The Agony and the Ecstasy - Curing Pork (Part Three)

Part Three: Smoking.

The pancetta in the basement was joined by even more hanging meat. Smoke permeates the meat better if the surface is totally dry.

Jeff got to work preparing the wood. While it is true that you can buy wood chips all over the place, it seemed more fun to do that from scratch too. (Although not as much fun after an hour of sawing..)

This huge branch of Manitoba Maple fell down during one of last summer's windstorms.

Next morning, bright and early.

A few pieces of lit charcoal and a couple of chunks of maple got the smoke puffing nicely. Nice and cool.

Look at the happy smoker on the deck!

Look at the happy ham and happy hock and happy sausages!

Now look at the burnt, sad and unhappy ham!

This catastrophe occurred around hour 3 of smoking.

Everything had been going really well until that point. The wood was smoking consistently and was nice and cool for the first hour and a half, but then it started fizzling out. It took a while to get the next batch of charcoal and wood smoking nicely, so I figured I'd have to time it a little tighter on the next batch. Which led me, an hour later, to add half a dozen burning briquettes to the wood when the last half dozen were still going.

About fifteen minutes later, Jeff saw flames spitting out of the smoker. No more smooth, cool smoke. We had fire.

Now, the whole thing about smoking is that you want to flavour and somewhat dry out the meat without cooking it. This is why the low temperature is so important - you don't want to render any fat or cook the meat. Which is what happened.

I wept bitterly.

But all was not lost. The burnt parts of the ham were cut off, and then we roasted it. The smoke had permeated about 3/4 of an inch into the ham, leaving a nice pink ring on the outer layer. It tasted...kind of hammy.

Some of the bacon had started cooking in the fire and had gotten pretty leathery. I cut those pieces off to use later as salt pork, some of which flavoured a huge pot of spicy baked beans beautifully the next day.

There was about a 6-inch square of usable bacon from each slab that I had prepared. Hey, for my first try, that's not so bad, is it?

Mmmmm. Homemade maple bacon.

The Agony and the Ecstasy - Curing Pork (Part Two)

Part two: Bacon and Pancetta.


The dry cure sucked out a lot of the moisture from the meat as it sat in the fridge, creating its own brine, as seen below. After about 5 days, it was time to get the meat out of the salty brine. The remaining salt was scrubbed off the meat and thoroughly washed.


The two slabs designated to be bacon were dried off, and placed into new bags into the fridge. I added some maple syrup to one of them, and garlic and pepper to the other so the flavour could permeate a bit before smoking. (The scallops pictured on the Valentine's Day post were wrapped with the maple bacon from this stage.)


The slab designated to be pancetta was also scrubbed and dried off, then covered with a thick layer of cracked black pepper.

Then came the fun part - rolling up and trussing the tightly rolled meat.

Rolling - easy, trussing - tricky.

And then the easiest part - Hang it up, and let it cure.

Thank god the cats can't jump higher than two feet - the basement is usually their domain, but the cool, dry environment down there was very nice for the pancetta.

The finished product, after curing for almost four weeks:

For more info on making pancetta, check out http://www.chowhound.com/recipes/10699.

The Agony and the Ecstasy: Curing Pork (part one)

2007 - The Year of the Pig.

Pork intrigues me more than beef, somehow. Beef is too simple. You don't have to work with it to get results. It justs sits there, tasting good, being beef. But pork! Working with pork is like a culinary costume party. Different preps of pork leaves you with totally different tasting meat. Pork for the sake of pork - I could take it or leave it. But seasoned, smoked or cured pork becomes a seasoning of its own.

Yes, I could find simpler hobbies. Hobbies with less sleepless nights, with less heartache and tears, with less crushing disappointments. But then I'd never have homemade bacon!

O.k. So this all started about two and a half weeks ago, when I purchased half a pig. Half an organic, raised under the oak trees in La Broquerie pig. After trying out the flavour of the fresh pork by roasting the bone-in loin roast (juicy and succulent - organic pork for the sake of pork is pretty damn good!), the work of curing began.

Three projects were started: ham, bacon and pancetta. I received several small ham roasts cut from the leg, and I chose the largest roast (about 6 pounds) as well as the hocks to brine and eventually smoke. The belly came in a 8-pound slab that I cut into three equal pieces. One piece would become pancetta, and the other two were destined for becoming bacon.

