Off the Bone

We left Torsten knuckle deep in a ham, which by now is in the smokehouse. Charcuterie and the curing of meat is a ridiculously broad topic, the basics of which are fairly universal and easy enough to find in libraries or online. With an eye to specificity, I’ve decided to simply post the recipe we used, with comments and explanations in italics.

2lb salt
10g saltpeter
20g sugar
20g juniper berries
20g black peppercorns
3 bay leaves
5g nutmeg
Saltpeter is sodium nitrate, which, in and of itself, has no preservative effect at all. It does, however, get converted into nitrite by bacterial action, and nitrite, in addition to giving cured meat its colour, is a powerful preservative. Industrial cures use pure nitrite, but the byproducts of the bacterial conversion contribute to the flavour of artisanal charcuterie. Most cured meat, in fact, is fermented, by the exact same processes which wine and cheese are fermented, and the same family of bacteria – they produce lactic acid, which inhibits the growth of undesirable strains of bacteria, and the process shuts itself down when the lactic acid concentrations get too high for even lactobacteria to tolerate.
This is a dry cure – most meat is wet cured, by immersion in brine, because salt penetrates more quickly, and because less volume is lost. This is understandably appealing for industrial producers, but most traditional cures were wet also.
Grigson would have us believe that sugar is added not only for flavour but also to prevent “salt-burn” – a drying out and toughening of the surface of meat caused by too high a concentration of salt. As with most of her science, this is highly suspect, but it is actually possible to mess up a cure in this way.

Rub very firmly into meat, ensuring all surfaces are well coated. Stack in a tub, pour excess cure over the meat.
Torsten was ramming the cure as far as he could into the hock, so as to draw the fluid out from the knee. Since the synovial cavity is intact, we need to rely on osmotic action to do this, which is as problematic as it sounds. Hams, like our own unreliable carcasses, tend to go bad at the knee first.

Leave the tub in a cool, dry place. Every seven days, remove the joints from salt, brush them down and rub with fresh curing mix, preparing a fresh batch of cure if necessary. Drain the fluid that accumulates. Return to the tub, in reverse order (the one previously on top should go at the bottom), flipping the meat as well.

The duration of salting should be:
2 weeks for bacon & lardo
3 weeks for jowls
4 weeks for hams
My favourite part of the morning was when we had to dig the ribs out of the bacon. Normally you’d just cut the entire slab of meat off the bones, and sell the bones for spare ribs, but these had so little meat on them relative to the amount of fat that we’d practically have wound up with lardo if we’d done this. Lardo itself is back fat. You use it for cooking, and, yes, eating straight, in sweet, translucent shavings.

As a rough guide, a day in salt for a pound of meat.
Other sources suggest thickness may be a better guide, on the lines of 4 days per inch thickness of meat. This works out to about the same duration for everything but the hams (accounting for the fact that we had an aberrant amount of subcutaneous fat) – the hams, on the other hand, would have had to stay in almost twice as long).

Wash the meat off in cold running water, 12 hours for jowls and bacon, 24 hours for ham, dry in a warm air current.
Davidson would have us believe that this step is relatively uncommon outside Germany. Certainly Grigson never recommends this, and I haven’t seen it in Ruhlman’s new book either. Grigson’s recipes, English and French, tend to follow a dry cure with brine, after which the pork is either done or smoked – the brine effectively serves the same purpose, I suppose. Jabugo and prosciutto never get washed, merely brushed off or scrubbed down.

Everything gets a base smoke at 25-30 degrees C (80-90F) for 24 hours or till pale tan. Further smoking takes place according to the cut.
Lubeck is near enough the Baltic sea that it might as well be a coastal town. Long drying, in these conditions, is impossible, and so meat and fish are smoked instead when a dry cure is needed. Smoking ensures a suitably dry environment, as well as flavouring the meat and retarding the development of rancid flavours in fat – helpful, since salted meats are apparently more susceptible to fat breakdown. You can, incidentally, “wet-smoke” a meat – essentially by keeping the surface moist throughout the smoking process. The appeal of doing so is that, as with wet-curing, the effect is achieved much faster.

