Initially I had intended to photo document the breakdown of the pig, I started out well, but then it just got too complicated and time consuming, it got late, the pig had to be broken down and refrigerated, and basically I didn’t do a good enough job to post it up here. So i’ll go through what I have produced and show as much as I can of the breakdown.
First up: Coppa di testa !
Showing posts with label Cooked sausage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cooked sausage. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Coppa di Testa
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Nasone and Cotechino Tasting
Friday, December 17, 2010
Cotechino 2010
It's that time of year again, when cotechino makes its yearly appearance, in preparation for the New Years feast! I've explained the story of cotechino a couple of times before, both in 2008 and 2009. This year I was fortunate enough to have some concia, or spice mixture, from a fellow Italian in San Francisco. He gets it from his uncle in Italy, and he kindly sent me a pack to try. Sorry, i don't know what's in it, but i think it's the usual spice suspects which you can see on previous years posts.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Meet the Nasone
I'm sure many of you have heard of Zampone, the foreleg of a pig which has been "emptied" and then used as a "bag" for cotechino filling. It's really quite delicious. It's called a Zampone because it's a derivative of the word "zampa" which means "trotter" in Italian.
Well, I decided to invent my own insaccato (stuffed charcuterie/cured meat). I'm naming it the Nasone. I'm going to apply for IGP or DOP status.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Cotechino 2009
Well, it's New Years, or it was just last week, so of course I had to make cotechino, the traditional Italian New Years sausage. I've made it before, and iIreally didn't change the formulation much, but i did make some changes to the process.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Cotechino - Results
Last week when my brother was in town I cooked up one of the cotechini. I left it in it's vacuum bag, put it in a large pot of water, and slowly brought the temperature of the water up to 190-195 deg.
I then put the pot in the oven set at about 225, so that the heat would be even from all sides. The water stayed right around 200 deg. I let it cook about 2 hours, took the pot out of the oven, and then let it sit another 20-30 minutes.
The bag had blown up like a baloon, i assume from the air in the sausage expanding. It had quite of bit of fat in it that was released from the cotechino. I opened the bag, got rid of the fat, and removed the casing. The cotechino was served over lentils.
It was AWESOME. It was slightly salty, and slightly too cinnamony. I think this is likely because the salt and spices weren't diluted by direct contact with the water. Next time i'll reduce the salt by about 10-15%, and the cinnamon by about 10%.
The flavor was really good. The spices in it were pretty distinct and very tasty. The texture was great, with nice gelatin from the cooked skin, and a good quantity of fat.
Next year I may also try grinding the meat using the fine plate instead of the KA coarse one. I'm worried it might make it too much of a fine ground sausage paste, but i guess it's worth a try!
So..i'm sold. I'll be cooking my cotechini in vac bags from now on!
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Cotechino - That which started my adventure!
This is the salume that started my adventure into curing meats.
These are available from a few Italian butchers in New York, but I haven't seen them anywhere else. They're pretty uncommon here in the US. Cotechino is a traditional, cooked, New Year's sausage that was created in the town of Modena. It's a MUST at every New Year's party in Italy and is eaten with lentils, polenta or mashed potatoes. Alternately, a Zampone is eaten which is the same recipe, except the the mixture is stuffed into a deboned front pig leg, instead of casings. These sausages are supposed to bring fortune in the new year (with the lentils bringing money). The name "Cotechino" derives from the Italian word for pig skin; cotiche, and as you might imagine, it contains a fair amount of them.
The pig skin that's ground in with the meat and fat gives the cotechino a very sticky unctuous mouthfeel after it's been cooked for a few hours very gently in water. The sausage is pretty heavily spiced and has a delicious assertive flavor of traditional Christmas spices and herbs, as well as porky goodness. It's most definitely my favorite cooked sausage.
