FOLIO
Just in case any of y’all were wondering: One of my main food passions is the craft of charcuterie. Charcuterie is the ultimate way to Chef Up meats! Wild boar rillettes, rabbit sausage, lomo de bellota, saucisson en brioche, Vietnamese-style terrine. Unbelievably luscious, delectable, scrumptious, amazing, awe-inspiring delicacies all upon one board and all mine.
A truly memorable charcuterie board is a rare treasure and therefore should be cherished. I shall never forget the one at Walt Disney World Resort’s Yachtsman Steakhouse.
The craft of charcuterie requires all the skills that make cooking a rewarding experience.
The term ‘charcuterie’ is one of the most misunderstood culinary terms in American cuisine — maybe because it’s a French term. Most average people either don’t have any idea what charcuterie means or assume it is some esoteric classical French food that has no place on an American table. Now, I’m no Francophile, but their charcuterie rocks! The super-refined, high-end French fare like pâté, terrines, mousses and parfaits (like the chicken liver I drooled over last week) exemplify only a small moiety of the craft of charcuterie.
At its most basic level, charcuterie simply means processed meat. All of you have eaten some form of charcuterie in your lives — hello, bologna! — and probably never knew it.
An ideal example is meatloaf. Yes, that delicious all-American comfort food is actually a simplification of a French country-style pâté. That’s right! Mom was actually practicing the age-old craft of charcuterie, and you — being an ignorant soul — were unconsciously consuming a form of snooty-tooty French cuisine.
The first recorded use of charcuterie was a form of sausage in ancient Greece. So I guess the wise philosophers and scientists also invented tailgating. It’s only logical, like Plato used to say, “Gotta pre-party before the Olympics.”
Beyond simple sausage, charcuterie encompasses myriad forms, from the thousand types of salami to hams (remember the smoked ham recipe I gave y’all) to rustic rillettes, confits, pâtés and mousselines — even corned beef and pastrami. Fortunately, the popularity of charcuterie has exploded in recent years. Chefs are once again embracing this ancient craft, which requires them to dedicate untold hours of passion to the grinding, salting, seasoning, brining, stuffing, drying and slow-cooking that the art requires. Is it worth it? I’ll let you know when my three-day-brined, smoked and steamed pastrami comes out of the oven. You can even try the recipe yourself.
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Chef Bill’s Pastrami
Brine Ingredients
- 1 gallon water
- 350 grams kosher salt
- 225 grams sugar
- 42 grams pink salt
- 8 grams pickling spice
- 90 grams brown sugar
- 1/4 cup honey
- 5 garlic cloves, minced
- 5 pound brisket, trimmed
Spice Blend
- 4 tbsp. coriander seeds, toasted and crushed
- 4 tbsp. black peppercorns, toasted and crushed
Directions
- Combine brine ingredients. Bring to a boil. Chill.
- Inject the brisket with brine at six points. Cover brisket with cooled brine; weigh down with a plate to submerge. Brine for three days.
- Wash brisket and dry. Cover with spice blend.
- Hot smoke at 180°F until meat reaches 150°F. Remove and place on a screen in a four-inch hotel pan with one inch of water on bottom. Cover and braise at 300°F for two hours.
Until we cook again,
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Contact Chef Bill Thompson, owner of Amelia Island Culinary Academy in Historic Fernandina Beach, with your recipes or questions at cheffedup@folioweekly.com, for inspiration to get you Cheffed Up!
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