It didn't look pretty. After two days in the fridge, my fennel-cured salmon looked something like a disaster. A lot of the liquid had somehow seeped out of my protective covering. This worried me because that meant the brine didn't probably coat the fish during the cure. It might not be done. How would I know if it worked?
Ruhlman said to give it a touch. "The salmon should be fir...
Sparked with inspiration by Blake’s duck proscuitto , I procured Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie and dug in. Don’t let anyone fool you; it’s intimidating stuff. Curing food is the exact opposite of the cooking I’ve become used to. I love to take fresh ingredients and then cook them quickly, without much fuss. This process, hopefully, highlights the good quality of i...
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...
There are two kinds of cookbooks: some I buy and use, and others I buy and admire. I plan for the former, but end up doing the latter. I have cookbooks about offal , bread-making , and curing meat , but I’ve yet to order beef bones to roast . I have a copy of the River Cottage cookbook , which tells you how to deliver a lamb, dig for scallops, grow carrots, make bacon, and...
I’ve bought two cookbooks in the last week that teach you how to do funny things with pigs. The first, which I haven’t had nearly enough time to explore, is Michael Ruhlman ’s Charcuterie , co-written with Brian Polcyn, a book about the wonders of salting, smoking, and curing meat, a tradition of which pork is the oinking mascot. Much has been written of this book’s breakt...