I have been a bad blogger lately, lazy, uninspired, spring fevered, full of excuses and reasons to not post... Well, that time is over. I finally connected with a local farmer who will be able to provide me with a steady supply of farm raised oinker so that I can bring you... wait for it...
wait for it....
Charcuterie the blog... I am doing it. I am shooting for the moon. I am officially announcing that I will be preparing every recipe in Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn's fabulous book. Ironically enough MR just had an interesting post that references a Wall Street Journal article about "cook-through" blogs. I have actually been teasing you guys with this plan for a while now... but it is official. I am doing it. I have not been in contact with the man himself and maybe some day I will, but for now I will just start at the beginning and go from there.
The first post in this series is actually here Confit de Canard -Day 1 & 2. It seems out of order but I started out with the duck confit because it was one of MR's inspirations and he spends more that a few sentences extolling the virtues of a properly cured, fat poached, and aged duck.
I will be posting the final duck confit post soon...
The next post in the series is Bacon, were I buy pork belly, borrow pink salt, and bind pig up in a roulade (bondage pig... sounds like a '70s punk band, but trust me when I tell you, Do NOT Google that phrase... <shiver>).
Some of these post will be either multi-post or long in the making due to the length of time it takes some of the recipes to complete. Prosciutto, for example can take up to a year to age.
I will try to post at least one Charcuterie post per week... Some might run to every two weeks. Budgetary constraints and all that jazz. (Unless there is someone out there that would like to sponsor me... no ads on this blog for the foreseeable future)
So now that I have blathered on about what I am going to do, let me offer a little proof of what I have started to do.
Looking forward to making everything... and you guys reading about it.
Cheers
Chris
4 comments:
I've thought of this and now that you are doing it, I can go in peace with somebody else stuck with the dirty work.
I've done most of the sausages, bacon and at this point the second of two dry cured hams (proscuitto duh Pomona http://blog.charcuteire.com/2008/06/01/prosciutto-duh-pomona.aspx
You will need a meat grinder, a sausage stuffer, cold and hot smokers and something to hold a ham for at least five months below 60 F and at 60-70% humidity.
Do give your self plenty of time and feel free to ask questions, you should have my e-mail or just post on my blog.
I have some Himalayan pink sea salt. I can give you my source if you want. Glad to see you posting again.
i think you'll need an official taster...
Nice blog! Just discovered it surfing around, I think I found it on NTSC's blog.
BTW "aka Tennessee sucks in the gourmet department", Himalayan pink sea salt is different from pink curing salt. I ordered my curing salt from butcher-packer.com, it was REALLY cheap. Of course it came 2 days AFTER the day I needed it to make my own corned beef.
I loved that you used regular ol lard for the duck confit, I might go that route too since it is much easier to find & cheaper to boot.
Good luck with this, now I have another "by the book" blog to follow!
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