I've varied my recipe every year I've made this (about 5 or 6 years), and I'm still searching for a recipe that gets me the results I remember eating in Italy, which were made by a small town butcher in Modena. Mine are great, but those were fantastic. This year i decided to use pork belly instead of the usual fatback I use. I'll be cooking mine next week, so I'll see if it was a good decision.Ingredient Quantity(g) % of Meat+Fat+Skin Pork shoulder meat 1645 35 Pork belly (about 60/40 fat/lean) 1645 35 Pork Skin (fatless) 1362 29 Salt 82 1.7 Cure #1 7 0.15 Dextrose 18.4 0.4 Coriander powder 1.7 0.037 Nutmeg 0.5g 0.011 Clove 1 0.022 Mace 0.5 0.011 Cinnamon 1 0.022 Cayenne 1.4 0.03 Black pepper (cracked large) 6 0.129 White pepper (ground fine) 6 0.129
Since i haven't blogged in a while, I forgot to take pictures for everything, but I think I got all the important stages. Remember to keep everything you're grinding COLD COLD COLD. After i cubed up my meat and fat i put them in the freezer for about 1.5 hours to cool way down. It will grind better and won't smear the fat as much.
Pig skin is incredibly tough, so much so that if I were to try grinding it my grinder would likely explode. It has to be boiled first. I don't know if butchers in Italy do this, or if their grinders are strong enough to grind the skin raw, but somehow I can't imagine they are able to. So the pig skin is boiled until it is fork tender. This takes about 30 minutes. Once this is done remove as much excess fat attached to the skin as possible. This can be done before boiling, but i think it's a little easier to do it after. This picture shows what the skin looks like after boiling and cooling a little.
The pork skin gets cut up into chunks so it can fit into the grinder throat.
The pig skin is ground alone first. I used a 3/16" plate (the small kitchenaid plate that comes with the grinder)
Here is a picture of the pork belly. You can see that it's about 60/40 or 50/50 fat to lean. It was nice looking pork belly.
The skin is removed and the cut up into chunks.
Cut up pork belly. Not very exciting...but delicious!
This is the pork shoulder i used. It was trimmed a little, but I didn't spent a whole lot of time trimming it.
I forgot to get a picture of the ground skin alone. Anyhow, it looked like a big pile of sticky beads:)
Mix the ground pork skin with the chunked meat and pork belly.
Closeup of the belly, meat and skin mixture. You can see the skin looks like little pellets.
This is the spice mixtures i used. The spices were all (except the large cracked black pepper) ground in a coffee grinder, and mixed with the salt.
The spice mixture is mixed into the meats and skin and well massaged to distribute everything.
The mixture is passed through a 1/4" grinder plate (the large kitchenaid standard plate).
Note how the meat and fat chunks are pretty distinct. That's because the mixture was nice and cold before grinding.
The ground mixture is mixed well by hand and sort of gently kneaded to develop the bind. You'll know it's ready to stuff when you get a white film of protein building up on the sides of the bowl.
You can sort of see that in this picture.
This batch made 6 750g cotechini. I think 750g is a good size as it'll feed about 4 or 5 people as a main dinner with lentils or some other side dish. Cotechino is a VERY heavy dish, it sits in your stomach like a brick, so i don't advise eating this and then going out partying:)
I used a pretty large artificial casing. It's about 80mm in diameter. I like the cotechino to be quite thick.
To store, they can be vacuum packed and frozen. I've kept it this way for a year, and then eaten it. It's still great.
Some people dry their cotechini as if it were a salame for 5 or 6 days. I've never done that, but i imagine it would be pretty good!.
To cook it, the casing is punctured with a skewer (a large toothpick) in multiple places (i punctured these about 40 times) to allow some of the fat to come out while it's cooking. It is then wrapped VERY tightly in aluminum foil, closing off the ends like a giant candy, and put into cold water. Bring the water to a GENTLE (190 deg. F) simmer, and simmer for about 2-3 hours (or put the pot of water/cotechino in the oven at about 200 deg. F . After 2-3 hours turn off the heat and let it sit in the water for about 20 minutes. Carefully remove it from the water, remove the casing (which may have burst), and slice into slices about 1/2" thick. Serve HOT over polenta or lentils or mashed potatoes. It has to be eaten hot, otherwise the gelatinous skin hardens and you miss what makes it so good.
