I'm so excited... and I just can't hide it!

Sometimes everyone wins. I found a guy trying to unload a bunch of restaurant equipment, who is willing to store it for a short period of time who has an electric steam table (which I have to have) with the right kind of sneeze guard (I was going to have to buy a new one for $500 or more) for $600. SCORE! Plus he has a ton of small wares. Coffe cups, knives, forks, stuff I need. I am going to go check it all out this Sunday.

Plus... I am so excited... I know it is a real luxury right now, and money is tight, but I found cheap airfare to An Tir for the Culinary Symposium. I have been trying to string together a bit of sausage taxonomy and since the time and the regions of sausages are vast, it is a spotty project at best. I've been focused very Italian...

If you read my LJ blog regularly or have attended one of my classes, you might remember my musings on the differences between modern salumi and late period Italian salumi.

Modern Salumi

• Sea Salt
• Acidophilus
• Sugar
• Nitrates or Nitrites (depending on the length of cure)
• Meat (ground)
• Fat (frozen, chopped with a buffalo chopper)
• Casings (natural or otherwise)
• Spices
• Sometimes cold or hot smoked

Late Period Italian Salumi

• Sea (or other) Salt
• Meat (hand chopped)
• Fat (hand chopped)
• Spices
• Casings (natural or none)
• Sometimes cold or hot smoked

Now the process for modern salumi is the acidophilous creates an acidic (lactic acid) environment by consuming the sugar and exhaling lactic acid. This inhibits food born pathogens. It also lends a tangy flavor (acid) to salumi.

Acidophilous is not used in whole meat curing (like pancetta, bacon, capicolla, breasola), only in chopped or ground sausages.

For Period salumi, they are primarily counting on a process of denaturing and even occasionally almost completely dessicating food. The salt inhibits bacteria growth by by drawing water out of cells through osmosis. The cells want to hit equalibrium so they will continue to try to balance the amount of salt on the inside to the outside (this is why when salumi is too salty you can leech the salt out with unsalty liquid usually).

I've made several varieties of salumi without nitrates or acidophilous and found them to be very successful, yet the color is not what we are used to. But for my purposes (a salumi platter) the variety of color on the plate works for me and the flavor has been really really good.

So, I kept wondering WHY do we use these chemicals. I can trace back the nitrates in food preservation to the American Civil War where saltpeter was commonly used for both ammunition and to preserve meat. I recently (to my meat-geek heart's delight) found evidence of the use of acidophilous to the Viking era where they stored many food products in Whey (where acidophilous is naturally occuring).

But it still seems strage that a process that went on for thousands of years without issue has become so chemicalized. I guess that is just the way of things.

I find the journey that our food has made over the years facinating and I am eager to go to An Tir, take some classes and have yet more peices of the puzzle fall into place. Also the awesome thing about having the SCA as a resource... I know crazy cool information about what I do! I am also excited to get to hang out with Master Eduardo on Thursday before the event (the other half of my brain).

I know things are a bit slow right now, but I am finding things to do and my enthusiasm is very high!