Atlanta Underground Market 03/04/12

So it turned out that Atlanta Underground Market was becoming so popular that it had to surface. So we immediately signed up when the date for the last market was announced. We had been doing well, selling most of our goods, and having many repeat customers. All that being said, it almost didn't happen. Rebecca's cousin ad recently become engaged and was having their engagement party, in the next state over. I asked a couple co-workers to help out and ask Rebecca to make my apologies for me. Heck, I even had a back-up helper in case the first one backed out. We had learned a better way to operate from each market and this was surely going to be the easiest one yet. The menu had been decided upon and shopped for. All advanced prep had been done and everything was set.

The only photo of the night, the pork belly pastrami sandwich.

The menu was again three things, two of which we repeated from the previous market. The Scotch egg had sold out lickety-split so it was back. The Pork-rinds are always a hit. And I had a great sandwich up my sleeve to knock all their socks off. The organizer said that there was another event being held next door, so we should be ready for a big turnout!

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.