Curing a Ham for Chirstmas Part 2

Sorry it's been a little more than a week since we last talked. The ham came out of the brine last Thursday and it's been hanging in the fridge. I'll let it go a few more days, then I'll put it on to smoke.

Curing a Ham for Christmas

I picked up a 22# ham today. I'm brining it with the bacon cure recipe. I ended up making 10 liters.



Before I put it the bucket, I removed the aitch bone. This is part of the hip bone that will cause carving trouble later. I gave it to the dog.

See you in a week.

HAM burger

Do you remember the ads for A1 Steak sauce proclaiming a hamburger is not chopped ham but chopped steak? As a considered rebuttal to that 80's ad, I offer the HAM-burger. Pictured above the ground cured pork burger is dressed with mustard, ketchup, cheese, roasted jalapenos, caramelized onions in sour cream (à la Bonne Femme), tomato, lettuce and mayonaise, all set on a bun made with "Five minute a day dough."



Okay Bonne Femme says I need to take a picture of her burger too. She topped hers with a cole slaw (left over from yesterday's fish taco adventure) made with cabbage, beets, and carrots.

But I didn't set out to make hamburgers. It's been a little more than a week since we returned from our madcap EU adventure and I needed to restock the cured meats cabinet. I made up a brine (loosely based on Charcuterie's American Style Brown Sugar Glazed Holiday Ham recipe) and sunk some pork belly and some pieces of boneless ham. After three days I pulled the pieces from their salty sleep and today I tied them into roasts. While tying the roasts I ended up with some trimmings. Now if I had been really ambitious I used the cured pork trimmings in a Toulouse sausage, but I'm still jet lagged or I drank a lot of beer last night (with fish tacos!) Hey Presto HAM-Burgers. I'm smoking the ham and bacon tomorrow.

Hey check it out, I found the A1 commercial:



Cheers.

Hammin

Boneless Ham a la Gourmet Magazine 1987.

Here's the scene last Monday about 11:30 PM (that's 23:30 for my Continental friends, and a half hour more if you are in Hyderabad): I walk in with my haul from baking class, 2 rye loaves, 2 pains de campange, 12 mini baguettes. Bonne Femme is sitting on the couch unable to sleep. "I have fresh bread, who wants a ham sandwich?" BF replies, "I would but we don't have any mayonnaise."

"Huh? We got eggs don't we?"


One egg yolk, 1/2t mustard, a splash of vinegar, juice from half of a small lime, salt, white pepper and six ounces of canola oil. Thirty seconds later, Hey Presto, mayonnaise.


Midnight snack.

In school this quarter I am taking a food styling for photography class. Even though a friend who is a noted photography expert remarked, "Take the Class? Hell man, you could teach it," I still need to learn the "Tricks of the trade." I mean how do they get a burger to look hot and juicy even though its no warmer than a jar of jam? How do they make a beer look cold and refreshing even though it's been several hours since it came out of a can? I don't know the answers yet, but I will find out over the next few weeks.

For the first project I decided to shoot ham, so I gotta make some ham. I started with the brine recipe for "Glazed Holiday Ham," from Charcuterie, by Ruhlman and Polcyn. I threw in a handful old pickling spice and boiled it to a tea. Once this mixture had cooled I put in the ham. Since my boneless ham was in several pieces I figured it wouldn't need to sit too long, maybe three days.



Thoroughly pickled, time to tie our friends into roasts.





I let the roasts rest for a day then smoked them on the Weber Smokey Mountain.



Three hours later at an internal temperature of 155F, the ham is ready for its close-up.



This brings me to another philosophical quandary: Food as props. I'm sure somebody has written a book about this but I get an uneasy feeling about "styling" an object in order to made it look appetizing, then throw it away because it's inedible. This isn't a still life, this is portraiture. (all ham depicted in this blog was treated with respect, handled in accordance with sanitary guidelines and happily consumed). I know these thoughts verge on silly, along the lines of stepping on a bug, or the vegetarian having to cook meat at culinary class, I know there is give and take and compromises that are made for the greater good, but I haven't come to terms with it yet; I just can't put it down the drain.

In the mean time here are a couple of pictures of ham doing what it is supposed to do:


(Ham on a bagel under an egg and hollandaise)


(Ham on biscuit with egg)

Feeding someone, making someone happy.

Cheers.

Boneless ham in beta

At my local abattoir I can get ham with or with out the bone. While picking up some belly to make bacon, I impulsively decided to get some boneless ham, about three pounds. I threw in in the brine with the future bacon and let cure for three days. Yesterday I tied the ham into a roast and hot smoked it for 3 hours.

Ridiculously easy and now I have lunch meat.

Cheers.

Duck and Ham: The Final Chapter

Birthday Weekend in Wisconsin.

Le Diner

Magret Sec (duck prosciutto)
Bacon and Onion Tart
Trout a la Meuniere
Cassoulet
Sticky Date Pudding


Le Petit Déjeuner

Croissants avec:
Jambon et Comté
Pâte d'Amandes
Chocolat

It been a busy couple of weeks here at the hermitage, but we will always take time for food and friends. This past weekend we took the show on the road to celebrate birthdays and to execute the final chapters of Ham Serial and Duck Tale.