Bacon goes into a smoker at 18-20 C (65-70F) for 2-3 weeks till mahogany.
Jowls get heavy smoke at 40-50C (105-125F) for 4 days.
Hams stay in a cool smoke house at 18-20C (65-70F), getting a light smoke every other day, till asparagus sprouts.

Ham and asparagus is apparently a huge thing in northern Germany, like the first herrings in Denmark, or Beaujolais nouveau. The asparagus is steamed and served cold, and the dish goes with mustard.

1930s in the Soviet Union were marked by a quest for more and better consumer goods - chocolate, champagne (made by the reservoir method that was rejected in Europe as resulting in lower quality champagne but was suitable for mass production), and sausages. However, there were some problems.

According to a 1936 report by Comrade Saksoganskii, a representative of a Moscow meat factory, because the workforce was inexperienced and poorly trained, “we cannot for the time being prevent unwelcome items from falling into sausage. In our department every day something falls: a piece of glass, a bolt, a nail. They seem to think that we do not have enough meat and therefore add iron, no matter how hard we try to convince them that iron is expensive, and there is a lot of meat - nothing seems to help.”

From Jukka Gronow, Caviar with Champagne, 55

It’s funny what people remember. Somehow, in the last few years, I’ve acquired a reputation of a coffee addict. It’s not undeserved, mind you, but compared to other peoples caffeine addictions mine is really quite mild: a cup of coffee a day, preferably in the mornings, and I politely decline offers of more except in emergencies. I even manage not to be cranky if my morning coffee is delayed. Sometimes. Nonetheless, one of the first things Helena said to me, with a degree of concern, in a taxi from the airport was: “You must be dying for coffee.” And I was, and off we went as soon as I dropped off my bags, and so began my tour of Budapest.

I had never before seen so little of a city I came to visit. Sure enough, there was the Buda castle, a visit to St. Stefan and St. Mattias cathedrals and the Budapest Synagogue, and even an obligatory visit to the Heroes Square and an art museum. But mostly I saw the insides of coffeeshops, Helenas kitchen, and her parents’ lovely house in the suburbs - where the kitchen was the exclusive realm of Helenas mother and I respectfully stood aside. Mrs. T is a marvelous and enthusiastic cook, but before we get into the subtleties of Hungarian cuisine I should get two things out of the way: paprika and goulash. Because that’s what you are already thinking about.

Buying paprika in Hungary is serious business. You have lots of choices: sweet or hot, fresh or dried, whole or ground up to different degrees of fineness, and from one of the two growing regions that produce distinct varieties. Fresh and whole dried are best bought at a farmers market - there are several of them in the city, housed in permanent pavillions and selling everything from pigs’ ears to butternut squash. Even in the middle of winter, the quality of fresh peppers was astounding - I ate a sweet red capsicum raw, thinking of July and Union Square greenmarket, and, accidentally, a piece of harmless looking light-green bell pepper that turned out to be quite quite hot. If you speak German, youll be able to ask what you are getting - for the older generation of Hungarians a German is a default foreigner and many speak the language.

Green hot peppers don’t seem to be dried, but red hot peppers are dried and sold whole, tied with pieces of string hung in magnificent rows over the vegetable stalls. They are handled very gingerly. A dried pepper would be crushed with the back of a spoon and served in a small dish to be added to soup or stew - also with a spoon, for the oils that get on your skin can come to haunt you long after the meal, when you forget all about the peppers and decide to rub your eye. The peppers are, in fact, surprisingly hot. A couple of small flakes dropped into a bowl of soup transformed it in a few seconds, and continued doing so until I decided to fish them back out. I was also shooed away from the table before desert to wash my hands, since I did pick up the flakes with my fingers.

Ground paprika can also be hot - it is then labeled scipos or eros. Sweet ground paprika is labeled scipossegmentes (mild) or edesnemes (sweet), or both. According to my Hungarian hosts youll want a pack that also says orlemeny (special, referring to paprika of particularly high quality). Paprika comes from two growing regions: Kalosca and Szeged, and according to my hosts, the stuff from Kalosca is more brightly red and more reliably good. I have packets of both and cannot tell the difference in taste or color, but paprika’s flavor really comes out in cooking, so who knows.

