Pork and Pepperoni

The inspiration for this dish riffs pretty heavily on a post from Ideas in Food, I highly recommend getting them into your daily reading list, or hit them up on twitter. I actually have version two of this on the go now as I write, I’ve amped up the seasoning and am going to experiment a little more with the cooking and serving, so not really the same dish but this served as a springboard to push ideas further.

Counter to my last post about getting maximum comfort for little effort this post is really pushing things in the other direction, but holy heck is it worth it! It’ll take a little time and a little bit of investment of going to a butcher and getting a decent slab of pork belly, which may or may not be frozen, a supermarket is not going to have what you need, I’ve never seen a good three inch thick slab of belly at one, and quite frankly you’ll probably be paying twice the price. I ended up by chance at Preston's in town after doing my restock at Yan's Asian supermarket and they just happened to have a good deal going on frozen bellies, so $20 later and more than 2kg heavier, I left a happy chappy.

There is a bit to this but it’s not really all active, there is a lot of down time, so there are no stress about getting stuff done on time. You’re going to have to plan ahead a few days, so here is the rough break down.

• Defrost the belly if you have to, in the fridge.
• Cure the pork, 24 hours.
• Remove, rinse and dry the pork. Dust with white pepper and place on a rack uncovered in the fridge for 24 hours.
• Place in a roasting pan with the braising ingredients, cook for 8 hours at 120ºC.
• Sometime during that 8 hours make some cavatelli, which is about half an hours work.
• Remove and rest for half an hour, uncovered.
• Cook cavatelli and remove excess fat from the braising liquid, taste and season, combine.

So as you can see not really a whole lot of work, mostly down time, but it’s 56 hour investment of time, totally worth it I promise.

Ingredients
Pork belly, 2kg or so
Pepperoni
Bottle of red wine
Tomatoes, 2 cans crushed
White pepper
Cure mix

Cure mix
1 Part Sugar
1 Part Salt
Chilli powder
Garlic powder
Cumin powder
Bay leaf powder


Weigh the pork and work out what 2.5% of the total weight is, that is the weight of sugar and salt to use.


Score the pork deeply to the meat, rub the cure mix in and transfer to a zip lock bag, refrigerate for 24 hours, try to flip it once or twice during that time.


Remove the pork from the bag and rinse, pat dry, coat in white pepper and place on a rack on a pan. Put it back in the fridge for 24 hours.

Time to cook!

Place the pork in a roasting dish. Dice the whole pepperoni and scatter around, add in the tomatoes and the whole bottle of wine, I used a tasty Shiraz. Place the tray into an oven preheated at 120ºC. Set a timer for 8 hours and forget about it.


Well apart from the cavatelli you need to make. Just follow the recipe on this page, I subbed out roasted rye for wholemeal flour but rye would be pretty awesome here too.


Take the pork out of the oven and very carefully transfer it to a board. Pour the braising liquid into a pot and let it settle for a while, skim off any excessive fat as this will be a sauce, place it over a very low flame to keep warm.


Bring a pot of water to the boil and cook the cavatelli, drain and stir through the sauce, keep warm.
By now the pork should have rested for 30–45 minutes. Slice into thick slabs, cutting along the scores, serve with a generous spoon of cavatelli.

Miso cured egg

I've certainly posted my fair share of egg related posts, cured in salt, brined, cooked under pressure, slow cooked and this one is no different. I've been curious about using miso to cure food for a while but have never taken that next step beyond curiosity, in fact the idea for the whole thing had been sitting in my head for a good two years, ever since reading a post on one of my favourite blogs, Playing with Fire and Water, the author had written about Egg yolk cheese, the idea was intriguing and promptly filed to the dark recesses of my brain never to be heard from again, well until recently and then there was some rather frantic googling and trying to figure out where I saw the method.



The egg yolk is still encased in miso, sitting in my fridge just waiting to be released from it's fermented tomb, the egg was first cooked at 65°C for about an hour then placed in an ice bath until cool and the yolk carefully separated from the albumen. So I don't know yet what it's going to taste like, but my experience with salt cured yolks (which was cured raw) tells me it's likely to be pretty damn delicious, and miso really only makes things better, well most things anyway. So another week in the miso, and probably a few more weeks hanging in the fridge to dry out, I'm sure another post will pop up, I just need to figure out what I'm going to have with it.

Cured Egg Yolk

Not much curing has happened in my household recently, something I mean to change, get my hands on a nice piece of pork to make some bacon, or should really stop faffing about and finally get around to making some homemade pastrami. But I’ve got to work my way back up to it, can’t just jump in headfirst, well I tell myself that, but who am I kidding, I’m just lazy, forgetful and easily distracted, ooooOoooo a kitty.

