charcuterie

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

i think its more the producers in spain who label it serrano/iberico/bellota/patanegra, etc, no?

Iberico has to be made with 75% native pig. Serrano is mostly made with Landrace pigs.

Bellota is Iberico from pigs raised mostly on acorns.

okay haha after 30 minutes of diligent research phil and i finally figured out where this place is:

「セプ ドール」
Bar Cep D'Or
日本, 〒150-0043 東京都渋谷区道玄坂１丁目６−３
http://bit.ly/cmd1yn

HP: http://ana.jp-anex.co.jp/gourmet/shousai.php?code=41952

here's a pic of the ham:
http://ana.jp-anex.co.jp/gourmet/shop/photo.php?code=41952&id=2

the bar is named after a fine champagne cognac iirc?

phil wins the grand prize for his domination of google street view international.

i should have been a librarian

or a globe trotting tour guide.

oh wait...

the bar is named after a fine champagne cognac iirc?

Cep d'or is indeed a cognac but 'cep' just means vine stock, really, so 'golden vine' is also an award.

Where in Tokyo is that place?

its right behind the shibuya station and the shibuya excel.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=shibuya+station&sll=40.714266,-73.955339&sspn=0.017874,0.018604&ie=UTF8&hq=shibuya+station&hnear=&radius=15000&layer=c&cbll=35.657992,139.699266&panoid=6xG3SFmvXOMDa7l0rLn2cA&cbp=12,169.97,,0,1.72&ll=35.657941,139.699354&spn=0,359.997675&z=19

MWhite, click on the bitly for the g-loc. (xpost)

Ah, that makes sense. God, it's been ages since I've been in Tokyo. I miss Yoyogi Koen on a weekend in spring.

i miss the strong dollar/weak yen... T_T

When I was modeling there I always wanted the Yen to be strong.

My agency was in Harajuku and I used to 'get away' sometimes and walk through Meiji Jingu-Mae. I always felt lucky my agency was so close to a park and the subway.

you gonna be there during sonar fest?

will be in barcelona the week of, but we're doing an overnite up the coast on the 17th and returning to US on the 19th. sonar looks like a cool gig tho.

phil-2 have u driven a car in spain?

where are you overnighting at?

[tbh kinda loving a food thread spinning wildly out of tangent, unlike other threads that always converge on food themes for long lengths imo]

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 :)