The Handsome Salami

[thehandsomesalami]

Pulled Pork

While I have very much enjoyed participating in the charcuteapalooza challenges this year, I’ve found that the one problem I’m facing throughout all this is that I have an inordinate amount of meat in the house.

I know what you’re thinking: “is that really a problem?” 

Okay, it’s not the worst problem in the world to have.  But everywhere I turn in my little home I seem to have some sort of meat curing, brining or just stuffed in the freezer – either waiting for me to do something with it or as the leftovers from the creations I’ve already made.  It’s gotten so bad that I'm sure the ragazza thinks we live in a butcher shop!

What’s of particular concern is the space in my freezer – specifically, that there is none.  From the top to the bottom there are stacks of pancetta and frozen bacon leftover from the earlier challenges alongside frozen ribs, pork butts and briskets just waiting for the next project.  Every nook and cranny of my freezer is stuffed with some form or pig, cow or lamb and there’s just no room for anything else. 

So after Easter, when I was trying to stuff even more meat into the freezer (the result of leftovers from a big family dinner at the house) I realized that I had to make some room.  And after giving the contents of the freezer a thorough review I realized that there was something I could take out which would easily make a lot more room:  the giant pork shoulder I had been keeping in there for the past month.

Now I remember when I bought the pork shoulder but I don’t remember why.  It could have been to make carnitas for one of our regular “taco nights” or I could’ve bought it to make a porchetta – but at this point I didn’t know and I didn’t care.  What I did know was what I was going to do with it now: I was going to make pulled pork.

I don’t think I’ve ever made pulled pork before and it’s not something I’ve had often in the past (I usually go for the brisket when we’re somewhere having good barbeque).  But with a great recipe from Ruhlman’s book I thought I would give it a shot.  The fact that pulled pork is one of the ragazza’s favorites may also have had something to do with it!   

So since it was a beautiful weekend and I had Sunday with nothing to do, I fired up the smoker and got my pork ready.  I had a lot of leftover rub for when I made the spicy pork loin, so I slathered that all over the pork shoulder making sure to get it in every crack and crevice.  Then I took it outside where, after preparing the smoker with some charcoal and hickory wood chips, I laid it on top, closed the lid and waited. 

Since this pork shoulder was so big I knew it was going to take a long time to cook.  So I grabbed a beer and a good book and sat by the smoker to wait.  Finally after four hours I took it off the smoker and brought it inside.  In the kitchen I placed the pork shoulder into a roasting pan with a little water in the bottom and then sealed it up in aluminum foil and stuck it in the 250 degree oven for a few more hours to finish it off. 

By the time the pulled pork was ready to come out of the oven it was late on Sunday night – but the wait was worth it.  When I took the roasting pan out of the oven and removed the foil I saw a piece of pork that looked simply amazing.  Roasting it in the oven had made the skin dark – but not charred and when we started to slice up the pork I couldn’t help but start tasting a few pieces – and it tasted great!  We used forks to pull it all apart and then I added a generous helping of homemade barbeque sauce.  After smoking it all day and then roasting it in the over I was exhausted – but when I put that pulled pork on a hamburger bun I knew that all the hard work I had done was worth it – it was absolutely delicious!  And if it passed the ragazza’s test for a good pulled pork sandwich then I knew I had done a great job!

[thehandsomesalami]

Smoking a pork shoulder on a lovely Sunday afternoon.

[thehandsomesalami]

Lentil soup with homemade pancetta

[thehandsomesalami]

Spicy Smoked Pork

More nice weather means more time outdoors with the grill.  And the April Charcuteapalooza challenge was another opportunity to get some more practice using the smoker – and obviously another opportunity to spend a few hours outside drinking a beer or two while I wait for the smoky goodness that comes from using my new toy.

For April’s challenge we were given the option of smoking salmon, a pork loin or a pork shoulder.  Salmon would have been too easy, and a pork shoulder would have been too unwieldy – so pork loin it was.  With the pork loin I could’ve made Canadian bacon or spicy smoked pork, the difference between the two being that the pork loin is coated with a rub before being smoked while the Canadian bacon is brined before being smoked.   Both options sounded delicious, but in the end I chose the spicier option – a good choice, I think, not only because I really like spicy foods, but also because I suspect the ragazza was sick of seeing a giant pot full of briny meat in our fridge. 

