Saturday, July 2, 2011

Charcuterie 2

The cure kit arrived from the Pig in a Day/ Preserved people.  It was quite a delightful package.  My local courier normally just bangs on the backdoor and runs, but this time he hammered on the door until I opened it "They forgot to write your name on it."  I checked the sender very carefully and told him it was my bacon kit.  We have a nice local courier.

Inside there were recipes, the two different cures and a $10 note!!  It was a really nice surprise.  I emailed the owners to let them know in case it was a mistake (as a parent I've learnt that all kinds of things can end up in the most improbable places) but they responded it was a discount due to the delay in receiving it.  The earthquakes and ash clouds have not been kind to domestic freight, so I'd had rather low expectations as to the arrival date anyway.

Fortunatly I had to go to the supermarket so grabbed a pork belly and brought it home, eager to start preserving.  The recipe enclosed in the packet credits Hugh Fearnley-Whittingsall's recipe as the inspiration.  I've made one mistake - the piece of pork belly that I purchased was not the meatiest, but otherwise I'm on the third day of what is a four - ten day process.  It is very, very simple. 

I'll post pictures and a taste report once complete.  I'm keen to try to make the bacon.  They have pretty good pork suppliers at the weekend market here in Wellington - I might see what they have on offer tomorrow morning.

2 comments:

  1. Good work, I have been slack on the homemade-bacon-photo-taking front! My loin bacon was tasty, quite meaty/porky if you know what I mena, maybe as it isn't smoked. Also when cooked is quite grey/brown as no nitrates to make it that lovely pink colour. Tasty though! Have some belly just drying out overnight now after curing this week so will be interesting to see the difference. Next time will try a wet cure. Look forward to seeing how you get on, hopefully a bacon sandwich will make an appearance on LWD sometime!~ Becs@LWD

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  2. Oh good, I'm hoping to see a picture of your bacon, it is interesting to learn that the pink is from the nitrates! My belly is starting to look quite shrunken, I'm going to leave it to the morning, then try a little piece!

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