La Cuisine Anglaise: Preface

Here is the first part of Alfred Suzanne's 1894 book La Cuisine Anglaise.

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Preface.

It is an undeniable fact that, in recent years, English customs and traditions have gradually taken root in France. The most popular sports, such as soccer, lawn tennis, golf, rally-paper [1], polo, horse racing, and croquet, have been imported from England, and English cuisine itself is also becoming increasingly popular here, as one can see by consulting the menus of fine dining establishments and the food lists of Paris’s top restaurants. Clear evidence of this tendency to "feast" [2] like our neighbors is that we have adopted and adapted to French these terms, while retaining their original names: le five o'clock, le luncheon, and le garden-party.

King Edward VII’s official visit to Paris in 1903, along with the splendid reception held for President Loubet in London, played no small part in fostering good relations between the two nations and helping them put their old quarrels behind them.

Proud of our culinary superiority, which is indisputable, and driven by ridiculous chauvinism and absurd prejudices, we have never been able to admit that another nation could produce good cuisine. However—and I call on those who have traveled abroad to attest to this—every country has a few national dishes that are certainly worthy of note, as well as certain specialties that are not to be dismissed.

Is there, for example, a soup creamier [Fr. plus onctueux] than turtle soup? Is there a fried dish more delicate and more delicious than whitebait, a roast comparable to suckling pig stuffed with sage and onion, and nothing more delightful than a beefsteak or lark pudding?

York ham enjoys a universal reputation, and as for Wiltshire smoked bacon, there is nothing in the world that matches its aroma and flavor.

Need I mention Indian-style chicken curry, grilled devilled pheasant, braised rabbit with capers, and so many other savory dishes, the mere naming of which brings a tear of delight to the lips?

Cuisine in England has made immense strides over the last fifty years; today, London boasts English cooks whose talent rivals that of our best French chefs.

I do not intend to sing the praises of English cuisine out of bias, nor to draw a comparison with our own, which comparison would leave England at a distinct disadvantage. I simply wish to point out a fact: English cuisine contains excellent elements that I would love to see adopted in France.

French chefs who have spent years working across the Channel know how to make the most of these bonnes choses by adding a touch of refinement and applying their own signature style and good taste; in short, by "Frenchifying" them. This is not a question of artistic or ornamental cooking; I only want to talk about fundamental cooking, that wholesome, honest, and hearty cooking which—I dare say—is currently being sacrificed a bit too much for the sake of frills and decoration. The reason for this progress is easy to understand: improved transport links and relatively affordable travel have led to more frequent contact between the French and the English. Parents intending for their sons to become cooks no longer hesitate to send them to Paris for their apprenticeship, whereas in the past, they would have been deterred by travel costs and the difficulty of communicating or corresponding with their children. A full quarter of the apprentices trained in Parisian pastry shops and restaurants are English. These young people bring back the culinary skills they have acquired to their home countries; if they are intelligent, hardworking, and persevering, they soon rank among fine cooks. Meanwhile, cooking schools abound in England today, especially in London, where they enjoy aristocratic patronage. Run by expert chefs, these schools attract young women from the middle and even upper classes who attend culinary lectures. The instructor, assisted by two or three helpers, explains the theory behind various dishes, which the assistants then prepare on the spot before the audience. These long-established cooking schools play a major role in spreading and popularizing French cuisine in England. In France, women do not need to learn how to cook; it comes naturally to them. Scarcely settled into their own households, they take up the task quite naturally, putting into practice the lessons learned from their mothers, lessons they will, in turn, pass on to their own daughters. The situation is different in England, where the traditional "housewife" figure does not exist. The wife of a clerk or a member of the lower middle class would consider it beneath her dignity to attend to the cooking. As for the working-class man, upon returning home from work, he invariably finds a piece of cold meat on the table that was cooked on Sunday and is intended to sustain him throughout the week. He can expect nothing more from his wife, whose culinary skills and knowledge are limited to boiling potatoes and roasting or boiling a piece of meat; the mysteries of the frying pan and the saucepan are unknown to her.

