Charcuterie is the old art of curing pork, and making preserves. It has recently gone back into vogue, and not only are restaurants serving charcuterie platter -they are making it themselves. There are now entire restaurants devoted to this type of food, my favourite being The Black Hoof in Toronto.

This is not a new book by any means, but I have used it over and over again, and spurred me on in what can only be described as obsession. Needless to say with Ruhlman and Polcyn's upcoming release of Salumi this review is long over due.

The downfall of many charcuterie, and meat curing related books is that often it falls into the realm of food science. Our society as a whole is almost deemed unworthy to understand the principals behind processed food. There are many decent books done by the Marianskis, which will give you better comprehension of the science behind these things; however, it will scare off most first time dabblers. Realising this gap Ruhlman and Polcyn teamed together to create the first modern day, everyday man's book on everything porky, cured, smoked, salted, and stuffed.

One might ask themselves why we need the knowledge of food preservation? We have freezers, and refrigerators -it is no longer needed. Perhaps not, but its delicious. I for one am not willing to go my life without bacon.

The book is smartly divided into seven sections (not including the introduction): salt-cured, smoked, sausages, dry-cured, pates and terrines, confits, and accompaniments. Each section contains very informative instruction on techniques that are relevant, followed by some killer recipes, and usually additional related information. The salt-cured section begins with the history behind salted food, followed by the science behind it. Ruhlman follows this up with not only the economy and weight of buying whole hogs, but how these cuts differ in uses. Next up to bat is the dry cure recipe, and within a few seconds you know how to make your own bacon. After a veritable laundry list of culinary delights such as pancetta, guanciale, duck proscuitto, etc. We are inaugurated into the art of brining and everything from the perfectly brined chicken, to fermented sauerkraut, to lemon confit. At the end of the chapter you may not be getting a PhD in food chemistry, but you will have a great deal of understanding over the "what, where, why, how, and when," of everything salt cured.

The rest of the book follows suit.Whether you are an aspiring French chef trying to master duck confit, and pork rilletes, or an inspired barbeque pit master attempting to perfect a barbeque sauce you will get something out of this book. Cant find grandma's dill pickle recipe? This one is likely better. Definately a must have!

Well another day off, and another project. I am awaiting a truly epic repair bill on my 78 Volkswagen Bus, so I had to think of something to do with that in mind. Chicken Liver (well any liver with the exception of foie gras) is dirt cheap. This cost maybe two to three dollars with some help from a few pantry items.

Liver tends to have a very metallic taste that turns most people off. This in mind, some good spice choices, and adding some sweetness to the equation will help to balance, and take the dominance out of the metallic taste.

I recently recieved Garde Manger: The Art and Craft of the Cold Kitchen (Culinary Institute of America) in the mail and was skimming over the pages and found a recipe for chicken liver pate. In general a force meat will have a ratio of one part fat to three parts meat. I still had duck fat lurking in the fridge, perfect for this project.

You will need a terrine mold (very expensive), a bottle of white wine (I had some nice sweet Riesling in the fridge begging to be used up), chicken liver (I had about a 1/3 of a pound), slice of bread, creme, duck fat, cinnamon, cloves, anise, sugar, butter, an egg, and I think that was it. 

First melt about a 1/4 cup of sugar in about the same amount of wine and let reduce, add slices of apple, and a nub of butter. When the apple has started to break down, remove them, and continue to reduce the liquid until a syrupy consistency.  Let cool.

Heat up a pan with a little oil and butter. Season and sear off the liver. You are just looking to sear the outside and keep the inside pink, anymore and you will absolutely kill the liver. De glaze the pan with some wine, and the left over syrup mixture. Reduce, well scrapping the bottom of the fond. Let everything cool.

Its important to note that keeping everything cold well working with it is of the utmost importance.

Soak a crustless piece of bread in cream. This is what is called a panade and is an important part of pate. It will improve texture.

The best thing to do now is to line your terrine mold with plastic wrap for ease of removal, and lay the apple slices in the bottom (the bottom is the top of the terrine,) and pour some of the syrupy mixture on top. This is the sweetness component to mask the metallic liver taste. The best tool for the next step is a food processor. Take your chilled duck fat, liver, panade, salt and pepper (over season for food to be served cold,) leftover syrup, and one whole egg, and blitz until a paste like texture. Pour this mixture into the terrine mold, and let the flavors merry in the fridge for a few hours.

Cook the terrine in a water bath, in a 300 degree oven until it reaches an internal temperature of 170 degrees F. Remove, let cool, and set in the fridge.

Enjoy on canapés, toasted brioche, crostinis, or whatever your heart desires.

