Monday's harvest

Gosh, Monday again!  That means Phillip Glennister on the tele (Ashes to Ashes) and a big bowl of veges and rice or noodles as Jerry's playing football (the "proper" roundball one!). Today's harvest for dinner was the first of the purple sprouting broccoli (rather late this year), some coriander from the greenhouse, and a lovely pointy spring cabbage - my first for the season. I also retrieved 5 eggs from the girls....who are still annoyed about being locked up in their new coop!

Tonight I've decided to treat myself and include some home made bacon in my meal. I'm soaking it for an hour or so to make it a bit less salty, as I dry-cure my bacon, and this one was a bit salty. Of course, I won't be using all of this bacon! A slice or two will be plenty for flavour.

On the agenda for tomorrow - making a loaf of sourdough, so I've fed 'Harry' and he's bubbling away on the bench in preparation!

Enough about the bacon already!

Yep, it's time for me to rave on again about the joys of making your own bacon, particularly if you can get your hands on free-range rare breed pork belly. I picked up my 7kg or porky goodness from King Valley Free Range yesterday. Mmmmmmmm lovely. This is the best piece of belly I've had so far - this time it was from a pig that had been aged for bacon.

Assemble your ingredients........

Admire the belly. Mmmmmmm belly!

Slice the Belly into portion sizes, and prepare your dry cure. This time I'm making 2 sorts. A savoury bacon using Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall's dry cure recipe, and a maple cured sweet bacon using a recipe from the book Charcuterie. The Dry cure mix is 1kg course salt, 200g brown sugar, 20 juniper berries crushed, 25g peppercorns crushed, 2-3 bay leaves crushed/chopped finely. Mix it all together with clean hands and you're ready to go

Then you need a non-reactive container (I use a plastic one). Rub all surfaces of each piece with the cure and stack. Every day for 5 days drain off any liquid and rub in more cure. Re-arrange the pieces so everyone gets a turn at the top/bottom. I go for the lighter cure as I freeze my bacon for later use.

The maple cure is a bit different - sugar (1/4 cup), salt (50g) and maple surup (1/4 cup). Mix together and then rub into belly pieces. Place in a zip-lock bag, seal and place this on a tray in the fridge. Each day turn the bag and 'massage' the cure into the pork (the cure and pork juices will form a liquid brine after a day or so. Do this for 7 days.

Stay tuned for the reveal in about a week!

Being my own butcher

Sorry folks, I got distracted by garden stuff and forgot to update you on being my own butcher! I don't mean actually killing anything (for the squeemish....and the general euphemism for this is "processing") - I just mean turning big hunks of lovely pork into meal size portions.

First - here are my lovely hunks of pork - shoulder and loin/belly



So out come my trusty books - Hugh's meat book, and my John Seymour and my Carla Emery - for a quick crash course in pork anatomy!

A quick cut to the loin section and already we have something that looks familiar! Then it's off with the ribs, and slicing loin chops/steaks.




Mmmmmm ribs! And the belly bit went straight into a dry cure for bacon


I cut the shoulder into a roasting joint for slow cooking overnight in the oven, and the rest I diced to use in casseroles and tagines.

Then it was the leg of pork. Oh My - 10.5kg (!!) of roast and hammy lovelyness-to-be. But 2 people don't need a 10.5kg ham or roast - and besides, I don't have a pot big enough, so it's time to get he serious kitchen tools out - a hacksaw!! (with a new cleaned blade, or course)


et voila! It already looks more manageable. 1 ham down, a ham and 3 roasts to go! You can see one roasing joing on the black tray.



Once I'd cut and bagged 3 roasts I was left with my 2 hams - and into Hugh's West Country Cider Cure (ooooh aaar) they went the next day. Cider cured roast leg ham is on the menu this Christmas.

LOVELY.


And the best bit? All this pork came from the piggies we were looking after for King Valley Free Range - tasty heritage breeds that have lifed a happy piggie life with room to run around, dig around, wallow, eat apples, acorns and chesnuts, and do all those things piggies like to do.

