Posts from — April 2010

The bresaola is now in its final stage, that of drying slowly.   I took the eyes of round out of their cure bags from the fridge, rinsed them to remove most of the curing spices, then let them sit at room temperature for two hours.

(If you watch them VERY closely… they might move!)

After resting, I tied the roasts, so that they’ll be rounder eyes of round, and I wrapped them in (unbleached) cheesecloth.

Finally, I hung them in our basement, which just happens to be 60 degrees F, and 70% humidity, according to the temperature/humidity meter I got at the hardware store.  I am pleasantly surprised that my basement’s environment happens to fit the recipe so well.  The beef will hang for another three weeks, at which time I will need to finagle the use of a slicer, so we can have tastings.

Anyone have any suggestions?  Know of someone with a slicer that I should invite to the tasting party?  Know where I can get one that’s good for not too much money?

I’m excited that our local Farmer’s Market starts up again this Saturday.  I’ll be ready to go order my chickens (even if the farmer’s not ready for me!).  I hope I’ll have time before our WAQG workshop to go down and say hello, and take some pictures, and maybe buy some seedlings for my garden!

I received some photos this week of the latest grumpasaurus sightings in the mountains of Virginia.   All photos are copyright 2010 by Janet Sanborn Jonas.  (Thanks, Janet!)  I think the first one would be great for a caption contest.

“This laundry stinks.  This pile is a mess.” – Grumpasaurus Blue

Grump on a Lump

“This is a precision Swiss machine, and it doesn’t make CHOCOLATE?” – G. Blue

Now that the jowls have cured, I rinsed and dried them, and they are now hanging for 1-3 weeks until they are completely firm. I’ve tied them with butcher string, and they are hanging in a cool dry place- in the garage fridge.  (You can view a larger photo by clicking on the one above.)

I may move these to another location when I hang the bresaola… stay tuned for more on that on Wednesday.

Today is also the day that I can take my pork fat and meat from the -10F environment it’s been in for 12 days, so I can start the salame and sausages.

Thanks to Facebook, I recently re-connected with my best friend from summer camp during my tween years.  We discovered that we both did graduate school at the University of Maine, we are both quilters, and that we share an admiration of the work of Ruth B. McDowell.  Now we share even more than our original interests in drama and skiing.  Even better, A invited me to be in a quilt show at an art gallery in Plymouth, NH that she’s involved with.  She also invited my sister J (in Virginia) to participate.    This week, I’ve been adding labels (nothing like the last minute!) and a sleeve to the smaller of the two quilts.

This morning I mailed out Japanese Gardens II (above) and Ruth said “Let us Quilt.” (below).  They should arrive at A’s on Monday, in time for the show to be hung on April 30th.  A will be sending more promotion information shortly, so I’ll pass along more show details, if any of my adoring fans will be in or around Plymouth, NH this spring.

Now that the beef for bresaola has been curing for a week, this morning I went through the next steps in its process to dry cured deliciousness.  Saving you from the boredom of sanitizing the counter top, let’s move straight to the meat.

Here’s what it looked like, just out of the zipper bag, after I dried off the excess moisture with some paper towels.  I would have drained out any water that was in the bags, but there wasn’t enough to pour off.

Next, I took the remaining rub that I had saved from last week, and rubbed it all over the meat, just like before.  Results, exhibited below.

Then it was back into the zipper bags, and back into the fridge for another week, with planned overhauling every other day.  (Sorry about the glare in the photo- I’ve still got issues with lighting/photography with the stainless steel table.  I’ll work on it.)

This process may have an excitement level about like watching golf on TV, but I look at it as an exercise in patience, which you may know is not one of my strong suits.  I am hoping that the long term result (tasty treats, and new skills) will compensate.   Next week at this time, we’ll move on to the tying and hanging for the dry portion of the dry curing.

Here’s a new tool I got from Allied Kenco, from a link I found on Jason’s Cured Meats blog.  It is a tool that will allow me to override the temperature on my curing fridge, controlling it from the outside.  There’s a metal wand that will be inside the fridge that is the sensor, and the dial inside the plastic box goes from 30 degrees F to 110 degrees F, so that should give me plenty of range for curing.  The electric cord from the fridge piggybacks onto the plug for this contraption, and I’ll hang the box outside the fridge, on the wall in the garage.  I’ll have more pictures of this when it’s time to document the salame.

My next step will be to manage the humidity, now that I’ve got temperature controls.

At our Winona Area Quilters Guild (WAQG) guild meeting last week, we were discussing the kinds of tools that we use in our quilting projects that aren’t sold at quilt shops.  Some of my favorite tools for this discussion are 1) Blue Painter’s Tape, 2) Tracing Paper,  3) FedEx Office,  4) Freezer Paper, and 5) Sharpie markers.  As you can see in the photo below, I’m really a fan of the blue painter’s tape.