Magret Sec (duck prosciutto)

It embarrasses me to say duck prosciutto. I suppose it's a good name, it succintly describes the flavor and the process, and it certainly has a better ring than dried duck breast, but it's not ham. So I came up with a new name, Magret Sec. It's French for dry duck filet. Sliced thin, the magret does taste a lot like its former namesake, but instead of curing for a year or more, I got mine in about a week.


I dried them for about ten days achieving about a thirty percent reduction in weight. The temperature stayed in the fifties but my humidity dipped as low as forty percent. Well worth the effort. For anyone thinking about curing duck, go for it.

Bacon and Onion Tart.

Next on the appetizer parade is Bonne Femme, with her signature Bacon and Onion Tart. Her recipe is adapted from the cookbook, Cooking with Master Chefs.

The tart is wicked easy, especially when you have frozen puff pasty dough and a Cuisinart. The bacon was cured in the pot with the ham and cold smoked for six hours.

Trout a la Meuniere

People often ask me: Are you learning anything at culinary school? Oui. On the day we were pan frying fish, Chef talked about a hatchery in Wisconsin that was great place to get fresh trout. Turns out this place is about ten minutes from where we were staying.

Rushing Waters Fisheries was pretty cool and the fish doesn't get any fresher. Since I just wanted a quick and easy appetizer, I pan fried the filets in clarified butter, then finished with a whole butter and lemon sauce served on mixed greens. Stay tuned for an upcoming episode when I cure and cold smoke some filets I brought home.

Cassoulet

Oh boy I love this stuff. I wrote about cassoulet last year and I focused on the idea that this dish is a combination of items that come from your pantry and larder (pronounced beer fridge). This version raids the pantry again but I also made a quick trip to Walt's for some lamb.

I started with salt pork. This is cured pork belly trimmings that I did at the same as the bacon and the ham. Salt pork is bacon that has not been smoked. I chopped this stuff up and blanched it before throwing it in with the beans to cook.

While the beans are simmering I started the ragout with a couple of jars of tomato sauce (the pros call it tomato coulis), duck stock, a bouquet of rinds, and some cubed lamb shoulder.


For the sausage portion of the program, I made two kinds: A garlic recipe adapted from Ruhlman's book Charcuterie, and a Toulouse sausage.

Toulouse Sausage is required ingredient to that city's version of cassoulet (Toulouse is the Holy Ghost to Castelnaudary (the Father) and Carcassonne (the Son) in the Holy Trinity of Cassoulets) The sausage is supposed to be roughly chopped, I made mine with pork, some salt pork, salt and quatre épices.



Remember our crock of canard from two weeks ago? I had to warm the vessel in the oven so that I could wrestle the legs from their larded slumber. I browned them up in a pan along with the sausages and then assembled the whole lot (Beans and ragout too) into the biggest pan I could find.

Bubble in the oven for several hours, serve with love.

Here are the birthday girl(s) at about 23:30. JJ brought a cheese plate and Chrissy made the sticky plum pudding, shown here with candles and a caramel sauce. Zach discharged his duties expertly, sommeliering his way through the courses with some great wine choices, mostly Côtes du Rhônes, but also some domestic white and Austria red (who knew?) just to mix it up.

With dinner service concluded, time to hit the hay. The kids will be getting up in a few hours and they are going to want breakfast.

et le Jambon?

I am happy to report that the ten day long transformation from leg of pork to country style cured ham was successful. Most of it is still waiting to be made into sandwiches, the bones I saved for lentils, but some of the choicest slices went to Wisconsin last weekend to play the lead role in breakfast,

the ham and cheese croissant.

I made some chocolate ones and some almond ones too.

After breakfast we went outside.

Good food, good friends, great weekend. Anyone can do this anywhere.

Don't fuss, just cook.

Cheers.

Ham Serial Part Four: Light em up

Cold Smoking and Hot Smoking Ham and Bacon.

This is yesterday about three. Three pieces of cured belly and a ham.

The idea here is to apply smoke by smoldering sawdust over an electric hot plate. The outside air temp (28 F) kept the main chamber below 90 F.

Six hours and two inches of snow later, it time to put these bits to bed.

Today I fired up the bullet and I did some minor tying to round out the joint. The smoker settled at 200F.

I placed the bacon on the lower level. After about an hour the bacon had reached 150F, so I took them out.

After a total of six hours smoking, the ham got to an internal temp of 155F. Done. Was all the fussing worth it? I dunno, we'll find out soon.

Cheers.

Ham Serial Part Three: Let it Dangle

Upstairs, Bonne Femme, is conducting the music appreciation class. The boys are getting their grips on some of the beacons eighties: The Dead Kennedys, Love and Rockets (not as popular), and Ministry. I think class is going well, above the thrashing I can hear the boys being told to stop jumping on the couch.

Meanwhile down below in studio C, the ham has come out of it's week long briny bath. I'll let it get some air for at least 24 hours before puttin some smoke on it.

Before I hung the ham, I let it, along with the cured bellies, soak in a change of water. I fried up some of the bacon this morning and it was too salty. I am hoping a short cold bath will bring a little balance.

It's almost time to fire up the cold smoker.

Cheers.