Charcutepalooza The Final Challenge

Posted on December 6, 2011 by admin
Saddle of Rabbit

Saddle of Rabbit with Applewood Smoked Bacon

This is it, the final challenge. The opportunity to lay it all out on the table and show everyone what I learned this year. Showing off was this month’s Charcutepalooza challenge and we were given five weeks to put together a charcuterie menu to share with friends and family. How was I going to show my chops and put an exclamation point on this year long charcuterie journey.

My dinner party approach has always been overkill. I always make way too much food and still stress that I haven’t made enough. I also usually make things too complicated as well so that we are always busy all day long right up to and sometimes after guests arrive for dinner. So with 5 weeks to plan it’s obviously time to go crazy!

The Planned Menu 

 

Charcuterie Platters

 

Charcuterie Platter
House-Smoked Cheese Selection
Dry Cured Chorizo Sausage
Classic French Pork Liver Pate
Ancient Family Recipe Pork Terrine
Rabbit Rillette
House-Smoked Salmon
Fresh Pickled Mushrooms

Appetizer
Confit of Pork Belly with Spiced Pear Preserve

Main Course
Saddle of Rabbit with House Made Applewood Smoked Bacon

Dessert
That’s my sister’s problem, she volunteered!

I am going to make this admission right now. I have now failed twice in a row with the dry cured sausages. We could not keep the green mold off of the chorizo and ended up having to throw them out after just two weeks. The previous challenge we had thrown out a batch of Saussisons Sec and I had probably not cleaned out the curing chamber well enough. Oh well, you can learn from a loss too.

That was extent of the failure for the dinner. Other than that the executionwas pretty darn good for a charcuterie newbie. (I feel that I am a newbie until I get a dry cured sausage right) We did a practice run on the pate and the terrine a few weeks before the dinner. Tried smoking a couple of salmon fillets the week later. Everything was coming together.

Two weeks before the dinner we had one Berkshire pork belly cured and smoked over applewood and one-half Berkshire pork belly, maple cured and smoked over applewood. The other half was reserved for the confit.

In the week leading up to the dinner we first made the pork belly confit, smoked cheese and salmon, made rabbit rillette, rabbit stock, pork liver pate and terrine and pickled mushrooms. Finally on the night before the dinner, I prepared the rabbit saddles. All that was remaining for the day of the dinner was to cook the saddle of rabbit and plate the food. Wow! Apparently the secret to being ready was planning and preparation. Who’d have thought? 

Charcuterie Platter

Selection of Smoked Cheeses

We selected three cheeses to smoke from our favourite local cheese shop, Springbank Cheese company. The owner helped us choose a partly skim Mozzarella to make a home version of Mozzarella Affumicata, a medium Cheddar for Applewood Smoked Cheddar and a Stilton which tasted great.

Classic French Pork Liver Pate

2 lbs. pork liver
1 lb. pork back fat
1 medium onion chopped
2 eggs
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup armagnac
5 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. allspice
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. ground mace
8 slices applewood smoked bacon

We eschewed the use of our meat grinder for the liver, as when we made our practice batch the liver was grainy so we used our food processor this time. However, we did use the course die on our meat grinder for the back fat.

Preheat oven to 325° F.

Line a pate pan with the strips of bacon so that the inside of the pan is completely covered.

In your food processor add all ingredients and puree until the mixture is a very smooth consistency about 2 minutes. Pour the mixture into the pate pan and cover tightly with tin foil. Cook the pate in a bain marie for 2 1/2 hours.

Family Recipe Pork Liver Pate

2 lbs. pork liver chopped
1 lb. ground pork back fat
4 cloves garlic minced
3 Tbsp. cracked black pepper
5 tsp. kosher salt
8 slices applewood smoked bacon

Preheat oven to 325° F.

Line a pate pan with the strips of bacon so that the inside of the pan is completely covered.

Add all of the ingredients to your food processor and pulse until the mixture is smooth but still textured, about 1 minute. Pour the mixture into the pate pan and cover tightly with tin foil. Cook the pate in a bain marie for 2 1/2 hours.

Rabbit Rillette

The main course of the meal was saddle of rabbit and since we are not lucky enough in Canada to have D’artagnan as a supplier so can not buy a Super Saddle. So I was left with legs from four rabbits, enough for a rillette. I made a rabbit rillette for a previous post so recycled the recipe.