Darling husband made the brining possible by procuring some lovely plastic buckets from the cafeteria at U of W.The brine for the ham and the hocks was salt, brown sugar, some juniper berries, and water. Next came the pancetta. This was a dry cure, pictured above: salt, brown sugar, bay leaves, juniper berries, fresh thyme, chopped garlic and cracked black pepper.

This spice mixture was rubbed liberally all over the slab of pork belly. This was repeated with the other two slabs of belly, but with a simpler cure of salt and sugar.

The slabs of bacon were placed into air-tight plastic bags, and then weighted down in the fridge. I used a sophisticated method of placing canned goods on top of them. Clever, yes?

The brine with the ham and the hocks were placed in a cold corner of the pantry. There happened to be a cold snap during this time and this room was probably around 5 degrees. Although it probably slowed down the process of salt absorption, I didn't have to panic that it was going to go bad on me!

Then, I waited.

Happy Valentine's Day!

My Valentine's gift to Jeff: A kielbassa heart.



Jeff's Valentine's gift to me: fresh Digby scallops, brought home on the plane. (wrapped in our very own homemade bacon - as yet unsmoked - updates on bacon shall come soon...)


...and pretty flowers too.

Tourtière!

Here on Planet Borscht, I present to you our very first guest Blogger.
Please warmly welcome Miss Harms and her tales of fine food from afar!



Hello fine foody folks.

I recently returned from La belle province, and while there, I dined at 'Aux Anciens Canadiens'. This most charming restaurant in Old Québec specializes in old school cuisine served by delightful wait staff wearing period costumes. . .the period being French colony Québec.

The lunchtime meal--Table à Haute: your choice of main dish, including soup du jour (a delightful creamy tomato while we were there), dessert (maple sugar pie or apple cranberry pie served with fresh cream, not whipped cream or ice cream. . . cream!) and a glass of wine or beer! And the beer was not hum-drum beer. It was all tasty beers like Boréal Russe, ooh or Blonde. . . mmmm) (Coffee was extra) for a mere 14.95$!


And now, the meat of my entry-- the main dishes! First, "Tourtiére Lac-St-Jean avec des viandes sauvages" (right). The wild meats included caribou, boeuf, cerf (deer) and wapiti (elk). It was a most succulent tourtiére. So juicy, and seasoned excellently. It was the best tourtiére ever to touch my tastebuds (sorry St. Jo).


Also, the tourtière was not in pie form. It was more of a loaf. The breaddy crust wrapped around the meaty filling. Note the lovingly cubed potatos, and the bits of extra-burned. Oh, Heaven!


And the daily main dish special "Pâté en croûte de Wapiti avec le Romarin" (super-flaky crusted wapiti pie with rosemary). Oh my, yum yum yum! the wapiti was definitely much drier (and therefore leaner?) than the tourtiére. The crust was most dilectible, and melt-in-your mouth. I am guessing it was definitely lard. And the rosemary crept up on you and enveloped your olfactory and savory senses in a big blanket of joy!


To top it all off, the sides that accompanied the main dish (viewed here and above) were divine! The orange-red-yellow mixture is a tomato, onion and yam pickle. It is sweet, tart and delightful, and I will never enjoy ketchup again. There was a smattering of lightly--perfectly--steamed sugar snap peas, and the most amazing yams I have ever tasted. They must have been approximately 2/3 boiled yams mashed with 1/3 butter, and liberallty mixed with salt. And piping hot! Everything arrived at just the right time, and steaming to perfection!

Vive Le Québec!

Three Fondues

I'm always up for over-the-top food. And if an idea is a good one, why not triple it?

Having received a chocolate fondue set for Christmas, we were eager to try it out. It seemed appropriate to plan a multiple fondue feast - Cheese, Broth, and the Chocolate for dessert. It also seemed like a good opportunity to return the hospitality of Chris and Coral for their mid-December feast. (Thanks go to Coral for the pictures of the broth fondue and the chocolate fondue treats!)The cheese fondue was composed of McEwan's Scotch Ale, two cheddars (one smoked), some mustard and some cayenne.
The McEwans was a great choice for these cheeses - the strong and sweet ale paired really nicely with the slightly smoky cheddar. I probably should have paid more attention when warming it all up - it curdled quite quickly but a bit of lime juice smoothed it out a bit. We eventually enjoyed it with roasted potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower, kielbassa rounds, bread cubes, and cherry tomatoes.Considering the heaviness of the cheese fondue, I opted for a broth fondue rather than oil for cooking meat. I had planned on getting some wonderful scallops from Mariner Neptune and thought a nice gingery broth would work really well. Unfortunately, the scallops were way too huge to cook properly in the over-crowded fondue pot! The beef, chicken and prawns worked really nicely though (and left me with some tasty broth at the end of the night!)
We had a couple of very nasty fire flare-ups as a result of the old lamp oil that we used for fuel. Both pots got charred black and the metal pot had a 1/2 centimetre of ash covering its base. (Note for future reference: buy Sterno for next fondue).