This year i think i'm going to try cooking one in one of the vacuum bags. My theory is that there will be less flavor loss to the water it's cooking in. There may also be less fat loss, which may or may not be good! We'll see. When i cook it next week i'll put another post up to report back.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Sanguinaccio
Sanguinaccio - what is it?
Sanguinaccio derives its name from the Italian word for blood: sangue. It is a sausage made using the blood of pig or, less commonly, cow. In my mind this is the epitomy of the waste not culture of old where no part of the pig was wasted.
I've never been a big fan of it. Growing up we'd eat it every so often during winter as part of meal of "bollito misto", which is a pot of all sorts of meats, boiled and served with potatoes ,cabbage and other cooked vegetables. It always tasted like iron to me. Traditionally, in the Piedmont region of Italy it is made using only blood, mashed potatoes, fat, and spices.
Last week my friend told me he was interested in making some, so I offered my assistance. How could I pass up making a salume of my childhood, play with pig blood, AND do it all in his kitchen! Instead of using the traditional Italian recipe, he wanted to give it a French flair, turning a sanguinaccio into a boudin noir, which uses meat,fat,onions, apple and spices.
The recipe we used was an involuntary adaptation of one found on a great page, hertzmann.com , so credit for it goes to him. The recipe we used is as follows:
Sanguinaccio / Boudin Noir (adapted from recipe by hertzmann)
1050 grams minced onions
200 grams rendered lard
250 grams cored, and minced apple
300 grams pork fatback
450 grams pork loin
18 grams minced garlic
30 grams minced flat-leaf parsley
20 grams salt
6 grams ground black pepper
3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon quatre épices
1125 grams pork blood
200 grams rendered lard
250 grams cored, and minced apple
300 grams pork fatback
450 grams pork loin
18 grams minced garlic
30 grams minced flat-leaf parsley
20 grams salt
6 grams ground black pepper
3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon quatre épices
1125 grams pork blood
We started by mincing the onions and appled by hand, and quickly turned to a food processor for help. Short pulses made sure we didn't make apple sauce or onion puree. You'll have to drain the onions if you use a processor as it does force water out of them, unlike a knife.
Sweat the onions in 150g of the lard for about 30 minutes until soft. Sweat the apples in the rest of the lard for about 10 minutes. Remove and allow to cool to room temp.
Cube the meat and fatback into 1/2-3/4" cubes and place in freezer for about 30-45 minutes. Grind the loin and fatback through a fine plate grinder.
Combine everything except the blood into the bowl of a stand mixer, and mix for about 30 seconds to 1 minute. Add the blood and mix for another 30 seconds- 1 minute to get everything mixed up.
Using a funnel on which you've "threaded" some regular, soaked and cleaned, hog casings (29-33mm) stuff this semi liquidus mixture into them, after tying off the end. Try to avoid getting air into the casings as much as possible. This really is a 2 person job. 1 person holding the funnel, and the other plunging the mixture into the casings.
We used about 4' lengths of casings so they didn't get unmanageable when they were stuffed, and it took us just about 4 of them to use up the mixture.
Simmer them in water which is kept at 185-190 deg. F, for about 17 minutes, until the internal temperature is 170 deg. F. Cool them in a bowl of cold water.They are now ready to eat. Either reheated by simmering, or fried in a pan gently. Serve with eggs for an interesting breakfast, or with polenta for Italian style. It would be good with grits too, making it a southern type dish with Italo/French roots. These will keep in the fridge only for a few days, so freeze if you're not going to eat right away.
I acually enjoyed eating these. They are not as metallic tasting as I remember, possibly because the original Piemontese recipe doesn't use any meat, and fewer fillers, leaving the blood flavor to come out more.
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