Q & A with the Meat Curing in My Basement

Interviewer: Hi there - how's the temperature for you in the basement?

Meat: Well, I'm not putrefying, if that's what you mean.

Interviewer: I'm sorry, I don't mean to imply anything, it's just that I know you'd probably prefer to be in a drafty barn somewhere in Parma, with the cool misty wind that comes off the Po caressing your canvas wrap.

Meat: Well, doesn't everyone feel that way? Really, though, it's fine down here - the temp hovers around 40-45 degrees, and it's just a tad humid. I could probably use more of a draft, but I think I need to be realistic about my situation.

Interviewer: What situation is that?

Meat: Well, I'm a piece of back fat and some slices of pork liver wrapped in canvas and hung from the ceiling. My mobility is limited.

Interviewer: Do you mind my asking - I try to avoid using the word "rot," I think it can come across as kind of insensitive - but do you mind my asking how you stay so fresh and firm?

Meat: No, it's fine, I try not to get too exasperated, although everybody always asks the same question. So - as you may already know, I started out as various pork parts from some pretty awesome pigs living in central Massachusetts. I spent a couple of weeks in December curing in a salt-sugar bath in the refrigerator upstairs. I'm worried that I may have absorbed a bit too much salt, but basically that's what keeps me together. It inhibits most microbial activity, as I'm sure you're aware. I've also lost a lot of my water content, which helps.

Interviewer: Cool. Thanks. So what's next for you?

Meat: Well, I'm not really sure. I'm going to hang out here for a while, maybe dehydrate some more, get better acquainted with the thorough dusting of black pepper I've got on underneath this canvas. Eventually I'll come back upstairs, my back fat transformed into prosciutto bianco (some people call it "lardo," but I really prefer the term prosciutto bianco) and my liver will have been transformed into...well, into cured liver, which I guess is served in a similar fashion (sliced, seared, and tossed with an early spring salad). At least, I've seen this recommended in one really questionable recipe from Fergus Henderson - honestly, I don't know how this is all going to turn out. I'm just trying to stay focused on the now.

Interviewer: Right. Thanks for taking the time to chat with us. I look forward to seeing you again in the spring.

Someday Recipes, Part I: The Compound Egg

Here's a recipe I've always wanted to try, but I doubt I'll ever be able to lay my hands on the requisite ingredients. It's from Robert May's The Accomplisht Cook (1678).

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To make a great compound Egg, as big as twenty Eggs.

Take Twenty eggs, part the whites from the yolks, and strain the whites by themselves, and the yolks by themselves; then have two bladders, boil the yolks in one bladder, fast bound up as round as a ball. Being boiled hard, put it in another bladder, and the whites round about it, bind it up round like the former, and being boil'd it will be a perfect egg. This serves for grand sallets.

Or you may add to these yolks of eggs, musk, and ambergriece, candied pistachies, grated bisket-bread, and sugar, and to the whites almond paste, musk, juice of oranges, and beaten ginger, and serve it with butter, almond milk, sugar, and juice of oranges.

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It's the latter variation that intrigues me. I'll confess I have no idea what the proper substitution for ambergris might be, or how I might obtain two bladders, but I would dearly love to give this a try some day. Until then, it remains just another dog-eared page in an old cookbook on the shelf.

How I Became a Killer

Why did I first become a killer? I blame it on vegetarians. I don't have anything against vegetarians as such, and will happily throw an extra pot on the stove to accommodate friendly herbivores. No, what freaks me out are tired repetitions of the same objection: “Oh, I just couldn't possibly eat meat - I can't imagine killing an animal with my own hands.” Setting aside the fact that specialization has done a great deal for our species - I drive and yet can't imagine building a car with my own hands - this objection to eating meat always struck me as something of a provocation, so this year I made efforts to assist with poultry slaughter, hoping to gain some insight or at least some practical skills.

It seems I'm not the only city girl into this killing thing right now. (Sadly, as you can see from the picture above, I did not have the foresight to wear overalls that day, detracting somewhat from my new agrarian hipster cred.)