Sweet paprika is really present in just about everything, and together with onions and lard forms an essential part of a Hungarian flavor base. Ground, its a delicate spice and must not be overheated, or it may turn bitter. It does, however, need fat to release most of its goodness. In soups, it’s stirred in close to the end of cooking. In stews, it’s sprinked over the already browned meat, which is then taken immediately off heat (one can then add a liquid and begin braising - the gentle temperature of a braise will do no harm). Such is the method used in goulash - which is officially a soup, although the line between a soup and a stew can be fine indeed.

I did not have a homemade goulash on the trip, although I did get my host’s recipe - Christmas and New Years is not a time for goulash; families tend to cook pork and more elaborate holiday dishes (and fish on Christmas Eve, which is a day of fasting - even though its hard to tell by the quantity of food that is served). I did have a big bowl of goulash nonetheless, in a bistro-style eatery on a frosty day after touring the Buda castle. Its a very simple thing, really - beef, and broth, and root vegetables, and paprika for color and flavor, and maybe some caraway seeds and black peppercorns - and marvelous on a cold day. More complex recipes, including the one in the Joy of Cooking, seem to me to miss the point - perhaps in an attempt to mask the weak flavors of American vegetables and paprika alike.

(more…)

England was a carnival of meat, starting with the hanging game at Borough Market, much of it with fur and feathers still intact, and ending with the aseptic white of St. JOHN in Smithfields.

Borough Market on the first day was quite envy inducing, which is something, considering that I’ve got Union Square. The winter selection here was somewhat better than at Union, with one vegetable supplier, Turnips, fully stocked. I don’t know where they got their stuff, but much of it was in at least decent shape, including, somehow, tomatoes that actually smelled edible. A baker was present, as were several confectioners, mostly dealing in chocolates of reasonable quality, but one with trays and trays of dried fruit, nuts, and Turkish delight which I might have sold an acquaintance for. Cheesemongers were limited in both scope and quality, probably discouraged by the proximity of Neal’s Yard Dairy. Mostly, though, there was meat.

At least three huge butchers were set up, each stall at least as big as Mario’s store, selling heritage meats and their own charcuterie. At least one more was closed for New Year’s Eve. All dealt in both beef and pork, with game being available in varying quantities. Mostly there were cooking cuts on display, but with tantalizing promises that primal cuts were available too. Fresh hams and huge, lightly cured pork chops seemed to be the biggest sellers. A woman, calling herself Hunter Gatherer Foods, sold salumi from Iberian pigs - the spicing was relatively light, so the fermentation and meat could be tasted more clearly. One particularly ambitious operation combined a fishmonger with an impressive 10’ high rack of hares, pheasants, partridges, geese, and skinned does, all of which were hanging for future sale. When you got close, the dead hares stared back with blood-soused eyes.

Lunch was half of one of Mrs. Elizabeth King’s meat pies, eaten at room temperature. The pie was traditional, with a raised crust (meaning it was made with hot water, and stood vertically, without the support of the pie dish), and my half must have weighed near a pound. Inside was wild game, ground with a little too much sage and pepper, set in truly luscious aspic. Still, you could taste the meat (venison and wild boar, probably no hare), and, wonder of wonders, it was relatively lean. I would have gotten pork, but they were out. My companion, unashamedly bourgeois, left wing and artistic, had boar and cranberries in his. As we ate, we watched the most beautiful meat slicer I’d ever seen, a hand cranked, cast iron contraption, big as a car engine. Every portion of it was either scarlet, black iron, or gleaming steel, and I’d bet it’s been running since before my da got to London.

Lunch finished with gooseberries, damn good, from Turnips, and a cup of Monmouth Coffee. If I ever open a café, it will serve coffee just the way the Monmouth Coffee Company does, or not at all. As I got in line for a cup of daily brew, I noticed a curious rack with a number of porcelain drip cones arranged in it, apparently for display. I ordered, then stared open mouthed as the barista ground a portion into a paper filter, stuck it in a porcelain cone, then slowly added water which was 10 seconds off the boil.

“Wait,” I asked, “are you actually brewing me a cup of drip coffee, right now?”
“You ordered one, didn’t you?”

The coffee was roasted slightly dark for me, but it didn’t really matter, after that.