But even if the Englishman is unfamiliar with the subtleties of French cuisine and unaware of its economic principles, one must admit that his diet is healthy and nutritious.

At the inauguration of the cooking school on Rue Bonaparte, Jules Simon, the honorable senator who presided over the ceremony, extolled the strength and vigor of the English and attributed this to their diet.

I myself lived in England for forty years and was in a better position than anyone else to observe and study the way of life of our neighbors and to note that, while the English may not know how to eat, they at least know very well how to nourish themselves.

My goal in writing this cookbook is to make things easier for those of my colleagues who will be called upon to join the already large ranks of French chefs scattered throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and its colonies.

The English gentleman has always had a pronounced fondness, which he does little to conceal, for his national cuisine; thus, he makes it a rule to return to it at regular intervals, not only out of taste but also for practical reasons; for his robust stomach, accustomed since childhood to hearty food, would have difficulty adjusting to an essentially French diet, with its light soups and delicate dishes.

It is not uncommon for a cook who has just arrived in England to be forced to leave his job after only a short stay, often because of the difficulties he faces in adapting to the language and customs of the country, but even more often because he lacks even the most basic knowledge of British cuisine.

This book, which deals exclusively with English and American cuisine, will therefore be of undeniable use to chefs working in England and the United States, just as it will provide my colleagues residing in France with recipes and information that are unfamiliar to them, allowing them to vary their menus by occasionally including dishes that, although of English origin, are nonetheless of very high quality. 

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Editor's notes

1. A kind of race.

2.Fr. « festiner ». I suppose this is in contrast to fêter which would normally be used but more broadly means party. Festiner has an archaic sound, the same as if you were to call a party a "feast" today.

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Translated with DeepL

Introduction to La Cuisine Anglaise

I've been translating Alfred Suzanne's 1894 book La Cuisine et Pâtisserie Anglaise et Américaine (using online translators) and wanted someplace to post the results. I think this is an extremely interesting text for a variety of reasons.

The author, M. Suzanne, was an interesting person in himself, and someday maybe I'll devote a post to him specifically. But for now suffice it to say that he was a Normandy-born chef and baker who spent a lot of time in England and Ireland cooking for English nobles. He published a lot of books and monographs in his life, including his famous book on cooking eggs (which began as 100 Ways to Prepare and Eat Eggs and went on to become 250 Ways to Prepare and Eat Eggs). I first became aware of him through Escoffier, as he is credited with the recipe for the Bookmaker sandwich in the sandwich section. There is something very intriguing to me about English cooking through a French lens, and since English cuisine has only a marginal role in Le Guide Culinaire, I was excited to find an accessible book specifically on the subject - and one which seems to have been popular at the time, no less.

Being a French cookbook aimed at French people, there is a fair amount of "improvement" evident in the recipes. Yet they maintain their characteristically English simplicity and dignity, as you'll see. I've made a few recipes from the book and I can confirm that they are quite good, if a little fancy. I would say that they are recognizably "English" but still clearly made by a Frenchman. M. Suzanne also includes all sorts of tidbits and anecdotes which are delightful - pieces of history or his own commentary on the dishes for example. Here's what he has to say about steak and oyster pudding:

The English are very fond of this pudding which, for my part, I can’t stand. Oysters, after such a long cooking, can only be indigestible. And I find it illogical and bad taste to mix meat and fish.

So French.

I'll be posting my translation in parts, probably one post per chapter (soups, roasts, fish, etc), starting with the preface. I'll also be doing some cooking from the book so you can see what it looks like.

Cheers!

NB - La Cuisine Anglaise was first published in 1894, but the version I'm working with was printed in 1904. Jsyk!

Barking Crab - BF&CR #2

The first review was a bit of a downer, but thankfully this one ends on a good note. Barking Crab is a great spot, located in the Seaport near the Courthouse and pretty much in view of the Boston Tea Part Museum, whose ships always make for a good view when you walk over the bridges over Fort Point channel. The restaurant has the classic "crab shack" vibe which usually makes for a good time.

