Last week I traveled around the Jura region of France. You can expect a whole slew of Francocentric coverage on what I ate, drank, poked, prodded, and otherwise documented on this awesome trip to the land of cheese and wine. Here's a quick overview of the wide range of tasty comestibles from the Jura region: Comte cheese, charcuterie, and more. More
The door separating the Olympic Provisions restaurant-deli from the chamber in the back says it all: MEAT DEPT. (In all caps, if you didn't catch that.) The meat-curing facility is Oregon's first USDA-approved salumeria, which means salumist Elias Cairo makes charcuterie with a USDA inspector watching him for a whole 40 hours a week—sticking flashlights into the grinders and swab-testing the walls, spices, and floors, to ensure a health code-happy process. More
“That’s a fat ass,” observes sous chef Nick Stefanelli. “That’s what you want," says executive chef Stefano Frigerio, "since the fat melts inside the meat as it’s curing.” So, basically you want a fat ass—for charcuterie. Learn this and other standards on salting, fermenting, aging, grinding, and curing piggy meat in the current issue of Washington City Paper.... More
SF Bay Area artisanal charcuterie The Fatted Calf sends out a great email newsletter, worth subscribing to even if you don't live in the area. This week's missive included this nice bit on corned beef: Corned beef isn't exactly from Ireland but neither was St. Patrick. It turns out that this briny beef specialty, called "corned" because the grains of salt used for preservation resembled little kernels, gained popularity in the ghettos of New York's lower East Side where recent Irish immigrants were searching for a substitute for their beloved bacon (which they make from Pork Loin and not belly). As luck would have it, their Jewish neighbors across the hall were digging into a tasty brisket that fit... More
Veronica of the eponymous Veronica's Test Kitchen recently made the pork belly confit from Michael Rulhman and Brian Polycn's Charcuterie, and boy does it sounds like something I want in my belly RIGHT NOW: " The confit was crispy on the outside, the meat falling apart but it was the fat that held the concentration of flavors derived from all the spices -- a perfect alchemy of complex tastes that explodes with flavor with each bite."... More
