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

Great Balls of Fire

"Here, you have to try this..." she said sliding a sliver of mango across the cutting board. It was topped with a lurid, almost pornographically red sauce. Just a couple of little dots of the stuff, but I knew—oh yes I knew—that in those few small dots of color existed pain... If you weren't careful. But I trusted my host, wrangled the slippery piece of fruit from the board and popped it in my mouth.

Amazing! The mango was juicy and sweet with that slightly funny mango aftertaste, but this time somehow more mango than the un-garnished chunk I had just robbed from the cutting board. The heat of the sauce "woke up" the mango. I was enlightened, just a little bit.

So I am sitting in a sardine can airplane a couple weeks later on my way home, when out of the clear blue, BANG!!! Mango Sriracha Ice Cream... No shit. My brain thought that up... I thought it was freakin insane, but I was hooked on the idea.

I didn't write down any quantities while I was concocting but I will do better next time and post an accurate recipe.

I filleted 4 ripe mangos and rough chopped the resulting flesh and chucked it into a pot with 2 tbsp of sugar. The pot then went over medium high heat until it start to sizzle a bit, basically a sauté. I reduced the heat to a simmer and cook hell out of it until it reduced by at least a third and everything is very soft. Since I am guessing at a time for this post I would say 20 minutes or so.

The next step was to puree the fruit into, well puree. I also added 1/2 cup of cream and 1 cup of milk. More simmering, then "DING" you have about 2 1/2 to 3 cups of mango milk that need to be strained.

You lose about 2/3 to 1 cup of solids. You could leave this in, but I think it makes for a stringy mixture...

This is not stringy...

My end result was 2 cups of mango mixture ready to add to a custard style ice cream base.

Pretty standard mix, or at least my version of a standard mix. Less eggs than normally called for.

1 whole egg
1 egg yoke
1 1/2 cups milk (I didn't use more cream because my mango mix was already so creamy)
1/4 cup sugar

Heat the milk in a pot to just simmering, you don't want to scald it. While the milk is heating mix the egg and yoke in a bowl with the sugar... beat the hell out of this mixture until it starts to thicken (I'll take pictures next time.)
Temper the egg mix with the hot milk, adding little bits at a time while whisking. I added a tbsp at a time until I had doubled the volume of liquid in the bowl... If you do this too quickly you will get scrambled eggs. Add the tempered mix into the hot milk and stir gently until the entire pot starts to thicken. It's gonna be like a thin custard or pudding.

Chill everything down so it can be stored in the fridge until ready to freeze... I used an ice bath.

Everything in the fridge over night for a through chilling.

The next day I mixed the ice cream base and mango mix together and then had to figure out how much sriracha to add. I did little test batches of the mango puree with various amounts of sriracha.

The one thing I couldn't get around is how raw sriracha tastes... It's really quite harsh. The solution??? Cook it.

2 tbsp of the chili sauce mixed with 1 tbsp of sugar to make what truly looked like a chili sauce glaze after about 5 minutes cook time. (I didn't get a picture, it was cooking too fast to stop and snap one.)

Once I had, or thought I had, an acceptable ratio of chili to mango, I poured the final mix into my super handy ice cream maker. The batches are small but the freezing is fast... 20 - 30 minutes for ice cream ready to serve soft or put in the freezer to firm up.

Now all I needed was someone to experiment on taste it. I got my chance last week when I had dinner with my dad and stepmother.

This is what I served.

The sauce is a basic blackberry puree. 1 quart of blackberries and enough sugar to make it sweet, (sugar quantity depends on the berries) boiled, strained of the seeds and chilled.

Reactions were, as expected, a little delayed due to the creep up factor of the sriracha. It's a little hit in the back of the throat. Lots of mmmmm's and ahhhh's and in general fawning praise, which is to be expected from parental units but I think it was honest reactions not parental pandering. A success on that night.

I also had a couple of culinary professionals evaluate this concoction. The reviews there were mixed... One chef said point blank that he didn't care much for tropical fruit, so that review was a bust. The other guy really like the texture but is a purist about flavor, so the mix of mango and chili was not really something he liked. The pastry chef at this local eatery agreed to give it a review when I made another batch. I would like a dessert persons opinion.

My final thoughts...
The sriracha might not be the best chili sauce to use for an ice cream because of the savory elements built into that sauce. I might try it with a really strong pepper jelly next time.
In the end I liked the flavor and the heat working together.

I will try this again with better recipe notes.

