charcuterie

MW, I was referring to "jerky" not "charcuterie" although they are slightly homophonic!

xp: i'm talking about places that are new to charcuterie/salumi obv, rather than the exceptions.

yea i was going to write about how prosciuto, capocola, much more expensive in the deli case than say genoa salami

also slim jim vs above thread stated jerky in plastic tub by check out at truck stop

there's this really funny thing about salami in this movie if you've seen it you know cant find it on youtubes

DO you know I like country ham? country ham country ham country ham country ham country ham

abbott: god bless you and yr love of country ham. thank you for linking to it.

in jaymc's link rob levitt mentions ciccioli. what he was talking about sounds like a messier version of rillettes which i think of as like a fattified version of pulled pork. i heard somebody say that rillettes are the place to start when thinking of or learning abt charcuterie, though i don't remember why.

now that i'm lookin at stuff for pate (which i guess is charcuterie) i have come across this concept of
forcemeat
i think i am going to start a new band and call it that

tho i guess rillettes can be made without pork

I made a bunch of chicken liver pate last summer, from Elizabeth David's Summer Cooking - it was great, though I cut back on her measure of liquor and probably didn't need too. (I thought it would make the end result too liquid.) I've got a bunch of beef liver I want to make up using Maker's Mark or some other high-end bourbon as the liquid, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

tho i guess rillettes can be made without pork

Hell yeah. Rabbit is good.

"Guilds would develop training programs for its members, thereby preserving the culinary arts. Charcuterie was the name of a guild that prepared and sold cooked items made from pigs. Through this organization, the preparation of hams, bacon, sausages, pate en croutes and terrines were preserved."

from here

From the Recipe Books of Antonin Careme

Les Petits Vol-Au-Vents a la Nesle
Brighton Pavilion and Chateau Rothschild

20 vol-au-vent cases, the diameter of a glass
20 cocks-combs
20 cocks-stones (testes)
10 lambs sweetbreads (thymus and pancreatic glands, washed in water for five hours, until the liquid runs clear)
10 small truffles, pared, chopped, boiled in consomme
20 tiny mushrooms
20 lobster tails
4 fine whole lambs' brains, boiled and chopped
1 French loaf
2 spoonfuls chicken jelly
2 spoonfuls veloute sauce
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
2 tablespoons chopped mushrooms
4 egg yolks
2 chickens, boned
2 calves' udders
2 pints cream
sauce Allemande
salt, nutmeg

Forcemeat:

Crumb a whole French loaf. Add two spoonfuls of poultry jelly, one of veloute, one tablespoon of chopped parsley, two of mushrooms, chopped. Boil and stir as it thickens to a ball. Add two egg yolks. Pound the flesh of two boned chickens through a sieve. Boil two calves' udders -- once cold, pound and pass through a sieve.

Then, mix six ounces of the breadcrumbs panada to ten ounces of the chicken meat, and ten of the calves' udders and combine and pound for 15 minutes. Add five drams of salt, some nutmeg and the yolks of two more eggs and a spoonful of cold veloute or bechamel. Pound for a further ten minutes. Test by poaching a ball in boiling water -- it should form soft, smooth balls.

Make some balls of poultry forcemeat in small coffee spoons, dip them in jelly broth and after draining on a napkin, place them regularly in the vol-au-vent, already half filled with:

a good ragout of cocks-combs and stones (testicles)
lambs' sweetbreads (thymus and pancreatic glands, washed in water for five hours, until the liquid runs clear)
truffles
mushrooms
lobster tails
four fine whole brains

Cover all with an extra thick sauce Allemande.

Gnam, gnam, gnam

what are y'all's thoughts on lardo. is that trendy in chicago?

Lardo is delicious. Try Lardo di Colonnata, especially.

