Salted Ham

This is what hams can look like after they have sat in salt (sodium chloride) for 3.5 weeks. During that time they lost close to 14% of their weights as serum moved from the flash into the embedding salt. As I write they are sitting in the refrigerator for a “burning off” period (1 week) [...]

The Umami of Tomatoes

As most of you know, umami or the savory taste, has only recently been accepted as a basic taste by the scientific community that concerns itself with matters of human neurology. Umami is generally considered to be caused by glutamic acid and it’s salts e.g., monosodium glutamate or MSG (And YOU thought MSG [...]

Coffee fetish

I’m sure coffee made from beans that have traveled through the intestines of a civet is wonderful. Although I am not sure why anyone would care so much about drinking it that they’d trundle around the bush looking for civet turds.
The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Bread Starter Test Update no. 2

After 47 hours of incubation the samples were all actively fermenting and beginning to show signs of exhaustion of starch supply. All of them had separated into a mat of gaseous foamy starch on top of a layer of relatively clear water and a layer of stringy, insoluble gluten on the bottom.
None of the samples [...]

How to make pasta con filetti di pomodori

It’s almost the whole process. I didn’t show how to cook the spaghetti. The sauce is minimally cooked. Really it’s only the pulp that cooks (10-12 minutes) while the filetti (made from the skinless outer flesh) and the basil are merely warmed through.
Caveat: Don’t watch it if you don’t like tomatoes!

The best sauce [...]

Bread Starter Update

This morning (8.13.09) at 5:00 I checked the bread starter samples and took a bunch of photos. Unfortunately, I cannot post the pictures because the camera’s battery fizzled out before I could download them to my computer (When is someone going to build a high quality camera that can do direct uploads?). So until [...]

Bread Starter Test

Way back in July (7/21 to be precise) Michael Ruhlman posted about a method of kick starting sourdough starter. The method, which he learned from Carri Thurman of Two Sisters Bakery in Homer, Alaska called for the addition of a red cabbage leaf to a mixture of flour and water.
Both Ruhlman and Thurman, as well [...]

Brine Dilution

A couple of weeks ago I told you how I started a batch of pickled onions. At the time I expected the onions to be ready in about 10 to 14 days. Well, I am happy to report that after about 16 days in the aging room they were almost done. On the day [...]

The Charcutier’s Best Freind

Bloody curr more or less can say sausages.
Our thanks to Trig for suggesting the post.
The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Bresaola

Here are two stages in the life of air dried beef in the style of the bresaola of Lombardy. The piece in the foreground was taken out of the cure today, rinsed and tied, and hung in the aging room where it will dry and mature for 4-6 weeks. The two specimens in [...]