It's done! My first round of home cured salami is done and ready to eat. I cut one down last week and tried it, with no ill effect. So now I feel much more comfortable eating more and giving it a thoughtful evaluation. All-in-all, I'm pleased. Part of me is totally thrilled that this worked at all, and I've turned raw pork into something edible and delicious. Well, pretty delicious. I think it has a nice flavor, but it's clearly a beginner's start. The texture is what needs the most work, and I think to improve that I need a proper sausage stuffer. It has a nice mix of fat and meat, but it feels a little overworked and "pulpy."The issue I have is that my Kitchen Aid meat grinder/sausage stuffer works the meat too much. After grinding it, I have to rechill the meat, then pass it through the auger and a mixing paddle again to stuff it into the casings. This kneads the meat too much, which I think makes the texture suffer. A proper sausage stuffer just pushes the meat right into the casing, without and further mixing of the meat.

But for a first time, I'm really happy this worked. The salami has that savory taste of cured meat, with a bit of a bite from the garlic and black pepper. So while we still have cold temperatures, I'm trying one more curing project. This time I'm curing a whole muscle; a section of a mangalitsa's ham, complete with fat cap and skin. I've cured it for several days in a mix of salt, sodium nitrate, bay, juniper, black pepper, and coriander.

The adventure continues!

In William Woys Weaver's Sauerkraut Yankees, he mentions that the Pennsylvania Dutch used a much different cornmeal than we get today. Their cornmeal is always roasted, giving it a dark color and rich, sweet flavor. Poking around a small, local grocery store, I was rewarded with a bag of Brisner's Best, a delightfully antiquated-looking bag of just such an old fashioned corn meal. I cooked it up into a polenta-like mush for serving with pork tenderloin, but felt this wasn't exactly a traditional Pennsylvania Dutch use for their meal. So what could be more traditional than scrapple?To make this an even more traditional "heritage scrapple," I used half of a Gloucester Old Spot hog head. I love the look of these pigs and think they might be a good breed of hog for Carla and I to raise. They're a hearty, heritage breed, but they don't take as long to grow as the Mangalitsa hogs. They still produce a good deal of fat (but not as much as the lovely Mangalitsa), and they're a long-bodied breed, so they produce a long loin and good side of bacon. Plus they have these cute, over-sized floppy ears! Supposedly they were bred to have big ears to protect their eyes while rooting among rocks and sticks for food.So this scrapple was pretty straight forward - the head is boiled with stock vegetables to produce a broth, then the head is removed and the meat separated from the skull and chopped. A thick mush is made from cornmeal and broth, then blended with spices and the head meat. This mush is poured into greased loaf tins, then set to cool overnight in the fridge. The next morning, it's time to slice and fry! For me, the cornmeal really stood out, frying up easily and giving the scrapple a full, sweet flavor. I'm not sure how much I noticed the Old Spot's head making a difference, as it was more of a supporting role to enrich the cornmeal patties.

For Christmas, Matt gave me a basket overflowing with hop goodness. Included were four large bottles of IPA, hop-flavored hard candy (really!), and a 4oz packet of "Zythos" hops. I've never worked with them before, but as Matt explained to me, Zythos are a proprietary blend of hops made by the Washington State-based company Hop Union. One benefit of these hop blends is that they help to meet the market demand for super-charged, high alpha-acid hops, but don't have to rely on a single hop cultivar.

A lot of products, from whiskey to olive oil, are regularly blended to produce a uniform flavor profile from year to year and harvest to harvest. To be honest, I had no idea this was done with hops, but as Matt told me, it's more of a recent development for homebrewing. Some craft brewers, however, have created their own "house blends" to keep their flagship beers hard to replicate.

So to test the Zythos blend out (which is named after the Greek word for beer), I brewed a simple IPA using light malts, victory, and a good amount of wheat to help give it a frothy head. I boiled for 60 minutes, hopping one ounce at 60 min, one ounce at 15, and the last two ounces in the final 5 minutes. Right now, it smells juicy and citrusy, with some big piney flavors somewhere in the back. I'm really excited to try this out in a few more weeks!

I think I was first attracted to this product because of the odd , prawn-headed humanoid on the can eating two sardines. Next was the oddly-worded description of "seasoning for macaroni with sardines." A baffling ingredient list of wild fennel, sardines (min 25%), onions, sardine puree, and black currants was enough to convince me to buy a can.In researching a bit, I found out this is one of the oldest dishes of Sardinia. I can't find the source again, but one wonderful description was, "by the time the new world's tomato came to Italy, the cuisine of Sardinia was already centuries old." It went on to explain that this was an traditional combination of ingredients native to the island. Opening the tin I found what looked liked a watery pesto. A quick stir turned up several whole sardines and, yes, the black currants.The "pesto" was from the pureed wild fennel, which is more frondy and less of the white bulb you find in cultivated fennel. I found the slightly fibrous ground fennel to be oddly reminiscent of the tiny, edible bones of the pureed sardines, which is actually more pleasant than it sounds in print. Tossed with spaghetti, I thought this was a very nice sauce, but still a canned version of what should be a homemade sauce served by a grandmother. The fennel was present, but muted. The sardines were pleasant and meaty, but not rich and oily. The black currants were soft and unremarkable.
I really think this would be an exceptional dish if made fresh. Lots of aromatic, anise-scented fennel, large slices of fresh, firm sardines, the occasional interruption of a sweet and chewy currant. I'll have to keep my eye out for fresh sardines to give it a shot. Bonne Bouche, however, might argue the sauce was perfect. As soon as I opened the can, I couldn't shake his little snoot poking and investigating around the kitchen.

It's three weeks into the curing process and the salami is looking great! It's taken on a deep garnet color as the sodium nitrate breaks down into sodium nitrite and cures the meat. The salami has also shrunk a good deal and gotten harder. The small, skinny ones feel very firm and dry, so I think they'll be ready to eat in a few more days. The thicker ones are on their way, but still need another 2 weeks or so.
Although I haven't tasted the salami yet, I'm feeling very positive about the process. I think for my next curing I would like to try some mangalitsa. I have a whole leg muscle in the deep freeze that I'd think would cure well. It's not a huge step up like curing a whole leg, but I'd like to try something other than another round of salami after this. The muscle isn't very thick, so I think it will cure evenly, without much additional difficulty than the salami. Although, unlike the salami, where I just blended in the salt with the meat, the whole muscle will need to cure in salt for several days to draw out the water and evenly infuse the salt throughout the meat. But with this new cold snap, I'm sure I'll find the time for some additional hobbying in the kitchen.