Duck Prosciutto

People who know me know how much I like the salted/cured meats. I don't actually eat them all the time for obvious reasons. But when I do, I'm in culinary heaven. I love prosciutto, and dry salami, and lox, and gravlax, and smoked mussels, and pickled herring, and anchovies, and sardines, oh my!

I really became interested in it while reading Salt: A World History. After that I began making gravlax but it didn't get much further than that. Although I did help my dad make sauerkraut in Bolivia (where you can't buy it at the supermarket).

A week ago (or so) I bought the book Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing, something I should have done a long, long time ago. Pig prosciutto is near the end of the book, but duck prosciutto, because it is so small, is right at the beginning, and considered very easy.

One just needs the following ingredients:

• 2 cups of kosher salt
• 1 whole boneless pekin (long island) duck breast (about a pound)
• white pepper
• cheesecloth
• butcher's twine

And here is the simple recipe:

1. Put 1 cup salt in Pyrex baking pan, make sure that the breasts not touching (they make a big deal about this and I don't really know why) and that it's skin side up. Then cover with salt, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 24 hours.

   
   
   
   

2. After 24 hours remove the duck from salt, rinse thoroughly, dry with paper towels, add white pepper.
   

   
   
   
   

3. Wrap east breast in cheesecloth, tie up with the twine, and hang in basement for 7 days. It needs to be a cool and humid place (50-60 degrees).
   
   
   
   



4. It's done when it's "stiff but not hard throughout". That's what the book said. But what the hell does that mean? Yesterday (after 7 days of drying) two of them weren't as squishy as the others, but I was still a little scared. Today (in the evening) I checked and one of the breasts was "stiff". So, what did that mean? Well, it's was about the consistency of a silicone spatula.
   

   

So I decided to try it.

Oh boy was it good! I can't believe that it worked, and it was so easy. I can't believe that I didn't try this before.

Renovation (Week 21)

This week they painted the rest of the house. It's not perfect, I think that they just put on one coat and the edges are messy. They are supposed to return right at the end of the renovation and make everything perfect. But at least we can see how the colors work in the rooms. My opinion: They look great. Laurel did an awesome job picking them out. The photo above is from our bedroom. Unfortunately I forgot to manually set the white balance on my camera before I took these photos yesterday so they aren't consistent and I think that this blue is the only one that's correct.

The tile people also started last week. No tile is actually installed yet. They've only installed the heated floor stuff in the bathroom and prepared everything for the tile to be laid.

It's really starting to feel like the project is coming to an end. I've started packing and yesterday I dropped off a box of stuff that had been in my car since we moved out of the house.

As always you can see all of my photos here.

Renovation (Week 20)

After two weeks the cabinets are mostly installed, and they look beautiful.



It took a lot longer than I expected, but I guess that it's a very exacting process. If they are off by millimeters then stuff doesn't look right. What I really love is that the grain goes all the way up. Because we opted for flat cabinets instead of something framed, like shaker style, the cabinet maker was able to match the grain.




It feels really good to stand in the kitchen and imagine myself cooking there. I can't wait until I can actually cook a real meal there.

There have been a few "scary" moments in the past couple weeks. We thought that we might not able to use the disgustingly large kitchen sink that we bought, but the contractor thinks that it's going to work after all. Unfortunately we won't be able to use the tilt-down drawer that was built into that cabinet. It would have been an awesome place for sponges and such. The same thing happened with the bathroom sink but we decided to just get a smaller version of it instead.

We also had a nice long conversation with the concrete guy about our foundation and we feel a lot better after that. While we're going to eventually have to get to that, it doesn't need to happen this year so we'll be able to enjoy a quiet house for several years.

This week they start laying tile.

As always, all of my photos from this week can be found here.

Renovation (Week 18)

This week they started putting in the cabinets. It seems to me that this really just means that they've moved them to the locations where they'll eventually be put in. But it's really starting to feel like a kitchen now. The console (I think that's what it's called) against the south wall looks great. I also really like the way the grain looks.

The last week and a half have been pretty stressful because we just found some major water damage in the basement. I'd like to be able to blame someone, but the reality is that (using an overly used sports metaphor from work) a lot of us have dropped the ball. Laurel is really the only person who is blameless since she has been talking about the basement moisture since before we started the project. The problem is that none of us acted on it until now.

We tore up the carpet in the basement and then pulled out some of the drywall. We found that the part of the foundation behind the drywall was crumbling. The other two-thirds of the foundation (that which wasn't behind drywall) was restored a long time ago and is in perfect condition. We really don't know how bad the damage is on the back third of the foundation. We've been told by several people that if only the outer layers of the foundation are crumbling then we can we finish it, put water guards, and be pretty well off. This shouldn't be that big of a deal and this is actually a pretty common problem. If instead the foundation is shot all the way through the work is going to be extensive because they will be pouring a new foundation.

This weekend I dug two holes on the outside of the house and checked the foundation from the outside. It seemed to be rock solid. That makes me hopeful. Over the next couple weeks we will be getting a lot more opinions of our foundation. The next step, I believe, is to get someone who knows what they're doing to dig a ditch around that part of the house and tell us for sure how bad it is.

As always, all of my photos from this week can be found here.