Salt and vinegar are ready at the table when you sit down, usually a good tiding for seafood spots in my opinion. The fish is haddock and runs you $28. I prefer haddock but it often means a smaller piece of fish, which can be ok but for that price I would've wanted a larger filet or two pieces - let it be known I don't oppose multiple pieces of fish on the plate if they're well-made! - but it came out blazing hot and very crisp. I believe it's some kind of beer batter, which was quite substantial yet pretty thin as beer batters go. The batter was also faintly shellfish-scented, I assume because it's fried in the same oil as all the fried clams and oysters and so on. I actually don't mind this since I like fried shellfish, but it's something to be aware of. It's an overall heavy, very fry-forward piece of fish - again this is despite the thinness of the batter. This is also due to the thinness of the filet, which leads to a higher batter-to-fish ratio than on a thick filet. Quite nice if you want that sort of thing, and makes the beer taste much better. (They also gave me a random beer for no reason which I didn't pay for - not even another round of the one I had ordered, just a glass of some IPA after I'd drank about half of my first glass. I don't like IPAs but you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe they were trying to sweeten my review a little...)

The fish itself had a nice subtle and fresh taste, typical for haddock, and was quite juicy. (Good fish and chips is a pretty wet meal.) The fries were good, nothing particularly special but the flavor of the potato came through somehow without the same shellfish flavor that the batter had. Crispy and got pleasantly soggy after the piece of fish had been broken up, which is no bad thing.

All the accoutrements were there. Malt vinegar is available at the table when you sit down, as it should be. The tartar sauce was nothing special, a little thin in my opinion and lacking some piquancy, basically like mayonnaise with a little piece of gherkin or two swimming around. There was coleslaw.

Overall an absolutely decent platter, the standard which every seafood joint should hold itself to at minimum. Hot, crispy, fully-furnished. The tartar leaves something to be desired and its a bit expensive for what you get though. I think it's a solid 7/10.

Boston Sail Loft - The Fish and Chips Review #1

For the very first Fish and Chips Review, we have an excellent example of what I mean when I say the fish and chips situation here is bleak. This may very well be the worst piece(s) of fried fish I have ever eaten. 

Boston Sail Loft is widely reported to be the best seafood spot in Boston. Maybe these reviews were bought and paid for, maybe they were written by P-zombies masquerading as humans - or, to be fair, maybe they just weren't talking about the fish and chips. The other food may be very nice - the other dishes I had were alright - so I shouldn't be too harsh until I've gone back for more stuff. Anyways I digress. Here's the breakdown.

I believe the fish was cod. It tasted alright; frankly cod is not my favorite option for F&C but it is respectable as far as it goes and is quite traditional. The first warning sign to me was that the fish was cut into several small nuggets. I completely object to this as the ratio of batter to fish would be off even if the batter were very good. Unfortunately the coating on the fish was not only not batter but not even a well-executed version of what it was trying to be. Imagine shake-n-bake chicken breasts, cooked by a kid for the first time: soggy, thin, and rather bland - not a mote of salt on the entire plate. I suppose breadcrumbs could be used to make a fine fried fish, but this was not that. Zero points for the breading: in fact negative points for the atrocious execution of whatever this was supposed to be.

The fries were passable, certainly frozen but nothing special. Same goes for tartar sauce. Malt vinegar was not furnished by my server but I easily nabbed some from a nearby table. 

Overall a horrible experience - 3/10. The best thing I can say was that nothing seemed spoiled and all the elements were technically on the plate. Negative points for the breading fiasco and the fact that the fish was in pieces. (I guess they do this so that when a table orders a seafood platter it's easier to share - in that context the choice makes sense but not for fish and chips, and I will remind you that this is the F&C review.)

(The other thing this place is famous for is their chowder - in my opinion it was alright, lacking salt but otherwise inoffensive. I appreciate that they don't feel the need to be too unique or new-agey: the soup is thick, there are plenty of clams, and overall it's very warming. The dill is an interesting touch. - As a final positive, the rum punch is potable and they serve a hot toddy. Both plusses to me. I will reiterate that this is the fish and chips review.......more reviews forthcoming.)

