I picked up a bottle of Kreibaum Bay Port made by Satek Winery (just north of here) at Wine Time (the best wine store in these parts, bar none).

It says on the label “a great wine to sip by the fire.”  Well, we sure have the weather for a fire

and we have the fire too.

Looks like we have all the elements aligned.  Cheers, friends!

A dreary Sunday afternoon in February, snowy frozen fields outside, a fire in the fireplace and the Olympics bubbling away on the TV inside; it’s a perfect day to plan what to do this spring.

I’ve generated a ridiculously long list of what I’m going to grow in the garden this year.  Even under the spell of the Burpee’s catalog I realize it’s delusional and I’ll be cursing come July trying to keep it all under control.  But what to cut from the list?  It all sounds so good after 3 months of winter.

Then I’ve been reading Charcuterie by Ruhlman and Polcyn (excellent book, it’s on my Christmas list in case anyone wants to get a jump on their gift buying ) and The Art of Making Fermented Sausages by Marianski and Marianski.  Now I’m dreaming of cutting up more pork and making salami and German cold-smoked sausage.

Which gets me drawing sketches of my long planned outdoor cooking area with a hot grilling/smoking pit plus a masonry bread oven that’s vented into a large chimney for cold smoking.

Here’s an old world smokehouse from “The Art of Making Fermented Sausages.” I’m thinking something similar to this, except on a much smaller scale, and the firebox would be the bread oven sitting at ground level.

And finally untouched on top of my reading stack is “The Year-Around Conservatory.”  Maybe this year I’ll start doing something with the greenhouse I built as part of the chicken coop 4 years ago.

Big plans on a lazy day.

Jeff, Royce, and I fixed dinner last night for our reading group, 18 people. Our reading group meets once a month. Each month has a topic and everyone brings something related to the topic to read. This year we decided to cook a meal for the group in conjunction with Valentine’s Day. The reading theme was “From Russia with Love” and we did a Russian themed meal.

We went all out with a 5 course meal of appetizers, soup, salad, main, and dessert. Debbie did elegant hand-lettered menus in Cyrillic. Here’s the menu in plain text: Menu.

We’ve all been cooking for a while, including big events like this one. An article in the November 2009 Food & Wine magazine about the Four Coursemen has got us thinking about the possibilities of starting an underground supper club right here in the frozen wilds of northeastern Indiana.

I’m fixing a large batch of Russian deviled eggs for a party tonight.  I’ve cooked hard-boiled eggs the same way for years.  Put the eggs in a pan with water to cover, bring to a boil, turn off the heat, cover, wait 12 minutes, and plunge into cold water.  Works perfect every time.  They’re not overcooked, there’s no gray ring around the yolk, and the whites and yolks are nicely set.

But today in a move that can only be described as stupid, I decided to try a different way of hard-boiling eggs.  Now I have 18 eggs, cooked somewhere between a soft-boil and a hard-boil, to figure out what to do with.

At least eggs aren’t a rare and expensive ingredient.  It’ll be a simple matter to do another batch using my tried and true method.

Today was the day to smoke the ham and bacon I’d been curing since last Tuesday.  The bacon was a dry cure of salt, Prague Powder #1, and brown sugar, and the ham was in a brine with essentially the same ingredients.

The Cure.

 I went and chopped a small branch from a wild apple tree growing on the edge of one of our fields and cut a dozen chunks or so about 1/2 an inch thick for the smoker.  The smoker is electric with a cast iron skillet sitting on the burner to put the wood chips in.  Makes it easy to control the heat and smoke.

Here are the hams in the smoker.

Unsmoked Hams.

And after smoking.

Smoked Ham.

 I froze most the ham, but we had a few slices still warm from the smoker.  It tastes even better than it looks!

The bacon is cold smoked.  I turned the smoker down to just keep the wood chips smoking, but not hot enough to cook the bacon.

Smoked Bacon.

 Little Owen was anxiously awaiting a taste of the bacon.

Hungry Owen.

 He’s still waiting…

Finally, slicing the bacon.

Slicing

Notice the glass of wine left center.  Whenever using incredibly sharp powered slicing tools, plenty of alcohol is the perfect complement!

If you haven’t been to Sandra D’s in Auburn you’re missing a gem.

Sandra D’s

Absolutely splendid Italian food at splendidly reasonable prices.

If you’re coming from Fort Wayne just take Clinton Street north until you hit Auburn and then turn right into their parking lot. The street will twist and change names 3 or 4 times in Auburn. Fort Wayne’s street system may seem idiotic with the same street having multiple names, but Fort Wayne has nothing over tiny Auburn when it comes to confusing street names.

Debbie got me a sausage grinder for Christmas, so as night follows day, it’s not unexpected that you would soon find large amounts of unprocessed meat in our house.

Half a Hog.

I got half a pig from Krider’s Meat Processing in Columbia City.   We’ve raised our own hogs for meat, but the last time we tried that it turned into a pet and ended up living a long and happy life on the farm and eventually dying of natural causes. (R.I.P. Arthur).

Does the ham look large to you in the picture on the right?  It was huge!  I ended up cutting it into the shank and rump portions.  I didn’t weigh it, but I’d guess the whole ham at 28 pounds.

I got Grandma’s butchering book out and went to work.

Grandma’s Butchering Book (A Family Heirloom.)

Note the highlighted paragraph in that picture.  It’s titled “It Pays to Do a Neat Job of Butchering and Trimming.”  I wonder what the story is behind that.  Why did someone outline that paragraph?  I’ll ask Mom & Dad tomorrow and see if they know.

Carnage ensued.

What a mess.

It’s a mess, but there’s a really nice loin roast in the back, and some dandy spare ribs in the middle.  But the foreground is just various nasty bits for sausage.

Order begins to arise out of chaos.

Pork Chops.

Look at those chops!   Some weighed nearly a pound each so I packaged them individually.   Note: I received no consideration from Coca-Cola, despite what looks like blatant product placement.

I tried making a few cracklings on the stove top.  I thought they were rendering a little slow, so I cranked the heat and then got distracted with the sausage grinder and burned them up.

Cracklings Before I Ruined Them.

Too bad, they were looking and smelling really good before I burned them.

Here’s the bacon.

Bacon.

That’s a 5 pound slab.  I’m doing a dry cure where you rub it with salt, Prague Powder #1, and brown sugar.  It’ll cure for a week, then I’ll smoke it.  I’m doing the ham in a wet cure and I’ll smoke it too.  We have nearly perfect weather conditions and the bacon and ham are curing outside in the refrigerator-like temperatures.

By 2pm I was flagging and I still had the sausage to grind.  Time for a Cuban!

Break Time.

It’s a double espresso and you add brown sugar to the ground beans so it dissolves into the coffee as it’s brewed.   Spirits restored, it was time to make sausage.

The Grinder that Started it all.

The Colonel Watching Over my Shoulder.

After grinding I mixed up a batch of breakfast sausage, hot Italian sausage, andouille,  and a batch of salt-free for my dad. Then it was time to stuff it.  Grandma always stuffed the sausage when we butchered, and I soon discovered it wasn’t as easy as she made it look.

Misshapen Sausages.

But after a few batches I was starting to get the hang of it.

Getting Better.

I smoked the andouille.

Smoked Sausage.

And by 5pm cleanliness and order had been restored.

Done!

We had fresh sausage for supper and even after spending the day up to my elbows in pork, it was wonderful!