When I first started down the road of making charcuterie at home, the art of making salami seemed a long way off. It seemed like one of those things best left to the pros, and certainly something that would turn out pretty rubbish if tried at home.

Actually, before I even thought about doing any meat curing however, the idea of curing meat at home seemed like a bad idea, and a potentially dangerous one at that. Somehow you are lead to believe that even though these fine culinary arts started at home, and are practiced at home all over the world today, it is a dangerous thing that is best left up to the big manufacturers that (apparently) have health standards.

Of course, this is complete and utter crap. We all know of the recent meat health problems, especially in processed meats (not with small salami/charcuterie makers however). In my mind, all it takes is some reading up, a little bit of specialist equipment, and you are on the road to making some pretty great products. To start with there are as many failures and successes, but as everyone knows, you learn much more from bodge-ups that heroic wins. I have almost certainly thrown away some products that would have been absolutely fine to eat - however I made a promise to myself when I started this (and a promise to Danika my wife actually..) that if I wasn’t 100% certain that something was fine, it would go in the trash.

And so quite a bit of meat did.

So Becky Selengut came over last week, and we got cracking on another batch of salmi.

Before we go into the details of making salami at home, lets talk tools for a minute. Whilst none of these are technically required, they do certainly make the whole process easier. No meat grinder? Chop the meat by hand. No sausage stuffer? Use a funnel and some seriously suspect hand movements. No electric mixer to mix everything together? Stick gloves on your hands, put them in ice water for a few minutes, then get mixing.

The stuff listed below makes things faster. In my mind it also makes the whole process safer too. Faster means that the meat stays colder, which is less bacteria growth. You can grind 4lb of meat in a minute or so, but it would take 20 to chop it really finely by hand. Using an electric mixer to mix up the forcemeat means you can use ice-cold attachments - rather than your warm hands.

Some products I recommend that make the whole salami making thing much easier:

Kitchen Aid Meat Grinder

This is an almost required piece of equipment for any kitchen, and especially so if said cook is interested in making charcuterie. A quality product really relies on extremely freshly ground meat, and quite frankly I don’t know of any other meat grinder that works so well for the price (given that you have a kitchen aid mixer to start with). You can grind through 4lb of meat in a couple of minutes, meaning the meat stays colder, and with better separation.

5lb Sausage Stuffer

This one is the exact one I use, and is made by Northern Tool. It is one of the cheaper 5lb stuffers out there. I like it because it is a solid stainless steel build, comes apart easily and cleans up well. The drive gears are plastic, if you want something that will last a lifetime, spend some more cash and get the all metal one - however I think this one is going to last me a very long time.

I know it seems crazy to buy a separate tool just for stuffing sausages. And yes, you can find cheaper stuffer’s out there. There is this crank arm thing that is quite frankly next to useless. More meat squirts out the sides of it than in to the sausage casing.

You can also get a stuffer attachment for the meat grinder mentioned above. It is cheap. Cheap and nasty. Don’t do it. You have to have 4 hands to operate it (one to govern speed, one to pile more meat into the hopper, one to stuff it in, one to guide the meat into the casing). What is more because it uses the auger from the meat grinder, it kinda mushes up your salami meat, causing fat smear. Horrible.

Stand Mixer

It seems a little odd to mention this one, since I reckon most home cooks have some kind of stand mixer. You will use a stand mixer to mix up the meat, fat and curing ingredients very thoroughly. “WHAT!!” you say.. “I CAN DO THAT BY HAND!!”. Well, yes, yes you can. However this mixer does it faster. It also does it without the heat of your hands warming everything up - and as mentioned before keeping all the ingredients at the lowest temperature possible is key to a good salami.

Now, what is even better is that you can stick the bowl and attachments in the freezer for a few hours before mixing, which makes things even colder when doing that all important mix. Don’t try doing that with your hands folks.

Food Grade Gloves

Run down to your local restaurant supply store and get yourself a big old bag of disposable gloves. Sure you can wash your hands every 10 minutes, but gloves are still the best way to keep meat free from bacteria from your hands.

Salami making tips:

Everything is more fun with two people, and salami making is no exception. Two people make the prep faster, meaning meat stays at a lower temperature. It also makes stuffing the salami a breeze - one person cranks, the other governs the flow into the sausage casing. There is also much fun, hilarity, and really REALLY childish humor to be had when stuffing sausage. Your jokes shouldn’t go unheard. Nor should those rather dicey sloppy meat sounds that come from sausage making.

Keep everything cold. Really cold. The meat, tools everything.

Wear gloves. Bacteria you know.

Don’t sniff the beef casings up close. Chances are they smell pretty nasty. Every batch of casings I have used have not exactly smelt of roses.

HOME MADE SALAMI RECIPE

This recipe is a slight modification from a recipe given to me by Hank Shaw, who runs the blog Hunter Angler Gardener Cook. You can see his original recipe here. His original recipe was based around making a salami from ingredients he could source locally (within 50 miles of his place) in California - including the wild boar he shot. The modifications I have made are to get ingredients more accessible to me, along with some tweeks to salt and sugar ratios to better suit my taste.

You will notice that this recipe contains no garlic - which might seem odd for a salami recipe. Becky is allergic to garlic, so we left it out of this batch. If you want, feel free to add 15g of fresh minced garlic when you do the other herbs/spices.

6lb pork shoulder

1lb pork back fat

56g (2.75% meat+fat weight) Kosher Salt (I use Morton)

6g Cure #2 (see below)

2tsp bactoferm T-SPX starter culture (see below)

1/4 cup distilled water

37g dextrose (see below)

45g dry milk powder

1/4cup white port (refridgerated)

10g black peppercorns

2g fennel seeds

5 dried bay laurel leaves

2g dried sage leaves

beef middle casings - about 6ft of em. (see below)

pH test strips

1) Soak the beef middle casings in coldish water, with a splash of vinegar in for at least 30 minutes. For the love of god do not sniff them. After 30 minutes they should be pretty pliable. Run cold water through them to flush them out. Soak them in some more cold water until you are ready to stuff.

2) Place your mixer bowl, paddle attachment, meat grinder attachment and sausage stuffer pieces in the freezer for at least 2 hours before starting to make the salami.

3) Cut the pork shoulder into 1″ dice. You want to remove all sinew from the meat, and a lot of the pieces of fat too. When done you want a good stack of diced meat, with fat marbling, but no stringy sinew or fat, or large pieces of fat. You want 4lb of trimmed shoulder meat. Set in the freezer whilst you do the next stages.

4) Cut the pork fat into small dice, no larger than 1/4″. This job is much, much easier if the fat is fully frozen before cutting. Return this diced fat to the freezer.

5) Mix the dry milk powder, Cure #2, dextrose and kosher salt together in a bowl.

6) Grind the peppercorns, fennel seeds, bay leaves and sage leaves together in a spice grinder, or pestle and mortar. Combine with the salt mixture.

7) Mix the meat chunks (not the back fat dice) with the herb and salt mixture. Mix really well using your hands, then return this back to the freezer.

.8) Mix the bactoferm T-SPX with the distilled water. Let this sit for about 30 minutes to let the bacteria wake up.

9) Take your meat grinder pieces out of the freezer, assemble, and grind the diced pork shoulder through the coarse die into an ice cold bowl (your mixer bowl will work great here).

10) Add the starter culture solution and the chilled port to the meat grind.

11) Add 1/4 of the diced back fat to the mixture.

