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.

New Frontiers Ahead - Forking Good!

I seem to have gone a little crazy on the Charcuterie front of late.

I have wanted to try my hand at smoking sausages, bacon and all manner of meats for sometime; but have refrained from lack of knowledge, equipment and any number of other reasons including fear of failure and botulism.

I had a fab conversation with a young chef from what is to be a new restaurant BUCA, back in June, (the new restaurant associated with Jakobs Steak House and Brassai) as they fed us at the annual Set Sail for Hope Charity event on Toronto Island, one of my top if not my foremost event of the year. I asked the young chef if it would be possible for me to possibly use a wine fridge for curing as a more sanitary condition rather than the open area in one of the spare rooms in my basement, which while keeping a fairly consistent temperature, still had me concerned and worried about the sanitary nature of the environment. (The room is is primarily used to store dry and tin goods, extra clothes thats been packaged away, wine beer, a dusty rowing machine and any other types of stuff not in use that needs to be stored)

After quite a bit of dialogue and in particular probing on my part, I was 90% convinced that it could be done; the question was then some more research to get comfortable on exactly how I would go about this.

Luck and circumstance would seem to have delivered a path to me filled with knowledge, trials, experience success and failure and lots of pikkies through an exceptional blog if you are a "foodie" (general term) called Menu in Progress.

I say exceptional only because the writing is great, the pikkies excellent, the food very scrummy and not only are recipes provided; but there is wonderful detailing of the experiences.

So over the Simcoe Day holiday weekend I had the opportunity to visit the site a number of times and leave some comments, which were responded to by Mike who writes the blog.

This has led me to do a ton of research on what one might require to get going, for my initial attempts, which I suspect will be pancetta and bacon (start slowly).

This will provide me with the requisite time to get hold of the various equipment that I require from myriad sources. As I mentioned I may start off with bacon and pancetta; but i see a variety of sausages smoked, dried and fresh in my future as I try and advance my knowledge in this area.