my chorizo and tongue fry-up on steamed rice.  For toppings I used a squirt of lime juice, some chopped cilantro and slices of avocado.  I love spice so I also added a drizzle of sriacha sauce. 

The Verdict

Well much like the brain experiment, the tongue didn't do it for me, even with the chorizo sausage.  Having said that I did eat it all, which is saying something I suppose.  The texture is quite smooth and the flavour wasn't overly strong.  I was amazed though that with all the aromatics and spices infused into the tongue, it still tasted like, well, tongue. 

Notes

• It is really easy to cut chorizo up with kitchen scissors.  Try it and you'll never go back to a knife.

Sheep Brain Fritters

For my first recipe out of Odd Bits, I decided to bust it open, literally.  

The author, Jennifer Mclagan, mentioned that a sheep's head was quite fiercesome looking.  When my butcher brought it out from the back, held right about head level, I'll admit that it looked quite hideous.  The eyeballs bulged from the naked flesh, teeth bared, tongue limp having fallen through the bottom of the jaw.  He wrapped it up gently so the eyeballs didn't break - a sheep's head with a broken eyeball could be even more gruesome if it were possible - threw in a couple pig's feet and off I walked home.

Once I unwrapped it I realized that the brain had not been removed.  Pleased, I opened up my Odd Bits recipe book to find something yummy to make.  Sheep brain fritters it was (page 42), and here is my story.

1) The first step obviously is to get the brain out.  This is no easy task and not for the faint of heart.  I pulled out my trusty hacksaw and sawed the skull open where it seemed thinnest.  I also aimed to the edges of the brain so that when my saw broke through it would do little damage to the brain itself.

The key to getting the brain out of the skull unharmed is to think about where it attaches to head.  On the side closest to the back you will find the brain stem.  The brain stem is attached to the spinal cord so if you gently grab the brain and pull from the stem then it should come out easily.  Don't use too much pressure and if there is someone in your household with small hands try to cajole them into the task.  Don't be surprised if it's a hard sell.

Here is my lovely little brain.  If you look at the lower right corner of the brain you might see a white area.  That seems to be where the sheep or lamb had their head drilled.  I am not sure why this happened but if you notice any damage to the skull then be sure to check the brain for skull fragments.  I found several large chunks.  No one wants to eat sheep skull. 

2) Once this first task is over give yourself a little pat on the back for a job done.  Then steel up your courage (and maybe stomach) and move on to brain prep!  If you are serious about getting to know offal then I would recommend purchasing Julia's book, which is chock full of recipes and preparation tips.  However, in essence what you are doing now is getting the brain ready to cook.  This starts with soaking the brains in salted water from six hours to overnight.  Soaking helps get rid of the remaining blood.  Once the brain is soaked, split it open and check for more skull fragments.

Look at how tiny this brain is!  It's pretty cute.  Once the brain is soaked and split it is time to attempt to peel off the outer membrane.  I couldn't get my membrane off without seriously desecrating my little brain so I opted to leave it on.  The recipe I am using calls for coating and then frying the brain so it doesn't really matter if the membrane is on or off.  Now the brain is ready for poaching.

I used a broth similar to the one described in Odd Bits (page 21).  Basically I threw in a whole bunch of spices, simmered it for a while and then strained it.  I poached my brain in this broth for about five minutes because it was quite small.  The brain should firm up when you poach it, but it will still be quite soft.  The softness is the beauty of the brain.

Once it is poached you can either use it right away in a recipe or cool it and store it in the cooled broth for several days.  I recommend using it right away because who wants to eat brain that is a few days old?

3) Whoo!  On to actually cooking this luscious little pile of wobbling grey matter!  The lobes, now of a decent firmness need to be sliced approximately half-an-inch thick.

The brain slices are then coated in a cheese, egg and chive mixture (see ingredients below) and fried until golden brown.  Specific directions are taken from Odd Bits with permission from the author.

Ingredients

3 eggs
1/2 cup Gruyere
1/4 cup Parmesan
2 tbsp finely chopped chives
Finely grated zest of 1 orange
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 cup lard

Directions

1. Put a baking tray or heat proof plate in an oven preheated to 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Whisk the eggs, then add the rest of the ingredients except the lard and the cornstarch.
3. Toss the brain slices in cornstarch to coat and then add them to the batter and stir so that all of the brain slices are coated in the batter.
4. Using a heavy frying pan, melt the lard over medium heat.  The lard is ready when a drop of batter in the oil sizzles and rises to the surface.  Each little piece of brain should be cooked for approximately 3 minutes on each side.  Don't put too many slices in at one time (see note below).  Once they are finished cooking, place them on the baking tray or plate in the oven and eat as soon as you can.

I paired my brain fritters with a light salad - green lettuce, tomato, avocado, orange segments, olive oil and a splash of white wine vinegar.  I enjoyed the salad tremendously.

The brain.  Oh the brain.  Did I love it?  Honestly.  No.  I didn't love it.  It was okay.  I almost ate the entire brain so that's pretty good for a first timer.  I didn't taste much cheese so that didn't help.  I also found that the batter didn't get crispy enough.  If I were going to try again I would mix it up a bit, maybe more salt, something spicy?  Maybe jalapeno poppers stuffed with brain?  That might be nice.  The texture was beautiful and silky but there was a distinct flavour that I am going to have to allow to grow on me.

Notes

• Whenever you fry food, only a few pieces should be cooked at a time so that the oil doesn't cool down too much.  If food is fried in too-cool oil the batter absorbs too much oil rather than having a nice crisp outside.  The best idea is to use a thermometer to ensure that the oil stays hot enough.

References

• Odd Bits by Jennifer Mclagan