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?

----

Shonagh explores the guts of food in An Offal Experiment.

EPIC Christmas Eve Brunch 2012

Every year I host a Christmas Eve Brunch in my little apartment for a big group of mostly family with a few friends.  The numbers often get up into the late teens, early twenties so it is definitely a packed house.  My favorite part of this tradition (now in its fifth year) is choosing the theme.  I was struggling a bit with a theme this year, nothing was really standing out, that is until I was half-way through my trip to Ecuador!


Of course!  An Ecuadorian Christmas Eve Brunch!

Here's the plan:

Appetizer

Green mango slices with lime, salt, and pepper.  This was one of my favorite snack foods in Ecuador.  Green or very light yellow mango slices are packed into a little bag and sprinkled with salt and pepper.  Very refreshing and a wonderful way to wake up your palate in the morning!

Drinks

Cafe con leche.  Made with my Ecuadorian roasted coffee topped with some delicious whipped cream and freshly ground canela.  I brought canela home from Mercado Central but in the hub-bub of almost 20 people in my apartment I forgot to put it out.  I put one of my cousins on latte duty and she made cows milk and soy milk lattes for my guests. 

Main

Double-fried green bananas.  How could I not serve these delicious morning treats?  They were a breakfast staple on the farm.  Making them is simple.  The green banana is cut into 2-inch chunks and fried until golden.  The fried chunks are then smashed and fried again.  Keep them in the oven until you are ready to serve breakfast.

Queso blanco.  I love making cheese and this cheese is quite simple.  We also ate this fresh cheese on the farm as the neighbor next door made it.  While mine doesn't have the same depth of flavour (if only I had a cow outside my door to milk), it was quite yummy.

Fruit salad.  Watermelon, apple, banana, and papaya.  An Ecuadorian essential.

Avocado chunks.

Salsa.  A touch of culantro, red onion, tomato paste, chile to drizzle over the cheese...  Mmmm.

And that was my Ecuadorian-inspired EPIC Christmas Eve Brunch!  It was wonderful to share the food traditions I learned on the farm with my own family.

The Verdict

Like every Christmas Eve Brunch it is a packed affair.  My apartment is a decent size but once I fit, er, cram, 18 people in, it feels pretty small.  I really appreciate that my family humours me every year, shows up and eats me out of house and home.  The consensus this year was that the plantains were delicious.  A bunch of people in my family had never tried plantains before and I was happy to introduce them.  They also loved the queso blanco.  As well, my coffee was a hit!  It doesn't taste like the coffee we have here, but I don't know why.  Perhaps it's the roasting?  Or the bean is different?  Whatever the case, smelling it instantly brought me back to Ecuador...  Another EPIC Christmas Eve Brunch over, which leaves me with the question - what will next years theme be???

Up Next?  Culatello or the King of Prosciutto

----

Shonagh explores the guts of food in An Offal Experiment.

Spicy Smoked Pancetta & Lemon Coriander Pancetta

Every Christmas all of the cousins in my family do a Christmas gift exchange.  This year I got my cousin Hamish.  He's the perfect person to gift with his love of all things meaty.  So what was I going to get him?  Hmmm, ponder, ponder, ponder.  Ahhhh, yes.  Bacon.  No, pancetta.  No, smoked pancetta!  The best of both worlds!  

I decided on two types of pancetta.  The first would be flavoured and the second would be smoked and flavoured.  And guess what?  I got to build a smoker.  Oh yes.  Read on...

The first pancetta cured in salt and sugar, diced preserved lemon, toasted coriander and thyme.  I let it sit in the cure for a week, the water slowly seeping out as the salt and lemon worked their way into the belly.  It got a little bath to rinse off the salt and sugar before I grated fresh lemon peel straight onto the belly and then rubbed it with toasted and ground coriander.  Into the drying closet it went.

