Home Cur­ing

When nor­mal peo­ple get home from Flo­rence, it’s with beau­ti­ful mem­o­ries of shop­ping for love­ly soaps, mar­bled papers, tiny repli­cas of the David in plas­ter… and their suit­cas­es smell of all those pairs of new leather gloves.  My suit­case, on the oth­er hand, smelled of two salamis, a vac­u­um-packed half-kilo of bre­sao­la and a giant chunk of prosciutto.

Cured meats, in short.

And now I’m mak­ing my own.  Cured meat, that is.  Let me explain.

Have you ever eat­en at a restau­rant here in Lon­don called St John?  When I call it the “brain­child” of Fer­gus Hen­der­son, I’m actu­al­ly being very clever, because the restau­rant is famous for its cre­do of “Nose To Tail Eat­ing,” mean­ing that if we’re to kill ani­mals and eat them, we should eat ALL of the crea­ture, leav­ing no bit unap­pre­ci­at­ed: nose, ears, brains, every­thing.  I’ve nev­er been to St John, but John has and he sim­ply raved.  Luck­i­ly, I have a won­der­ful cook­ing friend who gave me the cook­book writ­ten by the love­ly Fer­gus, as a gift for com­ing to dinner.

And the man can write!  He talks about dish­es “eat­ing hap­pi­ly,” and the impor­tance of hav­ing bread around for “sup­ping up the juices.”  Any cook­book that includes the phrase “saute your brains in but­ter” is a win­ner for me.

So, as I leafed through the cook­book with mem­o­ries of Flo­ren­tine cured meats danc­ing in my head, I alight­ed on a recipe for “Cured Beef and Cele­ri­ac Sal­ad,” and I was off to the butch­er, my dear neigh­bor­hood butch­er Sten­ton’s, and chose a gor­geous fil­let of beef, about a pound and a half.  I must digress and tell you a very pecu­liar sto­ry of my adopt­ed home­land.  The con­ver­sa­tion at the butch­er went like this.

Butch­er: “What can I get for you, love?”

Me: “I’d love that very nice look­ing fil­let of beef, please,” point­ing in the win­dow at the piece I want.

Posh British Lady Stand­ing Next to Me: “Did you hear about that beau­ti­ful stag, the one who was shot on Exmoor over the weekend?”

Me: “Yes, I did, what an awful story.”

PBLSNTM: “No doubt it will turn out to have been a fat, stu­pid Amer­i­can who shot him.  As they do.  And now they’ll hush it all up.  The Amer­i­cans do that, you know.”

Me: Stunned Silence.

Butch­er: “This beef is about two third of a kilo, is that all right?”

PBLSNTM: “Oh, you’ll want that whole lot, will you?  I was going to ask for a lit­tle taste, but I know Amer­i­cans and their appetites.  You have it, the whole lot.”

It was a bit chill­ing, to tell you the truth.  I often go about my dai­ly life here, near­ly six years into our British adven­ture, and for­get that I am a stranger, an incom­er, a for­eign­er — and specif­i­cal­ly, an Amer­i­can.  Of course this is more the sub­ject for a psy­chol­o­gist than for a food blog­ger, but I do think about it, how we are seen.  Avery’s had these encoun­ters too, occa­sion­al­ly, and always finds them quite jar­ring and shock­ing, real­ly.  I remem­ber once a prospec­tive head­mistress at a school we were vis­it­ing asked her, “Do you think that some of the neg­a­tive things peo­ple think about Amer­i­cans are true?”  What a thing to ask an 11 ‑year-old child.  I walked away from the butch­er shop feel­ing just that lit­tle bit less wel­come here than I nor­mal­ly do.  It’s prob­a­bly healthy, a quick dose of self-doubt.  Makes me a bit more aware of what I might be say­ing to peo­ple, maybe not that pot­ty, but still insensitive.

Any­way, onto the recipe.  Here’s what the meat will look like when you bring it home.

Very pinky-red, juicy, heavy and sort of flop­py, if you know what I mean.  And then here’s what you do.  Keep in mind that you need three days for the beef to cure, so don’t get start­ed right now, hop­ing to have it for dinner.

