When choosing where to take us this weekend I’m convinced Australian Capital Tourism had me and only me in mind.  When I discovered they had booked Poachers Pantry for Saturday lunch I squealed with delight.  Poachers Pantry is a smokehouse with a cafe. The cafe serves an amazing array of their own hot and cold smoked produce. Smoking just happens to be my new favourite cooking method and this place has given me some great inspiration for new cooking adventures.

There were 50 of us enjoying the food and wine, so we didn’t get to choose what we ate. However, having perused the online menu since our visit I can confirm that we received a great selection of typical menu items.

You name it, Poachers Pantry smoke it.  There was beef and chicken, pork and lamb, in multiple different forms including ham, prosciutto and bresaola. All could be eaten unadulterated but were perfectly matched with some cheese, pickles and tapenade.

And if the meat platter was not enough three main course options followed.  As a large group we got to share the smoked chicken, fish and sticky beef ribs.  The only problem I had was to limit my portion size so that I could sample a little of each dish.

I’m struggling to pick the stand out dish of the day.  The smoked chicken breast was served in the style of Saltimboca.  This was so unusual that it left me wanting more.  You can see that heavenly, tell tale ring of smoke around the edge.

The sticky, slow cooked beef ribs was a classic, dish that fell off the bone. Served with a coriander relish and a rich gravy; it was also difficult to say no to seconds and thirds.

I have included a photo of dessert because it was pretty and the rumblings from around the room suggested it was good. I was so full on smoked meat I couldn’t even find my dessert belly so no fennel flower panacotta passed these lips.

It has been over a year since I completed the Charcutepalooza challenge and made meat at home.  Unfortunately when I started making cheese I had to clean the fridge and turn the shelves over to a different food group.  Having tasted all of the amazing Poachers Pantry produce I have been re-inspired to make meat and smoke it with my new found smoking skills.  Second hand fridge shopping here I come.  Watch this space for more smoked goods.

Poachers Pantry is open for brunch, lunch and dinner at weekends. Check the website for specific opening times.

Nic Cooks dined as a Human Brochure competition winner.

Back to the meat. The final challenge is to show off all of the skills we have learnt in the past year. For the apprentice challenge, create something that includes 3 charcuterie skills and for the charcuterie challenge create something that demonstrates 4 or more skills. So where do you start? I’ve learnt so much that I wanted to create something that demonstrated all of my new skills. The first idea that popped into my head was canapés. I love making platters of bite sized goodies and don’t need too much persuasion to cook up a storm. I didn’t manage to include all of the skills from the past twelve months but I gave it a red hot crack.

The most amazing discovery this year has been the smoking. I’ve never smoked before in my life so all the twitter spam I received trying to persuade me to stop was hilarious. If only they knew what I was really up to.

I enjoyed the smoked bacon, but my real triumphs were the smoked duck ham and whole smoked trout. This was the third time I have smoked a duck breast this year and each time it has got just a little bit better. I smoke things using my barbecue which is by no means an exact science resulting in slightly dry meat the first time. But practice makes perfect, and even if I do say so myself, I think I have perfected it.

The duck ham was served as part of a charcuterie platter but also wrapped around a cube of Gorgonzola.

The smoked trout was combined with a small amount of creme fraiche and horseradish sauce and served on a savoury shortbread biscuit. For recipe see below.

Brining. Check.

Smoking. Check.

I don’t think a month has gone by this year without the fridge containing a bag of bacon. I now refuse to buy it. The dishes that the bacon finds its way into are too numerous to name but in the name of showing off this had to be something special. As I was flicking through my cook books this dish caught my eye. A Caesar salad canapé with a bread ‘cup’ that acts as the crouton, holding all the usual elements of a Caesar salad. Don’t be fooled by the egg, these really were bite sized thanks to the mini muffin tray and the quails eggs that grace the top.

Dry cure. Check.

Another item I have made on more than one occasion is the duck prosciutto. I love duck and salting and hanging a breast turns something I love into something I adore! This was also the best batch to date. Over the year I have found that it does take a little bit of practice to get things right and this last batch of duck prosciutto was the perfect texture. Not too dry and just cured enough. In fact this batch was so good I got the seal of approval from an Italian friend who suggested I sold it to the Italian community in Sydney!

I served the duck as part of a charcuterie plate and wrapped around a small piece of dried fig.  The left over end that was too small to slice was chopped up and combined with spring onion, fried and served in a lettuce cup with sour cherry and fresh mint.

This year has also given me a freezer full of wonderful leftovers so to finish off the spread I dug out some leftover sausage meat and turned them into sausage rolls by wrapping it in puff pastry, sprinkling with sesame seeds and baking for 25 minutes in a hot oven.

