Friday, October 7, 2011

farm to table...... ink? part deux


It's all coming together. Just a few more sessions and my entire arm will be a full fledged farmland.  My artist has been doing incredible work.  The scene is based on a painting by artist Walt Curlee who paints many different wonderful farm scenes.

People ask quite a bit about it, mostly "Why a farm?"  Why not?  I like to have fun with my tattoo obsession and it ties perfectly into my other main obsession.... food! There really isn't anything more than that.  I can't wait for it to be fully finished.  For now heres some other stuff I've been working on.


First off, my roommates had twin babies a couple of months ago, Jack and Izabella.  They are so amazing and have greatly impacted my life for the better.  There's nothing like coming home everyday to a couple of new best friends.  Can't wait to have kids of my own someday.  Good practice for now though.


A few months back I visited BLG (Bar La Grassa) in Minneapolis and had an amazing dinner.  Truly a fantastic establishment.  One of the several dishes I had was n'duja egg raviolo.  It was a ravioli with a poached egg and n'duja salami inside.  It was delicious and intriguing.  I had never heard of n'duja let alone tried it before.  I tried to hunt it done on the web, but there isn't too much about it to find.


I did learn that it is a spreadable salami made with spicy Calabrian cherry peppers from the Calabria region of Italy.  I decided that since I couldn't find it anywhere that I would make some myself.  So


So here it is a month and a half later getting some nice white mold growth.  I feel it will be ready for the tasting in maybe about 3 or 4 more weeks.  Ohh I cannot wait.  This also signified my first ever dry curing endeavor, which I am now on my way to expand.  I stared some duck prosciutto and sopressata and coppa will soon be following.  It's quite intimidating and it will require much patience.


Few weeks ago I got some beef tongues and decided to make pastrami.  Here they are on brine for about 9 days.


I then braised them with some mirepoix and cleaned them up.  I crusted them with a melange of black and szechuan peppercorns, smoked sea salt, coriander, and mustard seeds.  After a day I smoked them.  Perhaps you could guess, I made some reubans out of them.  Tongue is so delicious and this was a complete success.