Since I was nearing the deadline for completing the April challenge, I didn’t have the time to visit the Italian market to pick up my supplies – which meant I had only one other option for getting a good piece of meat close to home: Whole Foods.

Whole Foods…just saying the name sends a chill up my spine.  Every time I walk through its doors a little part of me dies.  It’s not because of what they sell - I think their meat and fish departments are pretty good (albeit very overpriced) – it’s because of what they don’t sell.  For example, one day I had to stop in on my way home from work because I needed sandwich rolls – just regular, ordinary sandwich rolls.  You would think that it would be easy to find something like that at Whole Foods, but that was not the case.  All I could find was a bunch of fancy, multi-grain, birdseed-topped things that would have been a dishonor to the delicious porchetta sandwiches that I wanted to make that evening.  Why couldn’t I just get regular sandwich rolls!  My blood is boiling just thinking about it!

But I digress.   

So after leaving the local Whole Foods last week I had in my hands a fantastic looking, albeit slightly small, pork loin.  It was only about two and a half pounds – smaller than what the recipe called for, but I wanted something that I knew would fit easily on the smoker and be a little more manageable.

When I got home I stuck the pork loin in the fridge while I prepared the rub.  I mixed up some salt, pepper, brown sugar and other spices and then covered the pork loin in the rub, making sure to coat every inch of it.  I wrapped the loin in plastic wrap, stuck it in the fridge for a few hours and then got to work preparing the smoker.

As usual I filled the smoker box with some charcoal and then some woods chips.  I used hickory wood chips, which I think, in the end, was the right call.  Then I threw the pork loin on the grill and, with a bottle of ice-cold Brooklyn lager in my hand, I waited. 

The pork loin ended up smoking for over two hours, but I had problems getting it up to a final temperature of 140 degrees.  Being appropriately fearful of trichinosis, I ended up sticking it in the oven for about a half hour and that finished it off. 

The results were fantastic!  The exterior looked great, and once I sliced into it I wasn't disappointed - it was nice and juicy, with a great smoke ring along the edge of the loin.  And the taste was magnificent – spicy, but not clear-your-sinuses hot.  Also, I was really happy that I used the used the hickory wood chips – it still gave the meat a great smoky flavor, but not overpowering (an issue I encountered when I made bacon with the mesquite wood chips a few months ago).

Of course I cut a few slices and made sandwiches for dinner (the ragazza and I do love a good sandwich).  With some tasty cheese on top (also procured from Whole Foods, I must admit), we ate very, very well that night.

I think this was by far my best effort on the smoker.  I was really pleased with how the pork loin came out; the looks, the taste - this baby was the complete package. This is a dish I can see myself doing a lot more – I think it will be a big hit at the next barbecue this summer and I can’t wait to go at it again.

[thehandsomesalami]

Pastrami

Now that the weather is finally getting better it’s time for me to start grilling again.  I can’t think of anything better than being outside with a beer in my hand, grilling up some burgers or sausages out in the sun.  In the summertime I’ll go out and grill anything – from porterhouse steaks to Portobello mushroom burgers, it's all been on my grill at one point or another and it’s always been delicious.

But while I may be pretty good with the grill, using the smoker has been much more of a challenge.  Turning the old kettle grill that was left out in the backyard into a smoker was the easy part – cooking with it has been another story.  My biggest challenge has been keeping the temperature constant in the smoker so as to thoroughly cook what’s inside.  It’s difficult because every time I want to throw a few more briquettes or some wood chips into the smoker box it involves taking off the lid of the grill and using gloves or oven mits to carefully remove the grill grate (with whatever I’m cooking laying precariously on top) before I can toss in the briquettes or wood chips.  This often changes the temperature inside the smoker, making it take a lot longer to cook everything completely.   Needless to say, this can be a real hassle.

But...it’s worth it.  It’s been such a treat to be able to get that great smoky flavor in the food I’m cooking and I’m amazed that I have been able to do it at home.  I never thought I’d be able smoke food in my tiny backyard in the city, but I’ve made it work (without annoying my neighbors) and the results have been amazing.

