Charcuterie & fromage

My Bride's mother & father came and stayed with us for a few weeks this month, and our house has been full of food, and hugs, and love. The kids especially love seeing their grandparents (of course). And with the weather being mostly so frigid, we've stayed in doors and around the kitchen and fireplace quite a lot. 

Last weekend, we decided we'd go into our freezer full of pig, and do a little charcuterie. I was also inspired by our recent trip up to Vermont to make a bit more cheese.  We figured we'd have a whole shut-in weekend of old-time preserving. 

We started out making Longanisa - a Filipino sausage much like a Portuguese linguiça - sweet and tart and well seasoned.  Grinding and stuffing the sausage was a whole family event, and took most of an afternoon, and many, many sausage jokes. 

My Bride's people are not tall, and needed proper sausage stuffing leverage. Fortunately, we were prepared. 

The pork was really beautiful - a great ratio of fat to meat. With the leftovers, I was able to put up a few pounds of chorizo. (Made from our pig, Honeydew, not Chorizo. Which made the Critter laugh. We had asked the butcher to label all of the meat so we'd be able to keep track of which pig we were eating. Honeydew's packages are all written in blue, and Chorizo's all in red.) 

I used the same chorizo recipe that I've used in the past. I love this recipe - it's easy to bag & freeze pre-portioned amounts of meat. I don't bother casing it - I always use this for burritos or huevos rancheros anyway.  One of my favorite breakfasts in the word. 

I also had pulled out two beautiful joints that the butcher had set aside for coppa. I've never made coppa before, but after describing the basic cuts I wanted to make sure we got (plenty of back bacon, three prosciuttos, etc), I told Maureen, the awesome partner at our butcher to just cut the pig how she felt best. 

When I pulled these boneless joints out - cut from the meaty part of the back of the neck on the pig, the marbling was absolutely gorgeous. That's right - marbling on a cut of pork. The peanut-rich diet for our pigs - along with the forage from the forested run they had - clearly had turned into some beautiful meat. 

I laid the joints out and rubbed them down with a combination of salt, pepper, fennel, garlic, and a few crushed juniper berries.  

Well actually, I employed child labor to do the hard part.

Nothing like a little handling a little raw meat in your superhero pajamas, ammiright?

(Note, that's a bowl of chorizo in the foreground, waiting to be bagged) 

Coppa is cured by letting it rest for a bit (I gave it 24 hours post-rub in the refrigerator) and then casing it in a beef bung and hanging it to finish. This will take about 4-6 weeks, and it'll lose about a third of its weight as the meat dries & cures, and the fat becomes silky. 

I'd never worked with a beef bung before. When you order one on Amazon, it comes in a plastic tube as a hardened, salty, fairly smelly little ball. An hour or so of soaking later, and you end up with a pliable, stretchy & tough natural casing that will wrap around a 6" diameter piece of meat. With a bit of love and effort. 

I've hung these in my cellar which is a constant 55 degrees or so, and steady humidity. I keep going downstairs in the evening to check on them. They're tightening up already, and I can smell the faintly peppery smell of the cure. 

I can not wait to get these onto my slicer. 

While I had the components (and chil-dout, I pulled out a large piece of Honeydew's belly as well. (See? Using their names to talk about eating them stops getting weird after a few times, doesn't it? Or maybe it gets weirder. I'm not sure.) 

This meat just continues to amaze me. Absolutely beautiful. We've had good pork in the past, but nothing to compare to this.  I had to cut this piece of belly in half to work with it. 

I used my butcher's recipe - he charges about $30 per pound for his cured pancetta, but he gave me the recipe for free. Probably figuring not to many of his customers are daft enough to do this. Plus, he's just cool that way. 

These get sealed in a food-saver vacuum bag with salt, a little brown sugar, garlic, rosemary, and pepper, and a couple of those crushed juniper berries and put into the fridge for a week or so before I'll roll them and hang them. to cure. Again - 6 or 7 weeks, and I'll end up with pancetta that'll blow your mind. 

Cheese

The next day, we moved on to cheese. 