12) Assemble your kitchen aid mixer with the paddle attachment. Beat this meat mixture on low speed for about a minute, then start adding the rest of the back fat in small handfuls at a time. We add them pieces at a time to make sure we get an even mixture of meat and fat. Beat for another 3-4 minutes. It is crucial here that everything is very cold. Pork fat can easily start to melt at room temperature - causing the fat chunks to smear and make one very ugly sausage. This fat smear can also clog the minute pores in the sausage casing, causing problems when drying the salami.

13) Assemble your sausage stuffer using the largest stuffing tube you have. Put the sausage mixture into the stuffer, packing it in making sure there are no air gaps. Thread the casing on to the stuffing tube.

14) Start cranking the stuffer handle until meat mixture starts coming into the casing. Tie off the end of the casing using butchers twine. For this I favor the “bubble knot”. This is really hard to describe without pictures - so follow this link to a powerpoint presentation I found online, all about casings and the bubble knot.

It is absolutely important that you tie a knot like this for larger diameter salami (such as these). If you just tied it off with some regular knot, overtime the casing would start to slip (they are slippery), your knot would come undone, and your salami would empty itself out whilst hanging to dry.

15) regulate the flow of the meat into the salami casing, making sure it is packed in tight. run your hand down the stuffing casing a few times (and laugh whilst doing so) to make sure everything is packed in tight. We don’t want air voids in the salami - this can harbor nasty bacteria.

16) according to most experts in sausages, 12″ is quite enough length for a salami. Once you have a 12 incher, stop cranking, cut the casing, and tie off the other end using your bubble knot.

17) keep going until you have stuffed all your casings, and have no meat left. You should have 4 12″ salami’s

18) push out any remaining salami meat from the stuffer tube. Wrap this in plastic wrap. We are going to use this to pH test later.

19) using butchers twine tie up your salami much like you would a pork roast. Google “butcher’s knot” if you are unsure how to do this.

20) weigh and record the weights of your sausages.

21) FERMENTATION:

Hang your salami at 75F (often just above standard room temperature) and 85%-95% humidity for 35hours.  Put the plastic wrapped salami meat in this area too. This is the fermentation step of making salami. During this time, the lactic acid bacteria in the starter culture start multiplying and producing lactic acid. This does two things - the more good bacteria growing means less bad bacteria can (since they use up the food source - dextrose). This also lowers the sausage pH, making it more acidic. Acidic environments aren’t hospitable to most spoilage and illness causing bacteria.

After 35 hours, it is time to check the pH of your sausage meat. Unwrap the salami meat you had in plastic wrap, and wet it with a little distilled water (it MUST be distilled water, since it has a neutral pH). Press your pH paper on to the meat, and compare the color shown on the pH paper with the subsequent pH color shown on the paper’s box.

You want a pH somewhere between 5.0 and 5.3. If the pH shows higher than 5.3, ferment for another 10 hours and check again. If the pH is in this range, or below, it is time for the drying stage.

Feel free to spoon over a solution of Bactoferm 600 here if you want to. This is “sausage mold” - the white penicillin mold seen on some salami. This is frankly a good idea. The mold helps slow down moisture removal from the sausage, and also helps prevent the growth of bad mold on your salami.

To make this mold solution dissolve 2 tablespoons of Bactoferm 600 in about 50g of water. Let this sit for 12 hours. Dilute further to about 200ml in total. Spoon this over the salami during the fermentation stage.

22) DRYING:

You can now discard that plastic wrapped meat. Hang your salami at about 53F and 85% humidity for 7 days. After these 7 days you can reduce the humidity to 75%. The initial high humidity helps stop the salami loose surface moisture, drying out the casing and thus making it hard for the moisture on the inside of the sausage to get out.

It will take about a month for these to dry. Periodically through the drying process, weigh the salami. The salami are done when they feel firm, and have lost about 35% of their initial weight. If the salami feels very dry on the outside, but still squishy on the inside then you have case hardening. The chance of this salami being able to loose enough moisture to make it safe to eat is slim. Time to bin it.

For more information on environments for drying salami, and all dry cured meats check out here.

WHAT THE BLOODY HELL IS:

bactoferm T-SPX starter culture: This is really just freeze dried bacteria. Lactic acid producing bacteria to be precise. When these bacteria multiply, they produce lactic acid, which makes the salami more acidic (lower pH). This helps prevent bad bacteria from multiplying, and also gives a salami that distinctive “tang”

dextrose: A simple sugar, in powder form. This is the food for the lactic acid bacteria mentioned above.

cure #2: A mix of nitrate, nitrite and salt. Nitrates help prevent botulism. Botulism can be fatal. Add them to your salami. Botulism is rare, but the conditions inside a salami (moist, lack of oxygen, right temperature) are perfect for its growth. Make sure to use the correct amount.

pH test strips: also called litmus paper. A little strip of paper that changes color depending on the acidity/alkalinity (pH) of whatever you dip it into. The test strips come with a handy guide to show you what color means what pH.

beef middle casings: relatively wide (3″ when stuffed) natural beef middle intestines. These come packed in salt. They need to be soaked prior to use, to make them flexible and elastic. They can smell pretty bad. Adding a tablespoon of distilled vinegar to the soaking water can help remove the stink. The smell will go away after the first few days of hanging the salami.

All of these specialist ingredients can be ordered online at the following retailers:

Butcher & Packer

Sausage Maker

RECOMMENDED READING:

Charcuterie - Michael Ruhlman

Art of making Fermented Sausages - Marianski

Cooking by Hand - Paul Bertolli

So, I was trying to dream up a funny photograph for this one. Maybe me covered head to toe in newspaper ads, or even a fake ad with yours-truly. But no. That just looked somewhat silly, and not in a good way.

I was also thinking about not mentioning any of the changes that are happening with my lovely little blog - but that would seem kind of odd too.

Over the last couple of months I have been giving blog advertising some thought. I didn’t start this blog to make money, and I never intend it to be that way - I would of course like it be uber-successful and take over the world, but I don’t think that happens by having ad’s on my site.

What does happen however is the rise in food costs, and also some more than cheap hobbies (moldy pig bits). I have been looking at new and interesting content for my blog - more meat curing stuff, more videos, more tutorials. It all starts to rack up those green pieces of paper. I don’t want to cover my blog in ads to pay for the cost of all of that, but I don’t want my blog to stagnant and not naturally progress as I would like.

So, you might see a few more ads on my site for a while. I am working hard to make them not take over everything (I have got really used to seeing the foodbuzz ad in the sidebar), and have them cover a few simple costs for the site - like hosting, software, meat.

Yes, meat. Meat curing gets kinda pricey. Especially since I favor using local small farms for the raw ingredients. A batch of salami can run up to $60, and that starts hitting the bottom line.

What I am really trying to say here, is that if you see an advert that really pisses you off, I REALLY want to hear about it. Seriously. Email me immediately and let me know. Having interesting content and having fun with food is priority. If the ad thing works out shit, then lets ditch it, move on, and never talk about the whole thing again.

Bottarga is the roe pouch of either the mullet fish or tuna, that has been cured in salt and air dried.

Sounds tasty doesn’t it?

Sounds like the perfect mix of seafood and charcuterie to me!

Bottarga is a specialty of the island of Sardinia, off the coast of Italy. Some consider it to be a poor mans caviar, which I think is a wholly inaccurate assessment of one of the more unique seafood ingredients out there. It’s flavor is really nothing like caviar - it is far richer, exceedingly complex, and very very comforting. Some might liken its taste to a very good salted anchovy, but even that misses the mark (but is much closer than caviar).

It is typically sold in blocks - that is how it is cured after all. These are cased in wax to help preserve freshness. It is one ingredient I have always wanted to try, but frankly the price of it put me off a bit. A block normally retails from about $60 to $100, depending on the make. The stuff can last, about 6 months in the fridge apparently, but even still that is a heck of a lot of bottarga parties to use it all up, especially since a little goes a long way.

