Thu 4 May 2006
Last week we got a half pig from a local farmer and spent our “spare” time butchering and turning it into some fantastic ham, roasts, hocks, bacon and sausages. There is no more holistic food experience than taking a once live creature and preparing it for eating and sharing.
The bacons–one section of belly as a traditional dry-cured, unsmoked bacon; another section of belly dressed up as pancetta and the two jowls from the pig’s head as Guanciale: a specialty italian-style bacon–will be ready to come out of the cure tomorrow and get hung in a special wooden drying cabinet we built on the north side of the house to take advantage of the cool bay breezes to dry age for a few weeks.
The sausages–Spanish Chorizo pictured here–were hung to dry for a few days. Because summer is coming on and we don’t have ready access to a smokehouse, the ham is being cured and will probably be frozen for completion at a later date before a celebration worthy of its size and depth of flavor.
You can read more about the adventure here. And have a listen to Gastrocast #56 where I speak about the experience a bit. If all goes well in the future we shall be expanding our pig skills more and hopefully be bringing our own Kitchen Garden Company reared pork and pork products into the public arena.
Technorati Tags: pork, pigs, butchering, gastrocast, farming, sausages, chorizo
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May 22nd, 2006 at 3:12 pm
[…] My Pancetta and Guanciale are finally done! Seven days in dry cure and two weeks hanging in the salty spring breeze by the bay–I can’t wait to begin cooking with them. These went into the curing cupboard the day the Chorizo came out. […]