The Fish and Chips Review: Preliminaries

Boston, for all its apparently British character, has a conspicuous dearth of good fish and chips. And this is totally unnecessary.

Now there are two aspects to this lack of good fish and chips: the first is that there aren't any "chippies," or in other words places which deal exclusively in fried fish and potatoes. These are ubiquitous in big cities in the UK (although they're of varying quality). In the US in general cheap casual spots are going to deal in something like pizza or "bowls", and neither of those kinds of places are liable to have any fish on the menu at all. Chicken tenders are the closest you really get, which are cheap and widely beloved, so there's no demand for fried fish. I suppose some restaurants will have fish sticks available but that's if you're lucky; usually you don't get any fried fish option!

The second aspect to the lack of good fish and chips in Boston is that the fish and chips we DO have usually aren't any good. Soggy, weird piles of "food." Frankly even good fish and chips is kind of a strange dish, food for the insensate, an overwhelming heap which acts kind of like cement or sand in the stomach. I'm pretty sure it's almost totally indigestible; great for soaking up a hangover though. Anyways I want to start a list of every fish and chips in Boston and find the good ones. My points of critique are the following:

Batter. Is it light, crispy, good-tasting, and generally well-made? Bonus points for beer in the batter. Is the oil which the fish was fried in clean-tasting, or does it have other flavors - burnt grease, other foods, etc - mixed into it? MAJOR negative points for a non-batter coating, ie breadcrumbs or cornflakes or whatever.

Fish. Is the fish fresh? Does it have a good texture? Is it cooked properly? Is the fillet well-sized or measly? Does it taste nice?

Chips/fries. I'll award bonus points for having actual chippy chips, big fat fries, instead of typical American fries, but it's a little silly to expect a restaurant to serve chipper chips to patrons who probably don't want them. Are they hot, crispy, not overly oily? Critical: are there enough of them? Too often you only get like a handful... Bonus points for freshly-cut fries.

Accoutrements. To me the indispensable condiments for F&C are malt vinegar, tartar sauce, and copious amounts of salt. If these are present then any plate gets a passing grade - but attention will be paid to the quality of the tartar sauce. I like a chunky, thicker kind, not runny or too plain. Tartar sauce is essentially mayonnaise, which on top of a bunch of fried food would be entirely redundant if not for the gherkins and shallots etc which it carries. Lemon is unessential, but very welcome. Bonus points for curry sauce.

In general I won't be awarding bonus points for particularly "well-flavored" F&C, with spices or the like in the batter or the fries or whatever, since I don't think that F&C is a dish that is improved by more flavors. The point is that it's rather plain on its own. But I'll make due note of those F&C's which are more highly-flavored than others.

I think these are the basic components of F&C, and other than minor aspects of taste I don't think anything here is too controversial. One last note about ratings - I'll be doing ratings out of 10, with 5–7 being essentially average (the minimum requirement for paying for food at a restaurant); between 0–5 means "not worth ordering," and 7–10 means outstanding. A 10/10 wouldn't necessarily mean that a plate is "the best fish and chips ever," I like the sticky toffee pudding guy's way of putting it: a 10/10 is "the one to beat." The purpose isn't really to find the best fish and chips in Boston but to ensure that high standards are being upheld all around. And, again, I don't think the above standards are really all that crazy.

My reviews will be forthcoming, especially over the summer I hope. I encourage everybody to engage in a similar pursuit and share their results, maybe even on their own blog.

Notes for a chicken butchery class

Hello all! I know it's been a while...but I've been busy. Here are some notes I've compiled over the last few weeks, going over how I would approach a chicken butchery class. If you know me you know why I'm writing this out, and you can probably guess that these will be updated more in the coming months :-).

By way of introduction I'll introduce what I think are the main questions that a student would have coming into such a class, and also the main things that I think should be impressed on them.

    Why is chicken considered more hazardous than other meats? Why is the risk of salmonella so high?

    What's the fastest way to break down a chicken? The easiest?

    Are FDA guidelines for cooking chicken really that important?

    What does "humane," "halal," etc mean anyways?

