Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Hmmm...my version of Charcuterie has a recipe for Guanciale on page 47.

I decided to play along and registered my blog for Charcutepalooza. I have duck breasts hanging in the upstairs bedroom. Initially I figured I would use the upstairs closet, thinking it was a good cool temperature and small enough to humidify with a pan of water. As it turns out, in this inhospitable clime, my upstairs closet is TOO COLD for hanging charcuterie. It is only 40 degrees in there! So I have two duck breasts (from an anorexic-looking duck, watch for my blog post) hanging from the iron bed frame in the bedroom, which is 51 degrees and 56 percent relative humidity. (Yep, we keep our house cool. Downstairs the main area is a balmy 65 degrees, with perimeter rooms hovering at 58-60.)

I also have bacon and pancetta curing in the fridge, and might also try some butt bacon. They sell it around here and I can only figure it's pork butt cured like bacon. The people at the local smokery (is that a word?) are very unhelpful. I guess they think I'm trying to steal their secrets and compete with them. They wouldn't even sell me pork belly, claiming they "couldn't get it." Um, they ostensibly smoke their own bacon...

Interesting - is it also listed in the index?

(I hope it's not too distant from the recipe for lardo since that's what I'm doing...)

Our butcher is our source for pink salt. He owes us something since we convinced him to stop making his flank/skirt (I forget which) into hamburger and sell it whole at a higher price.

Edit to add:
Darcie: Teh Google has some info on butt bacon. Here's an excerpt from the first return:

Yep, Guanciale is listed in the index.

To paraphrase recipe: for 1 (2 lb.) pork jowl use dry cure, 70 grams kosher slat, 70 grams sugar, 2 cloves garlic, 15 black peppercorns (cracked), 1 large bunch thyme.

Trim jowl of stray tissue & any glands. Rub cure into jowl & refrigerate until stiff, 4 to 6 days. Rinse & pay dry. Poke a hole in one corner (away from edge) and string twine through. Hang in cool dry place 1-3 weeks.

Substitute bay leaf for the garlic and we're there. It's been in the cure for over a week though (and it was stiff on Saturday), so I'll pull it tonight.

I swear I looked for it...

We made all the dried sausages on the weekend, although my parents wouldn't know the word charcuterie in reference to what they do.
We did make salami, capicollo, cotichino (cured though, the google search I did didn't show that version) and prosciutti. The salami was by accident, my dad bought the wrong casings and didn't want them to go to waste.
Fresh sausages are made every few months now, I need to document that process soon so we can recreate them after my parents are no longer able to do them.

Page 47 in my (first) edition is the second page of a 2-page illustrated spread on making pancetta.

Dude, I have a first edition too (mine is signed by M.Ruhlman--see below). So how can this be? In mine, the Pancetta is 3 pages, 44-46. Then guanciale. We really need to get together and see what gives. [/quote]

I can't remember now where I got my book - amazon or at the book signing. Where'd you get yours?



edit to fix typoooo

My friends in Seattle tell me I bought my copy in April 2006. Here's pages 46 & 47 in mine:



Salt pork begins at the top of page 48.

PS: Mine is signed too (neener neener ).

My page 46 has all the illustrations crammed onto one page - they look to be slightly smaller. My page 48 is also salt pork.



I think mine was signed in Nov. 2005 (also in Cleveland) at a Viking Kitchen session featuring Ruhlman. So I guess they removed the guanciale recipe from a later/different printing? How bizarre.

Maybe that particular recipe killed a few people between printings...

The following quote is attributed to Ruhlman in the Washington Post article about Charcutepalooza:Maybe that's how he knows...