No clever arrangement of bad eggs ever made a good omelet. - CS Lewis

This dish had quite the involvement. The hardest part being the feature of the dish -a cows tongue. I was perusing the grocery store as I often do on my day off, hoping to be inspired by some sort of odd ingredient and after pouring through my many cook books, searching the internet, getting the necessary information, and techniques ready to transform the unknown, and ugly into something beautiful. That is when I saw it, lurking in the corner of a meat department, looking forlorn and in need of some love and attention. I quickly snatched this up and began the thought process.

The first part of this dish involved learning what I could do with an Ox tongue. I thought about braising, boiling, but that was far to simple of a process, and any opportunity I have to work on charcuterie I am going to jump all over it. I only had one day off, and another a week later. The natural choice here was to brine the tongue, and think about what to do with it over the course of a week. I used the brine recipe out of Ruhlman's Ratio. Remember when your ingredient list starts to look more like a science experiment, then a recipe pay particular attention to measurement. Too much sodium nitrate (pink salt) will kill someone, and too little could cause botulism poisoning. As this was destined to be cooked the nitrates were not necessary, however it will make the meat nice and rosy. This was brined with peppercorns, salt, pink salt, garlic, thyme, onion, and I think that was about it -pretty classic French brine. It was left in the brine for a week, turning, and weighting down every so often.

After the brine, the tongue was rinsed off, put into a pot with aromatics, and braised for three or four hours. This process will break down all the collagen to gelatin, and make the meat tender to eat. It also separates the thick skin off the tongue to be peeled. I had a little bit of apprehension about peeling the tongue on account of never doing it before. After the tongue has been boiled allow it to cool enough that you can comfortably touch it, yet is still hot. Begin by using a pairing knife to peel the tongue, once you have a bit removed its really easy to pull off with your hands. The skin is very very tough, and much like thin leather, I airmailed it to a Nike factory in South America for use in shoes - I loathe throwing things out.

I allowed the tongue to cool overnight, and then to air dry to form whatever pellicle I could on it. For the first time I was happy it is Canada and in winter, cold smoking would be a breeze. The tongue spent six or seven hours in the smoker and stayed at a fairly steady 20 degrees Celsius. The end product had a texture and taste very similar to a summer sausage, yet not as potent. Now that I had a great ingredient it was time to think about what to do with it. My first idea was to use it as an amuse bouche, with a horseradish aoili, however I could not find fresh horseradish anywhere, still might make this at work one day and snap a pic. The next thing I did after my tiring day of going grocery store to grocery store in a snow storm, looking for horseradish was make a Smoked tongue sandwich with Dijon, on Danish Rye. This was a tasty sandwich however I thought the tongue would do better with a hot preparation.

This dish was conceived one morning before work, looking through the fridge for leftovers. My fridge was looking pretty bare, there was duck confit in the corner, roquefort, beer, leftover bottle of wine, eggs, butter, and whatever condiments I deem allowable in my fridge. So I figured beef and blue cheese go together well, I should use up the rest of that wine before it sours, and I had eggs. An omelet was a natural choice for a before work snack. The onions were caramelized up and the wine reduced in them. I then added diced tongue and allowed that to cook, and crisp up. These were thrown into an omelet and Roquefort was crumbled on top. I took one bite and realized I had struck gold! After telling my chef about it, he suggested I throw in some pears into the mix. So many days later  I did. The pears were caramelized up with a bit of sugar and white wine vinegar, then folded in with the omelet filling. Possibly the tastiest conception I had come up with in a long time, but as they say necessity is the mother of all invention.

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I like duck, it is possibly my favorite poultry. Quite some time ago I picked up a copy of Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie. I am very interested in the art of charcuterie, and wanted to give it a shot. Ruhlman recommends the duck proscuitto as a starter project, and frankly I was a little intimidated and scared at the prospect of curing my own meat and then dying of botulism. Well I was a victim of my own ignorance, and after some research, and many successes, I am neither dead nor afraid. Whenever I find duck at a decent sale price, chances are I am picking up a few of them, and devoting a good deal of time to some stock, confit, and proscuitto. I am continually amazed at the ability of both duck and pork to be transformed into something transcedent of their original form (which is also good.)

This little beauty is easy to pull off, I am not giving away the recipe, but at its most basic form its pound for pound salt, and 24 hours. This can be tweaked to include spice, and herbs, but I would really recommend an addition of sugar. Sadly, this is not a Magret duck breast and lacks the almost foie gras like buttery fat. Tie the little beauty in cheesecloth and hang for about a week.

We recently served duck proscuitto on our New Years tasting menu: Quebec A Grade foie gras torchon with duck proscuitto, toasted brioche, apple cider reduction, and organic pea shoots. Mmm tasty. Good luck, and dont be afraid to try this at home. Just do your research first, please.