I had been running through my cheddar a bit lately, and hadn't put any up to cure lately. What I found from our first attempts is that it takes a year or so to really cure to the point you're going to enjoy eating it. Before that, it tasted young and curdy. More time = more sharpness. 

So I knew I wanted to put up a couple more wheels. I also wanted to try out a new recipe, though, and expand our repertoire a little further. 

The larger pot is my cheddar, resting and waiting to curdle. In the smaller, white pot is goat's milk. The first batch of chèvre I made is hanging on the rack in the background.

Goat's milk chèvre is incredibly easy to make, it turns out. There are only 3 ingredients: 

• Goat's milk (well, duh). 
• Citric acid
• Salt

Our local Whole Foods carries goat's milk, and the rest I got on the internet. Within an hour, I had a really excellent cheese that was declared acceptable & quickly devoured by the family.

I spread mine on a toasted bread with a little drizzle of honey. Excellent. 

Yeah. Winter days like these are pretty much my favorite. 

Looking back & forth

2013 was a good year. 

No. That does it an injustice. 2013 was a freaking great year, by pretty much any measure Well. Except that I got in my first car accident in.. well, I think ever. Rear-ended a young lady who was doing some kind of stutter-stop dance on her brakes at a 3 way intersection. Still. I hit her. So my bad.  But that's pretty much the exception that proved the rule. 

Good travel. Good people. Good food. Good health.

I saw a monkey in the wild, and ate grilled pig intestine off a stick on a beach.  (not at the same time). You can't tell me that wasn't a fantastic year. 

For 2014, I don't have a lot of resolutions. I'd like to strive to play music more regularly - banjo, ukulele. Whatever. I am always refreshed and rejuvenated after I sit down for a while and pick. Especially when I get the chance to play with others. And I'd certainly always like to write more. For the same reasons. Except not with others. That would be weird. I'm not even sure how that would work. 

Like almost everyone in the working world, I have a whole list of professional goals for the year - many of which are the required business folderol ('Complete Super Mega Important Project on time & within budget').  But a few of which are the fun ones ('Find a way to top being on stage at an industry conference in front of >55,000 peers.' ). 

(Note to self: make "use words like 'folderol' in at least one powerpoint presentation for the office' a goal.)

But otherwise, my goals for 2014 are pretty much the same: keep having this kind of fun. 

Even without a list of resolutions, I made a big mess of hoppin' john for New Year's day - eating black eyed peas on new year's day is a Southern tradition for good luck.  To be clear, it's a Southern tradition that we have never before kept. But this year, when I said we would have black eyed peas and got a weird look from everyone in my house, I just stated with solemn authority: "It's a Southern Tradition."  

And it was good.  I used a recipe from a combination of sources, but mostly a Southern cookbook my Bride got me a few years ago. I've noted it below - this would be good pretty much any time of year. Don't wait for New Years

Hoppin' John

• 1 lb dry black eyed peas
• 1 large onion - diced
• 6 oz bacon (about a third of a pack) - diced (I chop mine up with scissors)
• 1 large rib celery
• 3 cloves garlic, diced
• 1 quart chicken stock
• chili flakes
• bay leaf
• thyme, salt, black pepper
• Fresh tomato
• White, long- or medium-grained rice

Soak the black eyed peas over night. Don't hurry this. I don't care what any of the "quick soak" recipes say - it's going to most of a day to simmer these peas soft, even after a night's soaking.  And then you're going to want to change out the water when you're done. 

Take your stock pot and start the bacon, onion and garlic on medium heat until the bacon crisps and the onion turns soft and warm. Then add the peas, chicken stock & bay leaf.  I add about a tsp of thyme, chili flakes and black pepper & salt.  Bring to a boil, and then turn down to simmer.  Add stock or water if the liquid reduces too much. Some recipes will lead you to believe you can make this in under 60 minutes. They are lying. Just keep simmering until it's done.  

You'll see a lot of arguments about people believing you should add the rice into the hoppin' John to cook, but those people are fools. Serve the peas over a mound of fresh rice, with diced fresh tomatoes on top as a garnish. 

