Charcuterie Day - 2nd May

Brothers, Sisters and lovers of fine food and free ranging pigs. The day is fast approaching when we shall make our wonderful pigs into some exquisite creations. Here are a few pointers for our activities on Saturday.

Directions, if you need them, will be via e-mail. I will send those out this week.

Timeline:
07:30 I will trotter along to Mr Humphries' fine store and pick up our harvest.
08:00 unloading as much as I can into the double fridges.
08:30 from about 8:30 onwards people will start arriving, unloading their gear, drinking coffee eating flapjacks etc
09:00 we will try to get going. I suggest splitting into platoons of sausage makers, bacon makers and ham curers
13:00 break for lunch. Lunch will be a leg of Wilshire cured ham with new potatoes and salad. A glass or two of wine and then back to the grinder
14:00 onwards, finishing off sausages. Tying up roasting joints. Bagging and labelling. Experimental salami cures. Washing up and all that good stuff.

In our first year, we finished around 1am. We're much more expert now. I hope to be done in time for tea.


What to bring:
If you show up with just yourself and a happy smile then you can't go too far wrong. Among the other people there on the day you will find plenty of kit go around as we all share salt, sausage skins etc. However, it is always nice to bring a few bits to the sharing party and it is obviously helpful to take your produce home in your own plastic pots and freezer bags. Below is a list of things you might consider bringing along but by no means is any of it essential.

Your sharpest boning knife
A cutting board
Plastic pots and tubs for brine cures and meat
Cooler box and ice packs for finished goods
Freezer bags and cling film
Herbs and spices for your sausages
A pre-prepared sausage mix
Rusk for sausages
Some sausage skins
A pre boiled up brine cure in the brine tub
A dry mix for your ham cures
Some bacon cure
A mental list of the recipes you are going to inflict on your pig

For supplies, these two have proved pretty reliable.

http://www.weschenfelder.co.uk/
http://www.sausagemaking.org/

Don't forget your winning smile, it can be a long day of standing up cutting meat. Children are welcome to poke their heads in to see sausages being made but it isn't a good place for them to be hanging around very long. Too many sharp knives and not enough space to dismember more than 10 bodies in one day.

Parking. Hopefully there should be plenty of room. 4x4s on the grass, ferraris and lambos on the tarmac.

Jamon Libre.

Ready, steady, go eggs

The autumn chicks have finally laid their first eggs. 50 Marans and 8 Ixworth hens are all coming into lay at once and yesterday we collected their first efforts. Its the beginning of what could become a deluge, we gathered a solitary brown egg from a Maran and two cream coloured Ixworth eggs. They're still a bit small but perfectly formed.

Together with the rest of the flock (Light Sussex) we could be in collecting 4-5 dozen eggs a day through the summer. I hope to be able to sell them as fast as they're laid. So far I've got requests in from friends and colleagues from far and wide. My daily commute to London could see me weighed down with baskets of eggs. When the anarchists start boarding trains looking for greedy bankers my farmer disguise will come in handy. It is already a well established routine that I leave a trail of straw and pig manure through the train. It amuses my train buddies James and Robert enormously.

If the egg trade is slow I've been working on some baked goods recipes. Portuguese custard tarts and Coconut Macaroons. Having baked three batches this week I'm getting better at the tarts (the first batch when straight from cooling rack to bin). Trouble is, they don't use nearly enough eggs, 4 yolks for the custard and 4 whites for the macaroons. Any other egg recipes? Please leave your suggestions in the comments...