Home Charcuterie Part One – Making Rillettes

Charcuterie is an aspect of the culinary arts that has long interested me both theoretically and on a more practical level. I find it truly wonderful that something that began as a necessity grew into the art form that we know today.

On the broadest level it encompasses the vast gamut of skills from curing and smoking to drying and salting. In short it is about preservation. It was about making sure that precious parts of an animal that would spoil quickly were not wasted and could be eaten throughout the year, long after the prime cuts had been roasted and consumed. It was about thrift. It was about economy. It was about the reality of slaughter and respect for the animal that had just been killed, making sure that as little as possible was wasted.

In the days before refrigeration and deep freezing, our ancestors had to come up with myriad other ways in which to preserve the meat from the pig or cow or sheep that was far too large to eat within the few short weeks (days sometimes) before the meat started to spoil.

Thankfully, these were tasty and delicious enough for the practice to continue and flourish even after technology made it possible to preserve meat simply with the application of cold temperatures and even now we still enjoy the salamis, hams, pâtés, terrines and other items that they perfected over generations.

But charcuterie is not a practice that many home cooks embrace and it is becoming a lost art beyond the specialist. Which is a shame because many aspects of the practice are easy enough to replicate in any domestic kitchen – not to mention, incredibly cheap.

This surprises some people – pâtés, terrines and salamis are expensive when bought in delicatessens – but the components themselves are the cheaper cuts of meat, those which could not be simply roasted over hot coals: the tough bits, the offal, the bits that need a little more care and attention in order to become delicious.

In the spirit of adventure we set about attempting the charcutier’s art for ourselves this weekend. Keen to keep things relatively simple we shied away from chorizos, salamis or cured hams (plus we really don’t have the space to hang a full pig’s leg just yet) and chose instead to make a pâté and some rillettes, which are one of my single favourites in the charcutier’s entire armoury.

The first time I ever had rillettes was when I lived and worked in west London and invariably got my lunch from the best deli-café I’ve ever had the pleasure to dine in (sadly now a hair salon). They are rich, decadent and so tasty that even the mere mention can bring a smile to my face (see above for Tony Bourdain’s rather excellent summation of this glorious food).

Made with either duck, goose or pork cooked long and slow in fat they are not for those who view calorific items with scorn or trepidation but given the scarcity with which they are eaten, and the all-natural origin of the ingredients, I personally don’t think this is an issue – I’d much rather eat a few spoons of this sort of food once a week than gorge on a microwave chicken tikka masala or other such culinary monstrosity.

For our version of this classic French pâté type preparation we used pork belly and shoulder to be cooked down in some back fat. Once the belly had been skinned (which we use to make pork scratchings – nothing wasted here) it was cubed and placed in a large pot with the cubed shoulder cuts (often used to make high grade sausages) and the rendered fat. After the addition of a little water and a bouquet garni it was cooking time. And it takes a while. Three hours at a tremulous simmer so that the occasional bubble will make its way to the surface before bursting is necessary in order to cook the pork to the ideal texture.

Once cool, the pork was then shredded, seasoned with salt, pepper and a little allspice, before being left for a day or so to allow the flavours to develop, meld together and take on that distinctive Gallic character.

This is food alchemy at its finest. The gradual transformation of base ingredients into a finished product that is infinitely more than the sum of its parts and just to be sure, we made a lot. Certainly enough to keep us, and others, dwelling in happy porcine reverie until well into the New Year. Mmm, rillettes.

Food for Free – Hawthorn Fruit Leathers

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while but a near constant stream of things seems to have got in the way including a minor run in with a large bus (funnily enough, the car came off worse) and a couple of days spent down on various farms chatting with pig breeders and turkey farmers, amongst others (full reports to follow shortly, I promise).

As a means of preservation, fruit leathers are an ancient art and were traditionally used as a means of transforming a summer glut into something that could be eaten throughout the year. It is a method that almost certainly goes back to the Palaeolithic and is still used by hunter-gatherer societies today.

Throughout September and into October, the fruit of the Hawthorn tree (haws – no sniggering at the back please) is in wanton abundance throughout the English countryside. I was inspired to have a crack at making a ‘haw leather’ (tee hee) by a wonderful post by Nick Weston on his equally wonderful blog Hunter-Gatherer Cook.

