charcuterie

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]

^^
yea and it's annoying me shasta
back to the charcuterie ya hams!

how 'bout this:
i cut up a chicken yesterday and usually i just throw the skin away cuz everybody's always saying how the skin is bad for you but for some reason i saved it this week. what the hell do ya do with chicken skin? should i try to make cracklins?
i guess this isn't exactly charcuterie, but this is: http://ilovefood.fronza.net/?cat=41

I'm pretty sure only in america do we think that animal skin (fish, chicken, pig) is bad for you.

the skin is an important part of chicken stock.

I want a drying fridge.

The last time I had a whole hog butchered, I cured 1/2 the belly as bacon and roasted the other half - cut the skin in 1/2" strips with a sharp paring knife, rubbed with thyme and black pepper, slow roasted until the skin crisped totally up and the meat was just about fall-apart.

I have 3 or 4 whole jowls in my freezer - thinking about trying for guanciale.

jaq this is a no-brainer. you should really do this and put lots of pictures

shasta-
i think in america it's basicly fat=bad
and skin has alot of fat, which most people skim off of they stocks so i am not sure how important it is to chicken stock
this ddude let's 'em know

you skim off the fat but surely the skin still flavors the stock?

flavors and adds texture - like cartlidge, the collagen/gelatin in the skin adds so much body

thinking about trying for guanciale.

Yes!!!

cartlidge, the collagen/gelatin

That's why the feet are awesome for stock.

oh yeah, I make pork stock from roasted neck bones and trotters and it's completely amazing. I hadn't thought about using chicken feet though - will do for the next big batch now.

Here's the photo set from the dry aged ham I did - not 100% in order and two different kitchens: http://www.flickr.com/photos/illiterati/sets/72157600215964848/

Wow. I have a smoked dry-cured ham aging right now. I had planned on letting it age for a couple of months. Do I really need to go 18 months though?

nope, it depends on the weight, which I didn't realize at the time. 18 months for that little ham was probably 9 months too long. Still tasted AMAZING, but was seriously dried out and difficult to cut.

OK DUDES I ORDERED THAT RUHLMAN CHARCUTERIE BOOK FROM AMAZON
LOOK OUT

Better start stocking up on Lipitor.

i just wanna have a bad-ass heart attack

http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/yf/foods/he176w.htm

http://www.sausagemania.com/tutorial.html

hey JAQ did you make guanciale? also would you plz describe the process of 'having a whole hog butchered' for those of us who aren't doing that sort of thing yet?

in chicago i found this place, peoria packing co. that i plan to utilize:
http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=23813

btw first recipe in ruhlman/polcyn's charcuterie book: bacon

re: guanciale - I'm waiting until we move to a house (in a few months) before I start any meat projects. I've got my eye on a cold smoker and a meat-aging refrigerator for the new space.

describe the process of 'having a whole hog butchered'

Start by going to Eat Wild and finding a local farmer who raises the livestock, usually during the winter. Get in touch, and find out if they can raise one for you and how much $ you need to send. Usually it's under $200 and covers the cost of the animal and its feed and care until butchering. Most farmers have a local butcher they use and can generally quote your final costs in the amount per pound of "hanging weight", so you can have a rough idea of how much you'll need to come up with in Oct/Nov. If the farm's close enough, I try to go visit a few times - the people who've raised pigs for us have also done fruits and vegetables so I'd pick up 50 lbs of tomatoes to process or whatever was in season.

When your animal is at a marketable weight and it's butchering time, you might have the option of being there. Our farmers have used a mobile abbatoir that comes to the animal, rather than hauling the animals to the butcher (which greatly adds to their stress). The carcass has to hang and cool for a certain amount of time before it is cut, wrapped, and frozen. If you're right there, you might be able to bring home a certain amount of fresh meat. If you want bacon, hams, or hocks smoked, that adds time to the final processing and to the cost. But generally within two weeks of butchering, you go pick up all your meat and whatever other bits you specified you wanted (fat/trotters/ears/tail/liver/etc).

Another option is to go your county or state fair and bid on the 4-H livestock. You can usually get set up with a hauler and butcher at the auction by asking around.

There's another thread here somewhere where I spell out how many grocery bags of meat you get from various animals. A whole hog is about the same as a side of beef - 8 to 10 grocery bags I think, plus a tall kitchen bag (13 gallons?) of trimmed fat.

This one: Buying meat in bulk

Speaking of cold smoker I've had some great success with a soldering iron, an empty tin can and smoking pellets. I cold smoked the ham I mentioned upthread, scallops and mozzarella.

Obviously if you have your eye on a real cold smoker a soldering iron might seem a little dinky, but I was very pleased with the results.

I had some fair success converting our gas grill into a hot smoker at one point. The soldering iron idea would be perfect for a cold smoker - what did you use for the big container/racks?

I have a charoal hot smoker that I used. I set the tin can with the soldering iron onto the lowest rack. If I was smoking more food I probably would have removed the water pan and placed the can at the bottom where the charocal would go.

If you do place the can on the lowest rack be careful about what you place over the can on the upper rack. That soldering iron can still put off some heat.