Sadly, nothing else in England managed to match that first, brilliant trip to the market, except dinner at St. JOHN. St. JOHN is where Fergus Henderson perpetrates “a sort of British cooking”, which involves a great many bits of animal you might not have considered putting in your mouth. The experience goes well beyond the food – it’s steps away from Smithfield market, which is to meat what Tsukiji is to fish. As you walk to dinner, you pass butchers cutting down sides of pork, and the curious, bloodless smell of fresh meat hangs in the air. The place itself is whitewashed inside and out. Anything that isn’t bare concrete is fastidiously, serenely white, and the high ceilings, naked piping, and more white make it feel almost oppressive, like he’s daring you to call it gorgeous. It’s a relaxed room pretending to be tense. Even the typography is a quiet rebellion, Times New Roman in a city of Gill Sans.

My companions were unimpressed by the menu. Faced with a menu featuring grey partridge, lamb’s tongues, goose gizzards, marrow bones, chitterlings, smoked eel and venison offal, they found they were tempted by pot roast pork, langoustines and steamed hake. Yet, in the presence of our server, a very small woman in a very big jacket (white) with very long glasses (black) and a great deal of hair (blond) pulled very severely back, they mysteriously rediscovered their gustatory backbones. Perhaps her descriptions sounded tempting – chitterlings grilled, after a bath in an English mustard marinade, grey partridge very nice, marrow bones a signature, invariably superb – as one friend pointed out, with this menu, they could hardly afford to have staff who didn’t actually like the food they served. More likely it was her steely gaze and imperial voice reminded them that people come here to be brave. Had I asked I’m sure her name would have turned out to be Millicent or Mildred or something similar.

In the end, no langoustines shamed our table. We started with lamb’s tongue salad (much like other tongues, with a distinct touch of sweetness), pressed pork and goose gizzards (a terrine, beautiful – whole gizzards buried in very finely shredded pork, surprisingly delicate flavour, lovely texture), and roasted marrow bones (I’d had marrow, but never saw the point before. This was unbelievably good). Pot roast Gloucester Old Spot had been smoked beforehand, and so, while very well done, wasn’t quite the act of worship the meat deserved. Venison offal – a tiny kidney and slices of liver, was faintly, pleasantly gamy, offset by a deep yet vinegary pan sauce, and beets. The kidney was actually tasty, which again, was more than I could say about the other kidneys I’ve had. The menu listed a marmalade pudding for two, which our server said was enough for three. The monster that arrived on the table, along with a half-litre of warm custard, could have fed eight of us. I’d asked for it because I have a recipe for such a thing at home, and wanted to know what one should actually taste like before making mine – the education turned out to be tangential, because this one had the marmalade over the top, whereas my recipe calls for it to be mixed right in. I did, however, learn that custard, flavoured with vanilla and a touch of nutmeg, is absolutely essential.

We didn’t mean to take a holiday break – honest!

I’m writing from London, a random caf by the Goodge Street Underground, stopping over en route from Singapore back to Brooklyn. My brother’s due to show up in a couple hours, and together we’ll haul my jet-lagged carcass to the Borough Market, where, hopefully, we’ll see something worth writing about.

In the meantime, a holiday story. Christmas dinner, I cooked for the family - a couple uncles, the parents, and granma. Dinner was a crackling shoulder of pork (possibly my most successful roast ever), with all accoutrements suitable to its rank and position. Carrots, snap beans, spinach tart, roasted tatties, the works, and Christmas pud for afters.

My family (with a few wonderful exceptions) are a dour lot at table, fixed in their ways and tastes, who tend to faint at the sight of blood in their meat, so I wasn’t entirely expecting a good reception. They generally approved of the crackling, however, except for my granma. I asked if I could improve the situation.

“It’s not as good as the red haired devil’s food we had the other day.”

“I thought you didn’t eat the food of the red haired devils, granma.”

“I didn’t know it was the red haired devils’ food when your mum ordered it, she just told me it was fish. Anyway, it was damn good.”

Turns out my granma, at the ripe young age of 90, has discovered fish and chips. I went out with her for fish and chips before leaving, and I must admit, those really were damn good fish and chips.

Back soon, with parts 3 and 3 1/2 on pigs, and, if D is feeling up to it, possibly something on Hungarian food. And, after that, turning one.