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sheepish

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  1. sheepish

    Pork cheeks...

    Confit pork cheeks are good. My fancy pork dish for a dinner party if I have time is from Gordon Ramsay's Recipes from a 3* Chef. Confit pork cheeks wrapped in finely sliced potato and crisped up. Served with tenderloin wrapped in pancetta. With a little black pudding, mushrooms, spinach, turnip puree and turnips.
  2. Hi Ross Lamb ham was just me having a go with some lamb. Sheep being my most common reason for trundling to the abattoir. Did it just like you would an air dried pig ham. I boned a small leg for this one. It tastes sort of air dried ham with definite sheepy overtones. It was OK, but as I said, not something I've rushed to repeat. Salty ham could just have been left in salt for longer than your tastebuds dictate. Is rock salt the same as sea salt? That's what I always use. It's not as salty as cooking/table salt. Weaners were really easy, and fun to have. But ideally you'll want to feed them twice a day, so not sure how close you are to the farm. I know of people who just leave them to roam, and I'd like to do that a bit more myself. However, be warned, slow growing pigs will take a while to fatten. Mine went at 6 months, were a relatively improved breed so would expect to grow well. They did have a lot of space (30 acres-ish) so walk off a fair bit of that food, but also graze and forage. At 6 months pigs you see twice a day and are very used to you can still be, shall we say, boisterous. I had the bite mark on my thigh for a few weeks, and it flippin' hurt! My daughter is 18 months old, and there is no way I would let her on the same side as the fence as them unless their noses were in the trough - pigs seem oblivious to most things when they are actually eating. Even so, they're big and strong and omniverous, you want to take care. Rob
  3. Hi Ross I've never kept wild-boar, you need a dangerous animals license with all sorts of hassle from the local council to do so, but 14 weeks seems very young to be just before sexual maturity. Some of the really modern breeds will make pork weight in about 3 months, but they grow scarily fast. That said I only fatten weaners of the same sex so I don't know what they could get up to if mixed. My last lot went at 24 weeks, they were boars and had been mounting each other for a few weeks but not more than that. Some people say that after 6 months boars can be tainted because of their sexual maturity, it's supposed to give the meat an unpleasant smell but I've never noticed that. Got a couple of hams in the salt myself at the moment. Took my first small hams out of the brine today - those will be for boiling hams. If you're into your charcuterie the forum over at sausagemaking.org is very helpful. Best of luck with the ham. If it's your first, best advice I can give is find somewhere really drafty to hang it. You can even hang them outside if you can build a frame round to keep the worst of the weather off. And for your hogget, how about a little lamb ham? To be honest I haven't rushed to make another, I just was really pleased with how nice it looked.
  4. Hi. I know this is far too late to be useful, but for others searching in future this is about the best online cutting guide I know. http://www.qmscotland.co.uk/cutting/pork-major/index.html How did you get on? Was it really a wild-boar weaner? 8-12 wks old? I imagine that was pretty small, wild boar are slow growers?
  5. Thanks. When you mentioned Jane Grigson I checked my copy of "Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery", which I usually refer to for salamis and terrines. I'd never really noticed the fresh pork section, and that exact recipe is in there too. Shelves full of books are only any good if you can remember what's in them :-) Like the Goan ideas. If the rain stopped blowing in sideways we could pretend the front garden was a beach. You haven't stumbled across anything clever with pork in Japan then? I ordered "pork cartlidge" in one of those little snack/noodle places attached to the station in Beppu, it was a lovely slow cooked knuckle. One of those occasions where the translation went the wrong way for the squeamish.
  6. Nah, swanky is definitely my expression :-) Thanks for those, although it's belly again. Belly melts into alsorts of wonderful things. It's the rest of the pig that I'd like to do something clever with. I mean, loin is lovely roast, but I can't help think I should be able to come up with something a bit more la-di-da. Have found an interesting idea in Alinea, but all of that stuff seems made for tiny plates, and I like to serve meat as my main dish, and probably not more meat as starters, pre starters, amuse yer gob, etc.
