charcutepalooza

Fun with Wieners, or Charcutepalooza Challenge 6

June 10, 2011
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I want to go on record as having decided to make hot dogs weeks before some idiot named Wiener thought he could lie about how Twitter worked. He should have “The Internet is Forever” tattooed backwards across his chest like Leonard Shelby in Memento; a permanent reminder that The New York Post will find any [...]

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Paella with Chorizo and Chicken

May 15, 2011
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As I have mentioned previously, The New York Times 60-MInute Gourmet was my go-to cookbook for years. In my recently rediscovered copy, on a heavily stained page 170, is a recipe for paella, a dish I had never tasted before trying to make it myself. I cooked that recipe a lot early on, then gave [...]

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Charcutepalooza Challenge 5: Cold-Smoked Chorizo

May 15, 2011
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If the Sixth Annual Birthday Dinner (the reporting on which will continue this week) wasn’t enough to keep me busy in the kitchen, I had the May Charcutepalooza challenge to complete as well. I had already figured out meat grinding during the hilarity that made up my first attempt at sausage making, so it seemed [...]

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Je Me Souviens de la Viande Fumée

April 15, 2011
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We’re only five months into the year-long series of Charcutepalooza challenges, and I have already developed a history of cooking and writing about the subject of a challenge months before it is announced. Bacon? Duck prosciutto? Been there, done that, sometimes twice. It happened again today with the announcement of the May challenge - grind meat and [...]

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Breakfast of Champions

April 13, 2011
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Making Eggs Benedict was one of my sure-fire Impress the Ladies™ moves. Having secured the necessary ingredients the day before, I’d get up early, set up a pot of simmering water, split muffins, make a hollandaise, and then wait for the object of my affection to arrive in the kitchen before transmuting base ingredients into [...]

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Miso Hungry

April 12, 2011
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By the time my participation in Charcutepalooza became official, I had already missed the January (duck prosciutto) and February (bacon) challenges. I have made both previously, but in the spirit of the challenge I thought it only fair that I make each again. I was happy to repeat the duck prosciutto recipe with no variation [...]

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Three Days of the Corned Beef

March 15, 2011
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Today is the deadline for the Charcutepalooza March challenge: brining. The apprentice challenge – brining a whole chicken or some pork chops – is something I’ve been doing for years, so I changed it up a bit and brined duck legs instead. The charcuterie challenge was a bit more complicated: brine a piece of beef [...]

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Charcutepalooza!

February 21, 2011
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I follow Michael Ruhlman on Twitter, and recently noticed that many of his retweets contained the #charcutepalooza hashtag. A quick search turned up this page, which explains that Charcutepalooza is a year-long series of monthly challenges in which a different technique from Ruhlman’s Charcuterie is used. Although I had already missed the January and February [...]

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