Peter Pan-cetta

Garlic Cloves
Pink Salt (Nitrite)
Kosher Salt
Dark Brown Sugar
Black Pepper
Juniper Berries (crushed with the bottom of a small sauté pan)
Bay Leaves
Fresh Ground Nutmeg
Fresh Thyme
Pork Belly

These ten ingredients are the alchemic start to the wondrous substance referred to by the Italians as Pancetta. From the Italian for belly: pancia. Belly people, as in pork. Or more commonly BACON. "Gimme what's in tha bag..."

Some of you might have guessed that this is a Charcuterie post. For those of you who didn't figure it out... It is.
Pancetta is the second recipe in the book and sorry for the time it took to get it to you... Pancetta is not a quick recipe like, say like Fennel-Cured Salmon, that take around 48 hours. Pancetta takes 7 days to cure and 3 weeks to dry. Some recipes I looked at had drying times upwards of 3 months.
This belly started it's inexorable journey to bacondom at the same time as the country/fresh bacon that was in the first official post from the masterwork that is Charcuterie... (Too gushing? Too wordy? But it's a really good book.)
As a matter of fact, the meat came from the same 14 1/4lbs belly as the fresh bacon.

There are 2 major differences between the 2 types of bacon.

1: The fresh bacon was smoked after it was cured. The pancetta was dried and not smoked.
2: There was a lot more to the cure. Fresh bacon only had 3 cure ingredients whereas the pancetta cure has 9.

Hard to see in this picture but that's 8 out of 9. I forgot the thyme until last minute.(Remember, no exact quantities cause that would be plagiarism, and thieving. Want to know, buy the book.)

The first part is pretty simple. Mix the cure ingredients together so that the pink salt is evenly distributed. Then give your belly a massage rubbing the cure mixture all over. The goal here is to get as even a coating of cure as possible on the entire belly.

See, simple... Next comes the second hardest part of the process. Wrestling the belly into the zip top bag without scraping all the cure off or getting it all over yourself. Hindsight being 20/20 and all that, next time I might try to enlist an assistant for this part. There is also a definite drawback to getting cure in the grooves of the zipper, damn things won't close if there is cure blocking the nifty zipping action...  

Tick Tock... and through the miracle of internet time dilation, 7 days pass. 7 days of waiting patiently for the various chemical and physical reactions to take place, flipping the bag every other day so the cure stays evenly distributed. "...(a process called overhauling)..." Observe, a direct quote from the book, page 45 in fact. Proof I really am following the book.

Check the belly by poking it with your finger... If it's uniformly firm and not squishy, it is ready to go. If still squishy let it sit for an additional day or two.

What do we do now that the 7 days have past and the belly is not squishy? Time to roll it duuude... This, my friends, is the single hardest task in the whole process.

After rinsing all the cure off of the newly christened pancetta, you will be left with a slightly stiff and slippery chunk of meat, that you have to roll up very tightly. This is so not an easy chore. I would rate it somewhere between giving a cat a pill and trying to convince a 3 year old that spinach is yummy. I have to confess that due to the battle that transpired, I was not able to free my hands to snap a shot of the pancetta mid-roll.

After trimming the belly to square it up, I sprinkled the meat side with cracked pepper and rolled it as tight as I could, tying it as I went. I spaced out the butchers twine about every 1 - to - 2 inches.

I wrapped it in cheese cloth and prepared for another wait. This time a mere 3 weeks needed to transpire before I would be able to show you this!

Let me just say the it taste as good as it looks.

The first thing I made with it after it had dried was farfalle alla carbonara. (Expect a post in a day or so)

I also cooked the trimmings on the grill while smoking the fresh bacon. Let me just say again as I did in that first post... Grilled bacon rawks!

If you can find yourself a farmer to supply the belly and lay hands on a copy of the book, I really recommend making this. It's actually quite simple. Just takes a little patience.

Next up from the book. Gaunciale.

Cheer

Chris