The second pancetta cured in salt and sugar, hot flaked red pepper and one clove of garlic.  It sat with the other belly, also being massaged and flipped every couple days.  After rinsing, it got another dusting with hot pepper flakes then it was time for smoking.  But I have no smoker!  What's a girl to do?  In my case, I decided to build my own and it worked like a hot damn.

I started with a kettle barbecue.  The little black one that people bring down to the beach.  There are four vent holes out of the top of the barbecue and to that I attached a ProFlex Dryer Vent Duct, with tape.  Oh yeah.  Hi tech.  I cut the dryer vent duct in half, which was the hardest part, and attached the other end to the barbecue grill with twist ties.  I suspended the grill between the backs of two chairs and then on top of the chairs I placed an oven rack.  Voila!  An ultra cold smoker!

I'm not sure what temperature a cold smoker is at normally but I wanted mine as cold as possible because I didn't use any pink curing salt.  How perfect that it is winter in Vancouver right now so it is about refrigerator temperature outside.  My little belly sat on the oven rack above the dryer vent for five hours and I didn't have to worry about food safety at all!

For the smoke itself, I used mesquite.  To light a fire, I bought Lokkii bricks from Canadian Tire and then put handfuls of damp mesquite chips on top of the Lokkii every 20 minutes or so.  The package said that each large charcoal chunk lasted for two hours but mine lasted longer than five hours.  I just stopped after five hours because it was late and I wanted to go to bed.

The belly took on a beautiful color, which I greatly admired as I hustled it down into the drying closet.  Now when I say drying closet, I really mean my unheated storage locker.  And let me tell you, it is smelling smoky.  Sorry other tenants!

After two weeks of drying both pancettas were given a tin foil blanket and passed off to my cousin.

The Verdict

I have no idea!  My cousin is getting four pounds of pancetta and I hope he enjoys it...  Maybe he'll comment on my blog!

Up Next?  My EPIC Christmas Eve Brunch 2012!

----

Shonagh explores the guts of food in An Offal Experiment.

Making Queso Blanco

One thing I really wanted to try was making fresh cheese like I ate in Ecuador.  While it's probably a pale comparison (I don't have a cow outside my door nor a woman whose been making it since childhood), it seems like a relatively easy process.  As well, I am using queso blanco in my Ecuadorian-themed EPIC Christmas Eve brunch this year and because it is one of the stars of the meal, I thought I should try it out beforehand.

The process is super simple and basically foolproof.  I didn't even use a thermometer and it's only my second time experimenting with cheese!

Directions

1. Start with fresh milk.  I am going to do a little thinking about where to source my milk for the EPIC brunch.  I might see if the farmer's market has anything to tempt me or I might just go organic.  The point is to buy milk that will make a beautiful cheese so buying the best quality milk you can afford is a good route to go.

2. Heat 2 litres of milk up until it starts to boil and as it's heating, add a heaping tablespoon of salt.  I didn't let my milk get to a roiling boil and the cheese turned out fine but you might want to let it get quite bubbly.  I noticed that my leftover whey was quite cloudy in comparison to other pictures I saw online.  Just sayin'.

3. Once the milk starts to boil, add three tablespoons of white vinegar or another acid and turn the heat down to low.  I'm going to use lemon juice for my brunch, but I didn't have any on hand for today's experiment.

4. Some recipes mention stirring and some mention sitting so do what you feel like.  I stirred my vinegar-milk concoction for about ten minutes and then let it sit a bit.  That worked well for me.

5. Once the whey (the leftover liquid) looks fairly clear, either scoop the curds out or dump the whole mess into a colander/strainer lined with cheesecloth. If you want to keep the whey then make sure the colander is in a bowl.  There aren't a whole lot of uses for the acidulated whey but you can use it for baking, making oatmeal, creating sports drinks, and watering acid loving plants such as roses and rhododendrons.  Waste not, want not!

6. I let my curds sit in the cheesecloth for about ten minutes before scooping out some fresh cheese.  You can put a weight on the cheesecloth to compress the cheese further but fresh off the stove is quite delicious.

