Content about Ham
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Everyone loves bacon, but it's not always the same thing.
British Bacon vs American bacon
If you've been reading the site lately, you may have been following Nick on his rather strange quest to recreate a full English breakfast from scratch (his first project was the British banger sausage). Why, I don't know. But when Nick proposed that I take over the homemade bacon portion of the project, I leapt at the opportunity to contribute. Homemade meat curing has long been a hobby of mine,...
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June 9, 2008
For those who didn’t catch our incredibly late Sunday post, we were both live bloggers at the 2008 James Beard Foundation Awards. See those all access passes? We could essentially go anywhere we wanted to at Lincoln Center. To check out the trouble we got into, visit the James Beard Live Blogging Site. There you’ll find a nice recap of us chatting with Nancy Silverton about her shoes, moaning over large hunks...
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I can't remember exactly where the conversation began, or why we suddenly started talking about New Orleans, but for about 5 minutes last Friday Night I waxed poetic about the Crescent City. My interest has been explored before, but apparently my chatter seemed especially interesting that night. I suppose I could have been because my friend Hal had never been, and I took umbrage. It was late, and alcohol was slightly involved...
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The other Italian bacon.
It took me almost a month and calls to half the butchers in New York before I could get my hands on a pair of pig jowls. Here’s the problem: they want you to order the whole head. And while I had a wonderful time watching pot-roasted pig heads go ferrying by my table at the Spotted Pig, when it was under the tutelage of British chef Fergus Henderson, the thought of lugging a 40 pound hunk of decapitation around the city...
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December 6, 2007
As I mentioned, Madrid is a city easily covered by foot (at least, the city center is--I’m sure the outer boroughs, so to speak, are worth exploring), which leaves a visitor quickly able to see the Prado, Plaza del Sol, and any other major tourist destinations in an afternoon. What’s left is to submit yourself to the ebb and flow of Madrid’s infectious lifestyle: eating, drinking, and never sleeping.
What follows are my...
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December 3, 2007
Crawling the streets in search of ham and beer
We arrived at the ultra-modern Madrid airport terminal half-asleep, legs in need of a stretch, eager for what we imagined might be a giant, country-wide cocktail party. The Spanish tradition of tapas awaited (or, as we would later call them in San Sebastian, pintxos, our American tongues unsure how a “t” can be pronounced before an “x," the result a squished noise that sounds like "chah"), in which...
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November 28, 2007
A results of a simple dry-cured meat project revealed
About ten days after I hung a salt-cured duck breast in the vestibule of my garden apartment, wrapped in cheesecloth and suspended by kitchen string in a little tent of wooden dowel rods, I retrieved it, unwrapped it, and laid it on a cutting board in my kitchen. It was my first attempt at curing, my Duck Prosciutto.
The flesh had taken on a dark red, almost black color on the outside, and the fat had become yellowed. The...
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September 26, 2007
Lately I've been making this sandwich over and over again. I don't know why. It's nothing that unusual: ham, bread, sometimes cheese. I've made it with the shrink-wrapped lunchmeat from my corner bodega; I've made it with thinly sliced Bayonne ham from the charcuterie.
The secret is in this invention I've taken to calling pickle butter. I don't think I invented it; I think I read about it somewhere. But it's sort...
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October 9, 2006
After four days of intense bonding with my 10 pound ham, the meat stopped magically improving in the fridge, and started instead to develop what could best be described as a funk. Not necessarily revolting, and I'm sure perfectly edible, the smell was offending enough. And with something less than a pound left, I didn't feel too bad chucking the slimy, sour-smelling flesh into the garbage and calling it a job well done. It's...
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October 5, 2006
I'll have to admit the real reason I bought a 10 pound ham, beyond "I'd never done it before" cop-out, was to have enough meat to make as many ham sandwiches as I could possibly stomach in a week. Sure, that Boar's Head Black Forest ham can stuff a hero, but thick slabs of real, brown sugar encrusted ham exist on an entirely different plane of pleasure. And for three days I had enormous sandwiches smeared with an excess of...
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October 4, 2006
By the second day the roughly 8 pound ham I had foil-wrapped in my refrigerator had started to express its full potential. What had tasted perfectly fine the day before became a sensuous, hands on event the next, as it had somehow increased in flavor as it waited in the fridge. I wanted nothing more than to slouch over the kitchen table, picking hunks right off. How could anything be better than this?
There are many recipes...
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I had no reason to buy a ham. No guests were coming over, there was no potluck to attend. It was just a Monday and I had never baked one before and wanted to try. So I hopped on my bike and set out to Fairway to secure the biggest ham I could find. Sure, I could have trained myself on some perfectly reasonable ham steaks that would have happily fed my girlfriend and me for one, maybe two, meals. But I wanted the...
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March 29, 2006
In which we find a wildly handsome Spanish man
Step 1: Find a Spanish Man.
Step 2: Find a Spanish Ham.
Preferably, a wildly handsome Spanish friend with a hunk of Spanish ham that his mother sent him. Jorge had looks. And he had the ham. What follows is an evening of many, many stages that included overcoming fears of anchovies, quail eggs, and two romantic party members who ate their share, doted on each other, and cooked absolutely nothing at all....
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All content copyright Nick Kindelsperger and Blake Royer.
