Bresaola and coppa (sorta)

The cut of meat that is supposed to be used for bresaola is not one that's available from New Zealand butchers. Here it's part of a larger cut that usually gets made into corned silverside. This week, however, Scotch fillet (aka rib-eye) was on special in large bits for $18.99/kg (usually more like $28.99) and I bought a hunk with the idea that I could use some of it for bresaola, or a close approximation. I dissected it out, using the large muscle for curing, and keeping the surrounding fattier meat for eating as steak or whatever.

I cut as much fat and silverskin off as I could, and have rubbed it in a mixture of salt, sugar, curing salt, thyme and rosemary from the garden, and black pepper and juniper seed from the pantry:

It now needs to sit in the fridge curing for a while before I hang it up to dry.

My other "sorta" thing this weekend is coppa. We can get pork shoulder OK, it's what I use all the time for making sausage, what we can't get is "beef middles" - the large bits of beef intestine into which coppa is supposed to be stuffed. I must see if I can find someone who butchers their own beef, because I can't find any sort of beef casings anywhere. Maybe we export them all? Who knows.

Anyway, I'm making skinny coppa. I cut three bits of meat from the shoulder I used for the "smoked" pepperoni, and cured them with salt and curing salt in the fridge for a few days. I figured they're only little so the salt will get into them a lot quicker than it would a big hunk of meat so they won't need two weeks curing.

Yesterday I rubbed them in a mix of grated orange peel, pepper, a little sugar, and some cardamom and allspice, then I stuffed them into 38mm pork casing like so:

They're hanging up in the pantry with the pepperoni now, drying. I'll have to keep an eye on them and make sure they don't dry out too much, being so skinny.