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Charcutepalooza December: Thank You

by David Dadekian December 6, 2011

written by David Dadekian

Charcuterie Board (see lower photo for descriptions)

And so it goes. Our year of meat has come to a close. For the final Charcutepalooza challenge we were told to show what we learned all year. In Cathy’s own words, do some “showing off” with a celebration. Personally, I think a lot of the Charcutepalooza participants have been showing off all year long—and I mean that in a very positive way. I’ve had an immense amount of fun, a little frustration and a minor failure, but mostly huge fun.

The final challenge for me involved my family and the weekend after Thanksgiving, a leisurely weekend of chopping down a Christmas tree and putting up lights and decorations, all while enjoying the meats and cheeses you see on the big board above. The bresaola I had made for the previous challenge, all the rest of the charcuterie I slowly assembled over the month of November in preparation for the bittersweet end.

As I said, it was the weekend after Thanksgiving. My parents were visiting us from their home in Florida. My wife had four days off from work. My daughters were constantly excited from all the grandparent attention and all these Christmas decorations coming out—there’s a tree in the house! I knew I wasn’t going to want to cook too much after the multi-day extravaganza that is Thanksgiving, but I knew we’d want to eat something else besides leftovers so thought, what’s better than a spread of charcuterie that we can pick at as we work and play?

I made all these photographs and then we proceeded to clear the board over the weekend, cooking up the sausage and some of the lamb bacon, steaming the pastrami until it was moist and tender. My mother loved the pâté, something she doesn’t get that often, and I avoided mentioning to her that using Jacques Pépin’s very classical recipe calls for half a pound of livers with 3/8 of a pound of butter as the base. As much as I would love to see my girls eat everything on the board, they’re not there yet, though Brigid did sample all the Farmstead cheeses at the Wintertime Farmers’ Market and helped pick out two of them.

When I was making the pâté the day before I had taken out a bottle of Armenian “cognac.” I use quotes because it’s obviously not made in the French region of Cognac, but that’s what Armenian brandies have been called for many years. Supposedly Armenian cognac was Winston Churchill’s drink of choice. My dad hadn’t seen a bottle in years and wanted to try it so my wife, in perhaps a bit of whimsy, took out a couple of shot glasses with shamrocks on them for us to have a drink. The bottle from Armenia alongside the Irish shot glass kind of summed up our whole family so I made a photo, but this being a Charcutepalooza feast I had to stick the pâté in the photo too.

So with that memory and image of all my now eaten charcuterie (there’s a little lamb bacon left, but won’t be for long) I close my year of meat. But I certainly can’t end without a huge thank you to Cathy Barrow and Kim Foster for coming up with all this fun. I’ve been making charcuterie for years, but never as regularly or as focused as I did for the last year. Also, for me, the best part was expanding how I would photograph these things. I started with some different ways with the duck prosciutto, became really happy with my style as I got to the pancetta and the last three months of meat pie, galantine and bresaola have been very satisfying for me. I appreciate all the kind comments and Kim’s choosing a few of my photos for her monthly wrap-ups. I can’t thank her and especially Cathy’s inspiring challenges and tweets enough.

Special thanks also to Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn, authors of our manual for the year Charcuterie. I eagerly await their salumi book. Finally, I can’t possibly think of a way to say thank you enough to all the wonderful Charcutepalooza participants. I can’t say enough about the joy of “conversing” with all of you on Twitter. If I begin to try and list everyone’s Twitter name I know I’ll miss someone, so check out this great archive of every tweet with the #charcutepalooza tag and follow them all.

Thank you again, Cathy @MrsWheelbarrow and Kim @KimFosterNYC!

Turkey & chicken liver pâté with Armenian brandy ("cognac")

Charcuterie Board

Turkey & Chicken Liver Pâté

Bresaola

Lamb Bacon

Pastrami

December 6, 2011 0 comments

cooking

Charcutepalooza September: Packing: English Meat Pie

by David Dadekian September 15, 2011

written by David Dadekian

Preparing English meat pie

Some of these Charcutepalooza posts have been short because of frustration (see stuffing sausage). In this case, this post is on the short side because everything worked out so well and was so darn easy. Either I’m learning to deal with meat mess much better (none in my daughter’s hair this time!) or I’m getting better at running various animal parts through both ends of my Kitchenaid mixer. Even the dough making part of this month’s challenge went smoothly, and I don’t have the best record of dealing with doughs (caused by more of my finely-tuned-lack-of-coordination—there’s been flour all over my children in the past too). I won’t go so far as to say my dough work was a huge success, but this was definitely a very smooth challenge for me. Which is good because Mrs. Wheelbarrow is already teasing us via #charcutepalooza on Twitter with a super difficult challenge for October.

As you can see from the photos on this page, I decided to make an English Pork Pie, and in a rare moment for me, I decided to exactly stick to the recipe in Ruhlman & Polcyn’s Charcuterie. Well, sort of. In sorting one of our freezers after a blackout (thanks, Hurricane Irene!) I noticed that I had a little over a pound of venison left from earlier this year. I grabbed a few ounces of pork fat to round it up to a pound and a half, and ground it all as a substitute for the pork in the recipe for English Pork Pie. That’s the ground venison in the photo above, along with some herbs and spices in the bowl, waiting for the addition of the sauteed onions and garlic to the right and the cup of chicken stock to the upper left. It all came together quickly and easily, and now I had the insides for English Venison Pie.

