Punk Domestics's blog

It's been a little more than five weeks since Scott and I hung our finocchiona and porcini salami. Thanks to gravity, almost immediately our lovely hung meat began to take on a provocative shape. 

Mercy me!

Shortly thereafter, beneficial white mold began to take hold.

Three weeks in, Scott weighed the salami. The porcini salame was down 32% in weight, which put it squarely into safe eating territory. However, when he cut into it, the texture was off -- too soft and still kind of gummy -- so he wrapped the cut end in cling wrap and left it to hang again. 

A week later we came over for dinner. Scott and I inspected the salami, which by now were down more than 34%. We selected one of the finocchione, as it seemed to be the most firm. We cut into it, and served it forth to the dinner guests. The texture was far better, certainly well within the range of edibility. Some of us felt it was just fine; others thought it might have cured a little longer. This is where making salumi diverges from precision and technique and into a matter of taste. 

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Once again it's Three Things Thursday, where I highlight three things that ran on the site recently that inspired, intrigued or impressed me. Here's this week's picks:

It's been two weeks since we kicked off the Festa di Salumi. Here's what's been happening in the salumisphere: 

Once again it's Three Things Thursday, where I highlight three things that ran on the site recently that inspired, intrigued or impressed me. Here's this week's picks:

Earlier this year, my friend Sean sent me one of these Chef'n StemGem Strawberry Stem Remover doodads, waxing rhapsodic about what a great tool they were for, well, removing strawberry stems. I had already done my strawberry jam for the year, and so set it aside, figuring I'd give it a whirl next year. 

Today we are canning 100 pounds of San Marzano tomatoes from Mariquita Farm. Earlier this week I remembered the StemGem, and thought it might come in handy. I am here to tell you that this tool is the greatest innovation for tomato coring, ever. We plowed through all 100 pounds in about 90 minutes. This is going in everyone's stockings this Christmas. 

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Although the Festa di Salumi is all about making Italian cured meats in the home, I really wanted to get a sense of what salame production looks like on a larger scale. After all, when we visited a prosciuttificio during our January Go Pig or Go Home trip, I came away not only with a greater understanding of how prosciutto is made, but of what I had done wrong when I tried curing a couple boar's legs the previous year. And having made salami with a norcino during that same trip, I wanted to see how larger-scale production resembled or differed from the way things have been done traditionally. 

A couple months ago I hosted a Twitter party for Columbus Salame, one of the three major salumieri based here in the Bay Area. They graciously agreed to allow me to pay a visit to their production facility in South San Francisco, and I leapt at the opportunity. Read More >

Festive news, i miei piccoli salumieri! One of my most favorite illustrators, Alyson Thomas of Drywell Quality Meat Art has fashioned us some meatastically gorgeous badges. Just pick your size -- 300x239 or 160x127 -- and drop that code into an HTML-friendly place on your site. Go on, you know you've always wanted a meat badge. 

300x239

Code: 

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.punkdomestics.com/salumi" title="Festa di Salumi on Punk Domestics"><img src="http://cdn.punkdomestics.com/sites/default/files/u7/salumi/festadisalumi300.jpg" width="300" height="239" alt="Festa di Salumi on Punk Domestics"></a></div>

160x127

Code: 

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.punkdomestics.com/salumi" title="Festa di Salumi on Punk Domestics"><img src="http://cdn.punkdomestics.com/sites/default/files/u7/salumi/festadisalumi160.jpg" width="160" height="127" alt="Festa di Salumi on Punk Domestics"></a></div>

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Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the Farm to Fermentation Festival at Tara Firma Farm in lovely Petaluma, CA. After perusing the booths of kraut, kimchi, kvass and other probiotic comestibles, I met up with Austin of Fermenters Club for a quick chat. And then, blushing like a fanboy, I MET SANDOR KATZ. *faints* *picks self up off floor*

Seeing all that fermentation in action got me excited about the topic. I know many of you out there are avid fermenters, and with the recent release of Katz's newest book, The Art of Fermentation, I think interest in fermented foods is at a new high. 

Personally, I prefer to do these things in small batches. I just don't have the space to produce enormous amounts of sauerkraut, and couldn't consume it all even if I did. That's why I'm excited for this nifty little product combo that allows you to do small-batch fermentation in mason jars. It combines the reCAP Mason Jar Pour Cap, a clever invention in itself, with a stopper and airlock. Then you just pack your kraut, kimchi or what have you into a sterilized jar, screw on the cap, and let the magic happen. Erica Strauss of NW Edible wrote a post on how to do it, and how it will save you beaucoup bucks.

FARMcurious has plenty of other tools and doodads for the DIY enthusiast, like this charming, hand-thrown fermenting crock.

Here's the best part: Nicole wants you -- YOU -- to have three reCAP fermentation sets of your very own. Here's what you need to do: Read More >

All right, kiddos! To kick off the Festa di Salumi, I teamed up with my friend Scott, an avid DIYer and Punk Domestics contributor, to take on some projects from the book. Salame is the order of the day, and so we each picked one that piqued our interest most. For me, finocchiona, one of my favorite salami, and for Scott, the porcini salame. After all, who doesn't love a little porcini? 

Making salame isn't actually all that hard, but it does require a lot of steps, no small amount of attention to detail, and more than a little luck when it comes to the curing phase. But at the front end of the process, the most important part is planning and prep. You want everything ready to go so you can move quickly from one step to the next. Make sure your meat and fatback are cubed and well chilled, nearly frozen. While you're at it, place your grinder attachment and accoutrements as well as the bowl in the freezer, too. The colder everything is, the better off you'll be. 

For the finocchiona, Scott first toasted the fennel seeds in a dry skillet. 

After which it's time to take the mortar and pestle to them. Oh, the smell. Like the perfume of angels. 

Get your mise en place in order -- you don't want to waste time measuring out spices and whatnot while your meat is hanging around, getting warm. 

And don't forget to soak your casings. We used beef middles that Scott ordered from Butcher & Packer. 

Okay, everything in place? Good. Then it's time to grind. 

And grind. 

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Friends! Ruminants! Charcutiers! Lend me your ears!

Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn are back with a followup to Charcuterie, which enjoyed a latter-day resurgence in popularity due to the phenomenal Charcutepalooza challenge that dominated 2011. This time they've returned with the next logical extension, Salumi, focusing on the rich world of Italian cured meats. (See Cathy Barrow's review of the book on Food52, complete with a recipe for salame cotto.)

For the unfamiliar, salumi is the generic Italian word for all cured meats -- including salami. And salame is the singular of salami. I know, not at all confusing. But salumi also include all the other wonderfully delicious salted pig parts like pancetta, guanciale, coppa, lardo, and of course the mother of them all, prosciutto.

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