House Smoked Salmon

I used the Michael Ruhlman’s recipe for smoked salmon on page 96 of Charcuterie: the Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing and it worked perfectly.

Fresh Pickled Mushrooms

I used a recipe from a previous post that was a perfect accompaniment to the platter.

Appetizer

Confit of Pork Belly with Spiced Pear Preserve

Once again we used the Jim Drohman’s pork belly recipe from Charcuterie book and the results were fantastic. Finishing the confit by deep frying gave the pork a uniform crispy exterior and a buttery, melt in your mouth interior. The spice cure infuses the meat and gives it an exotic flavour that you surprises you.

Spiced Pear Preserve

7 lbs. Bartlet Pears peeled, cored and diced
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
1/2 sugar
1 Tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. allspice
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. ground mace

Mix all of the ingredients together in a heavy pot and simmer for 8 hours or until the pears are caramel coloured and the liquid in the preserve is a thick syrupy consistency. Makes 1 quart.

Saddle of Rabbit with Applewood Smoked Bacon

This is a Thomas Keller recipe from the French Laundry cookbook and was a challenge just from a butchery perspective. I had four whole rabbits that I needed to turn into 8 boneless loins, 8 tenderloins and 8 racks of ribs, frenched. The first rabbit took an hour to prep but the remaining three only took 40 minutes. EXCEPT for the racks of ribs. This was excruciatingly fussy work and took over an hour to accomplish.

Rabbit Butchery

The recipe calls for a fennel oil that needs to be prepared a few days ahead but turns out a beautiful deep emerald colour and is the base for the plating.

 I had enough rabbit bones to make an actual rabbit stock that I reduced to 1/2 cup instead of making the Rabbit “Quick Sauce” that the recipe called for.

The meat is plated on carmelized fennel that is parboiled with star anise and bay leaves until tender and then sliced and carmelized in a hot pan.

The loins and tenderloins are wrapped in bacon and then quickly browned and then finished in the oven. The racks of ribs and the kidneys are sauted in a hot pan.

To plate, a disc of the fennel oil is placed on the plate with two slices of fennel on top. The meat is piled on top and then the rabbit stock reduction is spooned over top. Looked great and tasted even better!

All in all this was a fantastic meal and was the best possible way to finish the challenge.

Filed under: Air Cured, Bacon, Berkshire Pigs, Blue Cheese, Charcutepalooza, Charcuterie, Charcuterie the Craft of Salting Smoking and Curing, French Laundry, Mushrooms, Pickled mushrooms, Pork Belly, Rabbbit Rillette, Rabbit, Recipe, Rillette, Salt Cure, Terrine | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

November Charcutepalooza Challenge Curing

Posted on December 1, 2011 by admin

The penultimate Charcutepalooza Challenge! Eleven months of learning new techniques in the kitchen, new ways to prepare and preserve food but more importantly becoming more in touch with our food, how it’s grown, what’s in it and who grows it.

Freerange Berkshire Hogs

Hogs in the Mist

We have been going to the farmers market to buy most of our ingredients but when the November challenge of curing was posted, the thing that stood out most to me was that it was the quality of the meat that would determine whether we were successful with our challenge more than just the technical ability to cure the meat.

Jeanne and I looked at our schedule, pored through the curing chapter in Charcuterie, and read the Curing Challenge in Mrs. Wheelbarrow multiple times before deciding that making Saucissons Sec and also curing pork tenderloins would be a possibility. That being decided there was only one place we could possibly get our meat from that would make our cured meats shine and that was Broek Pork Acres. They raise Berkshire hogs on a farm near Nobleford, Alberta just northwest of Lethbridge. I mentioned their product at the Pigs and Pinot event this summer in a previous post.

I called them to see about making an order and found out much to my dismay that they had just made their latest delivery to Calgary in support of all of their restaurant customers and did not have much product left. After some back and forth they generously offered to put an order aside for me if I could come down and pick it up at the farm. Broek Pork Acres being a two hour drive from Calgary was a bit problematic but we decided to make a day of it.

We packed our three year old son in the car and made our way down to the farm on a beautiful sunny October day. Not a cloud in the sky and a magnificent view of the Rocky Mountains for the entire journey. When we arrived at Broek we were met with a couple of very large sows ambling across the driveway moving from one pasture to another. This was no ordinary pig farm!