From this week's Chicago Reader, in two separate places:

"House-made charcuterie is becoming the chicken breast of new restaurants."
--review of Revolution Brewing

"You can't throw a rock in a new Chicago restaurant without hitting a plate of artisanal charcuterie."
--article about the FamilyFarmed Expo

Btw, Steve, went to Bistro Central Parc last night. It was pretty good; best sweetbreads I've had in awhile.

chicken breasts are popular?

jaymc- you left out the part about how this 'new' snout-to-tail philosophy is going to save the world, dude.
the 'throwing rocks' line quoted above's entire blurb from chicago reader:

"Using the Whole Hog From trotters to head cheese, pigs are so hot these days that, as the Reader's Mike Sula remarked while moderating Saturday's panel on snout-to-tail cooking, you can't throw a rock in a new Chicago restaurant without hitting a plate of artisanal charcuterie. So I was pleasantly surprised that this discussion turned out not to be some bacon-crazed celebration of carnivorousness. Instead the panelists—chefs Rob Levitt (Mado) and Paul Kahan (Blackbird, Avec, the Publican), plus Ehran Ostrreicher of E & P Meats and Greg Gunthorp of Gunthorp Farms—were united in their conviction that whole-animal cooking can save the world.

"As long as we're going to eat animals, we should eat as much of them as we can," said Sula. "We should eat the skin, the bones, the weird bits, the blood. We do this not to horrify our vegetarian friends but because it's the right thing to do. It's the sustainable thing to do. And it's delicious."

Whole-animal cooking, the panel pointed out, is sustainability in action. "Everyone wants a pork tenderloin or a boneless, skinless chicken breast," said Gunthorp, who raises pastured pigs, chickens, and ducks in LaGrange, Indiana. "But you take a pig carcass that weighs 200 pounds and maybe three pounds of that is going to be tenderloin. So there's a huge percentage left over that a farmer like me needs to figure out how to deal with. It's not a sustainable process to just sell those three pounds of tenderloin."

At Mado, said Levitt, a 200-pound pig will last him a week and a half. And while he doesn't have the space to handle a whole cow, he can get a good deal on the leftovers. "I call up cattle farmers every week," he said, "and say, 'What do you have that nobody wants?' We get a lot of tongues, hearts, kidneys." The night before, he added, the restaurant sold more beef heart than chicken. For that to happen on a Friday (aka "amateur night") says something about the mainstreaming of offal.

The USDA and the city don't see things quite the same way, though, and at the end of the panel the good vibes gave way to controlled frustration with a health department that over the last few years has shut down restaurants' charcuterie programs and poured bleach over pounds upon pounds of house-made preserves.

"If the city wants to truly be green," said Kahan, with feeling, "they need to get on top of this." The sentiment was echoed by a crowd of nodding heads."

i bet kahan shed some salty ass tears when they poured bleach on his bacon jam, yo!

I don't think they're pouring bleach on Kahan's stuff, just the food made at my friend's shared-use kitchen.

Also, I didn't post those quotes from the Reader to denigrate charcuterie at all. I just wanted you to see that people think of it as a trend!

i agree with you that it is a trend, bro. but it's a good one. i am poor and i literally pick food out of the garbage when my gurl throws it away cuz it's 'expired' then i eat it all keep-it-like-a-secret
trying not to waste, ya know? i even munch the meat off the backbones i use for stock in an embarassing way

but whoa dude who do you know that they poured bleach on they bacon? that musta been some fist clenching shit
i prolly would've gone ape shit on that damn health inspector and would now be in jail with a bond i'd have no way in hell of payin

Al3x1s L3v3r3nz of K1tch3n Ch1cag0.

Read more here: http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/thestew/2010/02/health-department-destroys-thousands-of-dollars-of-local-fruit.html

actually heard a coupla stories about this whole chicago hates shared kitchen spaces thing
and i was thinking about starting to use them! d'oh!

I love this trend. Bring me all the pork you can. One of the few things I miss about eastern NC is the massive amount of pig products we would have after our yearly hog killings. Fuck a Charcuterie plate, we'd have a whole damn table.

Also, I could care less about sustainability. Snout to tail is good because the pig has so many delicious parts. It's a wonderful animal.

xpost
damn that is some serious bullshit, yo
here is the line that sticks the most:
"If Lazar had been less transparent and left her cooler in her car during the inspection, she would probably be cooking today."

chicago: land of the dickhead authoritarian pieces of shit
and also some regular folks too

Also, I could care less about sustainability. Snout to tail is good because the pig has so many delicious parts. It's a wonderful animal.