  7. Made a vindaloo last night actually. Hot but not silly UK restaurant hot. Toasted spices ground with vinegar, onion, garlic, ginger. Was pretty good. Not too sure what to "put round it". We just had it on a bowl of rice. Interested in the prunes and vouvray. Especially if it doesn't use a whole bottle and I can use the remnants to ward of cramp in the kitchen :-) Are we talking a stock and wine reduction with prunes in it? Something sticky? Pork Pie looks good. I made a raised game pie to clear a bit of freezer last week. My first go with a hot water crust. I don't think I got the pastry thick or well enough sealed because the stock for jelly ran out of the bottom. By the look of it your pastry isn't too thick though. That looks ideal. I saved some fatty sausage meat and lean chunks to do just that.
  8. I think Boston Butt is what I would call a spare-rib joint, or what a proper UK butcher would call blade. The shoulder as I see it when I'm sawing up a carcass is a huge joint which you split in two along the line you cut the loin from the belly. The bit then attached to the loin is the blade/butt. The bit attached to the belly is the hand - which I mince for sausages. So this is a very convoluted way of saying I do have Boston Butt. And lots of it.
  9. Thanks very much for that. My butchery book is from the US so I'm familiar with Boston Butt. We call it blade, or perhaps spare-rib joint in the UK. As luck would have it I have 6 of those taking up a lot of my freeser and I wasn't too sure what I was going to do with them all, so this is great.
  10. So what have people cooked from this already? I'm thinking the cauliflower and chocolate risotto, and the sweeties with edible wrappers look very do-able. Most other stuff, hmmm. What I need is someone to start "The Fat Duck at Home", like the lady with the French Laundry and Alinea at home blogs. TFL I've always got on with. Alinea looked a bit too faffy for small plates to me, but now I've seen someone do it I think, yeah, OK, I won't sleep for a couple of days but I can do that.
  11. Yep. One head has already gone for brawn. I'm just not sure I could convince my friends and family that brawn is a swanky dinner party dish. An interesting starter with some home made pickles. But to be honest the missus isn't keen on jellied head meat and fat, so it tends to be a solo indulgence.
  12. I'm after something smart to do with pork. I have a lot of boned loins, spare rib joints (I think they might be called Boston Butts in the US), hocks, trotters cut long and short, and a few tenderloins. Also a couple of split heads minus brains (they were delicious butchers perks ) Nearly all the belly I've cured for bacon - which I've now read is beyond passé. My swanky pork dish repertoire is based solely on Gordon Ramsays 3* Chef book - slow cooked belly with madeira sauce. And confit cheeks and tenderloin. With madeira sauce. Any ideas for other posh plates of food? Ideally not eating into my meagre cheek and belly collection. Even if I'd give up cheeks I think I've blown the head dish from TFL by cutting the heads in half to scoff the brains. TIA.
  13. Upright freezer in room next to kitchen : Stock. Bones for making stock. Got a bit of a fish bone backlog going on in there at the moment. Frozen blackberries - just starting to pick those. Icecream maker - cheapy one you have to freeze. Ice Various ice-creams made for other dishes that really need using up (roquefort, kirsch, apple) Left over pastry that I have the best intentions for. Ice packs for dropping in the buckets of brine I'm currently curing ham in. Little chest freezer in the barn : About 3/4 of a lamb. Haggis Veal shins. A few pigeons. Big chest freezer in the barn : 3 pigs. In bits. I don't think I could squeeze another one in there.
  14. Hi Fooey. This sounds very different to anything I've seen in the UK. I want to give this a go. Can I ask, is there a joint you favour for this preperation? And do you leave the skin on? Bone in? Thanks
  15. My tuppence worth. I like crackling. In fact I think crackling is the best bit. I roast a lot of boned out loins because I keep pigs and generally am not short of a bit of pork. I brine for 48 hours. Using the recipe in Fergus Henderson's Nose to Tail. Basically salt, sugar, juniper, cloves and black pepper. Then take the joint, wrap in muslin and hang for a day somewhere breezy. This may be a little suspect depending on how warm it is where you are. Here in south Wales in September is a balmy 15C today. Probably enough to worry environmental health, but I haven't come to any harm. I now have a dry joint. Dry is very important for my crackling. Score the skin and fat with a craft knife so I score into the fat but not the meat. Score straight lines at approx 1cm apart. Rub a little salt and pepper into the skin. I don't go overboard wiuth this because I find it makes the crackling too salty. For a boneless loin I tie the joint. Pop into the oven at 230C for about 15 mins. Then knock the temp down to 150C. I leave the oven door open until it comes down to this. Pop in my meat thermomenter and cook until I have an internal temp of 60C. Probably a touch over that. That's it really. I have done the scolding with boiling water thing on pork belly and it works well, so I should probably work out how to integrate that into the dry method I use for loins. I'm not for one second suggesting this is porky Nirvana, and I'm very keen to see any other suggestions or experiences on your thread.
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