To make things worse, I don’t know of any Seattle restaurants serving it, so I couldn’t go get a taste anywhere. (Any readers that want to correct me on this, and point out places that have bottarga on their menu’s - go for it!)

So alas, no bottarga for me. Or so I thought.

I have just started helping a friend of mine out, Scott, who runs the fantastic meat curing blog http://sausagedebauchery.blogspot.com

He emailed me recently mentioning that he was setting up an online store, selling imported Italian foods. We got talking, and I have ended up taking some product shots for him, for the new store. In return? I get to keep whatever he sends me.

So - my first question to him “do you have salted small oily fish?” (which is pretty much my first question to anyone actually).

“YES”

question two: “do you have bottarga?”

“YES”

question three: “do you have really bloody good salted capers, not the stuff in brine?”

“YES, two kinds from two different areas in Italy actually”

So, as you can see from the conversation above, Scott could quite easily become my new best friend…

This post is more than just the story of how I managed to score some great bottarga for free however. Scott’s product is somewhat different to what I have seen other places.

This isn’t a honking slab that sells for $80. He has sourced a company that sells high quality bottarga, in small vacuum sealed pouches - which is pre-grated.

Now, my first question when I heard this was “er, this isn’t going to be like pre-grated Parmesan is it, cos we all know that stuff is nasty“.

“NO, this is a really high quality product, that get vac sealed as soon as it is grated“. Was the reply. “I think you are going to really like it”

He was right, I do really like it. I will go as far to say that I am addicted to it. Pasta, salads, you name it - I have put some on it. Anything you want that salty fishy taste to, bingo. Bottarga is your product.

The best thing about this little bag of joy is the price to be honest (not my price - free ninety nine), but the price at which you can buy it from him - $10 for a decent amount of the stuff - certainly enough for a good few very large bottarga parties.

As most readers of my humble little blog will know, I like clean simple food. Don’t give me a zillion ingredients, just a few really good choice ones. I like layered flavors that are complex, bright and distinctive, not muddy and flat. This is especially true when I am trying out a new ingredient for the first time.

Enter the worlds most simple, yet addictive pasta. Just pasta, bottarga, garlic, parsley and good olive oil. The bottarga makes this so darn complex that I could eat this every day for a week and not get bored of it.

This is quite possibly the shortest recipe I have written on my blog, and one of the tastiest:

Bottarga Pasta Recipe

2 good handfuls of pasta - spaghetti works great here

1 clove of garlic, finely minced

1 handful of fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped

bottarga to taste - about 2 tablespoons

really good olive oil - about 5 tablespoons

Cook your pasta according to packet directions - or make your own and cook it to your likeness. Personally I like to still have a solid bite to mine.

In a large bowl, mix together 1 tablespoon of bottarga and the garlic with a couple of olive oil. You can warm this over a low flame if you want, to retard the garlic taste a bit.

Drain the pasta when done. Tip into the oil/bottarga bowl. Toss to combine. Add in the parsley, pinches at a time, until everything is nicely coated with green flecks. Add more bottarga to taste.

Divide between two bowls, sprinkle a little more bottarga over the top, and a little more oil and parsley if needed.

Serve straight away.

If you are interested in the products Scott has to offer, including this bottarga - check out: http://www.sausagedebauchery.com/ his online store.

There it is folks. Look at it. Pork jowl that has been salted, then air dried for 2 months…

There are many things that I love about pigs, and it isn’t just that they are pretty darn cute to look at.

They are tasty. Seriously tasty. We all know that. But for me, properly raised pork is much more than that. In my book, more than any other animal that we eat, you can really taste the difference between the various cuts.

You take a pork loin cut - clean, crisp, mild pig flavor. Not much marbling, pretty lean - and lean tasting. You move toward the shoulder and you start talking about muscles that are used more often. They are tougher. They have more fat marbling. They need slower cooking, but yield a much richer flavor.

Now we start talking about the pig’s head and neck. Tough meat that needs slow cooking, but a cut that yields extreme richness, and a really deep porky flavor. It certainly isn’t one for the pork novice, but if you like food with character, this is a good place to start (rather cheap too, as it happens).

This is really highlighted when you start to cook and eat pork from farms that do a fantastic job of raising their pigs in good conditions. Supermarket pork pretty much sucks - far too lean, and devoid of flavor. (not to mention hormones, antibiotics and all that jazz). When you start thinking seriously about pork you can taste the subtle variations in the different breeds - especially heritage breeds. When you start getting pretty hardcore about it all, you can also notice taste differences depending on what the pig was fed on.

These differences really get highlighted further when you start to look at meat curing and charcuterie. Flavors get enhanced, condensed. Somewhat like the flavor differences between fast and slow cooking something.

Enter Guanciale [ɡwanˈtʃaːle]

Guanciale is a whole pork jowl, that has been rubbed with salt herbs and spices, and air dried. The jowl is the cheek and some neck of a pig. It is quite frankly one of the fattiest cuts of meat I have ever seen. Whilst pork belly (bacon) might have a 50/50 fat to meat percentage, jowl is around 70/30 fat to meat. This really varies on the breed of pig too. Mangalista pigs might even be pushing a 80/20 ratio.

Because of how much these muscles are used there is also a lot of collagen in this cut. What does this mean for the cook and charcuteriest? It means richness, in a word.

When you slowly render out the fat from guanciale, much like you do bacon, you get a rich fattiness which really adds a lot of body and character to sauces.

Guanciale is a cured meat that in my opinion is best used IN something. You can certainly thinly slice and eat this charcuterie raw if you wish. It is rich though, really darn rich. I tried three thin slices raw when I pulled this from my curing chamber, and frankly felt pretty sick after - just from how gosh darn fatty and rich this is.

This is a cut that you certainly want to cook with - think of it like bacon on steroids. But, without any steroids.  Bacon with more porky flavor. Bacon that can give more richness and more body to sauce or a dish.

“Wait.. More richness and flavor than bacon? Matt are you mad?” I hear you say.

Nope, not mad. Try it. Source some out, and give it a go.

You could of course make your own. Guanciale is one of the easiest pieces of cured meat to do at home - next to perhaps duck prosciutto. The jowl is relatively small, and pretty thin - meaning that it cures reasonably quickly, which gives less chance of any muck-ups.

I cured this jowl with Becky Selengut, a fantastic chef and food writer here in Seattle, who happens to share my love of charcuterie. We had a day around the end of last year where we made salami, guanciale and coppa.

(there is Becky, demonstrating the location of a jowl..)

For the curing recipe, we modified the recipe in Michael Ruhlman’s excellent Charcuterie book

we essentially took his recipe, and added extra flavorings that we personally like. It is important when modifying charcuterie recipes not to muck around with salt or sodium nitrate/nitrite amounts. It is also important to treat these values more as ratios of the meat weight (or percentages of meat weight). This way if you meat is a different weight to the recipe (which it most likely will be), then you can accurately work out how much of the other stuff you are going need.

I also urge you to work in metric units, and to use as scale, and not do things by volume. Accuracy is important, especially when dealing with some of the cure ingredients. (having said that, this recipe is more forgiving for that since no nitrate/nitrite’s are used)

Home Cured Guanciale Recipe

2lb/ 1kg pork jowl

70grams kosher salt (7% of meat weight)

70 grams sugar (7% of meat weight)

15 black peppercorns

1 large bunch of thyme

2 bay laurel leaves (look for genuine bay laurel, not the pungent Californian bay)

4 juniper berries

Grind up the juniper, peppercorns and bay in a spice grinder until reasonably fine. Combine with the salt and sugar. Remove the leaves from the thyme, discard the stalks, and finely chop. Add to the salt mixture, and stir to combine.