And to end off the evening, we had strawberries, bananas, marzipan cubes, marshmellows, and peanut butter balls for dipping in chocolate.
The chocolate that came with the fondue set didn't last long though, and I had about as much success with melting more chocolate that I had with the cheese earlier. I brilliantly thought it would be clever to mix in some plain yogurt to melted chocolate, forgetting how easily this stuff seizes up... But thank goodness that you only need a bit of chocolate to make the sweetness of a strawberry sing!

January Eating

The More With Less cookbood is my bible for simple, cheap eating. Rich food has its place, but after days and days of non-stop seafood and donairs last December, I started craving simpler food. And this soup recipe is one of the simplest.These are the basic ingredients: lentils, onions, garlic and lemon juice. Here's what you do: Boil lentils with cumin. Fry onions and garlic in olive oil. Add a tablespoon of flour to coat onions. When lentils are cooked, add the fried onions and lemon juice.

Garnish with yogurt, and you got yourself some damn fine soup. Lentils rule!

Xmas in Halifax - Seafood Heaven

These lovely clams and chips come courtesy of Cousin's Snack Bar on Agricola Street in Halifax. Most Haligonians swear by John's Lunch in Dartmouth for fried clams, and don't get me wrong - they are amazing! But Cousin's has always been Jeff's favourite.Cousin's Snack Bar used to be a convenience store with a couple of stools in back, but the racks of potato chips are gone and now tables fill the place. On their sign outside they proudly advertise their Homestyle Cooking and then in smaller letters it says: Breakfast and Seafood. Gotta love a place that specializes in fried fish and fried bacon.

By the way, their clams are soft, succulent and sweet. YUMMMMMMM.

Onward to Clam Harbour. Not pictured here are the mounds of Willie Krauch's hot-smoked salmon that we had for lunch. Alas. But we did manage to get this shot of the amazing fish chowder that Jeff's dad made us for supper.

Check out the huge, twonie-sized scallops. Check out the chunks of lobster claw meat. And check out the glistening, shining layer of melted butter floating on the top. (The soup was actually a creamy colour underneath the butter). When I sipped my first spoonful, my tastebuds quivered with joy. The second spoonful of soup was gently savoured, and the flavours were quietly contemplated. On the third spoonful of soup my body started to rebel. I tried to will my body to submit to the pleasure, but the fourth spoonful of soup brought on nausea. I was defeated. (But Fluffy the cat won out BIG TIME.)

This soup did me in. This was the 2nd last day of the trip. I had already been dreaming of cleansing kale and lentils for awhile at this point due to the overload of amazing food being offered up from every direction. Two turkey dinners, three donair meals, corned beef and cabbage, clams and chips - all in the same week! It was too much!!! NO MORE EATING!

But then I slept on it, and woke up feeling great and ready to eat again. We brought home the rest of the chowder, and we ate it New Year's eve for lunch. At this point I only had to last one more meal. One more glorious meal before heading back home to the land of potatoes and sauerkraut. I'll let the rest of the photos speak for themselves.

The remains.

Xmas in Halifax - Donairs

The seafood in Halifax is wonderful, and there will soom be a post detailing our feasts upon the crustaceans and molluscs of Nova Scotia... but let's start with Donairs, shall we?



Halifax Donairs are the stuff of legends. There is something about that spicy meat and creamy sweet sauce that can't be duplicated outside of Metro Halifax. The night we flew into town, Jeff insisted on stopping for donairs on the way home from the airport. His loving mother dutifully drove in circles in Dartmouth and Cole Harbour until we found a suburban shop still open at 1:30 am. Dino's two for one, I believe.