Cheers

Chris

All's shell that end's shell

About 25 years ago I had my first raw oyster. It was not pleasant. In general, up to that point I had enjoyed oysters prepared in various ways, fried, stewed, casseroled, but not naked. Little did I know that the tub of raw oysters  my mother had procured to concoct an oyster casserole for the Christmas Eve dinner, was not the same critter as the Bullhead canned oysters to which I was accustomed. These, unlike the canned variety, were uncooked. I popped a cold, slimy, ovoid of shellfish into my mouth and was immediately aware that something was amiss. This was not the pleasant liver textured, nugget of intense flavor I was used to, but an alien creature, cold, slightly gritty, and mostly tasting of salt water. Why did people eat these things? Ewwwhhk. I would spend the next 25 or so years avoiding raw bars and raw sampler plates. Until recently.

Some of you are aware of my admiration for Anthony Bourdain. No so much as a chef, but as someone that communicates a passion for food in a way that really hits home for me. So it was with no small amount of envy that I read his description of his first oyster, "at a witless age 9...".

"I took it in my hand, tilted the shell back into my mouth as instructed by the now beaming Monsieur Saint-Jour and with one bite and a slurp, wolfed it down. It tasted of seawater ... of brine and flesh ... and somehow ... of the future.

Everything was different now. Everything.

I'd not only survived -- I'd enjoyed.

... The genie was out of the bottle. My life as a cook, and as a chef, had begun.

Food had power."

I had not enjoyed... I had nearly urked. How had what he eaten been so different from what I had eaten. Besides the obvious difference in freshness. Turns out that would be key. Freshness is absolutely the key to oysters on the 1/2...

To that end I went searching for fresh. I even went so far as to tell my sad story to one of the fish mongers at Whole Foods. He took down my name and number, promising to call when the next shipment arrived. That's pretty fresh for Nashville. Unless you can fork out the dough to have them  flown in...

Fast forward 2 weeks. I stop by Whole Foods to pick up a few things and to enquire about the state of oyster shipments. A different fish monger this time, assures me that there had indeed been deliveries of bi-valves since I had been in last, and that yes I was still on the call list and he was terribly sorry that no one had called. Determined to fulfill his customer service mandate he offered me a free dozen on the next shipment. I was happy to accept.

But I would thwarted in my plans to have fresh oysters... 3 additional weeks pasted and while stopping in on my way to a Memorial Day party to grab strawberries and cream, I head back to the fish counter to give someone what for. I spoke with fish monger number 1 and he remembered me after looking in "the book" and seeing his own hand writing. There was not however a note about the free dozen. He did however offer me a serious deal on a case. An entire case for 17 bucks, approximately 25 cents per oyster, given a count of 70 per case.

I now had fresh oysters and a shiny new shucking knife - and a party to go to where there was most likely not a place to store a box of mollusks. A 2.99 white foam beer cooler from a gas station and a bag of ice fixed that issue.

I had a nice time at the party, I offered fresh shucked oysters to any and all who wanted to try them. I didn't have many takers. But that's where I had my first decent (but not wonderful) raw oyster. I wasn't overly impressed but I wasn't grossed out either. I came to the conclusion that I would give the next raw bar I found myself at a try.

I have since shared a dozen in two different restaurants, in two different states. I think I understand now what Bourdain was talking about. I had a clue about fresh...

So now after all that chatter about my first time failure and mid thirties redemption with oysters, I get to the final point of this post... After the Memorial Day party I still had the lions share of a case of oysters to content with...

So I set about to shucking... I counted about 70 critters needing pried from their mother of pearl homes, which means I actually got a better deal that I had figured, seeing as nearly 2 dozen had been shucked at the party (most of them cooked)

I ended up with nearly a quart of the little snots, and a few decent shell inflicted cuts on my left hand.

One of my favorite dishes growing up was oyster stew. So simple, 1 can of Bullhead oysters, 1 can of whole milk, 2 tablespoons of butter, and enough pepper to turn the whole mixture black...

I wanted to try a fresher version, so I started out with about an ounce of un-smoked bacon in a saucier. I rendered the bacon for about 5 minutes then added a little butter.

Next came the oysters. 8 or so, just over 1/2 a cup.

A pinch of salt, and 8 turns of my pepper mill, 1 tsp chopped flat leaf parley and a tsp of minced tarragon simmered in 1 and 1/2 cups of whole milk for about 15 minutes.

More pepper added to the bowl makes this a bit of an ugly plating - but the flavor was killer.

For now I think I will leave the shucking to professionals and stick to cooking oyster when at home. But I can say with pride that I didn't let on bad experience keep me from learning to really enjoy a creature many refer to a snot on a shell...