I’d seen the small red fruits burst from the branches of the Hawthorn trees that scatter the open land around our house but was wary of the berries themselves. I knew they were edible but having cautiously nibbled on a few raw ones, I wasn’t overly impressed by their rather dull taste and disproportionately large stone. They were far too much hassle to be of any use, surely?

Turns out, unsurprisingly, that I was wrong.

So, armed with my trusty Thai tote bag and an iPod for company, I went foraging in the chill warmth of an early autumn afternoon. Half an hour’s picking yielded at least a kilo of berries, more than enough for a first attempt at making a haw jelly, or leather.

The first step is to transform these little berries into a gloopy mush. I used a large bowl and pestle (or mortar, I never know which is which) and then proceeded to break the bowl thanks to overly vigorous pounding. Thankfully by that point it was time adopt a more hands on approach and so after transferring the mixture, rolling up my sleeves and adding a little water to the now brown sludge, I squeezed and mashed the thick gloop with my fingers. A little more water and a little more mixing and the required consistency was reached without too much effort or any more broken bowls.

Instead of merely forcing the mashed fruit through a sieve – to separate out the stones and bits of twig et cetera – and leaving it to set, I decided to freestyle a little by adding a little apple juice, sugar and cinnamon and heating it gently in the hope that a softer and sweeter taste would emerge.

Being staggeringly high in pectin, haw ‘jelly’ will set without the addition of any sugar or any form of boiling. Within minutes you will notice the mixture thickening and taking on a far more solid feel. After an hour or so you should be able to slice the resultant cake.

After warming the jelly over a gentle heat and adding the extra ingredients, the colour and texture became increasingly fudge-like and the slight bitterness softened thanks to the addition of sweet apple juice and a little sugar.

Once cool, the jelly was sliced thinly and dried out in a low oven overnight to remove the water and give the leathers a near endless lifespan. Traditionally fruit like this would have been dried out in the sun and then offered essential nutrition throughout the winter months when fresh fruits were in stark supply. Things aren’t quite that bad for us, but small pieces of the haw leather stirred into warm porridge should be a tasty treat come the colder months.

Friday Nibbles – Tinned Tomahtas

Before we get onto the important business of Friday nibbles, I couldn’t possibly go any further without talking chickens. Our brand spanking new Eglu chicken house arrived this morning and by this time next week we should have two real live egg-laying hens. Having never owned so much as a hamster, I am ball-bouncingly excited about doubling the number of residents at our little house. And even more excited about the prospect of nipping out every morning to collect a couple of fresh eggs.

Anyway, onto more pressing matters.

For this weeks nibble we are going back to basics. Cooking 101, if you will, to borrow an expression from American parlance.

The tinned tomato is a true hero of the kitchen. I believe that any self-respecting cook would be utterly stuck without a ready supply of these canned wonders. They are a truly versatile heavyweight of the store cupboard and I start to get a little antsy if our own supply dips below two tins.

Not only are they amazingly cheap but they can also form the basis of a virtually endless number of meals from stews and pasta sauces to soups and pizza toppings. Casseroles, chillies, curries, the list goes on almost ad infinitum and that’s just dishes beginning with the letter ‘C’. Move onto ‘D’ and you’ve got daubes, dal, and dumplings. ‘E’ gives us…you get the idea. I don’t think I need continue.

The history of canning and tinning as a method of preserving food goes all the way back to when the Napoleonic Wars were ravaging their way through Europe during the early 19th century. Somewhat amusingly, the can opener wasn’t invented until about fifty years later, which led to a number of hair-brained methods for accessing the goods inside the little metal boxes. The bayonet became very popular, although the prospect of eating food that has come into contact with a piece of metal that had been used to disembowel an opposing soldier just before lunch isn’t particularly appealing.

In terms of its green credentials, tinned tomatoes score fairly high too. Whilst the initial canning process releases a significant amount of carbon into the atmosphere, once inside they sit happily being very green indeed, without actually going green. They need no cold storage, can be kept indefinitely and it allows us to munch on out of season tomatoes without having to freight them over from overseas.

If you have a tin of tomatoes then you have a meal. Cooked down with a little garlic and olive oil, perhaps a splash of balsamic or wine too and a twist of salt and pepper and you have a great pasta sauce. If you are feeling really lazy, blitz it up and eat it as a soup, that way you don’t even have to cook any pasta. Spread it onto toast, top it with cheese and after a couple of minutes under the grill (broiler for my chumlets across the pond) and you have an insta-pizza.

