Adventures in Curing - BRESAOLA !

Well I pretty much scared everyone in the family last evening. I had gone next door to borrow my neighbours commercial style slicer to administer to two pork bellies I had cured and smoked earlier in the week, then I remembered my experiment hanging in the cold room in the basement. I had my eye of round from almost a month before that I had cured hanging in teh basement cold room.

I used a recipe from my smoking and curing bible[Charcuterie - by Ruhlman & Polcyn] as seen in the pikkies here and tried to follow the recipe as accurately as I could. One week of curing, followed by new cure and a second week of curing.

Rinsed and air dried initially for a couple of hours, the instructions would have me next simply tie up the eye of round and leave it to air dry for 3 weeks.

Because it was an experiment, I used a small piece of eye of round (687 grams).

The idea of simply hanging the meat in the cold rooms downstairs didn't much appeal and I have yet to obtain a magic curing chamber like my hero Michael on Menu in Progress http://snipurl.com/10pm4y [menuinprogress_com], so my concession was to buy muslin/cheesecloth and use that to wrap it first then tie it up as per the instructions.

After the first week of hanging, I was having concerns as I saw white fuzz appearing and was already conceding that I might have farked up and have to regard my initial experiment as a fail; however, I held the faith and proceeded and so here we were 2 weeks into the air dry phase and the piece of eye of round was already as hard as a stone.

I asked my son to bring it up to the evident horror of my wife and daughter who almost ran from the kitchen as they claimed it looked like a some small animal that had been mummified. (Not very nice).

I was starting to feel a sense of abject failure. I would have to throw the bloody thing away and simply put it down to experience; but as they say, in for a penny, in for a pound. I cut all the strings, and removed the fuzzy cheesecloth/muslin, which seems to have taken on an almost bluish tint in certain areas and was blown away.

Yes it had clearly shrunk in size; but what I had in front of me was this dark hued almost dark log like colour on the outside (it suddenly struck me hey, that's how it looks in my local deli).

Having just sliced two large pork bellies, time to give this slicer a quick clean and proceed with slicing this piece of evident joy.

I proceed to cut it in half to fit into the slicer and I am overjoyed with the result, take a look and let me know if you agree. The taste is quite remarkable with a nice spiciness (the extra mace and black pepper) with that hint of must generally associated with Bresaola.

There is some reluctance admittedly in the family to eat it as its associated with what looked like the mummified remains of a small animal; but oh joy my foodie mates at work, will no doubt be more appreciative.