Making bacon and gammon - part 2

Today it was time to take the bacon out of the cure. All it needed was a good rinse, and then pat dry with towel. The maple syrup cured bacon then got wrapped in greaseproof paper and into the freezer. The same for one of the standard cure pieces. The other piece I soaked for a few hours (to make it a bit less salty), and then it was dried, into greaseproof paper and into the fridge. We'll be eating this piece over the next week or so.

Yep, it's that easy - why don't you try making your own bacon?


It was also time for the gammon and hock to come out of the cider cure. Don't they look YUMMY? They will soak in clean water for about 24 hours, and then it will be time for part 3.

Making bacon (again)..part 1

As Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall says, making your own bacon is ridiculously easy and very, very satisfying. He forgot to mention it's addictive!! I haven't bought commercially produced bacon for months now.
Today I made another 2 batches, and have started experimenting with other methods and cures.

First, start with a piece of pork belly - preferably free range, rare breed pork for extra flavour. I get mine from King Valley Free Range . This piece of belly came from the breed known as a Large Black. Imaginatively named because they are large, and (you guessed it) black. I picked mine up from the market this morning, along with a lovely shoulder roast and a piece of gammon, but that's another story!). I cut the belly into 3 pieces. The first piece was going got the maple syrup treatment.

I mixed up a cure of brown sugar, salt and maple syrup, then rubbed it into the piece of the pork belly.

Then, the belly went into a zip-lock bag, it was sealed and I put it skin side down on a tray (just in case of leaks as the brine forms. Then it's into the fridge for 4-7 days, turning every day or so to redistribute the brine.

Yep, it really is THAT QUICK AND EASY!!!!!!

Check back in a week to see how it turns out.

Next on the agenda - a cider (ooooh aaar) brine for the piece of gammon ham. Jerry's mouth is positively watering at the thought of home made gammon, egg and chips. Bless 'im. You can take the boy out of England, but you can't take England out of the boy.

Gammon isn't a typical cut that's readily available in Australia, but this is one of the great benefits of having a relationship with the people who produce your food - you can ask for special or unusual cuts. Not only that, but if you're local you can see where and how they live. In this case I know that before they end up on my fork they have lived as happily, as, well, a pig in mud (which they were for a lot of the time!), with treats, back scratches, TLC, and the ability to run around and be pigs. The fact that they are rare/ heritage breed pigs also means the flavour and texture is a world apart from mass-produced pork from the supermarket.

Bacon and Ham

This is what my bacon looked like after 5 days in the salt/sugar cure. One thing I did learn is that it needs soaking before cooking - otherwise all you taste is salt!! But after a few hours soaking it's lovely. Next time I'm going to try smoking some - but need to build a smoker...Jerry, get on with that will you?!!

My cider cured ham is also out of its brine bath too - and looking lovely! Now it's hanging in muslin under the verandah for 24-48 hours to air dry a bit. The dogs can smell it but can't reach it - torture!!

Mmmmmmmmmmmm pork

This post isn't for vegetarians! I got hold of some very tasty heritage breed pork (from a Berkshire pig) from a local supplier , and have embarked on my first ham curing and bacon making experiment.
For the ham I'm curing it in a mix of apple juice/cider/salt/sugar/juniper berries/pepper/bay leaf from a recipe by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (River Cottage). It's a lovely looking leg ham, so I hope it will tast good. It has 6-7 days in this cider brine .

L: leg in cider brine, and R: weighed down with a bag of rice!

I also bought half a pork belly, a hock and 2 trotters, and I'm salt curing them (mix of salt, brown sugar, pepper and juniper berries (again a River Cottage recipe). The belly will make what I hope will be super tasty streaky bacon, and the hock and trotters will go in lovely winter stews / casseroles to give depth of flavour (and some meat). And all I have to do is drain off the liquid each day for 5 days and rub in new salt mix. Too easy!

And tonight for dinner it's pork ribs!!! Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm lovely.