Dead People Tour

At the start of July I went and paid my respects and visited lost family and friends. A sad time.

My Mother (Bendigo, Vic)

My father and his beautiful wife Kit (Fawkner, Vic)

My best mate Clem (Cranbourne, Vic)

Sourdough Bread

My first loaf

Second Loaf

Sourdough bread is naturally leavened and slow fermented without yeast. It rises using a bubbly, active sourdough starter. This starter gives the bread its signature tangy flavour and chewy texture.

First

Second

A sourdough starter is a fermented mixture of flour and water that contains wild yeast and bacteria it gets from the air. Wild yeast exists everywhere in nature, including in the flour used and even from the baker's hands.

While it takes at least 24 hours from start to finish, you can create a great loaf of sourdough bread at home.

My Charcuterie Herbs and Spices

My Charcuterie Herbs and Spices

Pepperoni Sausage Experiment

Pepperoni sausage is an American semi dry fermented sausage typically made of pork and or beef. Peperoni is seasoned with paprika and aromatic herbs, has a soft texture, is slightly smoky, and bright red in color. It is a popular pizza topping and a snack cold meat.

Pepperoni

80/20 lean and pork fat

30 g salt per KG

2.5 g Cure #1 about 1/2 tsp per KG

5 g sugar - 5.0 g about 1 tsp per KG

3 g black pepper ground, about 1½ tsp per KG

8 g sweet paprika ground, about 4 tsp per KG

2.5 g anise seeds ground; about 1 tsp per KG

2 g allspice ground; about 1 tsp per KG

2 g cayenne pepper about 1 tsp per KG

2 cloves fresh Garlic per KG

2g Fennel seeds per KG

1/3 cup Red wine per KG

Chop meat in small cubes

Mix ingredients into slurry and mix with meat

Leaver in fridge overnight

Mince coarse then fine blade

Fill casing in sausage filler.

Ferment at room temp for 24 hours.

After fermentation smoke the pepperoni for 3 hours at 65C.

Check internal temp of pepperoni.

Place pepperoni in a drying chamber fovernight.

Cryovac

Overnight marinade in spice mix

Minced twice

Natural Casings

Pepperoni left at room temp for 24 hours to ferment.

Smoked at 65 c

30 minutes

3 hours

Cool overnight

Cryovac

Results: Good, not great. The pepperoni is well spiced and tastes like pepperoni but lacks the strong tangy flavour of a good fermented sausage. Meat will naturally ferment when left at room temperature, but I think next time I will use a starter culture to accelerate this process and hopefully result in a better sausage.

A starter culture (available from sausage supply places online) and some glucose to feed it will be better for the fermentation stage of this sausage’s creation.

This starter culture is used to induce good natural bacteria into the meat mix during the fermentation stage. Inducing good bacteria helps ward off bad bacteria from developing in your meat in the early stages of curing. It is a slower culture, ideal for salami and other Italian meat recipes.

Skin Cancer

Skin cancer is a disease where abnormal skin cells grow uncontrollably, often due to overexposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun. The three main types of skin cancer are basal cell carcinoma (BCC), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), and melanoma. 

I had a Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) it is the second most common type of skin cancer, originating from the flat cells (squamous cells) in the outer layer of the skin if left untreated, it can spread to other parts of the body.

Surgery is the most common treatment. Non melanoma skin cancers are almost always removed and in my case the surrounding tissue needed to be removed to make sure that all of the cancerous cells have been taken.

Too much sun. I hope I never see this shit again.

The culprit.

The planned excavation.

The outcome.

Endone is my friend.

1 week after surgery.

16 days after surgery with stitches out.

Six Weeks after surgery

Eating the Harvest - Curing or Dry Aging Meat

Salt is king. Before refrigeration, salt curing was one of the primary forms of preservation for most foods because it keeps microbes and bacteria from forming and adds flavor in the process. Salt cures foods by drawing water out of cells which deprives pathogens of the moisture necessary for growth.

Curing ion the other hand s different to brining. Brining food, especially lean meats like chicken and fish, involves submerging them in a salt water solution to enhance moisture retention, tenderness, and flavour during cooking.

Curing or dry aging meat at home is a lot simpler than you might think. It’s all about keeping an environment within a certain temperature and humidity range. Unless you don’t naturally have the ideal environment where you live, like a cave in the Alps of Italy with a constant 16C temp and 70% humidity. But you can build a chamber to create it. Most people in Australia’s southern states will make salami successfully in their garage or under the house in winter, for example. But if you have a charcuterie fridge, you can make stuff all year round.

Temperature

The temperature range should be high enough for the meat to cure properly and dry, but low enough so that bad bacteria and mould don’t grow. This is between 10C and 16C.

Humidity

The humidity should be high enough to stop the outside of the product drying too quickly on the outside, forming a barrier and causing the inside to spoil (case hardening), but not too high as to encourage excessive mould growth. This is between 65% and 75%. Mould growth is good for flavour though, so white or even greenish mould is good. If it’s black, not so much.

Air flow

There should be a little airflow to stop excessive mould growth, but not so much that you cause the product to dry too quickly on the outside, forming a barrier and causing the inside to spoil (case hardening).

The curing process can take anywhere from 2 to 12 weeks, with the thickness of the sausage and the salami type may mature faster than others.

I use a wine refrigerator as a charcuterie cabinet that gives me the almost perfect environment for my salami, see pictures below.

Day 1

Day 10

Day 17

The white mould you see on the salami is a natural, edible mould called Penicillium nalgiovense, and it's part of the fermentation process, acting as a protective layer and aiding in flavour development. 

Day 27

Croyovac'd  and ready to give away and eat.