― Jeff, Thursday, March 18, 2010 7:36 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

to eat

yes!

OFFALwebsite and blog

Offal Eating - C/D, S/D?

that thread is most interesting for it's unveiling of the hypocrisy of many meat eaters.

peeps are all over that chicken thigh picking the bones clean but as soon as it's a pig's head it's scary. c'mon!

the scariest part is raising the damn thing, the whole time knowing at some point you will eat it. and trying not to fall in love with the damn thing, amirite?

had incredible jamón serrano in Sevilla this weekend

are rillettes charcuterie? what about manteca? Anyway, in France rillettes de canard or d'oie are super common too (I think I prefer them but really they are all excellent).

pretty sure rillettes no matter what they are prepared from are charcuterie
manteca i am not sure, if it was pork fat then probably yes otherwise no se
congratulations on yr ham euler

Absolutely rillettes and manteca (lard) are considered charcuterie. From Ruhlman's 'Charcuterie':

"In the fifteenth century, charcutiers were not allowed to sell uncooked pork (though they could sell uncooked fat, which could be rendered into lard at home and used for cooking there)"

Sitting at home right now with a couple of just smoked ham shanks wondering if I should braise one to shred later for smoked ham hock rillettes. Hmm....

been totally obsessed with salame secchi lately

bresaola (air-dried beef) is the bomb.

going to barcelona in june and am so psyched to try jamon bellota

bresaola, barcelona, and jamon bellota should all be in a yuppie kid's jump rope rhyme

a year or two ago, philtwo (remember him? he used to post here) and I were coming back from a night out in Tokyo and were feeling like "just one more drink" and he knew this one afterhours-y place near his hotel.

we stroll in around 3:30-4:00 and the place is dark, darker than the streets, black velvet drapery on the walls. sporadic overhead spot lighting. a few discreet customers, quiet couples. two bartenders standing impossibly straight, hands folded behind their backs. between them, set on the bar, under full spotlit display is a full leg of Serrano ham, angled diagonally like a sundial, just beckoning us. 500 yen (~$6) per reasonable serving. i think we split two (three?) over a couple cocktails.

you make it seem so romantic...

(and it was!)

Lucky it wasn't Iberico...

anyway, serrano is good, but iberico/bellota/etc... mmmmmm

m coleman - me too actually. you gonna be there during sonar fest?

haha, memories or our romantic sojourns in Paris and Tokyo... ~sigh~

yeah, our sexual tension spans three continents

i think that Serrano ham imported into Japan may be similar quality to the Iberico that is imported to the US. No offense to the yanks, but Japanese food standards are just on a completely different level. They still won't import even USDA prime beef because it rates so low on their quality scale.

(xpost?)

MELT IN MY MOUTH LIKE THE FATTY BITS OF A SLICE OF JAMON BELLOTA

oh and i ate the confit with a salad. my gurl dint like it so i ate her scraps straight up

I had cured duck breast at Taste a few weeks ago - it was cut fairly thick (1/8" maybe, def not paper thin) and they had seared the skin side briefly. Really good.

So I've made this a couple of times and it's cheap, easy as hell and so unbelievably good:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/dining/161prex.html

I had some in the freezer and broke it out when a friend was here last weekend. Holds up pretty well frozen but not as good as fresh.