    

I assume for the sake of time efficiency that the students (who in my case have already paid money to attend) already have a "why" as in "why should I learn to butcher a chicken?" etc. I should also mention that these notes are intended for a two-hour, one-time class of amateur home cooks. Anyways, here are the notes as they stand now.

Preliminaries

Chickens are descendants of red junglefowl, a species of bird which still lives wild in Asia. Junglefowl like to live in so-called "disturbed habitats," for example recently-burned forests and the edges of human settlements. Their relatively docile nature and natural affinity for habitats that humans themselves create made them handy for domestication. Since then chickens have become some of the most numerous livestock worldwide. (I recently read that domestic chickens comprise 70% of bird biomass on Earth.)

Their anatomy is much like that of other birds, only perhaps slightly plumper due to the cushy living conditions to which they're accustomed. Yet their small size and ubiquity in developed markets makes them a good candidate for learning to butcher at home; once you learn how to break down a chicken you can break down a turkey, duck, goose, guinea fowl, pheasant, quail, flamingo, etc, with only slight adjustments to technique. (The method to break down rabbit is also quite similar in approach.)

The chickens which we usually sell at [my butcher shop] come from Giannone Poultry, located outside of Montreal. They work quite closely with their farmers to ensure a pretty high standard of cleanliness for their chickens, as well as generally high welfare standards, with many (but not all) of their farms being certified humane by the Certified Humane Project (whose standards can be found here). These standards assure, among other things, that the chickens are not exposed to certain toxins in their environment, that they have enough room to at least move around and stretch their wings without difficulty, that their food and water be plentiful and clean, and that the chickens have access to an "enriching environment" - basically, that they have things to do other than wait around to die. The result of these standards are chickens who are free of disease, not overly stressed during their lifetime, and yet also free of antibiotics. The chickens are slaughtered via sticking (possibly after being stunned or rendered unconscious), and a short prayer to the God of Islam Allah is said before each chicken is cut so that the meat is also halal. 

After slaughter, the chickens are air-chilled. This essentially means that instead of being dunked in chlorinated water to cool them down (if you remember the controversy about "chlorinated chicken" from a few years ago, this is what that was referring to), they are exposed to cold air. This is a superior method for producing chicken that tastes good, since there is no chance the carcass will soak up any extra water and dilute the flavor of the meat, plus the chicken isn't treated with chlorine. But this process requires more resources (water is more efficient than air at cooling things so water immersion is faster; plus air chilling requires more space) and that cost is transferred onto you the consumer. 

From an economic perspective, water chilling is the superior method for mass-producing chicken: water cools things down faster than air at the same temperature, so each chicken spends less time cooling; water tanks are smaller than the facilities required for air chilling; chlorinated water will kill any surface microbes that could cause an immediate health hazard; and since the carcasses will take on water and have a higher sale weight, they can be sold at a higher price even if the cost per pound is the same. So industry has long favored water chilling in places where water is plentiful. But from a gastronomic perspective it's obvious that air-chilling is superior. Air-chilled chickens don't soak up water, so the flavor is more intense; since producers can't just wash off any microbes, they have to take slightly more precautions to ensure the chickens have decent living standards while alive; and the chickens seem to last longer after they've been packaged. The tradeoff is that, since in most cases air-chilling is a less time- and resource-efficient, more-expensive process, that cost is transferred onto the consumer; but you get what you pay for.

For all these reasons we sell air-chilled chicken at [my shop]. 

Now after the chicken has been slaughtered, cleaned, and aged for about a day to fend off rigor mortis, they're ready for processing. The most basic way you're likely to get a chicken is as a so-called "whole chicken." But of course the chicken isn't whole - it's already had it head, neck, and feet removed, its entrails taken out (possibly also cleaned and returned to the carcass as giblets), and its oil gland (technical name: uropygial gland) removed. All of these steps are done to make your job at home (or our job here at the shop) easier; again, the cost for these conveniences are transferred ultimately onto the consumer.