Cured Fil­let of Beef

(serves 6–8, with oth­er ingre­di­ents, as a salad)

good chunk — maybe 700 grams/ 1 1/2 lb —  fil­let of beef, PER­FECT­LY trimmed of all fat and sinew and membrane

60% salt to 40% sug­ar, enough to cov­er and sur­round the fil­let — per­haps 2 cups total mixture

8 sprigs rosemary

plen­ty of fresh ground pepper

Place 4 of the rose­mary sprigs on the bot­tom of a plas­tic con­tain­er that will eas­i­ly hold your fil­let.  Gen­er­ous­ly cov­er the bot­tom of the con­tain­er with the salt/sugar mix­ture, then place the fil­let on top and pour in the rest of the salt/sugar mix­ture to cov­er and sur­round the fil­let.  Place the last 4 leaves of rose­mary into the top of the salt/sugar mix­ture, and cov­er the container.

Leave in the fridge for 3 days.  You will be amazed!  The salt/sugar has MELT­ED, the fil­let has shrunk dra­mat­i­cal­ly and dark­ened, and stiff­ened.  Have a look.

Take the fil­let out of the cur­ing liq­uid and wash it well with cold water, then dry with a clean cloth.  Rub more fresh black pep­per all over the fillet.

Now for the sal­ad ingredients.

Cured Beef and Cele­ri­ac Salad

(serves 6–8 eas­i­ly, as a starter)

fil­let of cured beef

1/2 head cele­ri­ac (cel­ery root), peeled

juice of 1 lemon

1 1/2 tbsp Dijon mustard

4 tbsps creme fraiche or sour cream

sea salt and pepper

good hand­ful rock­et leaves (my addi­tion, you know me and rocket)

Sim­ply slice the cele­ri­ac VERY thin­ly, into pieces like match­sticks.  Fer­gus reminds us to driz­zle lemon juice over the cele­ri­ac all the time you are chop­ping it, so it does­n’t go dark.  Fold the mus­tard and creme fraiche togeth­er and sea­son to taste.

Slice the beef very thin­ly across.  Lay it on a pret­ty plat­ter on a large cir­cle, then scat­ter the cele­ri­ac match­sticks over, and the rock­et leaves.  Driz­zle with the mus­tard-creme fraiche dress­ing and serve.

I know, the pho­to’s at the top of the post, but I thought it was so pret­ty, it bore post­ing again.  Are you inspired?  Thank you, Fer­gus Hen­der­son.  We’ll be mak­ing this one again.  I also thought that a mus­tardy vinai­grette with rose­mary in it might be nice, instead of the creme fraiche.

I’ve now been think­ing of oth­er things to do with cured beef.  Always, always thin­ly sliced, but how about with steamed new pota­toes and a pesto dress­ing?  Or on a real­ly good baguette with some sharp ched­dar cheese and horseradish?

GOR­GEOUS.

What a sim­ple, yet impres­sive thing to pro­duce for your fam­i­ly and friends.  Because John and I ate this sal­ad ALL by our­selves, there was enough left­over for Avery to have for her break­fast, and what a suc­cess!  She adored it, as it plays into the meaty-salty phe­nom­e­non she loves to kick­start the day.

But of course it’s always nice to fall back, lat­er in the day, on some cured meat that some­one else has pro­duced.  And I can promise you, this is one of the best piz­zas you will ever taste: total­ly light and such com­plex fla­vors.  It’s one of those recipes I came up with by look­ing in the fridge and see­ing a num­ber of things that need­ed to be used up, and guess what?  That’s often the best recipe.

Finoc­chiona Pizza

(serves 2 for lunch)

good home­made piz­za crust

12 slices finoc­chiona (fen­nel sala­mi, brought back from Florence)

1/2 cup goats cheese

1/2 head radic­chio, leaves shredded

driz­zle fen­nel oil

On a very, very hot piz­za stone, place your piz­za crust, then put it in a VERY very hot oven for about 5 min­utes, just till puffed up and slight­ly cooked.  Bring it out, lay the slices of sala­mi on the crust, crum­ble the goats cheese over it, sprin­kle with the radic­chio and driz­zle the truf­fle oil over all.  Bake in your VERY hot oven for per­haps 8 min­utes, just till the crust is baked and slight­ly golden.

Insane­ly good.  So when you’re next feel­ing inspired to cook, think of… the cure.