Review of recent goodies!

As it is about 12 weeks since my motorcycle accident, my leg is finally allowing me to get around fairly well. I can run errands and sit comfortably in most normal situations (I could barely get comfortable sitting in a restaurant chair for even a short meal). I have even gotten back into the home kitchen, too, and I hope to get back to some home meat-curing with some regularity. Thanks for bearing with me while I posted more reviews and great finds in a consecutive manner than I ever planned during the inception of "the Hog." I'm hoping now to get back to some of my own stuff for you all to enjoy and hopefully learn something from.

Some of the last things I had worked on before the accident were actually a couple items I had made for the wedding to use on a meat and cheese platter after the dinner had cleared. These items included some 'nduja, beef bresaola, pickles and some jalapeno jelly. Of course 4 weeks to the day before the wedding I had my accident. But with a ton of help from my wife Rebecca and our good friends Henning & Emily, everything was finished successfully and was thoroughly enjoyed by our party-goers! We were even able to knock-out some homemade favors for our guests like more jalapeno jelly, a smoky spice rub and some dill-pickled green beans.

Great Find: Charcuterie: The Dining Room at Biltmore Asheville, NC

For our last night in Asheville, we decided to stay close to home and have dinner at the Dining Room at the Inn.

(The view during the pre-dinner cocktail)

We had mentioned to the concierge that we were celebrating our honeymoon, so after a pre-dinner cocktail in the bar (me: gin & tonic, Rebecca: Biltmore champagne), we luckily scored a seat by the window overlooking the lush Blue Ridge Mountains. The menu was local and refined, with plenty of charcuterie to please my palette: bison carpaccio, venison bresaola, duck proscuitto, pancetta. I noticed chorizo on a dish we didn't order, so I asked our server if I could try a tiny bite, which led to a lengthy explanation of my love for and experience with charcuterie.

Bresaola, official wedding version.

Since the time restraints hit me harder than expected for the charcuterie for the wedding, I needed to choose wisely that which was going to grace the cheese and charcuterie table after the main courses were cleared at our May wedding. I had already done 30# of 'nduja that was well on its way to deliciousness. So I wanted something quick (less than a month), whole muscle (eye of the round) and something I was familiar with as to not take on too much in such short time. So I decided to redo the bresaola as a hybrid of the last versions I did here LotH. I was able to grab two pieces at about three pounds each. I did some basic trimming of the exterior to remove any silver-skin and tough spots. Then I split the two pieces down the center end-to-end so they could cure quickly and evenly.

I wanted to incorporate all the great things from both versions I made previously and leave out those that didn't seem a positive contribution. So for this version I gathered up some white wine, black peppercorns, juniper berries, bay leaves, fresh rosemary, minced garlic, lemon zest, orange zest, cure #2, salt and sugar. I cannot give the exact recipe at this moment because I am in the hospital while the recipe is at home, but I will included it later.

Another beast, Bresaola

So, it doesn't come from low on the hog, or from any part of the hog for that matter, but Bresaola is a delicious Italian cured meat, made from beef. I used the eye of round. I picked up a piece a little over 3# and cleaned it up to just under the 3# weight. At this point I had been trying to decide which of the 2 recipes I had narrowed it down to I was going to use. But in knowing that a single 3# piece was a bit thick I decided to split the eye down the center and try a version of each.

The two recipes I was trying to decide between were those of the Charcuterie book by Polcyn/Ruhlman and the one of Beef from Torode. In the past when researching recipes I tended to find a chunk of recipes that were quite similar baring only slight differences. For things like charcuterie the differences might be specific cuts of proteins, times of processing, spices & seasonings or slight variations in these things. But these two recipes are quite different. The Charcuterie recipe is what I expected when I started thinking about this project. A highly herbed and spiced dry cure followed by a few weeks of drying. But the Beef recipe was quite a surprise. It was a wet cure, or what some might call a brine or even a marinade. These two later styles are normally followed by cooking though.