I sprinkled mine with salt, which made it absolutely perfect!

The Verdict

What can I say?  I bought a croissant to enjoy with my fresh cheese and honestly they were the perfect combination.  A crusty baguette would be wonderful or a rustic loaf.  The recipe is so simple and so delicious that anyone who has ever even wondered about making cheese should try making this one.




Up Next? Smoked Spicy Pancetta & Lemon Coriander Pancetta

----

Shonagh explores the guts of food in An Offal Experiment.

Gingerbread House Cupcakes!!!

I was desperate to make a gingerbread house this year.  Probably because last Christmas I took part in a gingerbread competition (we did an Occupy the North Pole theme) and the competition this year was canceled!  What a let down!  So I decided to go solo and came up with tiny gingerbread houses on cupcakes.  Totally cute in my mind and I have to say they turned out not too bad.  Let me know what you think.

Before I begin?  Where did gingerbread come from?  This is always an interesting question because the beginnings of any foodstuff is murky.  Gingerbread is no exception.  It all supposedly started in Medieval Europe in the 11th century with spiced ginger cake.  Sometimes the cake was hard and sometimes it was soft.  The ginger itself probably came from Asia and I don't know if they have their own variety of ginger cake.  Germany built on the popularity of gingerbread and to this day there are little towns who specialize in gingerbread creations.  And then the Grimm brothers happened.  Hansel and Gretel came to life in their writing and the candy-covered gingerbread house became a mainstay in the popular imagination.

Now on to mine...

First of all I need to confess that I didn't make gingerbread.  I made ginger spiced sugar cookies.  To make the cookies, I followed a Sweetopia recipe.  Just a side note: What an awesome site!  The things that woman can do with icing!  The only change I made is cutting the recipe in half and only using 1ml of baking powder so the cookies didn't puff up.  The fabulous thing about sugar cookie dough is that it's hard to overwork so you can roll it and re-roll it and re-roll it.

I also used her royal icing recipe but really it's just icing sugar with some water and cream of tartar.  I don't use the meringue powder but you might want to if you are making something large and architectural.

Directions

1. Roll out the dough nice and thin.  Using templates, cut out the required number of pieces.  I needed 24 side walls, 24 roofs, and 24 peaked walls.  Now that I have tried this out, I recommend making them as small as manageably possible.  Mine were small but once baked, they did get bigger.


2. Let them cool and then decorate.  I put doors on the peaked walls and tiny windows on the side walls.  I tried making tiny wreaths but my icing point wasn't fine enough - that would be really cute doncha think?  The roofs got the special treatment:

• First, a rim of white icing filled with white icing.  
• Second, an outer rim of colored icing with silver balls embedded.  These need to be placed with tweezers.
• Third, cut a thin slice off the side of the roof that will connect with the other half.  

3. Let everything dry.  Don't rush this step because you will just smear all your beautiful handiwork.  Put two lines of icing on the outer edges on the inside of one peaked wall.  Take two side walls (the ones with windows) and attach them with the windows facing out.  The walls will be wobbly so let them dry a little bit and then adjust so the icing is a bit stickier.  Using two lines of icing on the other peaked wall attach it to the other side of the two side walls.  Hold the whole thing together for at least 30 seconds and then set it aside.  Let it dry.  

4. Put icing on the top edges of the peaked wall and on the inside edge of the roof pieces.  Place the roof pieces on and hold in place for 20 seconds.  Fill the middle gap with icing and then hold the roof in place again.  Let it dry for a while.

5. Draw a line of matching icing along the centre line of the roof and place a silver bead at either end.  Let it dry completely.

6. I decided to add an extra touch - a tiny Christmas tree out of white chocolate.  A little surprise for the person who eats the cupcake.  To make the tree, draw four or five circles on a piece of paper, each one progressively smaller.  Tape the piece of paper down and then cover it with a piece of saran wrap, also taped down.  Melt and color some white chocolate and put into a piping bag.  