Using a sharp boning knife or pairing knife remove any glads from the meat. These will look like small off-white bumps that are reasonably hard. Some might be hiding under some fat.

In a large tupperware, or zip lock bag combine the cure ingredients and the jowl. Rub the cure into the meat on all sides thoroughly. Seal the bag, or the tupperware and pop in the fridge for 7 days. On day 3 redistribute the cure over the meat just by rubbing the meat again.

After 7 days the meat should feel firmer. Take it out of the fridge, and rinse it in cold water to remove the cure. Some of the herbs might well stick to the meat and fat, that is fine - just give a good rub over to get the cure off. Dry with a towel.

Make a hole in one end, not too close to the edge of the meat (since it will shrink). Tie some butchers string through the hole, and hang at 55F 75% humidity for at least a month, possibly two.

You will know when the jowl is cured because it should feel firm to the touch. The fat will feel softer than the meat, that is fine.

Once cured it should keep in the fridge easily for a few weeks, or frozen longer. You can keep it hanging at 55F and 75% humidity too if you wish - the meat might well harden more, but it will develop an even stronger flavor.

What to do with all this guanciale?

Well, glad you asked. A little can go a long way for sure.

I doubt anyone is as lucky as Danika and I are for this. Becky just happened to have done a stint at one of Seattle’s best (and authentic) Italian restaurants, La Spiga, making pasta for a year. So, when she says “hey, why don’t you guys come over and I will make a carbonara with some of the jowl” you do not say no.

Dang, that was some seriously good pasta. Guanciale is the traditional cured meat used in carbonora, but most people (including me, until we cured some) would normally use pancetta or bacon).

How about this?:

* Mackerel, flageolet beans, guanciale, preserved lemon, parsley oil

That was a recipe I knocked together almost a year ago, with some guanciale I bought at the store.

* Truth be told, guanciale goes GREAT with beans. Better than bacon I would say.

* How about the classic Bucatini all’amatriciana - this recipe from Babbo restaurant is fantastic.

* Anything with eggs. Dice it over a fried egg if you wish. Just fantastic.

There is, in my opinion, only one way to roast a potato, and that is this one.

I can make such a statement without sounding like an arrogant berk simply because this particular method of roasting potatoes is far from something I have conjured up in that odd British brain of mine. Instead it is something that almost everyone growing up in England (who has an interest in cooking) has learned to prepare. Variations exist, of course they do, and they are often hotly debated - the same way people get all heated over the most “authentic” bouliabaise or cassoulet.

Arguments erupt over potato choice. Fat choice. Cooking temperature. Cooking method. Roasting pan type and even basting method. I have probably cooked this style of potato close to 200 times, using all the variables above, and settled on one method - and almost regimental method at that.

Traditionally in England spuds like this would get served alongside a nice roast joint (piece of meat) on Sunday. Tradition had it that families got together for a big Sunday meal that normally involved some kind of roast meat or game. Apparently this tradition is slowly dying out across the pond, but I left England long enough ago to still have had the privilege of these dinners weekly. What I remember is every family doing it. If you were a kid playing over a mates house you still got your Sunday dinner, just with your friends family. People always got together, shared some food, and had a lazy couple of hours. I don’t like to think of this tradition fading out.

But back to the spuds. Personally I think this potatoes are easily special enough to make them into their own course. In fact, I will go as far to say that it is a complete bloody waste to serve these with a roast, especially if some twerp is going to pour gravy all over them. Oh no, these should be savored, enjoyed all by themselves. The only thing I would add is an interesting, complex and slightly acidic sauce to go with them. The potatoes are rich and work well when you have something to cut that richness and add more depth and flavor complexity to each bite.

Enter stage right, sauce Gribiche. This is a classic French sauce of a bunch of acidic components, herbs, shallots, egg and olive oil. It has a slight tartness, much like a decent French vinaigrette, and enough components to it to make each bite very complex but not overwhelming. There are a lot of different recipes floating around for this one. I think every French cookbook I own has at least one recipe for Gribiche in it. A lot are a rich sauce base, where the egg is fully emulsified into the sauce base, giving a lot of richness and body. Personally I prefer the far more modern approach taken by Thomas Keller in his excellent French Laundry cookbook. He finely dices the shallot, capers, cornichon, hard boiled egg white and yolk, and mixes these into the base of olive oil, dijon and vinegar. To this gets added some finely chopped herbs - tarragon, chives and parsley to be precise. The sauce has texture, body and a lightness that goes fantastically well with rich food.

My rather peculiar sense of humor also makes me love serving something extremely British with something extremely French - letting the old rivals battle it out on the plate. This time however, no one looses, it’s a win-win.

I mentioned a rather pedantic method to yielding the perfect roast spud. It is a rather simple set of steps that for me always yields the perfect roast potato. Nothing complicated, but care and attention to detail really make all the difference. Oh, and duck fat.

Perfect Roast Potatoes - the WRIGHTFOOD pedantic method:

1) Preheat that oven of yours.

Four Hundred and Fifty Fahrenheit is the magic number here. Don’t bother about convection if you have it. Not at the start anyhow. Let the oven get up to temperature before you even think about putting in anything potato related. Oh, and you can also put that roasting pan of yours in to heat up along with the oven too.

2) Roasting Pan Choice

Your roasting pan choice is absolutely critical in the successful browning of your potatoes. The perfect roasting pan needs to be thick. George Bush thick. Heavy is a good thing too - lots of thermal mass. My personal preference is actually to use either a cast iron or carbon steel (pictured above) skillet. If you are going to cook a larger batch of these, you can happily use a larger saute pan, or a really good, really thick roasting pan.

The heavier the pan the more heat it can absorb, the more even the heating and the better browning you will get.

Oh, and if you are worried that your cast iron pan isn’t seasoned that well, fear not - this is the perfect recipe to season it very well indeed!

3) Potato choice and cut

Go for something waxy. No need to get all fancy pants unless you want to. I do my roasties with Yukon Gold’s. Feel free to use a more heirloom variety if you wish.

Peel the potatoes and cut them into randomly shaped pieces. Whilst the shape can be random, the size shouldn’t be. Aim to get your chunks of potato roughly the same size - they will all then cook to the same doneness (is that a word?)

Put them into a pan of cold water.

4) Par Boil and toss

This is where the magic starts to happen folks. With the spuds in cold water, bring them up to the boil. Simmer for about 5 minutes, or until they are almost cooked through.

Drain.

Now comes the fun bit. Put them back into the saucepan, and hold the lid on tight. Gently roll the pan around a few times. This genius step fluffs up the edges of the potatoes which in turns makes them far more fluffy when roasted. The fluffy edge catches more fat, making them light, crispy, and very textural.

Be careful not to over-toss. You don’t want them falling into pieces. You really want to make sure that you don’t over-boil them too, otherwise again, you have pieces… lots of tiny pieces. And that, as my three year old son would say, is “bad news”.

5) Fat choice

is it wrong that I have 4 tubs of duck fat in the freezer? No? Good.

Duck or goose fat is king here. Lard is a close second. Beef dripping (if you are  roasting a nice piece of beef) is acceptable too. You are going to use a fair amount of it, just to let you know. Before you go running around screaming of high fat content, duck, goose and lard actually have less saturated fat than butter, and are considered healthier for you.