Berkshire Sow

Berkshire Sow

Joanne Broek and her two youngest daughters were incredibly generous when they met us at the farm house and quickly  offered us a tour of the farm. For the next couple of hours we explored the farm and followed the life cycle of the hogs from birth through to the end. Broek Pork Acres raise, slaughter and then butcher all of their hogs and if you try their pork you can taste the care they take in each step of the process. The tour was enlightening and left me an my wife with a new appreciation for the farmers who grow our food. Our son liked petting the piglets and is still a little too young to understand that these cute little animals were in any way related to the ham that he likes so much.

We left the farm with a trunk full of pork belly, rib wings, pork shoulder, and pork tenders (they were out of pork tenderloin) and excited to try everything.

Smoked and Cured Pork Tenders

 

Pork Tenders

Pork Tenders

 

 Even though the tenders were smaller than a tenderloin we decided to go ahead and cure them regardless. We started by trimming the narrow ends to make them more cylindrical for even curing. We salt cured the tenders for 36 hours in the fridge – until they were firm. We then cold smoked them for 6 hours over applewood in our Bradley smoker at about 70 degrees fahrenheit. Then we wrapped them in cheesecloth and hung them in the curing chamber for almost 2 weeks before they lost the 30% moisture necessary to complete the curing.

 2 1/2 lbs. pork tenders
2 cups Kosher salt
1/2 cup brown sugar

Cured Pork Tenders

Cured Pork Tenders

Saucissons Sec

 For this project we faithfully followed Michael Ruhlman’s recipe on page 193 of Charcuterie: the Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing. According to Ruhlman this is one of the easiest dry cure sausages you can make with only pork, garlic and pepper as the main flavours.

We hung the sausages in the curing chamber and watched every day. After 10 days the sausages were looking great and had started to develop the good white mold on the casings. The sausages were not ready to remove after 18 days since they still had not lost 30% of their weight so we decided to wait for a few more days.

At 21 days when we went to check on the sausages we were dismayed to see green mold had spread very quickly and was over a substantial portion of all of the sausages. Arrggh! We had to throw them out. Hopefully the air cured Chorizo we are curing for the final challenge will fare better.

 

Filed under: Air Cured, Berkshire Pigs, Charcutepalooza, Charcuterie, Sausage, Sausisson Sec | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Charcutepalooza 10 Turkey Roulade

Posted on October 15, 2011 by admin

Turkey Roulade

Thanksgiving in Canada being in October is a real eye opener. Held seven weeks before American thanksgiving! We are usually into true winter weather by the time that they are sitting down to turkey dinner in the states. However, this year we were in Toronto for the event and the weather was beautiful and gave us inspiration for this month’s charcutepalooza challenge which was stretching.

Stretching according to Kathy at Mrs. Wheelbarrow was using all of our skills learned so far in the year and applying them to “stretch” the food itself as far as preparation, time, the number of peopl served with the amount of food prepared as well as the stretching the time that food can be safely served. We were to choose between making rillette, galantine and a roulade.

We thought that the best way to tackle the challenge was to apply it to the traditional thanksgiving dinner. So with the willing participation of my in-laws we decided to make a turkey roulade!

8 lb. Turkey reserve the liver
1 1/2 cups red wine – we used a merlot
1/4 cup shallots minced
1 Tbsp. garlic minced
2 Tbsp. fresh sage finely chopped
6 oz. pork back fat
1 Tbsp. olive oil
Kosher salt
Black pepper freshly ground

For cooking the roulade
8 oz. unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups onions diced
1 1/2 cups carrots diced
1 cups celery diced
2 Tbsp. garlic minced
2 bay leaves
1 bunch fresh thyme
Kosher salt
Black pepper freshly ground

 

All in One Piece!

You need to remove the skin from the turkey in pretty much one piece since you will be rolling up the roulade in the skin for roasting. The easiest place to start is on the back of the bird cutting the skin the length of the turkey down the spine. Then slowly, using a boning knife work your way around the carcass. You can peel the skin off the drumsticks easily just like taking off a sweater.

Once the skin has been removed then lay it out flat on a plastic wrap covered cookie sheet skin side down and place it in the freezer for an hour.

Remove the breasts from the turkey in one piece and refrigerate. Next remove the dark meat from he bird and refrigerate.