Speed and convenience are all well and good, but tinned tomatoes really undergo an amazing transformation when they are slow cooked. Ragu sauces such as Bolognese and its various relatives, are a great example of the alchemic nature of slow-cooking when the finished product becomes so much more than the sum if its parts.

So, whether you say ‘tomarto’ or ‘tomayto’, these amazing little tins of brilliance are more than worthy of a place in the larder of even the most discerning chef.

Self Preservation, Part Two

Having raided the hedgerows, stripped the trees, harvested the vegetable patch and bought the necessary extras from the shops, we set down to transforming the vast array of fruit and vegetables in front of us into a selection of, hopefully, delicious preserves.

There’s something homely and warming, almost antiquated, about making chutneys and jellies, jams and alcoholic drinks. Although it was warm outside and only the merest hint of autumn was present, I had images of dark afternoons and crackling fires in the grate. In my head I was already enjoying the fruits of our labour as the snow came down outside in a soft translucent sheet. Sipping on sloe vodka and munching chunks of cheddar topped with tangy pickle whilst listening to the wind race through the gaps in our ancient front door.

But those times are far off and there was work to be done to before we could realise them rather than just visualise them.

Naturally, we started with the vodka. Making sloe gin, or vodka, is a simple process that takes no more than a few minutes once you have gone to the trouble of picking the berries themselves and stabbing each one with a pin three or four times (which is a real pain in the arse). These little round fruits look similar to blueberries but have an astringency that renders them almost inedible on their own. Although they can be made into a jelly, they really come into their own when turned into a sweet alcoholic drink.

Simply add them to a spirit of your choice with a load of sugar, give it a mix and leave it for about six months, giving it an occasional shake. After the allotted time, strain off the berries and bottle the purple liquor. It should taste pretty good by this point, but will get even better if you can hold off for another half a year. This really is sloe food.

Next up were the elderberries. The white flowers of the elder, so redolent of summer, quickly disappear only to be replaced with hundreds of tiny purple berries. These can be harvested and boiled up with a little water and, again, plenty of sugar. Once strained through muslin and heated to the correct temperature (about 110 degrees), a delicious jelly is the result. Hopefully we’ve made enough to see us through to next autumn, a great accompaniment to a multitude of warming winter dinners from roasts to stews.

For the chutney we turned to the many courgettes that our plants have provided us with over the summer. After roasting them, stuffing them, frying them, braising them and turning them into soup we were a little ‘courgetted out’ so decided to preserve the remainder. Even the most diligent gardener will miss a couple of these fast-growing fruits and large marrows are the inevitable end point and we had a few of these overgrown fellas just waiting to be chopped up and gently cooked with onions, tomatoes, sugar, vinegar and plenty of spices.

Our largest pan proved to be a little too small to take the huge quantity of ingredients that we wanted to turn into jars of homemade chutney so we ended up buying a new cauldron sized pan perfect for making preserves and stocks.

Once all the fresh items had been chopped up, in they went to be cooked gently for three or four hours until the whole lot had reduced down and changed colour to a deep dark brown, a rich and sticky chutney, the smell of which warmed the soul and brought to mind those rich images of crackling log fires and cold winter evenings. I couldn’t wait to try it with a chunk of cheese, so I didn’t and spooned a little onto a slice of cheddar whilst it was still warm. Simple pleasures truly are the best.

Self Preservation, Part One

For the rural dwelling wild food fan, early autumn is undoubtedly the pinnacle of the year. With a profoundly disappointing summer (how I despise living up to the stereotype of an Englishman talking about the weather but it is relevant, and, according to anthropologists, performs an important social function but we’ll ignore that for the moment) the leaves have turned earlier and the hedgerows are positively aching under the weight of countless blackberries, the branches of apple trees bow thanks to the sheer number of fruit and the white flowers of the elder have turned into full clusters of tiny, deep purple berries. There is a banquet just waiting to be collected.

And so that’s exactly what we did.

The countryside that surrounds our house is vast and empty with numerous pathways and hedgerows crossing the fields from which to gather this wonderful bounty free of charge. We went out a couple of weeks ago armed with no more than a couple of bags and a keen eye and came back laden with tasty goodies.

