Bresaola – progress

My eye of round beef has finished curing.  After washing the spices and sludge off its surface, and dowsing it with a little white wine, it is ready for stuffing into natural casing.

After reconstituting the casing, it seemed far too narrow for the beef to fit inside it, but amazingly, the meat went inside with surprisingly little fuss.

The casing is one of the largest you might use in charcuterie, the beef bung.  It could easily fit a larger piece of meat, and much longer too.  Then I trussed the beef and casing with butcher’s twine, which took a bit of time to get the hang of.  In the end, it didn’t look too bad for a first attempt.

I went to hang the beef in my curing chamber, and Sod’s Law, it was just too long to fit.  I hadn’t accounted for the stretching of the casing and the length of the loop of twine adding a couple of inches to the length.  After some cursing, it turned out the bresaola will fit if I hanged it at a slight angle, with an extra line made fast to the other end so it hangs rather like a hammock.  I hope it doesn’t make a difference to the drying.  It should be ready when it has lost 30% of its weight; maybe 2 or 3 months.  Curiously, although my chamber is not tall enough to accomodate the whole length of the bresaola, there is plenty of room behind the beef to hang another piece of meat – I may have to make some pancetta or something else.

Traditional Japanese seasonal food: bamboo shoot

or, takenoko.  The edible shoots of the big bamboo species generally come up in Spring.  There are many ways to eat them: lightly simmered in dashi stock, deep-fried as tenpura or stir-fried with other seasonal vegetables.  However, my family favourite has always been the homely takenoko gohan, or bamboo shoots cooked with rice.  No matter how you cook the shoots, they need to be prepared the same way before they are edible.

First the shoot is topped and peeled, and then simmered in water to which has been added some okara (soy bean residue) and a touch of chile pepper.  The shoot is simmered gently till a wooden skewer passes through its thickest part nice and easily.  It is then removed from the stew-pot, rinsed, further peeled and left to cool at room temperature.

The shoot can then be chopped and is ready for cooking.

In this case, the bamboo shoot pieces are mixed with sliced abura-age (thin layered deep-fried tofu) and then mixed with washed rice and dashi, and cooked as regular rice – pressing a button, in the lazy case of using a domestic rice cooker.  The rice is ready in about 45 minutes, and the dish completed by placing one small branch of kinome (sansho pepper tree) on each diner’s bowl of hot steaming rice.

Best of British

What got me started in charcuterie: the quest for “proper” bacon in Japan.  For me, it would be pork belly that is cured but not smoked, usually with something sweet added to the cure to offset the saltiness.  I’ve made this bacon with white sugar, Demerara sugar, Okinawan brown sugar and different types of honey but so far the best results have come from using Japanese kibisatoh from Hokkaido.  Some Englishmen may argue that bacon should be made with loin, to make the kind of back bacon common to the greasy-spoon English breakfast; the same recipe works just as well with that cut too, with a slightly longer curing time.  Anyone can make this bacon at home without any specialist equipment or fuss, and it is a far, far cry from the horrid watery abominations on offer in Japanese supermarkets.

Simple is best

Very easy, very tasty salad.  We have a four-day holiday from today here in Japan (the infamous Golden Week) so hopefully I can get out on the water instead of just stuffing myself.

King of pot-roast cooking

The French dish cassoulet.

Bresaola

Finally got round to starting my homemade bresaola.  There is an online butcher here that sells beef eye of round, and as soon as it arrived I set to work.  The cut has a fair bit of fat and silverskin on it, and these need to be removed.  Once done, the cut is ready to be cured.  This one came to 1700g when fully trimmed and prepared.

I used Ruhlman & Polcyn’s recipe for the cure, although I did not use all the spices they recommend.  In my opinion, a lot of their recipes are over-spiced and over-herbed, but like all my cooking, I prefer things simpler rather than architectural.  Aside from the orthodox amounts of sea-salt, freshly ground black pepper and nitrate in their recipe, I just added a few juniper berries and omitted the bay, thyme and rosemary.  The beef is now curing in my fridge and should be ready for hanging in a couple of weeks or so.

Breeze over Kasumigaura

I had no luck on the water yesterday fishing for mabuna Crucian carp – aside from losing a very good fish that threw the hook at the surface, she had at least a shaku on her (30.3cm).  The wind was too strong for orthodox fishing: a stiff northerly breeze in the morning that only got stronger as the day went on, till it was howling at midday.  We packed up and left the lake at 1:30pm when the wind grew so strong as to lift one’s tackle out the water and send it streaming in a horizontal pennant in the air from the end of the rod.  I think we were one or two days too early or late as the majority of fish in the area were spawning in the shallows, you can hear and see them thrashing about, and such fish do not take the bait.  Some other fish, no doubt spent after their frenzied exertions, were idly sunning themselves at the surface or taking gulps of air and at one spot, where two rivulets conjoined, some fish were leaping out of the water.  The lucky ones would fall down the bank and roll back into the water; one unlucky fish we came upon was stranded and had its eyes and intestines picked out and eaten by the inevitable crows.  Kasumigaura is always an interesting place to visit, and for me a lack of fish in the bag is no cause for disappointment.  I passed some time watching a local man in the shallows with a home-made fishgig, standing as still as a hunting heron, looking to spear passing koi carp – in these days of opulent luxury carp is no longer a staple food in Japan but the older locals still take them.  I also spotted a number of big birds of prey soaring about but had forgotten my spyglass so I couldn’t identify them, but most sensible birdlife was taking shelter from the wind.  On the way back my fishing buddy almost ran over a cock pheasant that had walked blindly into the road, which would have been an ironic end to such a huge fine creature that had survived the Kasumigaura hunting season; luckily the bird came to his senses and ran off just before we flattened him.

Memories

old gyotaku appearing whilst clearing out my old stuff.  Whilst none of the fish were spectacular in size, each gyotaku lists the date, boat and place the fish was caught, and its particulars, and each one has a story to it. Just fingering through them brought back a host of memories: the first madai I ever caught; the first madai I caught on a rig entirely of my own construction; the marbled flounder I caught in Iwate when it was minus 7°C and nobody else caught anything; the young suzuki caught on a mebaru line that tasted so good when grilled; the giant aji (38cm) I snagged whilst caught in a genuine squall during Golden Week; the Pacific cod so big I had no washi paper that it would fit on, so I ripped up my bedsheet and printed it on that…happy, happy memories.  The genuine good fish gyotaku are of course, still on my wall.

First herabuna fishing of 2013

Fishing at a stocked herabuna pond seems to me one of the most scientific forms of angling there is, in addition to being very fun too.  I never tire of it, and am glad to have made the trip despite my recent busy schedule.

All quiet

Sorry for the lack of updates; I’ve just moved house.  For the next few months rod making will be somewhat out of the question, but I am still fishing occasionally and have started making charcuterie again.