So after seeing a lot of my colleagues taking the March Charcutepalooza challenge a step further by smoking brisket to make pastrami, I decided that I had to give it a try myself. 

This time I started off with a much smaller brisket than the one I used to make corned beef – this guy only weighed about three pounds.  It was a lot less fatty than the last brisket I used, which I hoped would make it a lot more manageable on the smoker.  I brined it in a pot full of water and some pickling spice and I left it in the fridge for a week.  I then took it out of the brine, lovingly dried it off and covered it in crushed black peppercorns and coriander seeds.  

At this point it was ready for the smoker.  Once again I threw a couple of pieces of charcoal in the smoker box and waited until they had ashed over.  Then I threw in some wood chips that I had soaking in a bowl and laid the grill grate over the grill before putting on the brisket.  I stuck the probe of my digital thermometer into the middle of the brisket and, with a beer in one hand and a cigar in the other, sat down to monitor the progress.

Which bring me to another reason why it’s great to have a smoker: it gives you an excuse to stay outside for hours drinking beer!  I mean, I certainly can’t be expected to leave the smoker unattended, right?  You need to monitor the temperature of the meat and make sure the flame doesn’t get out of control—and if the added benefit is that this paesan gets a little bit of a buzz and a tan…well, who am I to complain?  I’m doing it all for the charcuteapalooza!

After a few hours the brisket reached an internal temperature of 150 degrees so I took it off the smoker and brought it inside.  It looked great – when I sliced into it, I could see that nice smoke ring along the edge that comes with smoking meat.  And not to brag, but the flavor was incredible – I could really taste the spice from the peppercorns and coriander; it was just so tasty!  With a little spicy mustard and between two slices of rye bread it made for an out-of-this-world sandwich.  I’m really looking forward to making some more the next time I can spare a few hours – which I have a feeling I’ll be able to carve out sooner rather than later.

[thehandsomesalami]

Mosciame

This was a fun one. 

Ever since I’ve started participating in Charcutepalooza, I’ve been on the hunt for more projects.  Whether it was infusing my own vodka, rigging up a smoker out of a kettle grill for making bacon or just throwing another brisket in the brine to make a pastrami as well as a corned beef, I’m always trying to push myself a little further.

So, naturally, when I came across a recipe for fennel-cured salmon while flipping through Ruhlman’s book, I knew I had found my next project.  It brought to mind something I had enjoyed many years ago on Christmas Eve – salt-cured tuna (known as mojama in Spain or mosciame in Sicily).  It was very much like prosciutto – similar texture, but with a much darker appearance and obviously a fishier taste.  I had it sliced thin and drizzled with a little olive oil - it was delicious (or at least that’s what I remembered).

I knew I had to do it.  I had to try to make this.  It was on!

I visited my local fishmonger and discussed what I needed.  The staff was incredibly helpful and asked me to come back the next morning so they could cut exactly what I needed from the fresh tuna that they would have on hand.  They cut the tuna exactly how I wanted it, giving me a section of the loin which was about an inch thick and six inches long.  It looked amazing!  It wasn’t that big – a little less than two pounds. I couldn’t wait to take it home and turn it into something delicious. 

Admittedly, locating a recipe for salt-cured tuna wasn’t easy.  I spent a lot of time on the internet, looking for detailed recipes or instructions; the best I came up with was this.   It was a little vague but, with the memory of salt-cured fishy deliciousness from years ago as my guide, I decided to press ahead.

First I covered the tuna in sea salt, placed it in an airtight Tupperware container, and let it hang out in the fridge for two days. 

Then I took it out, rinsed off all the salt, and filled the Tupperware with cold water before sticking it back in the refrigerator for another two days.  The recipe instructed me to change the water in the container three times a day, so I made sure to do that and after two days I took it out, dried it off and hung it in the refrigerator for a week.

And this is where I encountered yet another conundrum.  Not only did I have to figure out a way to suspend the tuna in the refrigerator for a week, but I had to somehow convince the ragazza that this was not, in her words, “totally horrifying.”  I promised her that the end result would be delicious and that the salt cure would keep the fridge from “stinking to high heaven” (again, her words, not mine). I ended up running some wire through the tuna and hung it under a shelf as securely as I could, where it stayed for the remainder of the week.

