
Ham, dry-cured for eight months, removed from bladder (this photo by iPhone, the ones below are by Donna)

Ham, dry-cured for eight months, removed from bladder (this photo by iPhone, the ones below are by Donna)
In honor of this month's #charcutepalooza challenge over at Mrs. Wheelbarrow, I'm reposting this soppressata recipe from a couple years back. Wishing all who take up the challenge well. Happy curing!
While David Lebovitz considers molecular gastronomy and The Alinea Cookbook in a long and thoughtful post today (he approaches with great skepticism, as he's a traditionalist at heart, and leaves with appreciation having come back round to where he'd begun but by a whole new route), I would like to consider some of the oldest molecular gastronomical magic known to man. Combining ground pork and salt and seasonings, introducing to it some microscopic creatures, and waiting for it to dry a little, to achieve a tangy flavorful sausage that has never gone above room temperature.
In December, a few of us went in on a pig. One of the pleasures of hand-raised hog is ...
Even James, the guy who handed me a bag of 20 pig ears, gave me a funny look. "What do you do with 'em?" It's not obvious, even to farmers, not in America. It wasn't obvious to me till I had my first one several years ago at Michael Symon's Lola, fried crispy on the outside, gelatinous and chewy on the inside, their richness offset by the sweet-sour heat of pickled chillis. Michael said he'd had a similar reaction when he'd first had one from Mario Batali. Where did Mario first have them? "The ears were a prized part of eating whole suckling pigs on weekend lunches in Segovia, Spain, near where we lived in Madrid throughout high school," he said in an ...