Tuesday, September 6, 2011

A Spoonful of Sugar Makes the Medicine Go Down...

I had a dream last night that Stein and I were in the kitchen getting things organized to open. I was standing near the refrigerators looking at the new drywall on the wood beam they installed for the earthquake retrofit and we were discussing whether we should split the fridges and put tables in between or how to best use the space with the beam jutting out a bit. I remember thinking I wanted to get stuff into place so we could start cleaning and wondering if Galen was done moving the chairs in the dining room around.

It was good to know I still could think past the construction and so with that in mind I got up and started the post-construction to-do list. I set up a meeting with Stein and Galen tomorrow to talk about the weeks ahead. There are a lot of odds and ends on my mind...

I stopped in to Creek Monkey on Sunday with the girls and talked to Jim (Blier, the owner). He wants brats (bratwurst)... and I want his wood charc platters that Huge bought to showcase my salumi. The new chef does not seem interested in Salumi (he interned at Olivetos and might want to make his own?). We did the tasting a while ago and they have not shown interest since. Anyway, so I made 10 # of brats on Monday and I am going to see if he wants to trade me wooden platters (which are just taking up space and not being used) for Brats.

I also lost a whole batch of sopresatta. I was too lazy to go get the meat from someplace good and used stuff from Smart and Final (which is on the way to the rental kitchen). Lesson learned. But I grabbed 10# of pork today and need to probably to at least grind tonight and try to mix and stuff tomorrow.

I need to confirm which salumi we will showcase on our initial "Ploughman's Lunch". I know we will do Finocciona, Nduja, Capicolla and Testa (head cheese). This is my proudest menu item and I need to really nail it right away. I am marketing myself as one of the very few chefs who is deadly serious about charcuterie and I cannot afford for my showcase menu item to be anything less that ALLThat, no bag of chips necessary. A good Charc Platter will showcase the Charcutier's general mastery of various techniques including fresh, smoked, cured, dried and emulsified salumi... generally speaking you want some type of terrine or potted meat (pate or rillette), smoked (like andouille or chorizo), cured (lardo), emulsified (mortadella) and dried (capicolla, finocciona, sauccision sec etc).

It feels insecure to showcase too many of the long cured items; they tend to seem very showy and difficult but in reality making a really good mortadella takes more skill and is far more difficult to really nail. But I am only planning to do five on a platter and Stein and I have been working so hard to build our quiver of the longer cured items it is difficult to fight the urge, like tacky new money, to flamboyantly show off these products.

We can't put everything on there :( I am leaning towards doing a Mortadella). Ours is really good and I met a couple at the farmers market who raises the cattle you see grazing on the Martinez hillside as you drive on the freeway... I am going to see if I can get some beef from them so I can make local Mortadella. Mortadella only takes a few days to make so I can wait until we are in our own kitchen to start that process. Plus, no one knows it really but other charcutiers, but Mortadella takes the most skill to get really right. It is a tempestuous dance of buffalo chopper, dry ice and really good beef, then sous vide cooking to the perfect temperature for the shortest time possible to bring it up to temp. Dry cured salumi is more forgiving IMO.

So once we figure out which salumi we will be using, then we need to choose condiments. Definitely a pickle of some type (house made). We did Gardineri, but not as much as I would like. We need a cheese (OH NO! I forgot the name of the cheese we picked! Back to the Cheese Board I go...) and some type of sweet preserve appropriate to meat (fig mostarda?). Probably candied pecans as well.

I am also experimenting with cold shipping methods this week. I am going to ship 4# of capicolla to Montrios. A very funny trip to Coldice in Oakland... I come to the door and there is kind of... no way to get in. So a lady comes to the door and leans her head out and says, "Can I help you?" And I introduce myself and say I am looking for cold shipping. She says, "we don't sell retail". So tell her that I am a professional! Anyway, we got the stuff and we will be testing it out tomorrow!

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