After a week of staring at the tuna every time I opened the refrigerator, I finally cut it down for a taste.  Even with my meat slicer, I couldn’t get the slices quite thin enough for my liking, but I did my best and finally was ready to try my creation. 

I have to admit, it’s definitely an acquired taste.  And maybe it wasn’t as delicious as I had remembered – but it looks pretty good and it tastes even better (at least according to the ragazza and me) and I think it’s going to be a great addition to my charcuterie repertoire.

[thehandsomesalami]

Corned Beef

I was really excited about making corned beef.  It's one of my favorite foods - whether it's between two slices of rye bread or served with cabbage and potatoes.  And what better time of year to make it than March, when that important “holy day” is near.  I figured that it would be fun to give it a try and then, if it turned out well, I could always amaze my friends with corned beef made from scratch while we were celebrating St. Patrick's Day (that is, if everyone isn't already passed out from all the Guinness and whiskey).

I’ve always wanted to try brining my own brisket and making corned beef for St. Patrick’s Day, but I never seemed to get my act together in time.  I suppose the week-long brining time was always a deterrent, but when the powers that be decided that the March challenge for Charcutepalooza would involve brining it finally gave me the excuse I needed to make corned beef from scratch.

As per usual I headed down to the Italian market to pick up a brisket.  I was a little disappointed in what they gave me – it certainly was a brisket, but it was covered in fat and looked nothing like what I was expecting.  But this was the first brisket I’ve ever bought, so what do I know?

Things have been hit or miss at the Italian market lately, but since all the meat I’ve purchased there worked out well for the January and February challenges I decided to roll the dice and give it a shot with my odd-looking brisket. 

Ed. Note: regardless of how the corned beef turned out, I am definitely going to have to look for another butcher.  I just haven’t been satisfied with the cuts of meat I’ve been getting at the Italian market.  I think I’ll see what I can find this weekend at the Reading Terminal market, otherwise I’m just going to have to start raising pigs myself.

I took it home and got started on my brine.  I mixed up all the spices from the recipe in Ruhlman's book and then a put a few tablespoons of this pickling spice into a pot of water along with kosher salt, sugar, garlic and of course pink salt!  I boiled it all up and then took it off the stove and let it cool overnight.  The next day I put the brisket into the pot and stuck it in the fridge, where it lived among the ragazza's Greek yogurts and next to a giant hunk of tuna hanging from the refrigerator shelf (more on that next week).  Finally, I removed it five days later - in anticipation of our Sunday night dinner guests.

When I took it out I was a little worried – it really didn’t look like the corned beef you see in stores.  Then again, none of the Charcutepalooza projects I’ve done looked like what you would find in the store (and they’ve all tasted delicious), so I sliced off all the fat, cut up a few slices and served it up.

It was delicious!  While it might not look like the prettiest corned beef, it tasted great – and that’s what counts!  I'm really happy with the way it turned out - with all of the projects I've done thus far, I've always been worried about how they looked or whether or not they would work out, but I've always been pleasantly surprised about how good everything has tasted.  And the corned beef was no exception - I might just have to make another one for St. Patrick's Day!

[thehandsomesalami]

Pancetta: finito

The pancetta is finished and I have to say that I think it came out fantastic!  I was really worried about mold, but apparently you can cure meat in my kitchen cabinets. 

I checked on it every day and I was happy to see that it never dried out and it was always free of mold.  And it tasted perfect when I added it to my sauce for a homemade sugo all'amatriciana.  It was a great experience and I don't think I'll be needing to buy my pancetta in the store anymore!

[thehandsomesalami]

Sugo all"amatriciana - with homemade pancetta

[thehandsomesalami]

Habanero pepper-infused vodka - appropriately labeled

[thehandsomesalami]

Vodka

Indulge me please as I shift gears from cured meats to one of my other passions: the Bloody Mary.  I really, really love a good Bloody Mary.  In my opinion it’s one of the most perfect cocktails ever invented.  I could drink them morning, noon and night (to say that a Bloody Mary can only be enjoyed during the day truly under-utilizes this classic drink).  I love the spice of a Bloody Mary, the heat.  I love chomping on the celery stalk between sips.  I love mixing one up, carefully adding each ingredient like a mad scientist in the lab.  And once I’ve stirred everything together and taken that first sip I have the same feeling that I imagine Jonas Salk had when he realized he had come up with a vaccine for polio.