What a year and what a great way to wrap it up by sharing all my new skills with my friends. One thing’s for sure I will definitely continue with home charcuterie and next year I might also add home cheese making to my repertoire. Watch this space.

Here is the recipe for the savoury shortbread and the smoked trout pâté:

For the trout:

1 whole rainbow trout
125g rock salt
50g brown sugar
Fennel tops
Parsley stalks
Creme fraiche
Horseradish cream
Lemon juice
Seasoning to taste
Tarragon leaves to garnish

For the shortbread:

125g plain flour
100g grated Parmesan
1 tablespoon finely chopped rosemary
Tiny pinch of cayenne pepper
Pinch of salt
100g butter
1 egg yolk

To smoke the trout combine the salt and sugar and place half of the mixture in the bottom of a non reactive dish. Stuff the trout with the fennel tops and parsley stalks and place some around the trout. Put the whole trout on top of the salt and sugar mixture and cover with the remaining mixture. Cover the dish with cling film and refrigerate for twelve hours.

After twelve hours remove the trout from the salt and rinse off any excess salt. Return to the fridge, uncovered to dry out for about six hours.

To smoke, soak some hickory chips in water before putting in the smoking tin. Prepare the barbecue for indirect cooking and preheat to 100 degrees centigrade. Put the tin with the soaked hickory chips over the heat and the trout on a cooling rack on the other side of the barbecue. Close the barbecue lid and maintain the heat at 100 degrees until the trout is cooked. This usually takes about an hour and a half. Be careful not to over cook the trout as it becomes dry.

Once cooked allow the trout to cool and carefully remove from the bones. Flake the trout into a bowl and combine with some creme fraiche, horseradish cream, salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste. Add just enough creme fraiche to bind the trout into the pate but be careful not to add too much or the mixture will become sloppy. Set aside while you make the shortbread.

To make the shortbread combine the flour, Parmesan, cayenne pepper, rosemary and salt in a mini food processor. Once combined add the cubed butter and continue to mix until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add the egg yolk until the mixture comes together t form a dough. Tip out onto a clean surface and form into a ball. Wrap in cling film and put in the fridge to rest for at least an hour.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Once the dough has rested, roll it out until it is about 2mm thick and carefully cut out the biscuits using a 4cm cookie cutter.  This mixture should make about 40 biscuits, but if you don’t need 40 freeze the remaining dough for another day.

Place the biscuits on a baking tray lined with grease proof paper and bake in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned and cooked through.

Once cool, place a spoonful of the trout pate on top of each shortbread and top with a tarragon leaf.

As you can imagine that has put me off curing expensive cuts of meat for a little while, but the one thing I really did want to make this year was cured chorizo. I have made a couple of varieties of fresh chorizo this year (Spanish and Mexican) but I have been desperate to try the real deal, and this was my chance. As I was prepping all the ingredients for the curing challenge I went to the cupboard to get the sweet paprika out of the cupboard when I discovered the tin was practically empty.

This was a disaster.

In the last twelve months I have used the entire contents of the superior quality, sweet paprika that dad smuggled through Australian customs last year for Christmas! (thanks dad, I’ve really enjoyed it!). No time to source some more high quality Spanish paprika so I rifled through the book and found a recipe for Tuscan Salami. I would substitute the paprika with fennel and there you have it, a salami ready to be hung.

It was quite a palaver trying to get hold of the Australian equivalent of Bactoferm, so once my work colleagues took delivery of the goods and they were safely stored in the work freezer I really had to make the most of it. So alongside the Tuscan salami I also made some Hungarian Salami. This also involved Paprika, but it was Paprika of the Hungarian variety which I had plenty of in the cupboard for some reason.

I stuffed most of the salami mixture into natural casings, but I had a synthetic case that I thought I would try out and also a net, so the curing fridge was well and truly stuffed with a range of home cured goods.

The natural casings were ready first – when I say ready, I mean they had lost 30% of their original weight. So what do you do with home cured meat? Well the obvious answer is just eat it. Once I was over eating salami, I decided the Hungarian salami would make the perfect pea and broad bean salad, and the Tuscan variety would make the perfect topping for pizza.

I love pizza at the best of times, but there is something very special about using your own home cured Salami. When I was making the mixtures for the two different salami, it was difficult to believe how distinctive they would taste.

Here is my recipe for the broad bean salad, adapted from a Jamie Oliver recipe to suit the flavours of the Hungarian Salami. It’s difficult to quantify the ingredients for this recipe as it is very much a bit of this and a bit of that to suit your taste. You can’t really get a salad wrong.

Broad Beans
Peas (twice as many as the broad beans)
Hungarian Salami
Mint
Basil
Parmesan
Pine Nuts (toasting optional)
Olive Oil
Lemon juice
Salt and Pepper

Start by blanching the broad beans and peeling them to remove the outer tough skin and set aside. Chop the salami into small cubes and fry until crisp and set aside.

