I believe that, in an earlier post, I raved about the enormous farmer's market in Portland. Located in the beautiful park blocks on the campus of one of my illustrious alma maters, Portland State, this market has it all: truckloads of beautiful produce, great coffee, great pastry, great bluegrass, and loads of stalls selling small batch, artisanal products. There were pickles of all kinds, preserves, cheeses, breads, and my favorite, charcuterie. One stall had pork, Elk, and bear salami, plus a number of delicious pates. I don't know why, but it had never occurred to me that normal people could make salami. I remember my witty friend Mike once saying to me, "last night, I made mayonnaise and a CD, two things I thought only God could make." I think salami fit into that category for me.
So, it being me, I became determined to take on this little project. How could I not? It combines my well documented love for all things cured, salty, and pig-based with my admittedly amateur interest in chemistry. It's consistent with my food values, such as staying connected with your food, being able to control ingredients and source them yourself, and staying off the grid of mega-agra business as much as possible. Plus, it's just so cool! What better way to spend my precious sabbatical time?
Cool, but also complicated. Salami is what is known as dry cured, which means the meat is never cooked. Instead, it is transformed via a combination of salt, nitrites, and good bacteria. The key is to find an environment where the salami can slowly but consistently lose water content, that is conducive to good bacterial growth but retards bad bacterial growth. Traditionally, salami were hung in caves, which provide cool, moist, consistent conditions. More and more, I think I would really like to own my own cave. They seem fundamental to good cheese, good wine, and now, good salami. And, handy for surviving nuclear fallout, mitigating the impact of global warming, or riding out the end of modern civilization. Yes, buying my own cave is definitely on the to do list.
In the meantime, I found a very handy website chronicling how to MacGyver a pseudo-cave using an old refrigerator. Thank you, Matthew Wright, for knowing how to write complete, clear instructions! I pretty much just bought everything he told me to buy, often using the links he provided. Amusingly, when I bought the humidifier and humidity controller together on Amazon, they recommended a Charcuterie cookbook and the refrigerator override. Apparently, I am not the only Amazon customer with this idea. My only quibble with Mr. Wright is his sense that one could set oneself up for salami making for less than a hundred dollars. The sausage stuffer alone cost that much. I now understand why salami is so damn expensive.
It took me a while to gather my equipment and my ingredients. I had to wait for one of the pig farmers at the farmer's market to slaughter another hog so that I could purchase the fat back, which apparently is usually thrown away as waste meat. Wasting meat is bad, especially when it is delicious, delicious pork fat. By the way, all the pig I used was locally and humanely raised by farmers I have met personally. I ordered arcane powders called things like Cure #2 and Bactoferm. I am now on the Northern Tool mailing list (they made the sausage stuffer), so if any one needs, say, a combine, or small generator, I know where to get one.
Finally, three weeks ago, I was ready to get started. I decided to begin with a simple sopprasseta style, which means not hot and fairly large pieces of fat. Dicing the fat by hand took a long time, but everything else came together fairly quickly. Working with the hogs casing (oh, Super 1, how I love that you sell hog casings) was not as disgusting as I had feared, although they do smell really rather awful. Stuffing the sausage itself needed two people, and we got better as we went along, getting larger, smoother sausages with less air trapped inside. Then, it was just a matter of hanging them and waiting to see what happened.
There was some fuzzy mold growth, which is bad, but it never penetrated the casings, and I was able to wipe it off with vinegar. Other than that, everything seems to have worked the way it was supposed to. There are some pretty serious risks involved in eating home-cured salami. Bad bacteria can cause food poisoning, and there is a small chance of botulism poisoning, which is very, very bad. But, everything I read (and I did read a lot about the process) indicated that, if things went wrong, it would be obvious. The meat would be stinky, squishy, fuzzy, off color, and generally not like salami. But my meat lost the requisite 35% of its weight in the amount of time I expected it to, and came out firm and dark and remarkably salami-like.
Last Friday, I tried my first bite. Jeremy was more than happy to let me poison myself in the name of culinary experimentation, so he watched me eat four small slices and waited for me to race to the bathroom. As he explained, one of us had to be able to drive to the hospital, so he was just being practical. I admit that I was nervous enough that I barely tasted it. The next day, after twenty-four hours with no ill effects, I was confident enough to eat more and even serve a few slices to nervous dinner guests (none of whom have reported any symptoms). Since, I have put away nearly a whole salami by myself, with no ill effects, so I am confident that it is safe to eat.
But, is it good? Was it worth the effort and expense? It is good, meaty with a nice hit of bay and black pepper, and not overwhelmingly salty. I'm not sure it is noticeably better than stuff I can buy, especially if I compare it to the yummy stuff they sell at Saunder's. In the future, I want more spice and more garlic. But it is definitely good enough to make me want to keep working on my recipe. After all, this is only my first batch, and salami-making is a craft passed down from generation to generation in some parts of the world. Plus, my friend John, who hunts, has promised me a couple of pounds of meat from whatever harmless woodland creature he murders this fall, so that I can try game salami. (Can you tell that I am somewhat conflicted about hunting?) In the meantime, I have seven sticks of really quite good salami in my fridge, and I'm about to leave the country for a month, so I'm looking for homes for them. Any takers?
I have one more problem you all can help me with. I need a name for my salami. I'm not going into business, but still, branding is important. Okay, it is completely not important, but it sounds like fun. My current contenders are "Go Pig (or go home)" or "Maiale Vecchia" (which is Italian for "old pork." Surely, you can do better!
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