All my life I have been on an Ahab-like quest to make the perfect Bloody Mary.  And recently I have ratcheted-up my efforts by starting to infuse my own vodka.

It’s easier than you think – all you need is a bottle of decent vodka, whatever it is you want to infuse it with and a big jar to hold everything together.

Since I like my Bloody Mary spicy I thought the first infusions I would try would be more on the savory side instead of sweet.  I picked up some fresh horseradish (an obvious accompaniment to the Bloody Mary) and some jalapeno peppers, along with two bottles of my preferred vodka.  I sliced the horseradish up into long strips and put it in a jar which I then filled up with vodka.  I took the jalapeno pepper, poked a few holes in it with a fork and threw that in another jar, in which I added some garlic cloves before pouring in the vodka.

I think at this point I made my first mistake.  Perhaps I should not have thrown in half a dozen garlic cloves with only the one jalapeno pepper.  Perhaps I should have included more peppers to balance it out.  But I didn’t - I just sealed up the jar and stuck it in the "laboratory".  And then I waited. 

Here’s where I might have made another mistake.  I should have probably filtered the infusions within a few days instead of waiting a few weeks.  Because as they sat in their jars, the flavors just got stronger and stronger – which sounds good if you’re making a sweet vodka, but maybe not so good if you’re making something that turned into garlic vodka. 

That’s right, what I had on my hands after a few weeks was a bottle of garlic vodka.  Now this might disgust some of you, but I’m the type of person who doesn’t think it’s been a good day unless I have the smell of garlic on my fingers.  And when I use it now to make a Bloody Mary I think it tastes pretty good – then again, when have you added garlic to something and it hasn’t been good?

The horseradish vodka turned out to be even better and now I can't imagine ever using regular vodka in my cocktails again.  Recently I infused some with chopped habanero peppers - it’s hot, but not as hot as I was expecting.  And, to make something a little more sweet for the ragazza, I infused some vodka with pineapple.  I'm very happy with that one - I think it's my best one yet and it's going to be great for drinks in the summertime.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do for my next infusion - maybe I’ll try use use some of what I've been doing for the Charcutepalooza .  Bacon vodka has been done to death…but what about pancetta vodka?  Or maybe even duck prosciutto vodka?

<insert mad scientist laugh here>

[thehandsomesalami]

A piping hot bowl of delicious clam chowder with homemade bacon.

[thehandsomesalami]

Bacon

Apparently it’s not enough for me to make pancetta for Charcutepalooza – I had to go and buy another pork belly and give bacon a shot too.  I think I may have a problem. But it’s a good problem to have I suppose.  I mean, there are worse things to do with one’s money than spend it all on pork bellies, right?  So once again I found myself at the Italian market, picking up a pork belly and getting ready for some more fun. When I bought the pork belly I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do with it.  I had originally thought about brining it after finding a great recipe in Fergus Henderson’s book The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating.  This would be perfect for the March challenge, but when I saw that the recipe served fourteen people I decided to pass.  I don’t think I know fourteen people in the entire city of Philadelphia, let alone fourteen people that would be interested in eating brined pork belly (which should tell you that obviously I need to find some new friends).  So it looked like I was going to be making bacon.     I’m proud to say that my skills are improving and now I can remove the skin of the pork belly quickly and in one piece.  The recipe in Michael Ruhlman’s book Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing says to leave the skin on, but since I was itching to make some more cicoli bread I cut it off and saved it for later. After I had removed the skin and squared-off the belly I prepared the cure.  I mixed up some kosher salt, sugar and a few teaspoons of pink salt and then threw pepper, bay leaves and some crushed garlic into the mix to make it a little more savory.  I rubbed the cure all over the pork belly and then stuck it in a Ziploc bag in the refrigerator for a week (overhauling it every day off course).  I took it out on Saturday, washed the cure off as best I could and stuck it back in the fridge to dry overnight.

