suckling prosciutto

Here is a picture of my suckling prosciutto. It has been hanging for a couple of months now. This is based off of len poli's recipe for the traditional way to make prosciutto. After about a month of curing it was rubbed down with a mixture of semolina, black pepper and lard and will hang at 60 degrees with 65% RH for a total of about 6 months. It could probably go a little less, due to the fact that it is a rather small suckling ham. Hope it turns out!!! Here are some pictures of it drying.






Sorry the photos are poor quality, they were taken on my cell phone.

LONG time, NO updates

WOW!! So, it has been quite a while since i've posted anything, or done much of anything extra while at work. The busy season is upon us and I quite frankly haven't had the time to get to mess around with much. EXCEPT!!!!.... A suckling prosciutto that I cured for about a month and have recently hung, but more on that much later.

Here are the updates on my Salami and Merguez (and no I didn't wait this long to taste them..ha). I will start with the Merguez. I didn't think the flavor was that bad for my first attempt. There was a nice heat and salt level, however the recipe said to dry it for at least 18 days, (which was thoroughly bashed by one of the sous chefs of the resort, and I agrre with) which was probably about 15 days too long. Nevertheless, I was still able to get a nice mold growth, which I was stoked about.

The Lamb Salami I was very pleased with, except for 1 minor error... I cut the fat way too big, and do to my lack of inexperience thought that it would shrink with the meat. If it did, it wasn't by much. However, the flavor turned out really well I thought. It could have used more heat, but had a nice salami flavor with a nice hint of fennel, and then the SUPER creaminess of the fat wasn't bad with some crackers. Overall I was pleased and look forward to new adventures hopefully in the near future.




These are some of the really fatty pieces. There were others which turned out nice with a better meat to fat ratio.

Kimchi

So, the other day Chef Windus showed me a lexan full of brussel sprouts and said "kimchi." I had already written down a recipe a week or so before, because I was talking with the junior sous chef about stuff in our walk-in that we could try the flavors with. So sure enough, I pulled out my notebook and said "I got this." Chef cleaned them and quartered them, and I soaked them for 4 hours at room temp in a salt brine. Then I made a paste from fish sauce (didn't have any shrimp paste), red pepper flakes (no Korean pepper either), garlic, ginger, scallions, sesame seeds and sesame oil. This paste would actually be a delicious dip for a crudite (in my opinion) if you can handle the heat. Next I grated some black radish over the drained and rinsed brussels, threw in some chopped scallions, and mixed everything together. We only fermented it for 3 days (according to the recipe), but I would like to try again and move to the fridge at different intervals and see how far we could take it. The true test comes Tuesday when we'll taste it. I know that it continues to ferment, but am nevertheless excited to taste it as soon as i can.


Here is a quick updated shot of the Merguez after 2 weeks of drying...


And here is a shot of my only spot to store the products for now...

From Left to Right: american honey bacon, smoked merguez, mole lonzino, lamb salami, and the dried merguez.

lonzino and updates

I recently did a mole rubbed lonzino (got the idea from Grant at Blackhoof) with some of the suckling loins left over from our pigs. The spice rub was an adaptation of a rub we did at Beacon (when I was in New York) with a couple of spices (that I wanted to throw in), plus cure 2, salt, etc. I had never made a lonzino, but it was pretty easy. They dried up SUPER quick. They were at about 58% water loss after about 2 weeks or so, maybe. Needless to say they turned out good. There is just the hint of cocoa (I would have liked there to maybe be some heat), a nice saltiness, and a nice gamey pork finish. I was thinking it would make a good amuse with pickled corn and candied pumpkin seed powder. I'll have to try it out, maybe throw the idea at Chef. I also weighed one of my Lamb Salami today and it is right about 33% weight loss, but still feels a little soft (gonna check it in another 5 to 7 days) so I put it back into the chamber. Right now i'm hanging right around 60' with an RH of 80 - 84% (which i'm having trouble controlling due to the small size of my chamber), but all in all everything seems to be moving right along with no major problems (got a nice mold growing).

Lamb and more Lamb

I was looking through the freezer at work and came across some lamb shoulders that were in there from the past menu change. So, I went home and looked through "The Art of Making Fermented Sausages," and came across the Merguez recipe (we added some zaatar spice as well). Talked it over with Chef Windus, and decided that it would be an easy enough recipe for us to execute. (The reason that I like Marianski's book is that all of the sausages are fermented and then smoked/dried or dried.) However, when I got over to the commissary the grinder is a hand cranked grinder/stuffer combo, and let me just say that I worked out twice that day. Anyways here are some pictures of the Merguez at day 1 and a shot I snapped at day 5. My chamber is super humid, but I just have to kind of monitor it everyday, and often times crack the door to let some moisture out. Overall I was pleased with the flavor (a nice subtle heat).





Now that the Merguez was working, I still had about 3 lbs of Lamb left over, so I thought why not try to make a Salami. I didn't use a recipe for this one, just some basic guidelines for a normal salami (cure weights, bactoferm, etc.) and then added what spices I thought would be good (fennel, black pepper, crushed red pepper, red wine...nothing too crazy). This one was definitely a challenge for me though. Everything was going smoothly since I used an electric grinder this time, however since it was such a small recipe, I wanted to just hurry up and get it done before service (which hurry up didn't happen...and by hurry up I mean pipe it into casings instead of walking over to the other hotel and use the stuffer). Nevertheless it turned out well. The salamis are incubating right now, and I will hang them in a couple of days.

Guanciale

When Chef Todd English was in town, we had tons of sucklings in, so I took about 6 or so of the heads and decide to de-jowl them. Now, the jowl of a suckling is super small compared any normal 200 - 300 lb pig (obviously). Nevertheless, I decided to go ahead and try to cure them and make guanciale. I did the basic cure out of Rhulman's Charcuterie book to about 5 of them, a maple glazed cure to a couple and then BBQ rubbed a couple of them. They turned out really well actually. A bit salty when eaten on their own. Chef Windus decided to use them for our Chef's Pasta dish and so they were brunoised, rendered out and used in a carbonara. Overall I was pleased, but know there is still a lot that I need to learn (and I definitely am).

Here are pictures of cooked Jowl and the dried ones.





the curing chamber (its what I have to work with, and low budget)

Chef Windus and I made some Merguez this past weekend, and I have some left over lamb, and I had this thought of lamb salami with the leftover lamb. Definitely going to be doing that here in the next couple of days, so I'm pretty stoked. Hope that it turns out caus eI'm doing this one without a recipe, just some basic guidelines.

Lots O' Suckling

I guess I should first start by telling you that most of my first attempts at creating sausages, prosciutto, or any cured muscles for that matter have been with left over suckling pig parts that aren't being used by anyone else. You can often times find me walking around with a cart of random animal parts that I have taken from the butcher before he threw them away (one mans scraps is another mans salami).

So, in saying that, the first successful thing that I actually did was, as most of my original attempts were, inspired Grant Van Gameren. If you haven't heard of him or his site, you should definitely check him out.

I took the suckling belly and cured it in a pastrami brine that I got out of my CIA Garde Manger book. Cured them in the brine for 5 days and then allowed them to dry uncovered overnight in the walk-in to form a pellicle. I rubbed them with a black peppercorn-coriander mixture and hot smoked them on a rack on the grill (I was doing it during service... not always an easy task). I then thought instead of braising them I would cryovac them with the tiniest bit of water and cooked them at 82' f for 12 hours. They were a bit salty and I think it was from being cryovac'd, however they were pretty good eaten with other components.

Here is the process from start to finish.