See, I told you, lard is health food…

Now, vegetarians out there.. you can roast your potatoes in olive oil if you want. You can. They won’t be anywhere near as good, but you could.

6. Preheat the fat

Take the roasting pan out of the oven, and set it over a low flame on your cooktop. Add a couple of tablespoons of fat to your pan, so that you get decent coverage over the whole bottom of the pan. Get this fat nice and hot.

7. Add the potatoes, and toss

Add the potatoes to the pan. Gently toss them with a spoon to get a decent coverage of fat. Don’t crowd the pan. If you get too many in the pan, they will never brown properly. Use two pans if you have to, or one larger one.

As soon as they are coated, back in the oven they go.

8. Do nothing for 20 minutes

This part is easy just let them roast, and do their thing.

9. Gently toss, and add more fat if needed

Take them out of the oven, and again set over a low flame. Toss the potatoes gently in the fat again. They should be starting to brown up nicely. If the pan looks dry of fat, add another tablespoon.

10. Do nothing for another 20 minutes

Let them roast some more. After this 20 minutes, toss again and check the color. They should be close to done.

11. EAT

The best bit. If they look crisp and brown, but not burnt - they are done. Keep the fact that they are done quiet. Don’t tell anyone. Scoff as many as possible before guests arrive.

Sauce Gribiche

This sexy little number comes straight out of the French Laundry cookbook. Normally I wouldn’t reprint a recipe from a such a tome, just out of respect, however you can quite easily find this recipe via a quick google search - thanks to google books. So here goes.

This sauce is fantastic with anything that is rich and fatty - pork belly, leg of lamb - heck it might even work with some great black cod or salmon.

1 heaped tablespoon minced shallot

1 1/2 teaspoon finely minced capers

1 1/2 teaspoon finely minced cornichon

1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon of wine vinegar or sherry vinegar

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (use some good stuff)

1 heaped tablespoon of finely chopped hard boiled egg white

1 tablespoon of finely chopped hard boiled egg yolk

1/4 teaspoon finely minced tarragon

1 teaspoon finely minced flat leaf parsley

1/2 teaspoon finely minced chives

Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Personally I like to mix the wet and add the dry in. I also like to make this a few hours before required, just to let the flavors develop a bit.

Serve alongside the roast potatoes, or with the potatoes sitting on top of a pool of the gribiche.

After the radio interview I did earlier this month for the KCRW Good Food Show I thought I might well just do a post about how gosh darn easy it is to make a little setup at home to cure meat in.

When I first started making moldy meat in my garage over a year ago I figured that it must take very specialist equipment, and a team of well read meat science boffins to make anything resembling a decent cured product. I quite frankly am not a meat science boffin, or have very specialist equipment. Nor do the thousands of other people around the globe that cure meat at home, and make a darn fine product too I should add.

It turns out it is actually exceptionally easy to make a basic reliable setup at home to cure meat in, and one that doesn’t cost a pretty penny either. In fact, with a little wheeling and dealing, I reckon the whole thing can be put together for around $100 - even less if you have an old fridge already, or a room/garage/basement that has some of the right environmental properties (more on that later).

My first ever setup was a just simply hanging the meat (inside a cage incase any animals got in..) in my garage. This proved somewhat unreliable because temperature and humidity fluctuated so much - often outside the limits of what should really be considered safe. From here on in I started looking into making a more controllable setup at home that wouldn’t require a walk in fridge area, and lots of special equipment.

So - meat curing is just really the slow controlled release of water from meat. Once the water activity level (aW) of meat gets low enough it is considered safe to eat, since living organisms (bacteria included) need moisture to survive.

A setup for curing meat is really just making a small area with the right environmental conditions.

These conditions are temperature, humidity, and air flow.

In order to make a decent (and safe) product you need some way of controlling all three - or at least keeping them within a certain range. Lets look at each element separately, and see what we can do to control it.

temperature: a safe temperature range for curing meat is below 60F. Above that and bacteria grows a lot faster. Ideally you want the temperature between 50F and 60F. Below 50F and the curing process slows down a great deal, making the process take much, much longer (which also means it takes much much longer for your charcuterie to reach a safe water content level, but that is getting a bit geeky). Most likely you are going to find that you will have to cool and area to get it to 60F rather than heat it.

humidity: for most of the curing you want the humidity between 70% and 75%. Below 70% and you run the risk of the outside of your salami/meat drying out too fast, which means moisture is trapped on the inside, leading to spoilage. If the humidity is really high for too long then the sausage wont dry correctly, and you run the risk of getting a lot of bad mold on the charcuterie.

Ideally when you first put something in to dry cure, you want the humidity at around 85%, and then over the course of the next week you want to drop the humidity down to 75%. The reasoning here is that you want your humidity just a bit less than the water content of the meat you are curing - this stops the meat drying out too fast and developing case hardening. At the start of curing the meat has a lot of moisture in it (especially leaner cuts), so you want your curing humidity to almost match that. As the meat looses water you drop the humidity down accordingly (or roughly anyhow).

Typically we find that most areas in a house aren’t this humid, unless you have a cold, dank basement. Often enough we find ourselves having to add extra humidity to a space to make it perfect.

air flow: some air flow is critical in not only helping to dry the meat (pulling moisture away from the surface of the sausage), but it also really helps keep bad mold (green, black and fury mold) off the meat too - since there isn’t stagnant damp air constantly around the sausage. In practical terms this can just mean fanning the meat a couple of times a day, or setting up a low powered fan to blow a little air around.

SETTING ALL THIS UP IN PRACTICAL TERMS:

So, we know that we have a bunch of conditions that we need to control. How on earth does one go about making a space that has the right temperature, humidity and air flow?

1) buy a temperature and humidity sensor and find an area in your house with good temp/humidity

the first thing to do is get your hands on a temperature and humidity sensor. Over the course of a week, put it in different locations around your house for 24 hours, and see what readings you get.

If you have a basement that is somewhat unfinished (and not heated) then you might have somewhere with decent temperature, and possibly even humidity. Here in Seattle especially in the winter, most peoples basements can get pretty humid, thanks to all that fine rain we have.

I recommend against curing meat in a garage that you will have to open the garage door a few times a day with. Been there, done that, thrown away the meat because of it. Opening the door is going to lower the humidity quite a bit, and it will stay low for a while. Unless you get a humidifier to bump it back up as needed. Obviously don’t cure meat in a garage that you are going to drive a car in to either! Salami flavored with car fumes ain’t gonna taste too pretty.

The temperature and humidity sensor I recommend is this one: HygroSet II Adjustable Digital Hygrometer

It is relatively cheap, accurate, and most importantly adjustable. Often enough hygrometers (humidity sensors) aren’t incredibly accurate out of the box, and you need to calibrate them. Most digital sensors don’t allow this, but this one does. How to calibrate you ask? Spend less than your daily latte on this: Boveda One Step Calibration - a simple calibration kit that is so incredibly simple to use.

2) OK, my house is rubbish for meat curing.. now what?

Worry not, that is how it goes for most of us. The next thing to do is to construct yourself a curing chamber. Rent some old MacGyver episodes, read up on Heath Robinson, and make some friends at Home Depot - you are you going to need to!

JUST KIDDING!

Here is what you do… Go to craigslist. Search your local area for people selling old frost-free fridges. You shouldn’t spend over $25 on it to be honest. Quite a few are being given away free, if you can get your mits on a truck to take it away with. An old fridge makes an almost perfect curing chamber, albeit with some modifications!

Oh, and don’t worry about these old fridges draining the power grid, and your salami causing massive widespread deforestation and global warming due to the high power consumption. The fridge won’t be on that much - we are going to setup a controller that will turn it on and off to maintain a temperature of 57F - which is much higher than the regular fridge temperature of 36F.

