Stuff happens...

So I was thinking the other day that most of what I've written here isn't rooted in much more than the sort of 'I fancied doing this, here it is' fashion I sort of bemoaned here.  Then I kind of half-arsedly stumbled into this one.  Not that it's revelatory or anything, just merely a demonstration of things happening to point me in a certain direction. 

Last Sunday, being roughly between both my parents' birthdays we went to lunch at Bocca di Lupo (I'd be lying if I claimed to not have anything to do with that suggestion.)  If anyone's failed to notice my adoration for this restaurant and chef Jacob Kenedy's food, he's seriously rivaling Theo Randall for being the object of dizzying, wide-eyed Fan Boy-ism.  And as I mentioned before, this was largely accidental as Amazon suggested I'd be interested in his book The Geometry of Pasta as I'd already bought Theo Randall's book.  Of course I was interested.  The book itself is fantastic.  It forgoes glossy Food Porn style pictures of the dishes that beg you to cook them, instead featuring wonderfully abstract illustrations of all manner of pasta shapes and varieties, half of which you've never heard of.  The recipes include a load which I think are the kind of dishes I think a lot of people don't expect from Italian cuisine, that aren't the sort of Summery, brightly coloured, quickly cooked dishes that are seemingly synonymous.  What was that about Pot Tossery being cynical about The General Public's Attitudes to Food?

So anyway, I stuffed myself to the nines with five courses.  Not quite Mr Creosote proportions, but if we hadn't skipped tea/coffee due to their coffee machine being broken I'm not sure if I would have been able to find room for whatever might have been offered in place of a waffer thin mint.  They were instead ferrying coffees from over the road at their deli counterpart Gelupo, which we perused as a matter of principle.  Now so far all my attempts at making pasta have been using Canadian strong flour as a substitute of Italian Tipo 00 flour.  Not that it would have been difficult to get the latter, given the number of fantastic Italian delis in Soho.  But anyway, with it looking right at me, I thought it high time I gave it a go.  So that's Part One of Life Impacting on What I Cooked out of the way.  That and I'm still breaking in my new Imperia pasta machine.  I'd make pasta so much more often if it didn't always leave so many egg whites to use up.  Not that so many eggs are used in every pasta dough recipe, but it's going to take a lot to drag me away from Theo Randall's.  It is now well and truly a comfort zone. 

So, Part Two.  And to be fair, this is fairly tenuous anyway.  But yesterday marked the opening of a new butchers here.  Apparently there used to be five butchers in this town, but for a long time now there's been none, and just the offers of shitty mini supermarkets which assume people only ever want to use about three different cuts of meat.  Much in the same way that they assume everyone wants asparagus in December and parsnips in June.  There was for a brief time the meat counter in the now closed down Farmer's City Market.  The fact that the children's gym on the floor above it is still open just infuriated me even more.  What a fantastic portrayal of the middle classes getting their priorities round the wrong way.  But anyway, the butchers is run by the people who ran the meat counter at the Farmer's City Market.  I said this was tenuous, and it literally is as going to a butchers on their first day of trade and deciding what to cook based on what they had.  Told you.

So what did I cook?  Based on Part One, I consulted The Geometry of Pasta and came up with Pappardelle con Lepre in Salmì, or Pappardelle with jugged hare.  I made do with rabbit instead, and also slightly changed it to incorporate some of my bacon.  The recipe calls for marinating the meat, along with virtually all the other ingredients in 'copious quantities of red wine' for two to three days.  I had to make do with merely a couple of hours.  Oh well, (spoiler alert) it was still bloody delicious.

Go massive ingredients list.  (This supposedly serves eight, I roughly halved it to feed three.)