Pipe jagged shapes into each circle - don't worry about how they look too much because the overall effect will be awesome.  For the last, smallest piece, I placed a silver ball on top with tweezers.  Once the pieces are dry, put a dot of chocolate on top of the largest piece and place the next size up on top.  Continue until the tree is assembled.  Be careful, the pieces are delicate.  

7. Whoo!  What a process.  I am not going to say how many hours this took me, but suffice to say, many.  Now make some cupcakes (or do this earlier, whenever works for you).  I used a cake mix because I was spending so much time on the other elements.  I added cinnamon, nutmeg and clove for some kick.  Let them cool and then cut out the centre.  I filled the cupcakes with coconut jam, which is just a cup of coconut milk and a cup of sugar cooked down like a dulce de leche.  I also added a squirt of lemon juice and a pinch of baking soda.  Really yummy...

8. Now it is time for the cupcake icing.  I made a coconut buttercream with my leftover coconut jam (about 2 tbsp), 2 tbsp of salted butter, about a cup of icing sugar and enough coconut cream to make it spreadable.  Once this was all whipped together I added about half a cup of shredded coconut.  

Do you understand now why I used cake mix???

To assemble everything:

• Take the filled cupcake and ice it with the coconut buttercream icing (I dipped the cupcake in shredded coconut, just an option).
• Delicately place a white chocolate tree in the centre of the cupcake, with a dot of royal icing if you want.
• Ice the bottom of the house with lots of white royal icing.  Globbing it on makes it look like banked snow once the house is in place.
• Gently place the house over the Christmas tree and press down firmly.
• You're done!
• Who am I kidding?  You'd have to be nuts to do this recipe!  

The Verdict

Whoa so yummy!  The house got ooh's and aah's to no end.  Totally worth the effort.  I also entered my little fairy house into a cupcake competition over at Movita Beaucoup.  It will be posted tomorrow just in case you want to vote for me, ahem, hint. hint.

Up next?  Making Queso Blanco.

----

Shonagh explores the guts of food in An Offal Experiment.

Cambozola-Stuffed, Bacon-Wrapped Wild Black Dates

Aka the perfect holiday appetizer.

So how did I find these little beauties?  I think I've mentioned before that I started a cleaning company to pay for school.  I was at a client's house the other morning and we got to chatting.  Both being food lovers, we often trade recipes and good shops and general food chitter chatter.  This morning I was telling her about my recent bacon-makin' and she immediately seized on the opportunity to let me try "the most delicious thing I've ever eaten."  Seriously.  Unbelievably.  Delicious.

And so simple.  And so delicious.


The secret is to find the perfect ingredients.

I chose wild black dates from Ayoub's dried fruits and nuts on Denman.  If you live in Vancouver and haven't taken a visit to Ayoub's yet then I urge you to go.  Yes, urge.  Simply for the giant, ornate pewter containers that the nuts and fruits sit in, gorgeous.  He roasts the nuts himself and you can just tell that he takes what he does seriously.  I love food people like that and I love to support them.  So buy your dates from him.

The cambozola I purchased from Les Amis du Fromage - their Hastings location.  I've been wanting to check out this location and what a perfect opportunity.  The cheese lady recommended Fourme d'Ambert, a french cow's milk cheese.  It melted beautifully.

I am using my own bacon.  Salty, smoky deliciousness.

Directions

1) Cook the bacon to a nice level of doneness.  You want the bacon cooked through but still soft enough to wrap around the date and cheese.

2) As the bacon is cooking, cut a slit in the dates and pull the seed out.  Take a little chunk of cheese and stuff it into the date.  Take a piece of bacon and wrap it around the date - secure in place with toothpicks.

3) As this point you can either pop the delicious cheesy datey packages into the oven at 400 degrees until the cheese starts to ooze out or you can pop them in the fridge until you want to use them.

You know they're done when the cheese is melty and bubbly.