3) Fridge, check. What’s next?

Time to talk about controlling those environmental factors above that we talked about.

Controlling temperature:

If you leave a fridge turned on, it will self regulate itself to hold a temperature around 37F. You can make go to about 45F, but that is still too low for meat curing - which should be between 50 and 60F (preferably 55-60F).

Thankfully there is a great little (and simple) product that will automagically turn a fridge on and off to maintain whatever temperature you set it to. It has a temperature probe that you put in the fridge that monitors the fridge temperature. You plug the fridge into the controller, and the controller into an outlet. Set the temp at 57F, and you are done. The controller simply turns the fridge on and off to maintain the set temperature.

The controller that you see on the left is just under $50 and can be ordered here, and is meant for home brewing - but works exceedingly well for meat curing applications.

Controlling Humidity:

Humidity is a different ball game to temperature. Humidity can vary a lot depending on where you curing chamber is. In most situations you are going to need to add humidity, and not remove it.

Since humidity in your chamber (er, old fridge..) varies depending on atmospheric conditions, how long your fridge is on for (the cold air pumped into fridges has very low humidity), how much meat you have in there, and at what stage the meat is at - we need some kind of humidity controller, and humidifier.

Some options for controlling humidity:

1) bowl of salty water. Yes it can be that simple. In the bottom of your fridge put a big bowl of very salty water. The salt prevents bacteria growth in the water. This might be enough to raise your humidity to a decent level.

The problem here is that as those conditions above change, this salty water doesn’t give out any more or any less humidity, it is constant. This leaves you forever checking it to make sure it isn’t getting too humid in there.

2) a humidity controller (hygrostat) and humififer

This is by far the best solution, but it is more expensive. The humidity controller works in pretty much the same way as the temperature controller. You set a dial saying what humidity you want, and the controller will turn a humidifier on and off to maintain that rough level. All you have to do is make sure you keep your humidifier stocked full of distilled water.

On the left is the Dayton Humidifier Controller. This does exactly what is mentioned above. Set the humidity you want on the dial, plug a humidifier into the front of it, and put the thing in your curing chamber. Easier than breathing. This will turn your humidifier on and off to maintain the humidity you set it to.

One thing that I have done is actually to add a fan into this equation too. I have a power strip plugged into the humidity controller, and into that strip I have BOTH a humidifier and a fan plugged in.

So, when the humidifier turns on, so too does a fan. This pushes the humid air around the chamber, and makes sure the chamber has even humidity across it. This also provides some much needed airflow every now and again.

Now lets talk about humidifiers for a second.. You want to make sure that you get an “ultrasonic” humidifier. This gives out a much finer mist than regular humidifiers, which is absorbed into the air much easier, and wont leave you with large water globules sitting on your meat. You also want one that will just start going when you plug it into the wall - and doesn’t require 10 button presses to start - since the humidity controller cannot press buttons for you..

I use this one:

A simple cheap ultrasonic humidifier.

This one has a dial on it to determine how much moisture it kicks out. I have it cranked all the way up, and it raises humidity rather quickly. The unit is pretty small, which is great because you don’t want it taking up valuable meat space. For me, I have to fill it every couple of weeks. Oh, and on a note on filling humidifiers - always use distilled water, otherwise you get mineral deposits in your humidifier, which causes it to conk out much faster.

So you put the humidifier in the bottom of the fridge, along with the fan if you are using one (you don’t have to). Hook it up to the humidity controller, which needs to sit somewhere in the fridge too. Set the controller to the desired humidity, walk away and have a beer (the beer part is instrumental to the success of the whole seutp).

Controlling airflow:

You can get uber-complicated here. Certain airflows are best at certain times during the curing process. You could buy a small 120V computer fan, drill a hole through the side of you fridge, and mount it in the fridge, to give some air flow. Heck, even just drilling some holes in the top right side and bottom left side of your fridge would most likely give enough airflow, without the fan.

You could do that if you want.

Personally for me, I just leave the door of my chamber open a little bit. It isn’t like I don’t check on my meat twice a day, swing open the door, take the meat out, give em a squeeze, and so on. Plenty of airflow going on there.

If you have your fridge in a place where you cannot leave the door open, then seriously consider drilling some holes through the side of it (don’t worry, there shouldn’t be anything bad to drill through in the SIDES of the fridge) for some airflow. If you have rodent problems, then I suggest putting some fine mesh over these holes too. Rats can squeeze through a hole smaller than a quarter you know..

So there you have it - your basic fridge curing chamber setup. With the temperature and humidity controllers in place, this really is a pretty hands free setup.

3) Make some cured meat!

This is the fun bit. Get some recipes, get some meat, and all the stuff you need for it and get cracking making some lovely moldy bits of pig. There are some particular products you are going to need - curing salts, dextrose, casings if you are doing salami. I highly recommend Butcher & Packer for these.

You are also going to want to break down a buy a decent kitchen scale. Using cups and tablespoons isn’t accurate enough for most meat curing antics. Quite frankly, I have no idea how people bake/cook using volume measurements for dry ingredients anyhow. Scales rock. They aren’t expensive either.

Oh wait.. I nearly forgot recipes. Well, there are a couple of great books to get you started:

Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman & Brian Polcyn - a great book covering cured meats, salami, pate, sausages

The Art of Making Fermented Sausages by Stanley Marianski - fabulous book on making salami. A lot of information here, including a lot of science - however it is extremely accessible, and not at all dry. Marianski has managed to write a technical book with great recipes that is easy for you and I to read.

Finally, if anyone gets started curing meat, let me know! I want to hear about it.

On one rather cold and sunny morning in December I walked into one of Seattle’s best restaurants carrying my camera bag, tripod and laptop. Walking through the door the first thing that struck me was just how darn packed the place was. Packed with food bloggers and photographers.

We were all there for one thing - the same thing. A food photography class from Penny De Los Santos.

To call Penny a food photographer is like calling the Pope a churchgoer. She has shot for National Geographic, Saveur magazine, Time magazine, Newsweek, and most likely a whole heck of a lot more. Her portfolio covers food, travel, landscapes - and now she is teaching a food photography workshop right here in lovely little Seattle.

The emphasis here was workshop. This wasn’t going to be a dry lecture (quite honestly I don’t think someone with as much character as Penny could ever do dry), this was going to be a hands honest, up front (honest critique) workshop for new and seasoned food photographers alike. Count me in.

Lectures are good. Workshops with critique are better. I have spent a lot of my professional life both giving and receiving art critiques of various mediums and have really come to know one thing - you learn more from your mistakes and an honest critique than you ever will from your successes. Still, taking photos in this environment and having Penny talk about them was still pretty daunting.

The class started with a short talk from Penny, where she discussed her approach to food photography, how she does what she does, he tips for better photography, along with a talk through of setups she used for various photographs. Later the class was broken down into three distinct tasks - the first was to shoot some of the lovely food prepared by Spring Hill with attention to camera angle, depth of field and so on. The second task was to shoot some more of the Spring Hill nosh with attention to lighting. The third and final task was to shoot with an approach to editing a plate - that is removing food that might make the plate too busy, along with finally cracking into the plate of food, and getting some “eaten” shots.

Oh, and we got to eat all the food. Heck yeah.

The class ran long, and I was only able to stay for the first two tasks. I divided my time between shooting the food (4 plates between what must have been 30 people made it a waiting and elbow shoving game!) and shooting the great chefs and cooks preparing the dishes.