800g dried, or just over 1kg freshly rolled pappardelle
1 hare (about 2kg)
2 sticks celery, finely chopped
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
4 bay leaves
1 sprig sage
2 sprigs rosemary
3 sprigs thyme
16 juniper berries, crushed to release flavour
8 cloves
8cm cinnamon stick
¼ nutmeg, grated
1 teaspoon crushed black pepper
2.5 litres red wine
400g butter, or 350g butter and 25g dark chocolate
4 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley
grated Parmesan, to serve

Cut the hare into joints that will fit your pot (hacking it roughly into four sections will do; you can leave the liver and kidneys in), and marinate for two to three days with the vegetables, herbs, spices and wine in the refrigerator.  Transfer to a suitable cooking pot, add a pinch of salt and cook over a medium heat for 2½-3 hours at a gentle boil or ambitious simmer, until the liquid has reduced to about a cup and the meat is falling off the bone. 

Leave to cool until it can be handled safely - wear rubber gloves if you're impatient.  Drain and pick the meat from the carcass, breaking up any large lumps of flesh with your fingers.  Discard the bones, cinnamon stick and herb stalks.  Mix the meat and vegetables back into the cooking juices: you should have just over 1.5 litres of sauce.

When you're ready to eat, put the pasta on, and reheat the sauce over a high heat.  Add the butter and parsley (and chocolate if you want a richer flavour, though I normally make this sauce without), and stir to keep everything nice and emulsified.  At this point you can adjust the consistency, boiling the sauce down if it's too watery, or adding a little of the pasta water if it seems too thick, as well as tasting for salt and pepper.  Drain the pasta just moments before it is cooked to your liking, as it will continue to cook for the last minute as you stir it into the sauce, still over the heat.  Serve immediately with grated Parmesan and a glass of Barbera or a mighty red, more expensive than the one used in such quantity to make the dish.

Simple as that.  I fried a couple of thick slices of bacon, chopped, in a little oil as it releases a lot of fat, before adding everything else to the pan, and served it with my own hand-cut pappardelle.  Which is just a pretentious way of saying I don't have an attachment for my pasta machine for pappardelle, so had to cut it with a knife, hence the uneven, non-straight pasta.  The pasta itself was probably the best I've made yet, although pappardelle being my favourite pasta had a little to do with that.  The dough was more moist than usual, in fact as Kenedy says "it should be sticky enough to stick to itself, but not to anything else".  That said, it was no harder to work with than a slightly drier dough, I just had to be careful of it not sticking together too much when it bunched up having come out of one of the thinner settings on the machine.  The whole dish, aside from being quite rich thanks in no small part to the Fuck Ton sized knob of butter, was really deep in flavour with the cinnamon and nutmeg particularly coming through in both flavour and aroma.  I can only imagine how much this would be increased had I marinated it for the full three days having previously seen the effect of marinating pig's cheeks in red wine for a day for what was my second attempt at making ravioli. 

Patience...

Bloody hell, it's nearly two weeks since I last posted anything here, so I'd better make up for it.

So the bacon is out.  I'll avoid any attempt at suspense (I mean, there's already been enough anyway, given it's been the best part of three weeks in the making) and flat out say it's just really damn good.  I'm sure that the majority of the credit must go to the quality of the meat as it doesn't feel like I've actually done much, except wait.  And worry.  As I've divulged recently, things that fall outside of the area where I can brush things off with a swift Oh, I Know What I'm Doing tend to cause me concern, some of it almost certainly unnecessarily.  I think to watch me in the kitchen I generally exude an air of I Know What I'm Doing, even if that is not always the case, but with my first foray into curing this has been conspicuous by its absence.  To the extent that after hanging it up I pretty much ignored it until I took it out of the cellar and transferred it to the fridge.  But my overly pessimistic fears were unfounded.  The balance between meat and fat through the belly is pretty much perfect as far as I'm concerned.  Having tasted some simply fried during the process of the first recipe below I wouldn't want to leave any future bellies curing for longer than this one was, as it was quite salty but not too much as the sweetness from the sugar underpins the saltiness rather nicely.  Whilst the meat is firm, it isn't as hard as I was expecting, so much to the extent that I can just about get some unevenly thick rashers from it for breakfast purposes just using a heavy cook's knife.  I must admit that when I first sliced into it I stood and admired it for a moment or two, as it does look quite fantastic.