Now here comes the fun part:

What I was most excited about was smoking the bacon.  Originally I didn't think this was an option until I remembered that the previous tenants had left a Weber kettle grill outside.  I did a little research and found that I could easily use the grill to smoke meat - all I needed to do was clean it up a little and get a few extra supplies.  So on Saturday morning I went to Home Depot and bought new grill grates, a smoker box, some charcoal and wood chips.  And on Sunday I put everything together and started smoking.

It turned out to be easier than I thought.  All I had to do was keep the charcoal going in the smoker box on one side of the grill and feed in some soaked wood chips from time to time.  I put the pork belly on the grill and away from the coals and stuck the probe of my digital thermometer inside the middle of the belly, waiting for it to reach 150 degrees.

Now the recipe says it takes three hours to reach that temperature, but I think because my pork belly was thin it only took an hour.  And when I say that my pork belly was thin, I mean, it was REALLY thin.  Maybe I had taken too much off when I cut away the ribs from the belly.  Or maybe it's because my butcher doesn't get great pork bellies.  Whatever the reason, I don't think it's going to be the type of bacon that I can slice up into long strips and cook it with my eggs on Sunday morning.

Once the bacon had reached an internal temperature of 150 degrees I opened up the grill and took a look.  And I have to say, it looked amazing!  The smoke had given it a great brown color and the sides of the belly seemed to have crisped up nicely.  I took it off the grill and once it had cooled a little I sliced off a few pieces, threw them into the skillet and cooked them up to see how it tasted.

I'm happy to report that it definitely tasted like bacon.  It was a little salty, but I think that's because it may have cured too long (apparently the thinner belly doesn't need as much time in the salt cure as a thicker one does).  And according to the recipe, that can be fixed by blanching the bacon right before using it.  It looked a little fatty, but I thought it tasted good and I was really happy that I smoked it instead of cooking it in the oven - it really makes the bacon taste like bacon and it was a fun experience that I had wanted to try for a long time.

I don’t think I’ll be doing a lot of smoking though.  First of all, I don’t have a very big back yard – that’s the trade-off you make when you live in the big, bad city – and I was worried that my neighbors might object to all the smoke coming out of the grill (which actually was not as bad as I thought it would be).  Secondly, everything smells like smoke - my jacket, my shirt, my jeans, my shoes, everything.  At least it’s the smoke from the grill and the mesquite-flavored wood chips I was using, not cigarette smoke, but it still smelled very pungent.  The ragazza, while very encouraging and excited about the entire process, still made me take a long shower before getting in to bed last night.  And even today at work I feel like I can still smell it – although I think that it's all in my head.

[thehandsomesalami]

Agodina

Recently I’ve found that I have a surplus of pork skin in my home.  That sounds pretty gross, doesn’t it?

However it’s only because I’ve been making pancetta and bacon for Charcutepalooza and I’ve always been trimming the skin off the pork belly for these projects.  Now obviously I’m not going to throw this delicious pork skin out.  There are so many things you can make with it and it would be a waste to just toss it in the garbage.  At the very least you can always fry it up and make cracklins – which everyone agrees are one of the most delicious treats in the whole wide world. It was my father who suggested I use the extra pork skin for “agodina” and directed me to a great recipe in The North End Italian Cookbook (which was the first cookbook my parents gave me and to this day is still the best resource I have for Italian cooking).  Reading the "pork skin braciole" recipe it looked similar to the recipe for traditional braciole, so I thought I would give it a shot. I have to say though, the idea of pork skin braciole did not sound appetizing to me.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the traditional braciole and it was always the first thing I went for in the big pot of sauce* we had when I was a kid growing up.  But I wasn’t too sure about pork skin.  How would it compare to beef braciole?  Would it be too fatty or too tough?  Would it be so bad for you that I might keel over and die from a heart attack after just one bite?  But I threw caution to the wind, took the pork skin out of the refrigerator and got to work. 

* It's called sauce, not gravy.  Gravy goes on a turkey, not on a delicious plate of pasta.  Capisce? According to the recipe the first thing I had to do was wash the pork skin in warm water, so I put a pot of water on the stove, heated it up and dunked the skin in a few times before taking it out and moving it to the cutting board.  I sliced up the skin into four rectangular pieces and prepared the filling.