Leaving that to chill, I tackled the dough. Maybe I had just the right atmospheric conditions, or I was just plain lucky, but the dough came together as easily too. I’m not saying it was pretty, and as you can see in my four-step process photos below it could’ve used a bit more finesse, but it was good dough and I didn’t make a huge mess. Note regarding photos: powdery substances like flour and my camera & lenses do not mix. That brings us to the four-step photos below, and I know I sound like a broken record (ask your parents), but laying out the dough and the meat and sealing it all up, came together easily too.

A few notes: I made an aspic with chicken stock to pour inside. I’m not sure if it would’ve worked as it didn’t look like much space, but I was going to try. That is until I wisely asked my wife if she would eat the Venison Pie if I encased it in meat jelly. She said she’d pass so I passed on adding the aspic. Also, while I thought I was being clever baking on a Silpat for easy removal from the pan, in retrospect, I wouldn’t use it again. The bottom of the pie was rather soggy. I’m not sure the Silpat contributed to that, but I’ll try it without next time. One last note, this was not the most attractive dish once I sliced into it. I was going to get out a different lens and play around with the slices, but then I tasted it. As much as I love making photos of food, I really love eating great food better. We devoured this pie. The ground venison with pork fat was moist and very flavorful and the crust tasted fantastic. I know I strayed with the meat, but Ruhlman & Polcyn’s recipe was perfect.

It’s hard to believe another month has passed in The Year of Meat and now we’re three-quarters of the way through Charcutepalooza. As I do every month, and I will continue to do so even when Charcutepalooza is over, I send many thanks to Cathy Barrow a.k.a. Mrs. Wheelbarrow and Kim Foster a.k.a. The Yummy Mummy. Also, the community that’s sprung up around these monthly challenges is very fun, warm and constructive. So if you’ve been reading along but not playing along, pick up the Twitter and find #charcutepalooza.

Four stages of making the pie

The finished English Venison Pie

September 15, 2011 0 comments

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Charcutepalooza August: Binding: trotter terrine

by David Dadekian August 15, 2011

written by David Dadekian

Trotter terrine and crostini

Back to familiar ground for this month’s Charcutepalooza challenge, though it was only my second time working with pig’s feet, so it wasn’t totally familiar. You read that right, pig’s feet, as in euphemistically speaking, trotters. Yes, there are photos of said trotters further down this page. If you don’t want to see severed pig’s feet I would suggest you read a different story in that box to the upper right.

I’ll admit, working with trotters for this challenge wasn’t exactly like working with any piece of meat, there are some mental challenges to all that bone and gristle, even for someone like myself who has aided in the slaughter of animals and broken down whole carcasses. Interestingly, it became very clear that that perception is obviously learned behavior. While my wife Brenda didn’t want to be in the room with the trotters (and would probably be someone who would read a different story than this one to avoid the photos), my two daughters had no problem with the meat at all. In fact, my 18-month-old was fascinated with the process as I cleaned and prepped the trotters to go into the stock pot, even poking and sniffing one.

So what did I do to achieve the shiny loaf that you see in the above photo? The process is like making any type of stock from meat and bones: animal parts in a pot, cover with liquid, bring to a simmer for several hours. Except in this case you’re not making the stock in water with some aromatics, but in highly seasoned water. I used the same seasonings as outlined in Ruhlman & Polcyn’s Charcuterie recipe for headcheese, but since it’s been a very hectic summer and I just didn’t have the time or energy to acquire a pig’s head, I went a different route for the meat. Yes, I did have a pair of trotters in my freezer (don’t you?) but I didn’t think that would produce enough meat for my terrine. I was out of ham hocks (pork shanks), but I did have some beef shanks, so I decided to use those with the pig’s feet. Now because I was using beef I wanted to try something different than the traditional 2 cups of a dry white wine, and I happened to have a bottle of NV Port that had been open for a couple of months, making it past it’s prime. Turned out there was 1 1/2 cups of Port left in that bottle. Not wanting to skimp on the required liquor, I brought it to two cups with a little Patron. Why not, right?

So into the pot everything went and three hours later I had a big platter of, let’s be honest, messy animal product and about 7 cups of purplish-brown gelatinous liquid. This is not the sounds good stage. But we’re getting there. After some scrupulous separating of meat from everything else (and a little frying of the pig skin because why waste cracklins) I was ready to assemble my terrine. Instead of chopping up the meat by hand, and because I was reasonably certain Brenda wouldn’t want to eat the terrine if she saw chunks of the various meat suspended in there, I pulsed all the meat in my food processor a few times. I may have pulsed a little too much because the finish terrine, while it sliced beautifully, tended to crumble as you ate it, but it tasted great so who cares? I lined my loaf dish with plastic wrap, pressed in the meat and then very slowly added the stock so that it would get absorbed and into every tiny nook and cranny between the meat. When the stock began to pool up on top I tightly folded up the plastic wrap and put the dish in the refrigerator overnight.

Today, what more can I say but, we ate. Even though I added a good amount of salt and pepper to the meat before I pulsed it in the food processor, I still felt the final terrine needed more salt. But other than that, the seasonings, including the Port, came through very nicely. As for the lack of salt, it was nothing a sprinkling of very coarse Maldon sea salt on top couldn’t solve, which was probably even better than getting the salt right in the first place. The terrine was really a lot of fun this month, so once again I want to thank Cathy Barrow and Kim Foster for this whole wonderful Charcutepalooza experience. I can’t believe we’re 2/3rds of the way through.