The Verdict

What a perfect holiday appetizer!  They are easy to make, can be made ahead of time, use cheese and bacon and are absolutely delicious!  I've served these on two separate occasions now and both times they were adored.

----

Shonagh explores the guts of food in An Offal Experiment.

Chicken Foot Soup

When I returned home to Vancouver from Ecuador, fall was in full swing.  As those who live on the Northern Wet Coast know, this means rain and chilliness.  I don't mind either because they inspire cooking and nesting - two of my favorite activities.

I was contemplating the cooking portion of this equation one night and decided to take some inspiration from Ecuador, and make a chicken foot soup.  As I mentioned in a previous post, Juan, the owner of the farm, loves chicken feet.  I've never actually eaten a chickens foot and decided that if he loved them that much, I should really see what they're all about.

Chicken feet are my new favorite thing (I know, besides all of my other favorite things).  But seriously, they are a forgotten little piece of offal and I will forget you no more little feet.  The feet themselves are full of soft tendon and delicate chicken skin.  The experience of eating them is fun, with lots of sucking on bones and pulling joints apart.  And the texture, the texture.  The broth of your soup will be silky and luscious if you add just one chicken foot, let alone thirteen like mine had.

And my thrifty Scottish side:  This recipe made her happy.  Only $1.36 for the 13 aforementioned chicken feet.  Damn that is a deal.

I also decided to try another veggie that I discovered in Ecuador - a yuca root.  I'd seen these brown roots in the grocery store up here but never tried one.  Why?  I'm not sure as I am usually very adventurous.  It might be its color and potato-like character, not a big fan of starchy veggies.  But yuca, especially in soup, is also quite delicious and has a wonderful texture.  So here is my Chicken Foot Soup recipe, a great way to warm up on a cold fall night.


Ingredients:

• Package of chicken feet (about a dozen feet)
• 1 large yuca root, cubed
• 2 medium sized carrots, cut into soup-sized chunks
• 2 celery stalks, cut into soup-sized chunks
• 1/2 cube of chicken boullion
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 medium onion, cubed
• Water as needed
• Salt and hot sauce to taste
• Oil for sauteeing

Directions:

1) Turn your oven on to 375 degrees and pop your chicken feet into a roasting pan.  Roast until golden, approximately 45 minutes.  The roasting is to help develop the flavour of the soup once the feet are added.

2) As your feet are roasting, heat up a tablespoon of cooking oil in a heavy bottomed pot (your soup pot), cube the onion and saute until translucent.  Add the bay leaves, the boullion cube, the roasted feet and enough water to cover.  Let simmer for twenty minutes.

3) While the broth simmers, cut the hard outer layer off the yuca and cut into similar-sized pieces.  There is a woody string that runs down the centre of the yuca.  If you can take that out then do so, but actually it has a nice effect of slowing down the eating process as you enjoy your soup.

Side note: In the West (and I am guilty) we often equate efficiency with goodness.  Remove the bones, take out the bay leaves, anything inedible should not be on the plate.  While this definitely makes eating easier, I think it can, at times, reduce the pleasure of slowly and mindfully picking through a meal.  Eating chicken foot soup is an exercise in patience (and greasy fingers) and I found that having to slow down and pull the woody yuca core out of my mouth really added to the mindfulness of the meal.  Just a thought.

4) Approximately half an hour away from dinner time, add the yuca chunks.  They turn translucent when cooked so are kind of like a built-in veggie timer.  After the yuca have cooked for approximately 15 minutes, add the carrots and then after 5 minutes add the celery.  Turn the temperature to low-medium, put a lid on and let the whole mess bubble away until it is time for dinner or the yuca are translucent.

5) Before serving, adjust for seasoning.  I like to add a couple squirts of hot sauce for good measure.

The verdict:

Deliciously unctuous from the cartilageouness of the chicken feet.  Other than that?  As delicious as only a bowl of homemade chicken soup can be!

----

Shonagh explores the guts of food in An Offal Experiment.