I chopped up some fresh parsley and garlic and grated some Romano cheese and spread the mixture over the top of the pork skin before rolling them up tight and tying them with string.  Some recipes suggest adding raisins to the braciole, but that sounds terrible - why would I want any fruit with my delicious pork skin?

When they were all tied up I put them in a skillet and browned the sides of the braciole before pouring in some tomato sauce and letting them cook in the sauce for a few hours.

By the time I had finished cooking the braciole in the sauce it was very late, but I had to try one of these guys before going to bed.  So I put one on a plate, cut off the string and sliced it up.  It tasted...interesting.

It was fatty - I think I may have needed to trim off more of the fat from the skin before filling the braciole.  But it wasn't tough - it practically melted in my mouth when I took a bite.  And it was very flavorful - the filling had just permeated all of the pork skin and you could really taste all the seasonings.

I think I was most impressed with the fact that even though she had just watched a particularly graphic episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, the ragazza still tried a piece.  And I think she'll agree that the pork skin braciole won't be replacing the beef variety in our pot of sauce anytime soon.   

Editor's note: I tried the agodina again...it's just not good.  It's too fatty - and when I take a bite I can actually feel my cholesterol go up.  Now I know why it's so hard to find a recipe for this - no one wants to eat it.

[thehandsomesalami]

Pancetta

After duck prosciutto it was time to get back to basics.  I suppose I could’ve looked into other animals to turn into prosciutto, but I didn't want to press my luck.  Since the February challenge for Charcutepalooza was to use a salt cure, I thought pancetta would be something fun to try.

Pancetta is delicious.  You can use it in so many different dishes, but my favorite thing to do is either make carbonara or amatriciana sauce with it.  It's so much better than using bacon (in my humble option) and it's great to have in the house - you can just stick it in the freezer and slice off a few chucks anytime you need them.

To get started I once again made the pilgrimage to the butcher in the Italian market.  This time there were no problems and I got exactly what I wanted – a giant pork belly (actually it was only half a pork belly – but it still looked pretty big to me).   The pork belly was frozen so I had to let it defrost before I could work with it, but once it had thawed out it was ready to go. 

The first thing I did was slice away the ribs that were still attached to the belly.  I’m not sure if these would be considered baby back ribs, but whatever they were I sliced them off and saved them for later (after coating them in a dry rub and sauce and sticking them under the broiler for a few minutes they turned out to be a delicious meal the next day).  After I trimmed off the ribs I had to remove the skin – this was the tough part.  I was worried that I would be taking too much fat off as I was cutting the skin away, but I did the best I could and after what seemed like forever I had removed the skin (which I would later fry up and turn into ciccioli bread).  I trimmed up the rest of the belly to make it square and then I got started making the cure. 

This is where the ragazza’s Christmas gift was going to come in handy.  Since I needed to crush up some peppercorns and juniper berries, I broke out the molcajete.  Having once of these is a real life saver - it works great when I need to grind up peppercorns or mix up other spices and I wind up using it a lot more than I ever thought I would.  I crushed up the peppercorns and juniper berries and then mixed that up with some bay leaves, kosher salt, brown sugar, garlic cloves, thyme, rosemary and pink salt.

Ah, the elusive pink salt!  It's also know as curing salt, but whatever it's called it took me most of a day to find some.  I traveled to every spice store in the Philadelphia area before finding it at the Whole Foods down the street.  I ended up buying a pound of it and it's an important ingredient to have on hand anytime you're going to be curing meat.

Once I had the cure ready I rubbed it all over the pork belly, making sure every surface was coated evenly.  Then I stuck it in a giant ziploc back and sealed it - getting as much air out of the bag as I could.  I stuck it in the laboratory for about a week, turning it over every day to redistribute the juices that the cure had sucked out of the meat (a process called overhauling).