Anyway, I was in one of those moods, not really feeling like doing anything, TV wasn’t distracting enough and I didn’t feel like reading, so I thought I’d see what I could manage in the kitchen without actually producing anything to eat immediately, as I wasn’t really hungry. After staring at the pantry and then in fridge, and thinking ‘close the door, it’s not library, stop wasting power’ etc. I spied the eggs and ideas of the oft thought of but seldom produced cured egg yolk came to mind.


Pulling out the sacks of rock sea salt left over from the last egg curing madness that was kai kem eggs, I set about making a layer of salt in the bottom of a dish and digging through the draws for some cheesecloth, which I was sure was in the bottom draw, but now have no idea as I had rearranged the kitchen, disaster averted and cheese cloth in hand, a little rectangle was cut, slightly bigger than a yolk widthwise, and twice as long. An egg was cracked and carefully separated, yolk delicately placed on the cloth and wrapped gently, then placed on the salt bed, and buried in another layer of salt. The dish wrapped tightly in plastic wrap was placed in the fridge and left for 2 days.


Actually 24 hours should be enough, and quite truthfully I totally forgot about it, that is until I opened the fridge to dig about hoping to find something to eat, when I saw the bowl and remembered, oh yeah there’s a yolk in there, carefully unwrapped and salt ceremoniously (I said a little prayer at the wastage of salt) dumped in the sink, the yolk was extracted and unwrapped, placed on a pillow of kitchen paper towel and shoved with love and attention back in the fridge, where I’m sure it will be forgotten about again, not that it matters too much, the sucker needs to dry out.


Five days later, it had dried sufficiently enough for its purpose, being grated over some freshly made pasta. I set about getting the pasta sorted, two parts egg to three parts flour, mixed and kneaded and left to rest, wrapped, in the fridge for half an hour before being rolled, folded and run through a pasta machine until the desired thickness and cut into noodles. Cooked in generously salted boiling water, then drained and seasoned well with black pepper and good olive oil, dished up in a bowl and a little cheese grated over top, then finally finished with a good grating of the bright orange yolk.

“Does it taste like foot?” My partner asked as she poked her plate with her fork. Well no, be assured it is not a funky piece of dried egg with all the negative connotations one can take from eggs gone wrong, in fact it has no noticeable aroma, but the flavour is that of intense yolk, the curing and drying has concentrated all its rich wonderful flavour.

Kai Kem Eggs

I’ve become a twitter addict, I have found so much inspiration from the tweets of others, chefs posting their latest menu ideas, or plates, fellow bloggers tweeting about their latest post, NPH bringing on the food-porn, or in this case @chezpim putting out a casual tweet about picking up some marvellous looking duck eggs at her local market—making me thoroughly jealous in the process—and her plans to make Kai Kem eggs. Having absolutely no idea what Kai Kem eggs were, I educated myself a little on Google, and shot a tweet back, asking her what one does with Kai Kem eggs.

Kai Kem eggs are traditionally made with duck eggs, taking advantage of their large rich yolks, but good free range organic chicken eggs will get the job done, and for a first try probably the cheaper easier option. But I will be keeping an eye out for some duck eggs for my second batch.

So, want something different for your next fiery hot green curry, or maybe something new to top off that congee? Well with a little preparation, and 3 weeks patience, you can have some lovely salted eggs (Kai Kem), a traditional Chinese dish adopted in Thailand as an accompaniment to spicy green curries, johk(similar to congee, a thick rice soup traditionally eaten at breakfast), or simply served as a side, sliced in half, scattered with sliced chilli and diced shallots, topped off with a good squeeze of lime juice.


The ingredients are pretty straightforward, eggs, coarse sea salt and water. The important thing is to completely saturate the water with salt—dissolve so much salt in the water that no more salt will dissolve (about 35 grams per 100 ml).

Ingredients
6 Large Chicken eggs (or duck eggs if you’re lucky enough to have them)
1 Litre Water
350 grams Coarse sea salt (not iodised)

There are two methods to dissolve the salt.
1. Bring the salt and water to a simmer until all of the salt has dissolved, and no more will dissolve (hot water can take more salt than cold), then let the water cool down to room temperature.
2. Or my preferred method, whisk the salt into the water in a bowl on the bench and keep whisking until no more salt dissolves. It’s a little more work, but you don’t have to wait for the water to cool down.

Carefully place the eggs in a large jar or container, and then cover with the cold salt-water, making sure all the eggs are submerged, I ended up cutting up a plastic plate that fit under the rim of the jar to keep them under water.


Seal or cover the jar, and leave it in a cool dark place for 3 weeks, make sure to label the jar with the date.

After the long wait, and possibly forgetting all about the eggy goodness tucked away in the back of the pantry, drain the eggs and carefully remove from the jar.