Cheers

Chris

No rest for the wicked

It's late or early, depends on how you view the clock. For me it's late... It's late and I can't sleep. The pillows are too soft, the bed is too hard, I need a drink of water - I can't shut down my brain. That's the hard one.

What's got me all riled up you ask... Politics, Religion, work life, social life or lack there of? D - None of the above...

What's got me all twisted in knots tonight is the realization that while I really love food, love to eat, what I love more is the process. Turning raw pork belly into bacon - or asparagus, butter and lemon into something that made my father say "WOW!" - hearing a friend "mmmmm" over black walnut cherry ice cream. More than eating, I love making... It's always been more fun to cook for others. To feed people.

I have that desire or disease to pull a "Buford", pack up my shit and head to Tuscany, meet Dario and the Maestro, eat some steak. But sadly I don't think I have the huevos to do something so radical. I have gotten kinda comfortable with my life. Maybe that's my problem. Why I can't sleep...

I have always claimed that I didn't want to be a culinary professional. Maybe I have been lying to myself. I love to feed people.

Maybe my ADD affected brain just gets bored to easily and cooking is one of those things that you can never totally master. You might be able to master a method, but you will never master all the variations.

Now that I paddled down that steam of consciousness, maybe I can sleep - or I might just lie here thinking about the "Possibilities".

Don't that just mess with your head.

Night all

Chris

Confit de Canard - Final Service

Finding an adventurous taster is sometimes a daunting task. Food allergies, dietary restrictions, picky eaters, and uneducated pallets, all things you have to contend with when trying to find someone to give you a cage match brutal review of some dish you sent hours fussing over. I'm lucky... I found at least one taster that doesn't twitch at words like kidney, liver or gizzard. Willing to submit to my attempts at culinary voodoo. She said "My heart is breaking over how salty this is... you worked so hard."  and indeed I had but I wouldn't have been happy if she had smiled at me and lied "It's wonderful...". Especially since I was eating the same chokingly salty prep of duck confit.

Yes folks, my Duck Confit was for the most part a failure. I say most part because buried deep in the heart of the thigh meat was a nugget of meat that was not like a salt lick. That one bite for me made up for the rest of the duck. It gave me a hint of what duck confit could be. Just salty enough, perfumed with the bay leaf, garlic, and cloves, melt in your mouth tender, lick you fingers good. Hell, lick your entire hand good.

If you read the two previous post in this series, Day 1-2, Day 3-4, you are aware of the time it takes to prep this dish. The final plating is done by crisping up the skin either on the stove top or in an oven.

My lovely taster granted me the use of her oven, broiler cranked up on high. I set the tray as high as it would go, and let the oven get rippin hot. While the oven was preheating I helped finish a mango, arugula salad. I also dropped two orders of Lemon Asparagus.(first posted here).

After a few minutes of preheating, the oven was ready and in went the duck. A few minutes later, as I was trimming the flesh from a ripe mango, for the salad, I caught a flash of light out of the corner of my eye.... What? Fire? Yep. Shit... The duck fat was kicking up and splattering on the broiler elements and creating quick little flashes of orange light as it incinerated into duck smoke. (Which actually smelled quite nice).

I moved the oven rack down a level, killed the power and left the duck to finish cooking in the cooling oven, while the salad and asparagus finished. My host turned on the commercial kitchen sized vent hood on, and sucked out the smoke in a matter of a couple minutes.

I imagine if you could seal off the kitchen entrances (3 of them), you could probably use the vent to create a NASA vacuum chamber for space suit testing... I am so jealous.

We plated the duck on the asparagus with the salad on the side. It was very pretty.

Let me just warn you... If you cook duck in this manner and want to make pron with it, you better do it quick. The duck is all moist and glistening right out of the oven, but within a couple of minutes, it goes a little dull, not so shiny. This in no way affects the flavor. I have a feeling that those pictures of in foodie magazines are primped and spritzed  and mostly cold when the shutter was clicked.  I would also like to say that the preceding paragraph is not in any way an indictment of my host taster's photography skills, just a warning... Take pictures of duck quick as you can.

The Lemon Asparagus got thumbs up and the duck thumbs down from my volunteer taster.  The salad was killer but I can't claim that one even though I helped

Even thought it was a failure this time, I will be trying the confit again. I learned a lot as I usually do when trying something like this, and I still have 2 breast to turn into duck rillettes.

I recommend trying your hand at duck confit, but then again I recommend trying all the recipes I post.