After a week it still wasn't as firm as I thought it should be, so I left it in there for a few more days.  Then I removed it from the bag, washed all the cure off and rolled it up.  It had to be rolled up as tight as possible so there would be no air pockets inside the pancetta, which would spoil the meat.  I then tied it up nice and tight and hung it in a kitchen cupboard to dry.  The ragazza thinks it's a little strange having a giant piece of pork hanging with our pots and pans, but it's the best place I could think of until the city of Philadelphia lets me build my smokehouse in the backyard.

So now I wait.  It's going to take a least three weeks for the pancetta to be dry and ready to eat.  Meanwhile I check on it every day to make sure it doesn't get too dry (and to make sure that it's still hanging there - my system for rigging it up in the cabinet isn't exactly perfect).  I'm hoping it turns out great - check back soon to see the finished product.

[thehandsomesalami]

Duck Prosciutto

Why duck prosciutto? It makes no sense really. Isn’t prosciutto supposed to come from a pig? How can you make prosciutto from a duck? It’s a duck! Come to find out you can make prosciutto from a lot from things, including a duck. And I admit, it wasn’t an entirely foreign concept to me - I’ve seen it before at DiBruno Bros. in Philadelphia and I’ve found that theirs is pretty tasty. It has the same texture and feeling as prosciutto, but it’s much darker in color and has a gamey taste that some people (included my beloved ragazza) don’t like. I enjoy it though, so when I saw a recipe in Garden & Gun* for duck prosciutto at the same time that Charcutepalooza was kicking off, I thought I had to give it a try. *Yes, there is a magazine called Garden & Gun. According to its website it’s “a Southern lifestyle magazine that's all about the magic of the new South.” Now I have no idea what that means, but I have to say their recipe for duck prosciutto looked pretty good. Obviously the first thing I had to do was buy the duck breasts – and for that I went to the Italian market. The Italian market never lets me down. There are a few good butchers there and I always leave with some great sausages or a nice pork shoulder to turn into porchetta. However this was the first time I went looking for duck – and I have to say I was little disappointed. I had to go to a few different butchers before I found one that had duck breasts, and they only had the breasts frozen. But at that point what was I going to do? So I paid for the breasts and took them home (along with a pork belly – but that’s a story for later) and began to prepare for my first attempt at curing meat. Since they were frozen I had to let the duck breasts defrost, but by the next morning they were ready to work with. I removed the breasts out of their vacuum-sealed pack and took a good look at them. They were dark red in color and still had their skins on. Some of the recipes for duck prosciutto that I looked at didn’t specify whether or not I should remove the skin (and a few even said to keep the skin on), but I couldn’t imagine that making for a good prosciutto so I removed it from the breasts and then set to work making the cure. I mixed up kosher salt, brown sugar, ground juniper berries, ground black pepper and a bay leaf and applied it liberally to the duck breasts. Then I sealed them up in individuals Ziploc bags and put them in the refrigerator for about a day and a half. When I took the breasts out of the refrigerator they felt very firm and not at all like raw meat. I rinsed all of the cure off and then wrapped them up in cheesecloth and hung them in the “laboratory” to dry. My ragazza thought they looked like little ghosts hanging there and was a little worried, but I was just hoping that after a week or so they would be dry and ready to eat.

So finally a week had passed and it was time for the great unveiling of the finished duck prosciutto. After work (and after I had procured a meat slicer off of Craigslist without getting murdered) I came home, cut one of the duck breasts down and opened it up. I was pleased to see that on the outside it looked a lot like a salami or prosciutto – but the big test was the taste. So I put it in the slicer, cut off a few pieces and tasted it.

I have to say, I thought it was delicious. It was a little salty (which I think was because I may have left the cure on for too long or because the cure was too concentrated in the individual Ziploc bags) but it tasted like prosciutto and I feel confident in saying it was a success.

So I sliced it up and plated it with some delicious olives, marinated artichokes and anchovies (the duck prosciutto is on the right). It was my first meat plate with cured meats that I had made myself and with a glass of wine it turned out to be a fantastic dinner. Salute!

[thehandsomesalami]

Welcome!

No, “The Handsome Salami” is not a blog about nice-looking <expletive>. It’s a place where I can document my attempts at making bacon, sausage, salami or anything else that can be cured, brined, pickled or smoked. So you can stop putting a camera down your pants right now – those aren’t the pictures of meat we’re interested in.