Big Mike

BTW, cooked up that little hunk of heaven that I cut off of the jowl. Braised it for two hours in some hard cider, it was beyond good.

Just hung the pancetta and guanciale in the basement. Looking good so far, although the spongy fat content has me worried. Will the cure penetrate through the fat if I left too much on? I'm assuming it will.

I haven't tried to make a souffle but it intrigues me. What;s a good base recipe to start playing with?

I use the jarred bread machine yeast, which is basically just instant yeast so you don't need to proof it. I steam the oven for about the first 10-12 minutes. I use an enamel cast iron pot on the floor of the oven with 2 cups of water in it. The steam matters, the crust seems to not brown nicely without it. I generally don't care how long the first rise takes but the second proofing rise seems to need at least three hours. I'm still eating it three days later and it still tastes as good great. I take the foil I covered the bowl with during the long rise and use that to cover the cut end of the bread and that will keep it from going stale for a good long time.

Please tell me this is a joke..? That sounds like an emetic, not a sweet. No, I don't have a TV, long (not interesting) story. This is the single most vile sounding dessert ever.

Here's the result of the bread I was talking about in the last post It kicks butt. So good, love to dip it in olive oil. Normally I would sneak a little rye flour into the mix but I was out. It does make a huge difference in the final flavor.

I think I'm going to go the stresa route. Seems like the same results without the fussy rolling and tying while removing the chance of having hidden air pockets in the middle of the roll. The cure has been on for over a week and they're about ready to hang. I was hoping to have the pancetta ready for Thanksgiving, that might be a stretch. Can I use the pancetta if it hasn't finished drying? Once it's cured it's ready to go right?

My favorite bread right now is a no-knead ciabatta. Dump it into a bowl and mix tonight, tomorrow dump it out onto a piece of parchment paper with some cornmeal, shape, proof, bake. The stuff is fool-proof, I'm a total convert. I'm still in love with Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice though, even if the methods are a little involved.

I guess I'm more about enjoying good food for what it is, without all of the trendy BS menu wrangling. I see all those quotes in the description and my eyes just roll away. Parsnip “lardo”, radish “steak”, leek "butter". I know it was meant to be playful, it still bugs me. Then again turkey "bacon" bugs me too.

Food & Wine has now published two blurbs in two episodes about some hippie restaurant in California which is serving vegan "charcuterie". One mention is ranked as one of teh best restaurant dishes of 2010. Read the article here. Seriously, can you really possibly call any vegetable charcuterie? Am I the the only one that thinks this is completely stupid?

There is a light layer of spongy fat but I left it on. The only thing the book said to trim off was the glands, which I did. My thinking was to keep as much fat as possible on the jowl. Hopefully it doesn't suck, at the very least I can trim it off before I use it.

A Fruit and Grain strawberry cereal bar that I slammed down in between meetings. I dare you to find any of those ingredients actually in the bar.

Started the guanciale curing tonight. Before trimming the glands off: The jowels look great, but I'm curious about something. There's a nice chunk of meat on the underside of the jowel that looks like it doesn't belong. Check it out: I left it on one and removed it from the other to compare the difference. It looks delicious but since this is a cut I have zero experience with I thought maybe someone here has some knowledge they can share. Thanks a bunch, can't wait for the first piece to hit the pan.

Thanks for the advice, I guess I'll split them up. I wasn't accounting for the mess factor in shuffling the meat around during the curing process. Also decided on the basement for hanging, I think it's too dry in my garage this time of year. What's the opinion on weighting the bellies during curing? The book says to do it so I have a sheet pan with a couple of bricks on it resting on top of the bellies in the bag.

I was just gonna ask if you guys took the skin off of your pancetta. I just started the curing process for one belly split into two halves. So much fat came off with the skin, I was sure I was doing it wrong even though in the book it says to skin them. I'm extremely lucky to have an old school butcher about 15 minutes from my house, so I can pretty much get anything I can name with a week's notice. Also have two fresh jowels in the fridge, gonna start the guanciale process this weekend. Here's a question, can I stack them one atop another in the same bag during the initial cure in the fridge? Just looking to save on bags.

I've never had a bad experience at Alma de Cuba, good food for a Steven Starr place. The duck and the ceviche are top notch.

This week starts my first foray into making pancetta and guanciale. I'm torn between hanging in my basement vs hanging in my garage. This month and next month should be ideal temperature and humidity in the garage but not sure if the daylight will be a problem. There are no windows except in the top of the garage doors and where I'm planning to hang the meat. I've read that you can cure it in the fridge and that there's hardly any difference in the final product but I want to stay as close to the original methods as possible, aside from digging a cave in my backyard anyway