Anyway, my anticipation was such that I wanted to cook things where the bacon was relatively predominant.  Whilst it would be perfect to add to other dishes to add flavour, or moisture from the fat, or to bulk up meat content, I felt I needed to see how it would command a dish.  For some reason, I've been struck with a bit of a cooking blank recently.  Maybe because I've been intentionally forcing myself within the confines of things where the focus is primarily on bacon as an ingredient (not that it usually would otherwise), but on top of that I've had virtually no inspiration, and I've been totally underwhelmed by pretty much everything I've considered.  So I suppose it was quite apt that I ended up falling back on what is seemingly the only structured element of my cooking, that being my interpretation of Penne All'Amatriciana which I make on actually quite a regular basis.  I've made it so often that it really requires no thinking on my behalf.  Before that, though, I went for another Do It In Your Sleep dish, risotto.  I've had some dried porcini left over ever since I overbought them for the Zombioli, which I'd always earmarked for a risotto of some kind.  It's one thing I think anyone can make, regardless of ability, simply because it can be adapted in virtually any way imaginable and still be amazing.  Added to which the beginnings of a good risotto are the sorts of things I always have lying around somewhere, so its reliability as a strapped-for-just-about-anything recipe is invaluable.  It's easy to make a good risotto, less so a great one, and this was actually pretty great.

Here's what I did...

40g dried porcini
150g shiitake mushrooms
2 thick slices bacon or pancetta
200g arborio rice
1 glass white wine
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
a good knob of butter
2 sprigs fresh thyme
4 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper

Put the porcini in a bowl and cover with 600ml of boiling water and leave to soak for about 20 minutes.  Afterwards remove the mushrooms and very roughly chop. 

Heat 2 tbsp of the oil in a heavy based pan and add the onion and garlic.  Soften on a low heat for about 10 minutes, until translucent.  Meanwhile chop the bacon into pieces roughly the size of a postage stamp and fry in a frying pan until browned and some of the fat has drawn out.  Add both the bacon and the fat to the onion and garlic and turn the heat up.  Add the rice and stir to coat it with the bacon fat and cook for about a minute.  Add the wine and allow the alcohol to cook off, then add three ladlefuls of the porcini liquid.  Strip the leaves from the thyme sprigs and add to the pan.  Keep stirring constantly, and add more of the porcini liquid two ladlefuls at a time once the rice has absorbed all that was in the pan.  Continue this process for about 10 minutes, adding more liquid as it is absorbed.  It must never become too dry, or be allowed to stick to the pan.

Slice some of the larger shiitake mushrooms in two or three.  Add the remaining oil to the pan used to fry the bacon, and fry the shiitakes until slightly browned and softened.  Season with salt and pepper.  Add the chopped porcini and the shiitakes to the risotto.  Continue to add more liquid until the rice has become soft and pulpy, but still retaining a slight bit of bite in the very centre.  Add the butter and stir in to give the risotto a rich and creamy texture (having ridiculed American cup measurements last time round, I suggest it take heed from the 'good knob', a truly flexible measurement if ever there was one; a knob of butter for this purpose is as big or small as you want it to be).  Season to taste with pepper, and if needed, sea salt.

Sort of Penne All'Amatriciana...

3 handfuls penne rigate
About 12-15 pomodorino tomatoes
2 thick slices bacon or pancetta
1 tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic
ground black pepper
torn basil leaves

Fill a large saucepan with salted, boiling water (pasta is best cooked while giving it plenty of space) and drop the pasta in.  Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the bacon until browned and the fat has drawn out.  Slice the tomatoes in half lengthways to expose the seeds.  Add to the bacon and fry for a few minutes until the juice from the tomatoes has reduced slightly.  Finely chop the garlic and add to the pan, along with the black pepper and basil.  Check the pasta and drain just before it is al dente.  Turn the heat off from under the bacon and tomatoes and pour in the pasta and stir in to allow the sauce to coat.

