Here we are looking at an almost empty plate of the was once piled with mortadella, a very mild, emulsified sausage made out of last week's pig. This is a way to use up some of the excess fat we cut away, or watched being cut away and the scrap/offcut bucket we filled up in the previous session.
This week's hog was not quite as cleanly cut, headwise.
The Saints had just beat the Vikings and were on their way to the Super Bowl. My admiration for Morgan the butcher was only increased as he talked about the crab boil he had had the previous weekend at his grandmother's house in New Orleans. Perhaps my favorite non-eating second of this whole seminar-thingy came when someone asked him about what he boiled his crabs in, and for a second he seemed confused and then a little apologetic almost when he said sort of sheepishly "We just use Zatarain's. Everybody just uses Zatarain's. Or Old Bay, maybe." For the record, I find old bay
cloying and nearly inedible, but I think it is just because I expect boiled seafood to taste like Zatarains and that clovey thing Old Bay has hit's me dead wrong.
Dude made pretty short work of breaking down the carcass, retrieving the tenderloin and the chops and whatnot, and kinda putting them away because they are/were not really the focus of the class. The back leg was buried in salt, where it will be rest for a number of day/weeks determined by its weight, a formula I don't really remember, I figure I can look it up if I need it, and then be hung and aged for a matter of months until it is a prosciutto.
One of the guys in the group had asked specially about porchetta, so we watched as Morgan herbed and spiced and rolled up a handsome hunk of hog belly, which he then tied so it was all skin on the outside which was going to get all crispy and golden brown and keep all the delicious juices sealed inside.
The the customer who wanted the trotters from the previous hog had flaked, but then called and asked that the trotters from this hog be saved. I have only ever attempted trotters pickled, out of a jar from behind the bar at the Saturn in New Orleans, and this attempt did not last long. You can get a lot of pickled hog parts from out of jars behind bars in New Orleans, whole maws being the most arresting from where I sit. But anyway, back to the hog at hand, Morgan boned out the shoulder and prepared it to be made into tasso ham, which is not really ham at all, because it's made out of the shoulder. The meat is packed in salt, a little sugar, and some nitrates. It cures in the this salt mixture for a few hours, maybe a day, and then it get rinsed and herbed & spiced & garlicked up and hot smoked. Tasso is rarely served by itself, it mostly goes in beans or gumbo or jambalaya. They don't display it in the case at Bi-Rite, but Mr Butcher says he usually has some there, so if you are making something that needs it, Bi-Rite is a source, and I can't think of anybody else offhand who would have it.
The session sort of broke up early, with discussions of delicious charcuterie, including a pancetta Maki had made or acquired recently from an acorn fed Iberico hog. It was only so long before the talk had to stop and Maki retired to the market to slice us some of the meats of which he spoke. The pancetta was indescribably sublime. The tasso, which Maki warned was overly salty, was way past edible and would have been fantastic on pizza. All of it was gone before I could get pictures.
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