Before we start to cut, a brief word on food safety. Chicken is infamous for its risk of salmonella. At the farms, some chickens have salmonella inside of them, and they pass this on to their eggs. Critically, the salmonella can actually get into the muscle fibers of the chicken, for one reason or another, and so rare chicken is usually considered unsafe even though rare beef is usually OK if it came from a trusted source. A lot of this risk is mitigated in chickens raised in clean environments, but it's always there. This is why the FDA says to always cook your chicken to 165 deg. F - it's the temperature at which foodborne pathogens die instantly. However, [this section needs more work]

Chicken breakage

I say "breakage" to mean any approach to turning a whole chicken to smaller parts. 

Even if you leave the chicken whole for roasting, you'll likely benefit from removing the wishbone, which is the bird's clavicle. This makes carving the breast easier on a whole bird, and is essential for breaking it down into more parts later.

Demonstration: removing wishbone.

Spatchcocking. This entails removing the spine and flattening the bird so that it lies flat, with its breast flanked by its legs. This shape is very conducive to roasting or grilling and is a good way to both shorten the cook time and produce a juicier roast.

Demonstration: removing spine with shears; removing keelbone.

Now the bulk of our class will focus on fabricating a chicken into eight parts: chicken 8 ways, as we call it. It produces two drums, two thighs, two breasts, and two wings.

There are a few ways to go about this; but I'm going to assume you don't have a pair of kitchen shears at home and show you how I would do this at the shop. After some practice this method is extremely quick and pretty easy. There are a few hard steps but we'll take our time on them.

The first step is removing the wishbone, which we've already demonstrated.

Severing the spine. Slice through the skin adjoining the thighs and breasts, one at a time. Make incisions that slice all the way to the spine on the backside of the bird. Hyperextend the spine to snap it at this central point; slice through the fissure with the knife to separate the two halves. This last step might take a little force.

Separating the legs from the spine. We'll do one side at a time. Dislocate the hip joint by extending the thigh backwards. Feel for the bony section of leg near the spine. Cut through the exposed tendons at this part of the carcass, and extend this cut towards the tail of the carcass to separate the leg below the joint from the spine. Now you can remove the legs by simply cutting the rest of the way through the joint, or you can optionally remove the oysters: this step takes extra time but I always do it since the oysters are probably the best part of the chicken.

Demo: removing oysters.

Now we'll separate the drumsticks and the thighs. On the cut side of the legs, find the line of fat running across the joint. Follow this line with your knife in a clean cut. This method will almost always lead you straight through the joint, but you may miss. If so, explore with your knife until you find the joint: your knife will go straight through with little resistance. You can cut through the bone with brute strength, but it looks worse and will hurt your knife. Repeat on the other leg.

Now we'll tackle the other half of the bird, which is sometimes called a crown roast. First, remove the wings. The best way to do this is with a sort of scooping motion. Have the crown laying on its breast and grab a wing between your fingers, then twist the wing to expose the armpit. Cut into this crease. You'll probably hit bone, but keep exploring with your knife until you cut into the joint (you'll probably need to cut closer to the breast in order to do this). Once you're in it, twist the knife towards you and finish the cut. The end result should be a separated chicken wing with minimal breast meat on it. This takes a lot of practice, so don't worry if you don't get it at first. Repeat on the other wing.

Now we have to remove the backbone. We can do this by standing the chicken on its head end and cutting down the ribcage. The right part to start the cut is where the ribcage seems to have a crook in it. Keep the movement quick and confident, and try to cut straight down to the board. Sometimes you go straight through; sometimes you get caught on a bone. If you do get caught, your best best is just to crunch straight through. Repeat on the other side to yield a neck connected to the spine.

The remaining breast portion is a bone in whole breast (also sometimes called a crown roast). We only have one more cut: to separate the two breasts. This is as simple as laying the breast skin-side-down, marking the middle point through the keel bone, and cutting through. This takes some oomph, but is otherwise pretty simple - just crunch though.

Our yield now is two breasts, two wings, two thighs, and two drums - chicken 8 ways. As a bonus, we also have the spine, also cut in two. You can further fabricate this into a "country cut" chicken by cutting the breasts in half. This makes all the pieces a more even size: much better for frying or sauteing.