What I really want to share here is Penny’s approach to food photography, which has some striking differences to mine. This in my mind is why workshops like these are so darn important. Everyone has their own method - a certain setup and production style that works for them. You ask any 5 food photographers their approach, and they are all going to be different, yet they all shoot fantastic shots. In my mind these classes and discussions help you push outside your comfort zone, and start trying new and different techniques that you might well have never considered (and at worst completely discounted as “never being able to work”) and thus broaden your range.

Myself I like to use a fixed focal length lens (called a “prime”), a tripod, and I often shoot wider than I want and crop and image down (especially for my blog, where resolution isn’t so important). Penny is almost the opposite to this. So without further ado, here are some great tips and advice from Penny:

• Shoot in natural light. The food will generally look a lot more natural, unless you know a lot about lighting setup (and have the equipment). She shoots all her work in natural light, most of it on location at restaurants and so on.
• Understand light, and how to modify it. Practice with bounce cards, reflectors, and scrims. I have written about all these in a previous post about food photography here. This is critically important, especially if dealing with strong daylight outside. Thankfully the equipment to do this is very cheap, and most can be bought at an art supply store for less than $10
• She shoots with a zoom lens. This really goes against my style here. Penny uses one zoom lens for almost all of her photography (a very good zoom lens I should point out). Her approach for this is really that she does a lot of travel work, and cannot be humping around a bloody great camera bag full of lenses everywhere. Her lens of choice is a 24-100mm F4 L series canon lens. This is certainly a very nice lens, and is actually the one I shot my Seabreeze farms photos with. This to me is perhaps the best ever travel lens - especially for food photography. My personal preference however is for a lower F stop, so I can get a shorter focus range (more blur), this typically means going for a fixed focal length lens. Penny of course has yielded some fantastic shots from this lens, and has honestly made me think about using it for food photography more.
• Ditch the Tripod. Her approach is that if the light isn’t good enough to shoot handheld, then you need to move to a better lit location. She also likes how dynamic she can be shooting handheld. I totally agree with these statements - if you are in terrible light, find a better place. Shooting handheld is absolutely more dynamic. I typically shoot on a tripod for most of my stuff, because frankly I don’t have that steady a hand. I always finish up a shoot taking about 50 quick shots handheld. More often than not, one of those is the one I like the most.
• Edit the plate. Analyze the food plating, and edit it as need be. This is incredibly important. Remove food from a plate if it looks too cluttered. Spread food between a couple of plates - main focus on one plate, and the sides/salad etc on other plates slightly out of focus in the background. Most of the food shots on my blog aren’t the final thing I will eat. Whilst I might be skinny, I eat a ton - a lot more than I plate for a shot on this blog normally. It is much easier to do some great styling with a small amount of food on a plate than it is to go with Denny’s sized portions.
• Shoot shots of dish preparation. As you cook, take shots of some of the raw ingredients, food in pans and so on. This in my mind is harder to do in practice, especially if your kitchen has crappy light. Certainly something I am going to work on more.
• Take shots of half eaten plates. Edit the food. Once you have your money shot, break into the food with a fork, mess it up, eat a bit. Take shots of the half eaten plate - these can be dynamic, exciting, and all round irresistible.

So there you have it folks, some great photography tips from a true master.

Just time to say a big thanks to Seattle Bon Vivant for setting up the class, Spring Hill Restaurant for hosting it, and cooking the food for it, and of course Penny De Los Santos for giving the fantastic workshop.

Other posts on food photography setup:

Food Photography Setup Post One - learn about lenses, bounces, lighting, scrims, composition

Food Photography Setup Post Two - learn about post production work in photoshop, lightroom. Understanding a histrogram. Image brightness

Compact Camera Food Photography - hints and tips on how to use a compact camera for food photography

Big news folks! At the beginning of December I got interviewed by the wonderful Evan Kleiman, host of KCRW’s Good Food. I am happy to say that the show aired on January the 2nd, and you can now listen online!

The interview was all about the process of curing meat in a basement at home. We talked about successes and failures. We talked about the meat curing setup, environmental factors, and the really stupid idea of planning a party around cured meat.

So, if anyone wants to hear this rather funky Brit talk about moldy meat - you can listen to the radio interview online here: Good Food Radio Interview

click either listen or download to hear the show - my section is at the 50minute marker.

Pretty soon I will do a big ole post about my meat curing setup, and how to get started curing meat at home.

Turkey can go forth and multiply.

There goes half the readers of this blog.

I guess I shouldn’t make such a brash statement without backing it up with at least a modicum of fact. Well, perhaps not fact, but my views on that rather large, rather disappointing bird…

I have cooked a fair few turkeys in my time. I have roasted them straight. I have wet brined, dry brined them. I have stuffed them. Cooked both large and small ones. Some techniques do yield better results than others, but it is still a pretty darn bland white meat. The legs are better of course, but those normally get fought over so much I just say “what the heck” and let others battle it out. Gravy makes things better, but if you ask me (I know you didn’t..) if you have to smother something in gravy to make it decent, the starting product should be seriously contested.

To make things worse it seems like my extended family every year demand a ridiculously big turkey because they want left overs. Cooking a huge turkey in a tiny oven is a silly idea to start with, and every year brings new heights of imagination to me as I try and work out how to cook everything in that small oven.

This year the turkey finished it’s cooking on the BBQ so I could roast some veg in that little oven. That was actually a very good thing. The BBQ added an extra layer of flavor that was quite palatable.

In my mind there are solutions to the bland turkey however:

Brining does certainly help. The wet brine method is a complete pain in the arse, and normally ends up with a rather wet fridge. Drine brine is another option.

Another solution is to buy a heritage turkey from a small local farm. I did this last year, the turkey was actually pretty great. It was small, and rather bloody skinny (thankfully we were only feeding 8 that year) because apparently it flew a lot.. But I do have to say that its flavor was far superior to any turkey you will find at the supermarket, even an organic turkey from a decent co-op store.

Of course, those bad-boys aren’t cheap - and when you start to talk heritage turkey, you have slapped yourself well and truly into the price range of a fantastic game bird with so much more to offer than even the most poncy of turkey.

GOOSE.

For the same money as that skinny flown-a-lot bird you get yourself a nice plump, very, very fat goose. And as we all know, fat means flavor, and fat doesn’t come much better than goose fat.

Oh lordy, goose fat.

So this year I tried my best to convince my fantastic in-laws that a goose should be on our Christmas table, and not that traditional American favorite of the turkey.

I was shot down faster than I ever possibly imagined. Shot down for the following reason, and I qoute: “I don’t like goose. I had one in the freezer for two years, it had freezer burn, but I cooked it anyway. It tasted horrible. I don’t like goose“.

This is quite understandable really. Freezer burnt anything is bad news.

And so it was to be. I would roast a goose before Christmas, invite over the parents-in-law, and hopefully convince them that goose doesn’t taste like crap - and then we can do a Turkey for Christmas. Win-Win for everyone!

I am happy to say my plan succeeded extremely well. A week or so before Christmas I invited some lovely friends of ours, and the parents-in-law over for roast goose. This was actually the first whole goose I have ever roasted myself personally (nothing like pressure of in-laws and a rather talented chef looking over your shoulder..) - I decided to go the route of considering it be just a rather large duck, and roasting it along similar lines.

Now, it would be foolish to write a blog post about roast goose without mentioning a rather large and important by-product of roasting a goose.

FAT.

GOOSE FAT.

The best darn fat known to man. Known to me anyhow. And a goose has buckets of it. Thank the maker, because that stuff is pure gold. When roasting a goose it should be considered illegal not to roast potatoes alongside in the strained goose fat. ILLEGAL people.