classic pork rillettes (from p267 of ruhlman and polcyn)
1 lg leek
1 sm bunch of thyme
3 bay leaves
1 celery stalk
8 black peppercorns
1 md onion studded w 5 cloves
3 lbs very fatty pork butt cut into 1" dice
kosh
2 qt white veal stock or water
freshly ground black pepper to taste
abt 8 oz rendered pork fat
some cheesecloth
1. split the leek lengthwise in half stopping abt 1" from root end and wash it well. lay the thyme and bay leaves inside the leek, lay the celerystalk next to it and tie it up with string (an aromatic bundle called a bouquet garni)
2. crack the peprcorns and tie it in cheesecloth
3. preheat oven to 300F/150C
4. put pork in 6 qt pot and cover with water by 2", bring to boil, the drain and rinse w cold water (a way to quickly eliminate blood and impurities) return pork to clean pot and add leek bundle, peppercorn thing, and onion and 1 tbsp kosh, and the stock bring to simmer cover and put in oven 4-6 hrs or the meat is falling apart tender
5. remove the pork to cool, strain liquid set aside
6. pork goes into the stand mixer with paddle on low slowly adding strained cooking liquid until the meat shreds thoroughly and takes on a moist spreadable texture, abt 1 or 2 min. taste: salt and pepper as necessary (remember this will be served at room temp so it should be seasoned assertively)
7. spoon meat into ramekins or crocks, fridge until chilled the pour abt 1/8" rendered fat on top to seal them ramekins. return to fridge for up to 2 wks
8. remove rillettes at least 2 hr before serving, cuz they best and easiest to serve at room temp

addendum: veal stock
8 lbs veal bones cut into 7.5 cm lengths (have butcher do this, yo)
1 c fine dice onion
1/2 c fine dice celery
1/2 c fine dice leek, white part only
2 bay leaves
2 tsp black peppercorns
1 bunch thyme
6 qt water

1. bones in a pot taller than it is wide cover with water and boil. drain and rinse
2. back in pot and add remaining ingredients. water should cover by 1" bring to boil skimming the stock frequently then reduce heat to lowest possible. skim the stock and simmer for 6-8 hrs or overnight
3. strain and let cool then fridge or freeze

whew! good on y'alls that do it

oh i'm thinking of doing rabbit (see "rillettes de lapin" upthread). have the Robuchon recipe. it's dope.

duck prosciuto
http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd210/jdchurchil/food%20porn/DSC_0223-1.jpg?t=1275744194

speaking of duck fat I ate a can of beans earlier this week that consisted of just white beans in goose fat:and this was just a generic store brand! I love this country (France) so much.

― Euler, Friday, June 4, 2010 6:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

canned food in france = revelation

actually, pretty much everything in supermarkets there = revelation

even the cheapest store brand stuff is like miles ahead of n america

going to barcelona in june and am so psyched to try jamon bellota

good stuff. in fact the food (and wine) in spain is amazing & the prices seemed relatively cheap (especially compared to NYC). my son would now like to subsist on jamon y pan con tomat. don't recommend eating tapas twice a day, though.

this place was SO awesome: Cervecería Catalana Restaurant Carrer de Mallorca, 236 Barcelona

jokers joggin 'round spain makin me mad jealous, yo

had some bellota over the holidays, had memories of phil-two in paris and tokyo~~~~

wow 1st i googled bellota and found it was a spider, or the best kind of jamon iberico cuz a bellota is an acorn in spanish
and them pigs eat alot of them.

did it taste of acorns steve shasta?

ok i am finally getting around to actually making this stuff. just doing sausages right now like mick jagerwurst

I saw this recipe and thought of you guys.

hey dudes i made motherfockin headcheese!
srsly if any of u chi town ilxers want some i will bike deliver it to you cuz i made way too much!

Wow, thats amazing :)

my ex has italian family on farmland in WA who make all manner of whatever the italian word is for chacuterie. His zio makes an amazing, dense and dark pork sausage that is deadly spicy, and once or twice a year he vacuum-packs up a link or 3 and mails it to R. Dried, intense pork salami. I cant eat it, its just way way too hot for my palate but I am so impressed by the work that goes into it - they dont grow their own pigs but they work from a full pig carcass and make sausage and meats from it every year.

perhaps you should suggest that the put a little less spice in there? then you could eat it too!

Nah they're sicilian, thats heresy that is ;P

i don't know any sicilians but i just thought wtf it can't hurt, right? i mean it's a suggestion so they can ignore it if they choose

Oh i just mean sicilian food has soooo much chili in it. Heh tbh I dont like pork anyway :)