Pancetta, Weeks Later

After weeks wrapped in plastic in the fridge, the pancetta's moisture levels have evened out significantly and stopped dropping. It's perhaps a bit dryer than it should be, which happily means it's easy to slice. When cooked, it's less sweet and more aggressively porky than when it was younger. The meat has been sitting in my fridge for somewhere near two months, so even though I know the curing has probably made it quite safe, I'm not up for trying it raw any more.

Duck Bacon Results

At work on Saturday, I pulled the duck legs out of their cure and smoked them. Total curing time was 12 days, first in the Ruhlman/Polcyn basic cure for 5 days vacuum-sealed and then 7 more days in a mix of equal parts by volume white sugar and salt with added brown sugar, garlic, and whole coriander, allspice, and black peppercorns, this time in a normal ziploc-type plastic bag. After the first cure period, I thought they weren't fully cured, so I decided to do another week in a cure with the brown sugar and spices that I didn't have time to add on the first try. I didn't have pink salt on hand, so I didn't vacuum-seal the legs for fear of botulism, but from the interior color of the final product I suspect nitrite penetration was quite thorough after the first week.

After 12 days curing, the meat was quite firm, slightly translucent, and wrinkling at the edges. The legs got rinsed, patted dry, and left for an hour to air-dry in the walk-in while the smoker got going. I hot-smoked them over hickory for about an hour and a half, but I think the smoker was only producing good smoke for about 45 minutes to an hour of that time. First I turned the burners under the smoker (just a deep hotel pan rig we use at the restaurant) too low and then fat rendering from the legs dripped down onto the woodchips, effectively forcing me to abandon the smoker and finish the legs in a low (250F) oven for another hour or so. I gave the legs a sniff before I put them in the oven, and the level of smokiness seemed appropriate, so I wasn't unduly worried.

After the duck came out of the oven, I crisped up a few small pieces and it was FANTASTIC. The smokey flavor was perfect and well balanced with the intense meatiness and saltiness, with the brown sugar taking the delicious up another level. I was slightly worried about texture, since duck legs sometimes get a dense sponginess if not cooked long enough, but the texture of even the un-crisped meat is pleasant - dense and a bit chewy in a good way. With some crisped skin and fat thrown in - the ratio of meat to fat is also excellent - these legs are really a great eating experience.

I'm still trying to think of good ways to feature this stuff in our family meals - pasta carbonara and pizza are the only things that have come to mind thus far.

Fresh Whole Wheat Pasta

Inspired by all the fresh pasta making going on around me at work every day. In this case, meditative was the flip-side of tedious.

Recipe.

More Bacterial Magic

It turns out making yogurt is really easy. In fact, the bacteria do all the work. You just have to give them a nice place to multiply, and pretty soon you get to eat them along with the delicious product they've made (transformed?) for you. I was still nervous, though, when I tried it out for the first time. I've ended up with decidedly mediocre results from projects that could be described in similar terms. The beer I invested over a hundred dollars in brewing was pretty pathetic. I was afraid to even try my preserved lemons, and abandoned them when I moved so that they're now a safe half-dozen states away. I've turned out a few inedible loaves of bread. But no matter! Making yogurt, as I said, is really easy. I have a 100% success rate.

These were the sources I used, the high and the low: a NYT article by Harold McGee (a culinary guiding light of mine) and a wikiHow entry. Both are highly recommended reading.

Special equipment: a large microwave-safe bowl (I used Pyrex or something similar). A thermometer with range of at least 100 F - 200 F. Either an oven or some kitchen towels.

I microwaved about a quart and a half of milk for around 8-10 minutes, until it reached around 190 degrees F. Using the microwave once more, I kept the milk between 180 F and 190 F for the next 15 minutes, then cooled it in a water bath to 115 F. The cooling happened surprisingly quickly - less than 10 minutes. I then mixed a few tablespoons of store-bought yogurt (a kind with a bunch of active bacterial cultures) with a similar amount of warm milk, and stirred the milk-yogurt blend into the warm milk. After that the idea is to keep the milk warm - around 100 F - for four or more hours. Luckily, the bacterial growth seems to be exothermic, so after failing to wrap the measuring bowl I had my milk in with kitchen towels, I briefly warmed up my oven until it felt around 100 F, then turned its internal light on and stuck the bowl in there. Harold McGee recommends letting the milk (or soon-to-be yogurt) sit for 4 hours; the wikiHow article wants you to start with seven hours. I didn't time my batch right, so it sat in my oven for almost 12 hours, and it still came out fine: pleasantly tangy and a bit sweet. After sitting, the yogurt needs to be mixed and refrigerated to firm up. The next night, I set some in a strainer lined with a paper coffee filter and put the strainer over a bowl in the fridge overnight, which gave the yogurt a super-thick and creamy Greek-style texture.