So Cheeky

If you've been following along, at least since Christmas, you've heard us mention guanciale a time or two.  I know I keep telling you I'm going to post about how we made ours, and that day has finally come.  Huzzah!

So, if you remember, back in December when Justin unwrapped his Christmas present of a pig head, and we made porchetta, we cut off one of the cheeks to make guanciale.  If you're not familiar with guanciale, it's basically like bacon, but instead of being made from the pig's belly, it's made from the cheek.  It's quite easy to make too.

Once you have your cheek, you want to make sure that all surfaces are as smooth as possible.  Since it's going to cure, and be exposed to air, you want to minimize the amount of nooks and crannies where the bad bacteria/mold can grow.  So if you're cutting the cheek off the face yourself, make as smooth of cuts as possible.  Then rub 'er down with your salt and spices.  We used a combo of Kosher salt, black peppercorns, juniper berries, star anise, red pepper flakes, and coriander.  Pretty much the same mixture we used for the porchetta.  Once it was rubbed down, we put it in a ziploc bag and stored it in the fridge for about 2 weeks.  You really only want to cure it for about a week, otherwise it'll turn out a tad salty, as ours did (womp, womp!)

after a week of curing

Before you hang it to dry out, you want to rinse off the salt and spices you rubbed all over it.  Pat it dry, and hang it up over the sink.  You want it to lose about 30% of its weight.  If you notice any fuzzy or colored mold starting to grow on it, you'll want to wipe it off with a towel.  But if you see the white mold, like you'd find on salami, you're in good shape.

Day 0

Day 7

Day 14

So after 2 weeks, our guanciale had lost 40% of its weight, and we could finally eat some! At this point, you can just slice it up and cook it like bacon.  We've had some for breakfast in place of bacon, and we've added it to our meals, like when we made gnocchi the other night.

Now, go get yourself a pig head and start curing!

Red Carpet Sunday Dinner

Though we're trying to eat a little more healthy these days, every now and then you need a comforting, rich Sunday dinner.  Since we had potatoes from the share, we went with gnocchi in a rich cream sauce.  Making your own gnocchi may seem daunting, but its actually fairly simple.

To start, poke your potatoes with a fork so the steam can escape, and pop them in the oven for about an hour.  You want them to cook up, and for the moisture to escape.  Otherwise your dough will be sticky and heavy.  Once they're out of the oven, peel them, and push them through a ricer, if you have one.  We don't, so we just made sure there weren't any big lumps of potato.

To the potatoes, you'll add a couple egg yolks, some flour, grated cheese (we used pecorino), and some salt.  Since we were going all out, we used a combination of kosher salt and truffle salt.  Gradually add the flour in, as needed.  You want the dough to pull away from the bowl and not feel sticky.  When you reach that consistency, stop adding flour, and start rolling out ropes of dough.

Then you can start cutting the ropes into the gnocchi.  We put our gnocchi board to use to give each one the little ridges, but you can also just roll them down the back of a fork.  Place them on a floured tray or plate until you're ready to cook them.

 Cooking them is really simple.  Just boil a pot of water, as if you were making any other kind of pasta.  Be sure to salt the water too.  Once it's boiling, drop in a bunch of the gnocchi.  You'll probably have to do a few batches so you don't over crowd the pot.  They'll tell you when their done by floating to the surface.  Fresh pasta takes a little longer than dried pasta to cook, about 3-4 minutes instead of the two or so for the dried.  Then just scoop 'em out and place them in a bowl until you're ready to toss them in your sauce.

For the sauce, Justin whipped up one of his signature sauces.  It starts with some brown butter, shallots, and garlic.  Then you add some cream, pecorino, sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms, and sage.  We also added a splash of truffle oil.

Once all of those flavors melded together, we were ready to add toss the gnocchi in it.  We saved a bit of the starchy water the gnocchi was cooked in and added some to the sauce.  The sauce had started to thicken anyway, but the starchy water also helps the sauce adhere to the pasta.  So you should do this anytime you cook pasta.  Once the water was mixed into the sauce, we dumped the gnocchi into the pan so they could get coated in the sauce as well.

To finish off each plate, we sprinkled on some crisped guanciale, a little more pecorino, and some fried sage.  It's such a rich, and filling dish, but so full of flavor.

This was a perfect dish for Oscar night, it had the glitz and glam of Hollywood from the truffle, and was hearty and comforting just like a night on the couch.

Face Off!

What better to way to spend Christmas morning than by defacing a pig, literally?!?! 

Justin was welcomed into the family by receiving a pig head for Christmas.  I guess its a replacement for a lump of coal ;) 

So after opening presents on Christmas morning, we set off to make porchetta di testa!

First, we needed to grind up our spices that would later be wrapped in the face.  With Justin's new morter & pestle, we ground up black peppercorns, coriander, star anise, bay leaves, red pepper flakes, and some juniper berries.

Next came Mr. Pig!

I gave him a quick shave to get rid of some of the longer facial hair.  He had a lot on his ears too.

Once he was clean shaven, and looking handsome, it was time to cut the face off.  I took the first stab at it (get it...stab...).  My cousin, Lauren, who'd taken a pig butchering class and learned how to make this, coached us along.  Using short strokes with the knife, and pulling the skin away, we just followed along the skull to release the face.  We were careful not to puncture the eyeball, and tried to keep everything in tact as best we could.

It was a little tough to navigate around the socket by his temple, but I managed to get the left side of his face off in one piece.  Next, it was Justin's turn to cut off the right side and the snout.





Then we were left with the pig face, in two pieces.  Since Justin cut the snout off, I had the pleasure of cutting out the tongue.

The next step in the preperation was to remove all the glands, lymph nodes, and other untasty bits.  We took off a fair amount of fat in the process, but there was plenty of meat left.  Before laying out the face to season it, we cut off one of the cheeks to make guanciale (more on that in a minute).  We tucked the ears through the eye sockets to fill the holes, and layed out the face.  It took a lot of flipping and turning of the face pieces to figure out the best way to layer the two sides so we could roll it into a fairly even log.  Once the pieces were in place, we massaged in our seasonings with Kosher salt, getting into all the little nooks.



With the leftover salt and seasonings, we packed it on top of the cheek we cut out, and placed it in a ziploc bag where it will sit in the fridge for a week.  When we get home we'll hang it up to finish curing, so we'll post an update when that's ready to eat.

Now, back to the pig face.  While removing the face was time consuming, it was quite a fun experience, while tressing it proved to be more difficult.  Essentially, we rolled our seasoned porchetta like a pork loin, but the uneven shape made it a bit of a challenge. It took me a while to get the hang of looping it around, but it turned out alright.

The porchetta is sitting in the fridge until tomorrow, when we'll roast it.  Once its ready for eating, we'll slice it thin, and treat it like charcuterie.  We'll let you know how it turns out!

And, so we don't waste any bit of the head, we're roasting it (eyeballs and all), to make pork stock.  It should make for some tasty dishes down the road.