I previously claimed that this dish would not make for very interesting blogging, and yet now here I am going back on myself.  Not least, as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall points out in The River Cottage Cookbook, recipes "will be extra tasty and extra satisfying if you use your home-cured belly."  Still, I do feel slightly disingenuous passing off such an easy thing to cook, but nonetheless I shall.  It takes as long to cook as it does to cook dried penne, about 11 minutes or so (although 30 if you're in a Butlin's self-catering chalet with The Bluntest Knife In the World and a shitty electric ring hob that has had all the heat gauge numbers rub off that's near impossible to tell actually how hot it is.)

I have previously only made this with back bacon and thought about how it might turn out using a higher quality substitute, yet in fitting with the whole cooking structure thing I have never actually got round to it, until now.  Using a much fattier cut of pork obviously results in more fat being released during the cooking, which in turn I found results in a much better sauce.  This was easily the best I've made this recipe, and I can't feasibly put it down to anything other than the fact I was using my own bacon.

Next up (after finishing off this belly, let's not get ahead of ourselves, here) I'm going to try the same curing process only with the peppercorns, juniper and bay flavourings to see how they impart during curing.  What is actually a large part of my relief at this working first time is that the conditions I've got for doing so are obviously adequate at the least.  Whilst I'll warn myself not to get too carried away, in my mind I'm already thinking and salivating about moving on to more complicated salami style curings.

Reverting to type

So first things first, I need to feedback on the replacement marmalade as I rather disgracefully completely forgot to do so in my last post.  They're both really good (and I can be a bit of a marmalade snob sometimes).  The whisky and orange version has a pretty hefty kick to it, (Kirsty ain't no stinge on the booze) especially for a predominantly breakfast product, although as of yet I've not had anyone giving me questioning looks on the train to work as if I were a raging alcoholic.  There's probably plenty of them on my train route anyway.  I did initially think maybe the peel was in too large pieces, but there's enough give to them without being too soft.  I tried that one first, which I'm glad of because I, much like their creator prefer the lemon and honey version.  I prefer fruit to be sharp and acidic, and generally expect it from citrus, but the sweetness here is certainly not misplaced and the lemons' natural piquancy comes through.  It also has a better set, and while both could be described as 'spreadable' it's far from detrimental.  Watch out, Frank Cooper.

Anyway, my new culinary project is curing meat.  I've had the desire and interest to try this out for a while now, and so I think in part this blog has had a hand in finally doing so.  It's something that appeals to me directly on two levels (actually maybe three, I guess).  Firstly, cured meat, and in particular pork varieties, is fucking amazing.  When I visited my friend Timo in Madrid a few years ago I came back armed to the teeth with a twenty-one inch chorizo (yes, I measured it - if it had been any longer it wouldn't have been able to fit in my bag) and a pretty huge slab (at least 1.5kg I seem to remember) of jamón ibérico, albeit I think just the grain-fed variety as it didn't cost me any of my limbs.  Even so, I delighted in scoffing at how comparatively little these cost me, and even more so in having a supply of fantastic Spanish pork products for a couple of months afterwards. 

Secondly, cured meat is a product that came about by necessity.  Before someone invented the fridge, some little genius came up with the idea of rubbing salt on meat to extend its edibility span, and in the process incidentally discovered a way of arguably making it better (in fact in the case of pork I'd probably say inarguably).

Thirdly, the possibilities are almost endless in terms of flavourings, combinations and such, before you even get down to finer details such as the animal's diet.  It's no wonder there are so many varieties of cured meat that are protected by EU Designations of Origin as so many are direct expressions of the region in which they are produced, down to the breed of animal or the mix of spices and other flavourings, or the curing method itself.

As with all things concerning meat, especially new ventures my first port of call was Mr Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall; firstly The River Cottage Meat Book, and then The River Cottage Cookbook, which contains more detail in curing processes.  I decided to start with seemingly the easiest method, bacon.  It is the simplest of all those described in the book, and I think the shortest, so conservatively and almost certainly wisely struck me as the best place to begin, rather than go rushing in and potentially bollocks up a whole pig leg or something.

Dry-cured bacon

1 whole pork belly, bone in, divided into 3 pieces
malt vinegar
1kg salt (we use pure, dried vacuum salt)
1kg sugar (we prefer demerera or soft brown)

OPTIONAL FLAVOURINGS
a few bay leaves, finely chopped
about 20 juniper berries, lightly crushed
25g freshly ground black pepper

Rub the belly pieces all over with a cloth soaked in malt vinegar - or spritz them with vinegar from a spray bottle.  This subtly alters the pH of the meat surface and accelerates the curing process.