So that of course we did. Lots and lots of spuds. Parsnips too, and the last carrots from the garden. I think I might have served all this with a green salad too, but honestly cannot remember because of one thing - goose fat roasted potatoes!!!

Anyhow, what I am really trying to do here is to convince as many people as possible to drop the roast turkey for one year - especially here in the US (since what, you have roast turkey in November AND December), and roast a goose instead. You will be hooked.

I know I am.

I roasted the goose, but removed the lower half of the wings and neck. I had planned on stuffing the neck skin as a sausage, but alas this goose came with its neck without skin. The neck, giblets and wing tips all went into the stock pot, to make a quick stock for a goose au jus.

To help render fat from the goose its skin should be pricked all over, taking care not to puncture the meat. The goose fat should be harvested from the goose roasting pan a couple of times during roasting. The goose needs to be up on a rack, so it doesn’t sit in its own fat.

(thanks to my wonderfully talented and sexy wife for taking the photos)

Roast Goose Recipe, with all the trimmings (serves eight)

1 goose, about 10lb.

sea salt, lots of it. Freshly ground pepper too.

10 yukon gold potatoes

6 medium parsnips

a handful of carrots, plus 1 for the stock

green top of a leek

1 onion

1 bay leaf

1 small bunch of thyme

5 juniper berries, crushed

1 glass of dry white wine

Preheat oven to 450F

Using a sharp knife remove the lower wing tips at the joint.

Put the neck, giblets, wing tips, bay, thyme, onion, 1 carrot and juniper berries in a saucepan. Cover with water. Bring to the boil. Skim if scum comes to the surface. Reduce heat to simmer, and cook this stock down all the time the goose is roasting.

Peel the potatoes, and cut into bite sized pieces. Par boil until cooked about half way through in lots of water. Drain. Toss potatoes gently to fluff them.

Clean the goose inside and out, removing any giblets in the cavity. Dry well with paper towel. Prick the skin all over with a sharp knife. Sprinkle the inside of the cavity with salt and pepper. Trim off any excess fat from around the cavity, and put into a small saucepan.

Tie the goose legs together. Place the goose on a rack in a large roasting pan. Rub a lot of coarse sea salt into the skin of the goose. Roast at 450F for 30 minutes.

Turn the oven down to 350F. Continue roasting for another 90 minutes or so, until the temperature of the goose (when measured between leg and breast) reaches about 180F. Strain off the goose fat that has collected in the roasting pan at least a couple of times during roasting.

Pour this goose fat into the saucepan with the goose fat from around the cavity. Heat over a low stove until all the fat has melted. Strain through a fine sieve.

About 20 minutes before the goose is done, heat a large baking sheet in the oven. Take out the baking sheet, pour onto it a good half cup of the hot goose fat. Toss your potatoes, parsnips and carrots onto this sheet. Make sure these all get covered in the fat. Put the baking sheet back in the oven.

When the goose is cooked, take it out and cover in foil. Leave the vegetables in, and raise the oven temp to 450F. Let these roast for 15 minutes longer, whilst the goose rests. Toss the veg once during cooking, to evenly brown all sides.

Pour out the remaining goose fat from the roasting pan. Heat this pan over a high heat, and deglaze with the white wine. let this bubble away for a few minutes, and add a few of soup ladles of the goose stock.  Let this reduce by half to make the au jus. Feel free to add chopped thyme and butter to this if you wish.

Remove the legs and breast from the goose (the shot above is Danny carving the goose). Cut the meat off the legs. Slice the breasts against the grain. Serve with the roasted veg, au jus.

You may recall a few posts back now I wrote a little something about the salami that Becky Selengut (some might know her as Chef Reinvented) and I started together. I say started because salami making is a long process. Most of this work is up front. A couple of hours to dice, chop, grind, clean, stuff and finally ferment and hang. Another few hours to make ridiculously childish sausage jokes. From there on in for the next month or so it is about careful monitoring, and daily squeezes of your salami (giggle).

Well the careful monitoring is done, and there has been a lot of salami squeezing going on (ahem..). The salami has lost about 40% of its original weight, and exhibits no case hardening (where the outside dries out too much, before the inside is dry, making a rotten mess). Not being one to boast, but it has dried pretty much perfectly, with a lovely coverage of white sausage mold (a strain of penicillin to be precise).

Unfortunately this is one salami that we will never eat. This has been one of the hardest decisions on my culinary life. These salami got absolutely no bad mold on them at all. Nothing is rotten. Nothing too squishy. This time it is more about what you cannot see, cannot smell and cannot taste.

Making salami is often about overcoming safety hurdles. Jumping them properly, not just running through them. When making salami you take certain steps to assure the safety of a sausage:

1. Sanitation is very important.
2. Nitrates are very important (a hotly debated subject, but they prevent botulism, so are OK by me)
3. The use of a starter culture - A starter culture is really just “good bacteria”, which you feed so they multiply (feed by the way of sugar, and fermentation) and produce lactic acid which lowers pH (makes a sausage more acidic, thus making it harder for bad bacteria to grow)
4. Proper hanging conditions - the right temperature and humidity
5. The use of an exterior sausage mold - the white mold you see on this was sprayed on. This helps prevent nasty mold growing on the surface, and also helps regulate moisture loss.
6. getting moisture out of the sausage - bacteria need moisture to grow. Once the sausage is at a certain dryness it can be said that it is micro biologically stable (nothing can grow in it..)
7. and finally correct salt levels in the sausage.

This last step is where things fell fowl. We followed a recipe from a good friend of ours - a very experienced salami maker. He has made this salami many, many times and has never got sick. Salt is the first barrier against the growth of bad bacteria. We are talking some pretty nasty bacteria too. Salmonella. E Coli. Listeria to name a few. These nasties cannot be seen, smelled or tasted. Correct salt level, starter culture, and curing conditions all but wipe the chances of these out.

Salt level in a salami is a hotly debated subject. Too much salt and it tastes like a box of Kosher. Too little salt and you run the risk of bad bacteria growing rapidly and thus being strapped to the porcelain princess for a week or two (if you are lucky..). Most salami recipes state a salt level of 2.5 to 3.5% salt to meat weight (eg 60g of salt for 2kg of meat, at 3% salt amount).In the fantastic book “The Art of Fermented Sausages” Marianski quotes

“When making fermented sausages use between 2.5% and 3% salt as this combined with nitrite, is you first line of defense against undesirable bacteria….There is no room for compromise“

But yet I have seen a fair few salami recipes where the salt content is 2%, and one even lower than that.

This salami recipe that we followed is one of those. Salt level is at 2%. I am sure this has been used for centuries (a certain kind of salami is typically that low), and people have been fine with it. For me however that isn’t enough. A lot of modern thinking, and a lot of very experienced charcuterists think that 2% is too low to be completely safe. From everything I have read, I agree with them.

A year ago when I started to cure my own meats in my basement I promised myself (and my family) that if I thought anything could have the possibility of being not right, I would trash the meat and start again. That is exactly what we have done.

“Big deal” you say. “Just throw it away, no biggie.”

It is harder than that. This is something that we have worked on for a month. Checked on daily. Seen the wonderful progress of white mold on the salami, and got excited as the salami got firmer and firmer each week (OK, that sounds REALLY bad). But more than that I am 99% convinced this salami is safe to eat.

It is however that 1% that can kill you.

Cya salami! I think the trash eating critters of Seattle are going to get one jolly nice meal.

So what’s left after the salami are chucked away? Well - take a look at this picture, its the curing chamber. On the left is a guancialle that is looking rather good. Center stage there is a lovely little coppa that isn’t looking bad either. More to report on those very soon.