Category: Charcuterie

March 7, 2012

Quel Jour

Yesterday I spent all day in the expert hands of the Chapolard family. The four brothers and their wives (and now a couple of kids) all work together on the farm that their father started, raising pigs and turning them into superb meat and superlative charcuterie that supports all of them with a dignified living: true sustainability. The two kids have started a dairy on the property, with about fifty head of cattle, and they produce raw milk, yogurt, and some cheese. The rest of the operation is all pork, all the time, and I was honored to don a work smock, apron, and boots and spend a day learning from their expertise, passion, and hard work.

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March 5, 2012

A Pilgrimage Of Sorts

Today was busy, and the sun arrived to make it truly splendid. We drove all over the area, covering a lot of ground and several subjects; Kate wanted to give me an overview of this place and a sense of the history and geography that have made it what it is culinarily. I have much to report, but for now here’s a quick look at what we had for lunch at a little épicerie that just opened last summer. The proprietor was an executive at Bausch & Lomb who got laid off and decided to follow his passion for food. The hill town of Lectoure should be happy that he did. The tower above is part of the Cathedral there; we visited a few gorgeous churches from my favorite period, Romanesque (though this one is actually early Gothic). The area has hundreds; it lies right at the confluence of two of the major Medieval pilgrimage routes to Santiago di Compostela.

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December 1, 2011

I Always Take A Meat Sandwich With Me

For this month’s curing challenge, I took some of the knowledge I gained from making chorizo and fennel salami a couple of months ago and applied it to a more ambitious quantity and variety of salumi. Properly equipped, better skilled, and inspired to try a couple of unorthodox flavors, I ended up with about 20 pounds of five different types.

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November 29, 2011

Gratitude Is The Attitude

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, centering as it does around food. I usually take a day or three off leading up to it and cook my ass off, often making ten or so courses for whoever comes to visit. It’s my chance to stretch out and try some ideas that require special ingredients or techniques, and to make the best food I possibly can, in sequential courses, using my own ceramics, and try to nail all the details and timing for each dish. It’s also a holiday that’s relatively free of crass commercialism–although that appears to be crumbling in the face of earlier and earlier riot-inducing sales–but these things are easily avoided by not having TV and choosing not to shop in the days that follow the big meal. I think it should be about the food and the company, period. The timing also neatly coincided with the last Charcutepalooza challenge, which was more of a dare: show off, using any and everything we’ve done so far.

So I did. Eight courses, each of which contained some quantity of homemade charcuterie.

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October 14, 2011

Like Balanchine, But With Meat

For this month’s charcuteparoject, I made a ballotine. I’d been thinking about this for a bit, going back and forth about what I wanted to do, and then I heard that a friend’s birthday party was coming up, so I had an occasion for which to make something special. And that settled it.

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September 15, 2011

Ain’t No Pâté Like A Charcutepalooza Pâté

So for this month’s pâté and terrine project, I vacillated back and forth between a few ideas and then decided to make all of them. I had invited over a bunch of food writer/blogger types, so I figured quantity and variety would both be desirable. I emailed Northwind Farm and placed an order for a duck, a rabbit, and a pork butt, and picked them up at the weekly market here in town. Over the course of a couple of days, I turned the three things into three different pâtés, using a couple of tricks I’ve learned in my couple of years of terrine making, and which really do improve the results dramatically.

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August 15, 2011

I’d Like To Be Alone With The Sandwich For A While

So this month’s binding project got me thinking about the head terrine I made with Rich a couple of years ago, and how I wanted to try it again with my new knowledge and aim it at a specific goal: bánh mì entirely from scratch. It’s one of the great sandwiches of the world, and since it’s a bastard offspring of French colonialism with many established variants, it’s ideally suited to remixing and tinkering. Ironically, it was my new level of comfort with baking bread that actually spurred me to choose this project; head cheese by itself is not something I would make just to have around since it takes a fair amount of work to yield something that to me is less sensually delightful than a good pâté. But in combination with crusty bread, roast pork, mayo, and pickles, it attains greatness. And since I had all those things on hand–all lovingly homemade–I knew these were going to be winners.

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July 20, 2011

Lamb Bacon

When I was out procuring short ribs for the ill-fated hot dogs, I also stumbled upon some local lamb breast. I got four hunks of it for $8, which ranks as one of the better scores in recent memory. It can be pleasurable indeed to covet the cheap cuts, and guiltlessly filling one’s basket with meat is a major reason why. I’m especially glad I found these when I did, because the unmitigated hedonistic triumph of the lamb bacon–smoked at the same time as the dogs–really took the sting out of the beef debacle. Lamb bacon is seriously wonderful, and highly useful in a wide variety of culinary contexts.

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July 15, 2011

I Don’t Fool Around With No Oscar Meyer Weiner

I love hot dogs. In my youth, they were the Holy Grail of junk food, since we were only allowed to get them for summer cookout parties or eat them at other peoples’ houses. Every now and then, my Grandfather would make me some real Frankfurters from the Kosher deli: bunless, fatter than dogs, and with skin that I peeled off uneasily, they tasted right but the context was all wrong. I would murder hot dogs in high school when they were on the lunch menu, and once wandered Central Park with a friend eating a dog at every stand we passed. I think we had eaten seven each by the time we made it the Met to look at some paintings. Now, much later, they’re something that all three of us agree are a tasty treat, and we buy a pack of good organic ones every month or so. So making them from scratch for this month’s Charcutepalooza seemed like a no-brainer.

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July 7, 2011

Leaves Of Ass

The chorizo from last month is finally ready for eating as is. I’ve used a couple for cooking while they were still soft in the middle, but now they’re firm all the way through. I celebrated by making the sort of lunch that I would happily eat every day, and which neatly encapsulates my motivation for spending all the time that I do making all this food from scratch: pleasure.

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