Even though it was early and many of the blackberries on the brambles were little more than tightly packed red nuggets, there were a good number that were fully ripe, deep in colour and delightfully sweet. By the time we’d half filled a bag, my fingers (and lips) were stained with a familiar purple that beautifully illustrates the season.

The fruit of the blackthorn, also known as sloes, was also ripe and ready to be picked over to make a batch of sloe vodka. The hidden thorns can be a pain and I regretted not packing any gloves but the haul was worth getting scratched for, certainly enough to make a litre, or so, of sweet and leg-wobblyingly strong vodka that should be ready by this time next year.

We also came across two walnut trees whose fruit, the same colour as the leaves, was hidden within the thick canopy above us. It was hard work and involved a great deal of jumping and grabbing of branches but we ended up with two or three kilos of unripe walnuts (that bare no resemblance to the wrinkled little brains that they become once they’ve been cracked) to pickle, providing the shells haven’t begun to form.

Finally, we couldn’t pass up the thousands of elderberries that seemed to be covering every other tree along our route. By the time we returned home we had an entire bag full of bunches of these tiny little berries.

The plan was to transform this haul of fresh, seasonal produce, along with the glut of courgettes from the garden, into a series of jams, pickles, jellies, alcoholic drinks and chutneys, so after a trip to the supermarket to buy the necessary items we set to work…

Rocket-powered Pesto

There are two minor problems facing those who grow their own. The first is the issue that presents itself when faced with a glut. A failure to plan correctly can often leave the hapless gardener with a plethora of peas or a surfeit of strawberries which must then be eaten with every meal resulting in palate fatigue or preserved in some way.

This is where pickling, freezing, jamming, smoking, salting and the like come in to their own and allow us to enjoy the fruits (or vegetables, for that matter) of our labour during the months when they are out of season. The second problem that we are discovering is how to look after ones plants whilst you are away for any length of time. After the many hours of care lavished upon them during their short existence, the prospect of returning from holiday to find a parched vegetable garden with the dried and rotting remains of what once were lush, green plants is somewhat depressing. I know that there are intricate irrigation systems involving timers and piping but sadly our budget barely stretches to buying seeds so that was out. I also know that it is possible to ask neighbours, but having only recently moved to the area we felt it would be a little presumptive to begin a conversation with the words: ‘lovely to meet you, would you mind awfully watering our vegetable patch twice a day whilst we swan off around a distant European capital city. Thanks.’

As a result we were left with the unproven ‘soak and hope’ strategy for the vegetables that are yet to grace us with produce and the slightly less risky ‘use as much as possible’ strategy for the plants that were currently edible and would fail to survive four days of enforced neglect. Fortunately, this amounted to little more than the rocket, which, after a slow start had grown with a fervent vigour normally only seen with unwelcome and tenacious weeds. There was too much to make a simple salad and so we drew inspiration from a great Italian deli called Limoncello in Cambridge where they stock a tasty selection of pesto.

The plants yielded enough tasty green leaves for four or five generous handfuls which would hopefully make a happy bowlful of fresh green pesto to be dipped into and poured generously over pasta and pizzas for the next couple of days. In addition I grabbed a small handful of Greek basil from a plant that sits on our windowsill (the harsh East Anglian climate appears to be too fickle for the plant to survive outside) to add a hint of that classic taste. Since my first pesto making experience (which can be found here), I’ve insisted that the best way to do it is by hand – so I set to work turning the pile of leaves into a finely chopped mass of deliciousness.

Once the rocket and basil were sufficiently decimated and the pile rendered down to about a tenth of its original size I added two cloves of garlic and a scant handful of pine nuts before getting to work with the knife again. By the time they had been incorporated, my wrist was beginning to feel the strain and a deep burn was manifesting itself at the base of my thumb, I guessed that this was a good sign and that it was now time for the parmesan which was grated over in fine, gentle curls – melting into the mass with a soft enthusiasm.

With a pesto, the olive oil acts like a glue, bringing the disparate components together as well as adding a tone of its own. It is like a mutual friend at an awkward party that manages to bring out the best in each of the guests, whose presence contributes more than it should. It allows the pesto to transcend its ingredients and take on a completely new characteristic. In short, it is essential and once added, the resultant sauce was a total success: subtle enough to be eaten solely with fresh bread but punchy enough to be stirred into fresh pasta or fried mushrooms at the last minute and served on toasted sourdough which is how I had it for lunch the following day. Definitely one to try again.