You can now either put them in a very well labelled egg carton in the fridge, and they’ll keep pretty much indefinitely (but I’ll say 3 months), or you can cook them and then keep them in the fridge.

When you are ready to eat the salty egg, simply fill a pot of water, place in however many eggs you need, bring it to the boil, and simmer for about 15 minutes, yep really 15 minutes, I tried to be a smart-arse on my first go and cooked it like a regular hard boiled egg, didn’t turn out so well. When cooked run the pot under a cold tap until the water is cool and let the eggs sit for a while.

My favourite way to have them (so far) is as a side to a hot green curry, sliced in half, scattered with sliced chilli and spring onions, topped off with a good squeeze of lime juice and maybe a few coriander leaves.

P.S. Yes those are some twin eggs, so were the other five in the carton of six, I must be due some crazy luck!

Pork Cheek Bacon

The pork cheek that I made confit with, came with its twin, which I turned into that wonderful meat product called bacon. I used the same process as the previous bacon I posted about. I make a few alterations though, firstly, and the easiest way to change things, I used different herbs and spices in the cure, and I gave it coating of white pepper powder before I hung it, secondly, I wrapped it in cheesecloth when I hung it, and lastly, after smoking it, I pressed it overnight in the fridge.


Thyme, Muscovado sugar and Szechuan pepper. These get combined with the 5% curing mix.


Rinsed, and patted dry after seven days of curing in the fridge (flipping each day).


Dusted in white pepper.


Wrapped in cheesecloth and tied, ready to hang for seven days.


Unwrapped after a week under the stairs. You'll notice a little white fuzz on the pork, that's a small amount of mold, it's important to keep an eye out for it.


It doesn't mean you have to throw away your porky goodness, just wipe off the mold with a paper towel dampened with some vinegar. But if you leave the mold unchecked for too long, it can grow into the interior of the meat, making it inedible.


Smoked to an internal temperature of 65°C, the smoker shouldn't go above 85°C.


Pressed between to baking dishes overnight.


Sliced, portioned and packaged.

Note: Check the pork cheek for glands, if found, remove. If meat comes from a butcher/supermarket you shouldn't find any, but best to check.

Duck Prosciutto - Part 1

I have been meaning to make duck prosciutto ever since I read about it in Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing by Michael Ruhlman, Brian Polcyn and Thomas Keller, which I got for Christmas, but it's far to easy to put things off. I was in Moore Wilson on the hunt for a nice slab of pork belly, along with a bit of lard, to make a tasty meal of pork confit, and to stock up on kosher salt as my supply at home was getting dangerously low. Taking my time, as I always seem to do, no need to rush when there are so many goodies to tempt yourself with, I saw a lonely packet of duck breasts in the chiller, it was fate.


The method is very simple, you'll need about 450 grams of kosher salt for two duck breasts (or coarse sea salt, not table salt, or iodised salt), a container to cure them in, some muslin/cheese cloth, white pepper and what ever else you want to cure the duck with.

I did two different cures for each breast, one with thyme flowers and juniper berries, and the other with Szechuan pepper and coriander seeds.


You'll want to start by trimming any excess skin of the breast, but don't go crazy, just trim it so it looks nice, then give it a rinse and pat it dry. Set the breasts aside. In a bowl mix together the salt and herbs/spices. You don't have to add any herbs or spices, you could just use salt.

In container pour a layer of the salt mix about a centimeter deep and lay the duck breast on it (flesh side down, skin side up), then cover with the rest of the salt mix, make sure there is no exposed flesh, if you're doing both breasts in the same container make sure they're not touching each other. Ideally you want to use a container that isn't much larger than the breast(s) so you don't have to waste too much salt.

Tightly cover the container and place in the fridge for twenty-four hours.


Remove the breasts from the salt, they should have firmed up, and deepened in colour slightly.


Thoroughly rinse all of the salt off the breast and dry with paper towels. Weigh the breast, and either take a note of it somewhere or make a label you can tie to it later, it's very important to know the weight at this stage.


Dust each breast with some white pepper, or another spice, I used a combination of white pepper and coriander on the Szechuan and coriander cured breast.


Wrap in a single layer of cheese cloth and tie, make sure to leave enough length to use to hang the breast. It's a good idea to add a label with the date you hung it and the weight.


Hang the breasts somewhere cool (10–15°C) and dry (60% humidity), I've hung mine under the stairs as I know it is a pretty constant 10°C no matter the outside temperature. I've seen some people hang it in their fridge, but I'd be a bit worried about cross contamination of flavours.

There are many different times given all over the internet on how long it will take to be ready, but it all depends on the humidity and temperature of where it's being hung. The best way to check if the duck prosciutto is ready, is to weigh it. When it is at 70% of its start weight, it's ready. I've just checked mine and after five days it's only lost 12%.