Curing and Related Book Adventures

As I noted in a recent Facebook status update, the second gravlax is underway. This time the base fish is two slabs of a farm-raised Atlantic salmon.

It is not previously frozen, but we are not terribly worried about the risk of exposure to parasites (anisakis and tapeworm) – farm raising reduces the risk significantly, but of course doesn’t eliminate it. Unfortunately for us, filet form salmon sold previously- and still-frozen only seems to come locally in single serving packages and I’m not interested in trying that.

So anyhow, the second gravlax is going to be made of a richer, oilier fish. Given how rich the first one was, I am waiting quite impatiently for this one, which I imagine we’ll probably try tomorrow night or Thursday night. I may give it 3 days instead of 2 this time. Also, the cure went on much differently. With the first fish, the cure was dissolved into the meat almost instantly (it was wetter). With this one, the fattiness kept the cure on the surface much longer before it started going translucent and dissolving on the surface of the fish flesh.

I’ll report back. Very much looking forward to it.

The other thing I wanted to post about was that I got 5 books from the library (via ILL) related to meat handling, butchery, knife skills, charcuterie. I have had time to skim them all, so I wanted to give references and first impressions.

Knife Skills Illustrated: A User’s Manual, by Peter Hertzmann

A very thorough and illustrated basic knife care and handling manual for the kitchen. It talks not only about knife handling, safety and sharpening, but also gives various task-based instructions on using knives to process different kinds of foods, including illustrations, for both right-handed and left-handed cooks. I shall study this one further. If the skills are new to you and you’re interested, you might want to put this one on your wish list.

Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing, by Michael Rhulman & Brian Polcyn

A goldmine for my current fascination. Not only deals with meats but also discusses (though it is not the primary focus) curing seafood as well as making sausages of it. I think I have friends who may own a copy as I was the recent recipient of duck prosciutto, which is on page 54. It was gooooood. I plan to put this one on my wish list or buy it outright.

The Soho Charcuterie Cookbook: Fabulous Food for Entertaining, by Francine Scherer & Madeline Poley

This one was a case almost of mistaken identity. There are maybe 18 pages of the book devoted to pates and sausages. I think the restaurant itself is called the Soho Charcuterie, and it’s their cookbook. Actually, the recipes do look good, if a bit dairy heavy for our household, and the meats-preserving/-pureeing recipes do look good, I wouldn’t buy it if my purpose were the solely for the curing section.

Jack Ubaldi’s Meat Book: A Buther’s Guide to Buying, Cutting and Cooking Meat, by Jack Ubaldi & Elizabeth Crossman

This one is a great insider’s view of the meat and butchering industry from the late 1980′s (1987-ish). The author was a butcher, then an owner of a butchery, then an instructor before writing this book. There are discussions of how to shop for meat, choose meat and cook meat, as well as discussions of grades of beef and lamb and various standard cuts and what to look for among all the meats, discussions of how to tell the age of meats, etc. I’m definitely going to read this one more thoroughly, take notes and perhaps buy it, especially if I really get into curing meats (and not just fish). Also includes a lot of recipes that look good.

The River Cottage Meat Book by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

This is a really visually pleasing book that was written in Britain and many of the discussions are UK-centric. The author is definitely a gourmand (you can tell by his recipes, especially his cross-cultural ones). He also discusses the ethics of eating meat, is a strong proponent of eating locally, really of knowing where your meat, especially, is coming from, and thinks you should spend more on better cuts of meat, even if it means eating meat more rarely. He does have a curing section, and talks about butchering, preparing and curing non-fish flesh, including pork, fowl (including game fowl), rabbit, lamb and beef. He talks about and diagrams cuts. For folks who are upset by strong imagery, beware that there are photographic sequences of the slaughter and butchery of previously alive animals, as well as images of/illustrations of plucking fowl and images of and discussions of obtaining and preparing offal, including pictures of various representative pieces of offal. It’s a sumptuous book, but I feel it would be more applicable to living in the UK. I’ll read it once through and return it to the library.

So that’s it. I’ll let you know how the gravlax turns out and I’ll let you know what I get up to with these other books.