Sauté the shallots and garlic in the olive oil over medium heat for 2 minutes. Add the wine and bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer until the wine has reduced by two-thirds. Add the sage and stir into the mixture then quickly Remove from heat and refrigerate to cool, about 15 minutes.

Once the skin is frozen, carefully remove all fat from the inside of the skin. This was almost as painful a process as the skin removal and by this time I had finished the other half of the bottle of wine.

Remove the breasts from the fridge and cover them with plastic wrap. Then using a meat mallet, flatten the breasts to a thickness of about 1/2 inch. Trim the breasts to match the width of the skin and place them on the skin leaving 2 inches of skin on all four sides. In essence you want a rectangle of white meat inside a rectangle of skin. This took a little work with a knife and the use of all the scraps from trimming the breasts to make work. Season the breasts with salt and pepper.

Mix the dark meat, the pork fat, the shallot mixture, liver and salt and pepper and then grind with the fine die into the bowl of your standing mixer. Then mix on low speed using the paddle attachment for 1-2 minutes until everything is completely combined. We checked the seasoning with a quenelle test. (a small spoonful of the mixture sautéed in oil) We had to do this a couple of times to get it right.

Quenelle Test

Quickly spread the mixture in a log shape width wise in the centre of the white meat. Roll the entire package up in the skin tying the ends with butcher’s twine. Tie the roulade with loops of twine along its length and season with salt and pepper.

Jeanne Rolling Roulade

 

Preheat oven to 325 degrees

Sauté the onions, carrots, and celery for about 5 minutes in the butter and then add the garlic and sauté for another minute. Remove from the heat and place in the bottom of a roasting pan to use as the bed for the roulade. Place the roulade on top of the vegetables then cover the roasting pan with buttered parchment paper and place in the oven.

Baste the roulade every 15 minutes with the butter and juices and bake for about 75 minutes. The turkey should now have an internal temperature of 150 degrees. Then remove the parchment paper and increase the heat to 400 degrees and bake until the roulade is 160 degrees in the centre. This should take about 15 minutes.

Rest the roulade for about 15 minutes.

Bit of a Blow Out!

This was one of the longest 15 minutes of my life! The roulade smelled so good that I just wanted to cut into it and eat it immediately.

The slices looked fantastic with the ring of white meat surrounding the almost purple dark meat mixture with the savory smell of the sage and the sweetness of the shallots and wine. And it tasted even better than it looked. This was a great evolution of the classic thanksgiving dinner and is something we are definitely going to be doing again.

 

Filed under: Charcutepalooza, Charcuterie, Roulade, Turkey Roulade, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Charcutepalooza 9 Pate Gratinee

Posted on September 15, 2011 by admin
Pate Gratinee on a Cheese Platter

Pate Gratinee

When life gets hectic, everything can seem like a chore. All you want to do is to sit down and take a break but there is always something that needs to be done. That seems to describe our summer this year and left us reacting to the last two charcutepalooza challenges rather than planning out the our recipes and taking time to properly source the ingredients.
This time the challenge was packing. We had some free time on Sunday to make the pate and decided that for the sake of expediency we would do the pate gratinee with the pork tenderloin inlay from Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie, the Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing (pg.219)
Pate Gratinee Ready for the Oven

Ready for the Oven

The only ingredient we needed to buy was pork back fat, the only problem was the butcher shop we usually get that from was closed for renovations so 6 butcher shops and grocery stores later I was forced  to buy a number of small strips of pork belly to carve out the fat myself.
Most of the day was done and we hadn’t even started making the pate but failure was not an option after 8 successful challenges!
Pate Gratinee Fresh from the Oven

Fresh from the Oven

It was ironic that the keys to success for this project were proper preparation and planning. The secret was to get the get all the equipment ready, with everything that can go into the freezer in and chilling. The ingredients had to be prepped and then refrigerated until needed. Once that was done everything was relatively easy. Easier than making hotdogs anyways.
Charcuterie the Craft of Salting Smoking and Curing at Work

Putting Charcuterie to Work!

The pate smelled so good coming out of the oven that it was difficult to let it refrigerate overnight until we could taste it.

Filed under: Charcutepalooza, Charcuterie, Charcuterie the Craft of Salting Smoking and Curing, Pate Gratinee, Pork | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

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