In a clean, non-metallic container, thoroughly mix the salt and sugar and any of the flavouring ingredients you want to use (none are essential).  Put a thin layer of this cure in the base of a clean box or tray, big enough to hold the belly pieces.  Add the first piece of belly, skin side down, and lightly rub a handful of cure into it.  Put the next belly on top, rub it with cure, then repeat with the final piece.

Leave the box, covered, in a cool place.  Keep the leftover cure mix in an airtight container.  After twenty-four hours you will see that the meat has leached salty liquid into the bottom of the container.  Remove the bellies, pour off this liquid, and rub the bellies lightly again with fresh cure mix.  Re-stack the bellies, preferably moving the one from the bottom to the top.

Repeat this process daily.  Your bacon will be ready after just four days, though if you cure it for longer (up to two weeks) it will keep for longer.

Wash all the cure from the bellies under a cold running tap, then clean their surfaces with a cloth soaked in malt vinegar and pat them dry.  Hang the bellies in a well-venlitated, cool, dry place such as a ventilated garage or outhouse - or even an unheated spare room with a window open - for 5-10 days and they are then ready to use.  You can keep the bacon hanging in a cool place - again, it must be very well ventilated - or store it in the fridge for around a month.  Take slices as you need them, removing the bones as you come to them.

So I took myself over to HG Walter's butchers in Barons Court Saturday morning and purchased a big slab of belly pork (just under 2kg, about £13 - despite the best efforts of wanky chefs, belly pork is still a pretty cheap cut.)  Again, my conservatism led to me just buying one slab, rather than a whole belly.  I figured it best to get my head for curing, and also see just how quickly 2kg of bacon can be eaten, before churning out vast quantities and most likely blocking my arteries.  I was informed by the butcher the cut came from a cross-breed of Hampshire and Duroc pigs.  I'm not entirely sure what that tells me about my bacon, but it's definitely something I can see myself experimenting with.  Also, for reference I'm using plain old table salt and demerera sugar.

As you can see on one side of the belly, it came complete with nipples, which led to me immediately texting Kirsty a close up picture of one as I knew she'd well appreciate it.  I started the curing process on Sunday night, so should be ready to hang anytime from Thursday.  Depending on my working hours (and I'm almost certainly going to be working a hideous double weekend shift) I may cure it for up to a week.  Obviously the longer it cures for, as well as keeping for longer it becomes more salty, so for a first time I don't want to cure it for any more than about a week.  I'm also, as a first time get-the-basics-down-to-a-tee exercise, not using any of the flavourings suggested.  I'll try some or all of them on my second attempt.  I'm using a wooden wine box, as it was readily available.  It does have room for more bellies than I'm curing, so if I end up doing more in one go I think it may end up becoming my curing box.  I'm keeping it in the cellar (one of the benefits of a Victorian house that used to be a shop).

Monday
So I came home from work early having finished everything and there being no point in me kicking around for an hour and a half and went straight down to check on my bacon.  As you can see from the picture quite a lot of liquid has leached from the belly, although there wasn't sufficient to pour away.  I think this is mainly due to the fact that I'm using ⅓ of the amount of meat in a box big enough for all of it.  I decided to take all the curing mix that was soaked out and replace it with fresh mix, although thinking about it afterwards I don't think I need to go that far.  Depending on how it is tonight (Tuesday) I think I may replace just the mix immediately underneath the belly.  As a result of all that liquid removal the meat has stiffened quite significantly.  Before, if you held it it would droop where there wasn't support beneath it.  Now, when I picked it up it momentarily stayed rigid before giving slightly.  The skin on the underside has changed from a pale skin tone and has reddened quite deeply, as well as becoming quite crisp to the touch.

I won't update this daily, as I think it may well be quite repetitive, but at some stage I will.  If not when it comes to hanging then certainly when it come to being eaten.