Trends aside, most of us remain seriously unmoored from agricultural reality, with weird and sometimes disastrous consequences. An acquaintance of mine recently remarked that if I was eating beef tongue, I was just a few perilous inches away from full-blown cannibalism (I think he was joking...?). We seem now in the United States to either treat animals as though they are humans (Peter Singer; chihuahas in purses) or, at the other extreme, as though they are soulless meat envelopes (Hallmark Meat Packing). Lots of people seem not to understand that it's possible to treat an animal with respect and still plan to eat it – for those people, I recommend Stephen Budiansky's The Covenant of the Wild: Why Animals Chose Domestication. (I don't agree with every one of the author's conclusions, but it's definitely a useful perspective on how to hold up our end of an implicit evolutionary compact.)

But maybe I'm overthinking the whole thing. A dear friend of mine recently described receiving a call from another friend (let's call him “S”), just as the sun was going down. S: “Ok. I've chopped off the head. Now what?” Apparently he wanted to be talked through evisceration....on the phone. In the dark. (Hello, this is the chicken plucking crisis hotline....how can I help you in your ill-planned carnivory?)

I don't know that killing will ever be easy for me. The suddenness and irreversibility is hard; the ugly bloodiness of it is hard; the hesitation, when you know hesitation is the worst thing. But it is instructive and worthwhile. So tell me, vegevores and carnivores alike....have you ever done it? Would you, could you, if you had the opportunity?

Sausage

Today I made sausage with some seared pork liver, blanched pork tongue, country ribs, back fat, arbol chiles and caramelized onions. I love my hand crank sausage grinder. Sometimes, there is something deeply satisfying about doing things the hard way.


(If all of this leaves you feeling like you're trapped in a Jan Švankmajer film - well, you're not alone. Welcome to my kitchen.)

Duck Foot Soup Stock

Our friends at Up Back Farm have sold a lot of muscovy duck to Portland-area restaurants this year, and some of the better chefs have been very eager to get duck feet. Being very curious about this, I looked up some recipes (mostly French and Asian) and made a big batch of stock with a couple of pounds of feet. They were pretty clean to begin with, but I gave them all a good rinse nonetheless. Some of the recipes suggested chopping up the feet to release more of the gelatin. Sadly, I was feeling too lazy for this step. (And as you will see, it's probably superfluous - at least when you have an abundance of feet, as I did.)


After rinsing the feet, I brought the pot to a hard boil. Next, I poured off the water, rinsed the feet again in cold water, brought the pot back up to a boil with fresh cold water (adding some onions, garlic, etc - the usual stock supplements), and let it simmer for a couple of hours.

Finally I strained out the liquid, washed the pot, returned the liquid to the pot to boil again, then simmered for a while to reduce the volume (as part of my ongoing - and largely futile - effort to preserve freezer space).


The next day, duck jello emerged from my refrigerator - wow! I haven't seen anything this cool since....well, since I made stock with pig's trotters. The duck foot stock has gone on to form the basis for several batches of wintertime chicken soup, and its gelatinous qualities really seem to add a nice rich body. Common sense suggests you'll probably want to know what conditions your birds were raised in before making stock, which, for better or for worse, will concentrate the qualities of its constituent ingredients. That said, this is definitely something I'd happily make again, using either chicken or duck feet.

Banana Horseradish Cream: The Aftermath

Perhaps I should have forewarned my husband. Perhaps spousal experimentation without informed consent is unethical. Perhaps one day I will find him in the kitchen late at night, surreptitiously supplementing his dinner with mac-n-cheese.


Husband: "Why are you taking pictures of my plate? Is this an experimental food?"


"This tastes like banana baby food on pork."


"Is there horseradish in here?"

.....

I was forced to agree that it did indeed taste like banana baby food with a slight bite. The liberal application of additional horseradish eventually made it reasonably palatable, but this is not a recipe worth repeating (at least not with something as cloying as mashed banana!).

Banana Horseradish Cream

When perusing old cookbooks, occasionally I come across some real gems.

Rarely, though, do I ever find anything as amusing as this note, thoughtfully enclosed by a previous library patron:


Sure enough, the recipe does sound disgusting:


(From Recipes from Old Hundred, 200 Years of New England Cooking, by Nellie Brown, 1939)

There is only one way to find out...