To make the dressing, blanch the peas and put half of them in a food processor and puree, adding enough olive oil to loosen to a thick dressing.

Season the dressing with a handful of grated Parmesan, salt pepper and lemon juice to taste. Chop the mint and basil and add to the dressing.

To assemble put the rest of the peas and broad beans into a bowl with the Hungarian Salami and pine nuts and stir through the dressing.

This salad is a great accompaniment to barbecued lamb.

Pancetta Lardons

In the real world I work with children with Autism. For any of you who knows anyone with Autism you will know that many people with Autism have similar personality traits. People with Autism tend to have a special interest; they often like to stick to a routine; their special interest is often a large part of their life; once they’ve started something it can be difficult to stop; they are often sticklers for rules. Sometimes I think there is a bit of Autism in all of us, and this Charcutepalooza challenge is certainly bringing out my Autism.

Pancetta phase 1

I have had a special interest in cooking for many years now, but more recently it has gotten to the stage whereby I can’t walk past a bookshop without looking at the cookbooks, and more often than not I end up buying one.  When I started cooking, it was out of necessity, I had a new husband whom I had to feed when he arrived home from work, but once I got over the first few disasters I actually realised I quite enjoyed it. The more I cooked the better I became and the better I became the more I wanted to  challenge myself.  Having been given the best Christmas present EVER in 2009 (a food mixer with grinding and sausage stuffing attachments) and finding myself spending more time than is perhaps healthy reading a sausage making internet forum; charcuterie was the natural, next step.

Bresaola

Most sensible people undertaking this challenge (Charcutepalooza) would probably find making one cured meat product a month sufficient, but not me. Once I get an idea in my head I kind of get a little obsessed and one project turns into two, then three, then four.  Thankfully with charcuterie each recipe is very different, and although I started four projects all on the same weekend, they were all completed at very different times, so the influx of meat was staggered.

Ready!

I’ve already reported on the bacon, duck prosciutto and kangaroo prosciutto, but at the same time I also embarked on some pancetta, beef bresaola and kangaroo bresaola. I went off to Eveleigh Markets for the pork belly, and I found an awesome producer, but because it is essentially a farmers market you can only have what they’ve bought with them that day, and on that day their largest piece of pork belly was a kilo. They did try and sell me two bits to make up the 2.25kg I wanted, but I had to point out that two halves does not make a whole in this case.  To compensate I also bought a piece from the supermarket and did a bit of a taste test and I’m not sure why I ever thought otherwise, but there really was a big difference in taste and texture with the organic, rare breed pork compared to the supermarket pork.  I know the world talks about the importance of this, particularly in the world of charcuterie, but sorry guys, I had to try and test it for myself, and now I’ve done it, I’m converted.

Bresaola

Those of you who follow me on twitter will also know I had the same dramas with the beef for the bresaola. I spent $50 on the best piece of beef I could source from Eveleigh Markets, however, when I got it home I realised it was far fattier and sinewy than is ideal for bresaola. I tweeted my dilemma, and was reassured that bresaola is fairly straight forward, so I trimmed it to within an inch of its life at set to work on the cure. It has since also produced a dinner of stroganoff and a small roast, so it was $50 well spent. I also couldn’t resist testing it against a more appropriate cut of supermarket beef and a piece of kangaroo.

For the bresaola, the rare breed beef out shone the supermarket beef by miles, but I think the kangaroo bresaola was the quiet achiever. The intense, gamey flavour of the kangaroo was enhanced by the dry cure and the only mark it had against it was there just wasn’t enough. I desperately need to find somewhere that sells larger chunks of ‘roo.

Sliced

So all in all the Charcutepalooza challenge is feeding my Autism nicely. I have a deadline to produce my meat by each month – I like to stick to a routine. I’m a stickler for the rules – my post will not be published a second earlier or a second later than the 15th of the month. I have a new cookbook, which entices me to cook more than just the monthly challenges.

And “What does one do with all this meat?” I hear you cry. Well, we’ve eaten very well over the last few weeks and here is a run down of a few of the dishes:

I couldn’t resist eating the kangaroo bresaola just as it is, but it was also sampled with rocket and shaved parmesan.

Kangaroo Bresaola Eaten Neat

The pancetta has been served in many pasta dishes, including a summery carbonara. The usual recipe with peas and lemon zest added.

Summer Carbonara

The bresaola was served simply with rocket and manchego – superb.

Bresaola served the traditional way

Pancetta sliced and wrapped around a fillet of beef and porcini.

Fillet of beef

The pancetta worked well as a stuffing for an Italian style lamb roast.

Lamb Roast

And also enhanced the roast poussin

Roast Poussin

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