Bonus demos: Separating wings into party wings, deboning breasts, deboning legs.

To salt pork

After two weeks in its tub of salt, my beautiful piece of pork belly is now officially saltpork.

Beautiful saltpork

Salt pork is one of those foods that just about everyone from a pig-raising part of the world would have eaten until about yesterday. This simple and rather humble ingredient was once so common that it was often referred to simply as “pork,” with fresh pork needing to be specified if a recipe called for it. Yet it’s so uncommon today, with refrigeration, better packaging, and the sheer quantity and lower cost of meat making it essentially obsolete. (Of course there is bacon, but that’s really a different product with a different purpose; and even the bacon we get in the store or make ourselves today is not as it used to be.)

Now, given that my desire to make salt pork came from its being used in Auguste Escoffier’s recipe for tomato sauce, I figured I would follow the recipe for it which he helpfully provides. His recipe - #267: Dry Salt Curing - stipulates a mixture in ratio of 40g saltpeter to 1kg coarse salt (in due proportion to the amount of meat being cured, which he doesn’t elaborate on); the pieces of meat are “pierced right through the center with a large needle” (?) and then rubbed with pure saltpeter before being covered in the salt mixture. For each kilogram of salt, you add a sprig of thyme and half a bayleaf. Simple!

With this recipe in mind, and knowing I was going to scale it down, I happily set off to chinatown to buy some pork belly on the cheap. I ended up purchasing about a pound. I already had coarse salt, saltpeter, and the herbs, so I was ready to go.

But as I reread the recipe I became a little…consternated. Now, saltpeter has always kind of skeeved me out, as does any ingredient which may be poisonous. It’s the sort of thing where if I cook with it, I always try the food myself and wait a while to see if it’s safe before serving it to other people. To this end, I was double checking the numbers here and while the ratio of salt to saltpeter seemed normal, the instruction to rub the meat down with pure saltpeter seemed a little absurd. I don’t know if the material they were working with was less pure or if this is really just meant for really big hunks of meat like a whole pork shoulder or what, but I decided to skip that part, and since the amount of saltpeter would be minuscule with my little piece of pig anyways, I just forwent the saltpeter altogether. So, really the only thing separating this saltpork from something a Union Army soldier or Royal Navy cookie would have used is the herbs.

In it went to the tupperware with a sprig of thyme and a bayleaf (a laughably small amount of aromatics btw, but according to Escoffier this is actually over-herbed by a significant margin). 

In she goes...

(I ended up completely filling the tub)

This all was about two weeks ago. Today my little belly emerged from its salt tub, no longer green meat but real, true, salt pork. It has a strong porcine smell when it cooks, and somewhat of a musky pig flavor on its own; hard to say if that’s a product of the meat or the curing (probably the former honestly, but it’s rare in America to find pork that tastes like…anything…so it’s a little surprising to me). I honestly don’t mind it, and in the context of a sauce it mellows out and becomes quite nice. A little…earthy, maybe? I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s worth nothing that literal musk is the base note for many high-end perfumes. I made a quick tomato sauce and it was delicious.

The major benefit that I can see with this ingredient as opposed to, say, bacon or guanciale or even pancetta - which is the closest of these to true salt pork - is that it has a much more neutral flavor since it’s not aromatized with smoke or a lot of spices. So instead of smokey tomato sauce, or tomato-and-bacon sauce, the end product was just a good tomato sauce, clean and clear. I also left the skin on, which may be part of the reason it smelled so strongly (I’ve heard Chinese chefs say you should singe and scrub pork skin or else your pork belly dish will have a “skin smell”) which should add some gelatin to a long-simmered sauce, in addition to keeping the pieces from totally dissolving away.

The applications for this are legion. Baked beans, soups and stews, sauces, garnishes… is anybody working on a saltpork-lard-washed cocktail? Anyways, I’m getting carried away. The pork is delicious and I’ll be using it in future blog poasts. Next time I may make a bigger quantity and use nitrates. Thyme will thell.

To health!