Sunday, June 27, 2010

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.

3 comments:

  1. Wei Wei (hello in mandarin on the phone)

    still knitting? no time for anything else? update please! ;)

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  2. Still knitting, but my stepmother died last week and I've been in Auckland for her funeral. She had been suffering from Alzheimer's for years and was 86 so it wasn't tragic or anything. I'm making some haggis (not from scratch, so not gory) right now, will post about it tomorrow. I bought some shoes in Auckland too!

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  3. Slaps forehead!

    S.H.O.E.S.

    those were definitely missing from your blog lately!

    waiting patiently .....

    ReplyDelete