So what constitutes a Halifax Donair? This is what Wikipedia says:

The meat in this version of the döner kebab (Halifax donair, as it is sometimes referred to) is sliced from a loaf cooked on a vertical spit, made from a combination of ground beef, flour or bread crumbs, and various spices, while
the sauce is made from evaporated milk, sugar, vinegar, and sometimes garlic.
The meat and sauce are served rolled in pita bread with diced tomato and onion. This version is generally so packed with ingredients, that the pita is almost there for ceremonial purposes; the pita of any true Haligonian donair will be so soaked in sauce that attempts to pick it up will be fruitless.

They're not kidding about the 'don' t pick it up' part. This particular donair comes to us courtesy of Robert's Pizza and Donairs on Windmill Road in Dartmouth. They're kind of known for their over-the-top huge donairs. (Put it this way - Jeff could only eat about 1/2 of the large donair).

An offshoot of the donair is the donair pizza. You get your donair meat, your onions and tomatoes, your cheese - and then you smother donair sauce all over it. Kinda gross, but kinda yummy, especially after a few beers at the Seahorse Tavern...

(This pie comes courtesy of Alexandria's Pizza on Queen.)

Next post: Seafood heaven.

Regrettable Foods Christmas Potluck 2006

...Or shall we call it the Family Circle Christmas potluck?

The origins of this potluck go back to a lovely day at the beach this past summer when Jodi presented various cookbooks from The Family Circle Illustrated Library of Cooking to those present. This past weekend, we were all called upon to utilise these books to conjure up the magic of cooking in 1972. The consensus at the party was that it was painfully difficult for us to follow these recipes to the letter; the abundance of pre-processed ingredients, the lack of spices or seasoning, the insistence on hard-boiled egg garnishes, and the enthusiasm for molding perfectly good food with gelatin made this potluck prep an almost arduous task . However, we persevered and these are the results.

Ladies, if I get any of the details wrong, please say so in the comments below!

The Feast!

My own contribution to the feast was Scotch Eggs. Pretty simple - hard boiled eggs encased in spiced hamburger, rolled in crushed Corn Flakes, then deep fried. Not too much technique there - although I'd love to make these sometime with really little eggs covered in homemade turkey sausage. These beasts were a little overwhelming and kind of difficult to cook because of their hugeness. But oh, so tasty. (Next time, I'll spice 'em up! The Scotch won't know what hit 'em!)

Next, we have a casserole with pineapple, yams and ham with Marshmellow topping courtesy of Sharon (one of my favourites of the evening, actually...) and an eggplant salad. The ham was cooked in a sauce of canned pineapple juice and brown sugar. I think this is kind of a take-off on the whole candied yams American Thanksgiving thing. Yummy.

The eggplant salad was from the 'Foods from Afar' heading - this was a supposedly Israeli salad of cooked eggplant, cucumber, celery and green olives covered in sour cream. No spices apart from salt, sugar and garlic. The method for making the radishes into rosettes was also in the cookbook. Those 70s housewives sure loved their garnishes.

These two treats above were courtesy of Kreesta and John. The sandwiches were a corrupted Reuben sandwich with spam instead of corned beef - and the lovely tuna ramekins were concocted completely of preprocessed and canned foods. Even the biscuit topping was Pillsbury. A lovely little Tuna Pot Pie, if you will.

My vote goes to Jenny, however for the most ornate food of the night.

These little candied oranges were astonishingly beautiful. I want to decorate my Christmas tree with them. Jenny, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is how they were created. First, the orange was sliced at the top and all the insides were gently scooped out. Then the hollow peels were candied. I'm not sure of the process, but I think it involved cooking them in a sugar syrup over a long period of time. Then the candied orange peels were filled with Christmas cake and steamed.

In a way, these oranges reminded me of the beautiful molded Marzipan treats that I first saw in the Netherlands when I was a kid. Breathtakingly lovely, but you were a little afraid to eat them.

It was almost surprising that there was only one molded salad at the potluck - I would venture a guess and say that almost a quarter of all the recipes in these Family Circle books involved mixing gelatin with otherwise acceptable food and conforming it to a imposing, quivering tower of food.

Melanie took on the molded salad challenge with this little number composed of rice, cream, melted candy hearts, and canned pears. Garishly festive!

Alas, there were many other dishes that were enjoyed but not photographed - the quiche, the ambrosia salad, the cheesecake, the salmon spread, the molasses roll-ups... All truly wonderful, and all enjoyed.

Huzzah for Regrettable Food!