Cheers

Chris

Bacon - A 3 part exposé - Film at 11

Being on the road is a good way to be patient when making something like bacon. You can't poke and prod curing meat over a distance 430 miles in person. You have to do it by proxy. In this instance the person tending my pups obliged me in turning the belly on Humpday. But I am jumping ahead... A lot ahead.

Bacon:
Wiki says - a cut of meat taken from the sides, belly, or back of a pig that has been cured, smoked, or both.
Websters says - the back and sides of the hog, salted and dried or smoked, usually sliced thin and fried for food.
I says - one of the most versatile meat products on the planet, and not overly complicated to make.

I followed the recipe from a Charcuterie mostly too the letter. I diverge at the end of the process. Don't worry I share the details

The first thing I had to have to make-a da bacon was uncured pork belly. Not as easy to find as you might imagine. After a couple weeks of procrastination and online searching, I was finally able to procure a fine belly from Danny, proprietor of DW Farms in Pulaski TN. I called him during the week and he agreed to bring a selection of bellies of various sizes for me to evaluate. Like I have a clue about pork bellies...

I picked the big one. A little over 14 pounds. Danny had it in a cooler, frozen for the trip from his farm to the Saturday CSA location he has at a Nashville restaurant, where he also provides pig, albeit on a larger scale.

I took my plastic wrapped belly and put in my cooler for the much shorter trip home. Maniacal laughter rang out as I drove the 8 miles.

14 pounds of frozen pig does not thaw quickly, and I didn't want to damage the meat in any way so, I followed the old advise to thaw in the refrigerator. Overnight fridge thawing might work for a 12 ounce steak but not so much for this much meat. It probably didn't help that the fridge in question is extra cold. All told it was 4 days to thaw the pork, but once it was ready so was I...
NOT...! no pink salt (sodium nitrite with pink coloring added to distinguish it from table salt). Luckily for me, I was having lunch soon with a friend who just happened to be sitting on a stash of the pink stuff. She floated me 75mg, which will be paid back in the form of ready to cook bacon. Now I had pork and pink and a couple hours to get started.

The recipe calls for 1/4 cup of "Basic Cure", which I had to produce using pink salt, kosher salt and sugar.

I am not going to post the exact proportions and here's why... I didn't write the book and if I post everything you need to know to execute the recipe then I am basically thieving from Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn, which would be BAD. Want the recipe??? Go buy the book, it's worth it. Back to the cure.

Salt - Kosher, Sugar - white, Pink Salt - well it's ummm pink.

Mix until... mixed? How about uniformly pale pink. Not too hard so far.

The next step in this little bacon makin venture, was to deal with the belly. It was finally thawed and ready to be divided and trimmed and in general fussed over.

TADA!

For a little perspective, it's sitting on a half sheet tray. Lotta meat. Enough for 2 recipes... Stay turned.

I portioned the belly into 3 roughly equal portions.

I picked one to reserve for that other project I mentioned and proceeded to apply the cure to the remainder. 1/4 cup per flitch (that's what you call a side of un-sliced bacon. Seriously... You can't make this stuff up.)

Within moments of applying the cure, I started to see it in action. Moisture was already being drawn out of the meat.

Now I am caught up with myself and the start of this post.

The hardest part of a project like this for me, is the wait... This time I had help being patient. I had to spend the week in Charlotte working. I asked my step-brother, who was kindly attending my pooches for the week, to flip the enormous 3 gallon zip top bags, holding the future bacon, on Wednesday.

Upon my arrival home Friday evening, I was pleased to find firm flesh in the bags. MR advises that it should only take week to cure a belly but not all belly are created equal and a thicker belly might take longer to cure. Firm flesh means competed cure, squishy flesh means not so much completed.

Mine seemed fine. Next steps, rinse, pat dry and cook.

This is where I diverge. Country bacon is best smoked in my opinion, and considering that my smoker is not a cold smokers it seemed an ideal method to cook the nascent bacon to 150° as directed. To that end I gathered up the necessary tools and headed out into the backyard.

The next 2 pictures are what I will now refer to as my Bacon Meez.

Rinsed belly, and probe thermometer, ever so sun dappled.

Hickory chips, soaked in water for the better part of an hour.

Bacon Meez ready, I lit up the fire box on my grill/smoker, and after a vigorous cleaning of the grates, I placed the belly in the path of the smoke.

Again, I am forced to wait while bacon transforms one more time. How long... Well if you do it in a 200° oven like the book says, then about 2 hours. Seeing as the temperature control on a charcoal fired grill/smoker is less that pin point accurate, I would estimate that it took twice the recipes stated time, but that's okay with me, I got to hang with my dawgs. No really... after a week away form home I was ready for some pooch time.

