This year I’ve truly been immersed in the transforming power of salt. Before I knew of the likes of Mrs. Wheelbarrow and The Yummy Mummy I had finished Ruhlman’s Ratio, started reading Mark Kurlansky’s micro-history Salt: A World History, and had begun my first charcuterie project by curing a salmon filet. Charcuterie was on order. Then Charcutepalooza entered my consciousness thanks to Ruhlman’s blog, and […]

This was my first dry cure. So, I followed Ruhlman’s suggestion and used sheep casings for our saucisson sec. The idea is it’ll take less time to cure. We bought three pounds of pork shoulder from Ferguson Farms at the Greenbelt Farmers Market that had been flash frozen below -10 F for three weeks. The […]

It’s been quite a weekend. I consumed three dozen plus oysters at Tilghman Day on Saturday. Our dog went with us and was so worn out she snored for about five hours last night after we got home. Today we went to the farmers market, came home and made eight pounds of sausage, three pounds […]

We’ve been making duck confit since March or April and there has been a jar of it ripening in the back of the fridge just about every week since. It is something I plan to make sure is there. Kind of like butter. And beer. And bacon in the freezer. And . . . well, […]

We liked this challenge. I bought one of those small red terrines from Amazon and we made a couple of patés. First up was a paté campagne. We mixed in a garnish of duck confit from the back of the fridge. A nice, rustic dish that I also ate for lunch during the week in […]

Ingredients matter. They have to be fresh. We made a seafood moussseline early in the challenge with the scallops from the freezer and some processed crab. It was edible, and the potential was there, but just didn’t have the freshness needed for that type of dish. A couple weeks later I bought some pig trotters […]

We were so excited to make some dogs for our Independence Day celebration. We’d just finished building a new screened-in porch and were eager to spend some time eating a homemade dog on it at the outskirts of our nation’s capital. We followed Ruhlman’s recipe (the short rib one), kept things very cold and used […]

It’s been a busy month of activism and stuffing with not much time for blogging. Early on we made fresh Italian sausage and this past weekend was a fresh merguez. The spicy (not hot) lamb sausage from North Africa was a hit for Sunday dinner and will be for weeks to come. We like our […]

We ground some pork twice this month as part of Charcutepalooza. First off was a simple breakfast sausage out of Ruhlman’s wonderful book Charcuterie. We followed his advice and froze the grinding attachment beforehand and did not add fatback to these sausages. We also found that the grinding went much easier if the pork was […]

This month’s charcutepalooza challenge was hot smoking,  Canadian Bacon. I know about hot smoking. We’ve had a Big Green Egg for years. I brined and smoked the pork loin in time for a mother-in-law visit. We had the finished product for breakfast with eggs and grits. Put it in split pea soup and of course […]