I’ve been working on a new quilt project, working from a photograph I took in Lake City, MN, on the weekend of our WAQG quilt retreat last month. It’s a photo of sailboats in dry dock, near the marina in downtown Lake City.

I printed the photograph out on my printer on 8.5 x 11 paper (it’s taped to the wall on the right).  I then made a tracing of the major design lines in the photo. I took the tracing (along with two other tracings of other photos) to FedEx Office, where a man there was happy to enlarge my tracing to 36 x 48, and print it out for me.  The enlargement of each tracing cost about $9.50, which I think was a deal, considering all of the work it saves to enlarge the picture.  After taping the enlarged drawing to the wall, I covered it in more tracing paper, and have simplified the drawing some, so that it is pieceable.  This photo shows freezer paper taped over a section of the tracing paper, so that I can transfer the piecing lines to the shiny side of the freezer paper with thin Sharpie marker, to make the fabric templates.

I’m almost to the part of the project where I get to play with color and fabric, but all of this setup work really does make the assembly part easier.  All I need now is a really large piece of foam core, or some other substance that I’ll be able to pin the templates to as I audition fabrics.   It might be time to head back to the hardware store and look at what might become my next favorite quilting tool.

La guancia  is the term for cheek in Italian (meaning the one on your face).  Guanciale (pronounced gwan-CHALL-ay), therefore, is cured pig cheek, aka jowl.  It is used much like bacon, to add flavor to dishes like stews and soups, but could be used anywhere that you might want to add that lovely porky flavor.

To Americans, the pork cheek is not a familiar cut.  Possibly this is because there are glands to remove in the butchering process, or that the cheek muscle is not very large, thus not considered cost-effective.  Could any of you meat experts out there provide some explanation?

As you can see in the photos below, however, there is considerable fat and meat here, in a small, manageable size, so it’s perfect for curing at home.  In the pictures below, I’ve trimmed out the grayish glands, so all you see is the pretty white fat and darkish meat.  Click on either of these images if you want to see closer up.

The process for making guanciale is similar to the one I use for making fresh bacon, which involves making a dry cure, letting the meat sit in the cure mixture for a period of time, then rinsing the meat, and hanging it to dry.

The dry cure consists of salt, sugar, peppercorns, and thyme, and a little pink salt, to maintain the lovely rosy color.  Next time I’ll add garlic to the mix.   To be honest, I just forgot this time.

After trimming the meat, the process is simple- put the jowl in a big zipper bag, mix in the dry cure, seal the bag, and rub the cure into the jowl all over.   Then, after labeling the bag, it’s into the fridge for curing.  It’s on a shorter cure and overhaul schedule than the bresaola, and should be hanging within a week or so.

It’s the perfect meat curing process for the less than patient… it doesn’t require hard work every day, and it will keep you interested while you’re waiting for other goodies to cure.   That’s what I keep telling myself.

Bresaola (pronounced Breh-say-OW-la) is beef that has been rubbed with spices and cured, then hung to dry.  The dry cured beef originates from Valtellina, an area north east of Lecco and Bergamo, in the Lombardia region of Italy.  It is served sliced paper thin, not unlike proscuitto, often with arugula, olive oil, and an acid as a first course.  Unlike proscuitto, this is done with a very lean cut of meat, the eye of round.

I know all this safety stuff can get pretty dull, but it’s important when dealing with meat, to avoid cross-contamination from other things in the kitchen. Here’s my knife and cutting board in a bleach water solution, being sanitized before I start working with the meat.  I’ve also wiped down my work area with the same solution.

Yeah, yeah, we GET it.  When do we get to see the meat?   OK.  Thanks for your patience.  Here are my two eye of round roasts.

I’ve trimmed them of any excess fat and silverskin.   Each of these is about 3 pounds in weight.  While I was waiting for the sanitized stuff to air dry, I mixed up the dry rub in my little coffee grinder.  It’s in the bowl on the left, and I’ve got a closeup:

This rub contains sugar, salt, pepper, juniper berries, thyme, rosemary, and Insta Cure #2, aka DC Curing Salt #2.  I’ve used fresh herbs, so instead of being completely a powder, there’s a little clumping of the cure, due to the moisture in the herb leaves.

Those of you familiar with quilting might find humor in that I had to run upstairs to the sewing room to find my freezer paper before doing these steps… I actually use more freezer paper for quilting templates than I do for food related applications at this point.  We’ll see if I get to the point of storing freezer paper in the kitchen.

I rubbed half the spice mixture on the meat, and reserved the other half for after the  initial cure is over.

The next step is to put the meat in zipper bags, and let it hang out in the refrigerator for a week.   I put each roast in its own bag, then inside a second bag, to prevent leaks.

I’ll overhaul this (Don’t you love specialized vocabulary?  That means I’ll open the fridge and flip the bag over, to redistribute the cure) every two days or so, until its first week is over.   Until next Wednesday, this just has to do its thing.