I serve mine with a side of collard greens, splashed liberally a spicy, Filipino cane sugar called  Sukang Maasim (rhymes with 'I bet Jesus puts this on his collard greens')  You can buy it on Amazon now, if you don't have a handy Filipino store in your neighborhood. Or just substitute white vinegar of whatever type you have handy. 

But don't. This vinegar makes the dish. And I have it on good authority that it makes you even luckier*

(*Ed. note: I just made that up) 

Cider cured ham

We had a terrific and restful Thanksgiving. Neither of our families are close, and we long ago said that we simply don't want to travel on the holidays - there's nothing like waking up in your own bed or cooking in your own kitchen for those special days, especially when the kids are young. In the absence of extended family, somehow over the years, a tradition has grown for inviting in the ex-pat community. 

It started when we lived in England, as a way to bring together the nearby Americans to enjoy that most American of holidays and traditions. The butcher was always a little confused at our insistence on ordering the largest turkey he could find. But hey: we won the war, so just find me that bird, okay mate?  

When we moved to Massachusetts, we flipped the tradition a bit, and included more of our non-native friends who hadn't experienced Thanksgiving in all its overabundant glory. This year it was some relatively newly-arrived Italians and a visiting colleague, and a dear old friend of mine from Beijing. And besides, we're going to cook enough to feed a small army one way or the other. So we might as well open our doors. 

A few days after Thanksgiving, we happily joined one of our nearby neighbors and friends for her traditional post-Thanksgiving Pie Party. 

Terry is famous for her chickens, and she and her delightful husband we quite literally the first people I met when we moved to town. She is a fantastic cook (and the author of several cook books), and refuses to let anyone bring anything to the pie party except their appetites. I am far too polite too refuse. 

One of the pies was a savory French recipe for pork pie, made with lard I had rendered from our pigs. It was delicious and I unashamedly went back for a second helping.

Now that we're headed into the Christmas season, I've been dreaming about the time off for the holiday, and the opportunity to try a few new meals and dishes. 

I pulled a dressed, bone-in ham out of our freezer (it was Honeydew's, for those keeping track - our excellent butcher was good about labeling each cut so we can name our meal through the year), and have put it aside for one of my favorite preparations, a cider cure. This is largely based on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's treatment, and guaranteed goodness.

Cider Cure Ham

• 3 lbs kosher salt
• 3 lbs brown sugar (you can split this 50/50 brown sugar & molasses if you're so inclined)
• 1 gallon apple cider
• 1 gallon hard (alcoholic) cider 
• 1 gallon water
• 20 or so juniper berries
• 6-7 bay leaves
• 3 tbs crushed black peppercorns
• 2 tbs saltpeter ("pink" or curing salt)

Toss the cider, salt and sugar into a stock pot - heat & stir until everything is dissolved. Take off the heat and add the rest of the cure ingredients and let cool. Note that the pink salt is optional. I'll add it in if I'm going to serve the ham to guests, as it keeps the meat the pink color that people expect. 

I'm lucky enough to have the hard cider that we made & bottled ourselves (and if you're nearby, stop in and I'm happy to give you some). But any hard cider will do, really. 

I put it all in a large stoneware crock, and set the ham in the cure (you may have to put something on it to weight it and keep it from floating. I have a well-washed, round granite rock from the river that I use). 

Leave the whole thing in a cool place for 7-8 days to cure. I am blessed with a very cool basement during the winter More for a larger ham. Less for a smaller one. 

Remove the ham from the cure a couple of days before you want to start cooking it.  Pat it dry. Wrap it in a cotton dishtowel and store in the refrigerator. 

You need to boil the ham before you roast & glaze it. Place it in a large stockpot and cover it with cold water. Add a few of your typical vegies - carrots, onion, maybe some celery. A bit of thyme and parsley and simmer for 4 hours or so. If the stock tastes unpalatably salty, discard most of it (but not the veg), and top up with boiling water. This will help reduce the saltiness of the ham. Remove the ham from the stock and allow to cool a bit. 

To finish - glaze with your favorite items - we use a combination of brown sugar and either mustard or orange slices held in with cloves. Roast at 350 for about 70-80 minutes, or until the glaze becomes a deliciously dark, bubbly crust. 

It's not honeybaked or spiral sliced, but I guarantee your guests will like it.