So what does 4 hours in the smoker get you? This...

Have you ever had grilled bacon, really fresh grilled bacon, thick cut fresh grilled bacon? Oh god... It's...

Grilled Bacon for pete's sake!!! do I need to say anything more!?

On that subject, I don't think so, but there is a final step. The newly smoked bacon needs to chill. I recommend stashing it in the fridge and going to dinner.

Later when you are back in your kitchen you can slice off a rasher or 3 and cook em up to see if you can give Oscar Meyer a run for their money.

I can hardly wait for a truly perfect tomato to pair with this bacon for the ultimate in BLT joy.

I don't know what else to say after that particular bit of food pron... Scandalous! and yummy.

The next recipe in the book is pancetta...

Coming soon, to a computer screen near you.

Cheers

Chris

That's it man, game over man, gameover!

What - the - hell - was - I - thinking???

Where did I get the bright idea to tell the Restaurant Manager and  Executive Chef of Rooster's Wood Fired Kitchen about this blog? I guess I just couldn't help myself... Like watching a train wreck...

It all started back in March when I had a wonderful meal at the restaurant in question. I wrote a review and it became my very first post for this blog. Effectively that review/post started this blog. So when Laura Lee, the manager, approached me tonight and it was obvious that she remembered me after nearly 4 months, I was more than a little impressed. She asked me how I had been and I lost control of my brain... and tongue... 'Blurt' is a good word for what occurred next. I told her about writing the review and how it was partial inspiration for the blog, and what I was doing with it. Imagine my chagrin when she said she wanted to check it out. But I kept my cool and said something on the order of "cool" with only a slight crack in my voice, panic welling up in the pit of my stomach... After a little more very polite conversation Laura Lee left me to my very tasty cream of mushroom soup with truffle oil.

My waiter, (whose name I never really did catch, sorry dude) brought my charcuterie sampler, comprised of pork rillettes, bresaola, cured duck, Serrano ham and speck. The rillettes, bresaola, and duck ham were house made and really really good. I asked the waiter if he knew what spice the bresaola was with and he confessed he didn't but would find out. He walked about 10 feet to Ramon the executive chef and asked on my behalf. I imagine the my surprise when Ramon came over to talk to me himself and he also recognized me just like Laura Lee did. He even remembered what I had for dinner. I was again done in... I started to babble about the blog and my charcuterie and smoked leg of lamb... I wonder how much of a dork I sounded like. I must not have made too much of an ass of myself because Ramon and I talked for a while about food and charcuterie and the restaurant world. It was really cool... and he wanted to see the blog too... bugger!

All told I spent 2 or so hours at Rooster's watching the cooks and chefs handle the first dinner rush, eating wonderful food and talking to staff. It was a kewl dinner. I even ordered the mac & cheese. I got to find out what cheese they use in the mac... Sweeet

I even did something I don't do often when on the road, I brought leftovers back to the hotel...

 

Clock wise from the top left Serrano, bresaola, rillettes, speck and in the middle the mac & cheese.

This has kinda turned into another review... So final thoughts:
Only had one creative criticism, the cream of mushroom was a little flat. On a scale of 1-10 it was an 8. It just needed something to brighten it up a little. On whole it still gets high marks for service, decor, and food.

Roosters will remain on my favorites list and is still number one in Charlotte.

If you make it to or live in Charlotte, go to Rooster's. Go a lot. Take bunches of friends.

Cheers

Chris

PS to Laura Lee and Ramon if you read this or the original post... The stools are only uncomfortable after an extended period of time, which I will gladly endure again the next time I am in Charlotte.

C.

Food Network has a terrorist as a host???

In a shear case of WTF!!!, Dunkin' Donuts has pulled an online ad featuring Rachel Ray because she wore a black and white scarf that could be mistaken for a kaffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian garment and some people might think she is a terrorist sympathizer. There are even some "analyst" on an entertainment news show that suggested that she should have paid more attention to the clothes the stylist picked for the ad.

Now I am not particularly a fan of Rachel Ray but please...
If I never hear the phrase "E.V.O.O." it will be too soon... But Please..!
If I never see another episode of 30 Minute Meals, my eyes might stop bleeding... BUT PLEASE!!!

Rachel Ray might make me want to "drink the Kool-Aid" but, going out on a limb here... I just don't see her as the terrorist sympathizer type.

Political Correctness run amok...

And with a final incredulous "PLEASE!!!" I am signing off in Charlotte.

Cheers

Chris

Bringing home the bacon

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