Finished bresaola

The finished product! It has an even, deep color and it’s dried evenly throughout. I didn’t have any mould issues with it either.

The taste is pretty good too. I think I used too much sugar in the cure, and I might revise the spice mix for next time once I work out which aromatics I like.

The internet rightly tells you that you need a meat slicer to properly enjoy it. I don’t have one, and even with sharp knives and patience, it’s hard to get thin slices. If I keep going with curing I may have to invest in one.

Foraging: a step forward

I’ve taken a step in foraging if only a little one: I’ve eaten a bit of mushroom I found. Not just any old thing: this was a slippery jack.

I went exploring in a pine forest today, with the expectation of encountering interesting fungi to view and photograph. But when I found these, I had to take a few home!

clockwise from bottom left, here is:
-old ammonia test: started pink then turned blue
-whole mushroom
-fresh ammonia test (pink)
-raw slice
-cooked slice (fried in olive oil)

In the interests of caution, I ate precisely one slice. It was pleasant: mushroomy and nutty. We’ll see what happens. Hopefully I have many more years of exploring and blogging ahead though.

Edit: 3 days on and I’m still here! I dried the rest of the mushrooms, which has not affected the lemony, almost apricot smell they have. I’ll try a bit more again in a few more days.

Green tomato sauce

A while back we cleaned out our tomatoes to make way for broad beans.

We also picked out remaining people beans and olives.

Most of the tomatoes didn’t ripen so I made some green tomato sauce with them. Step 1 was smoking them, but I missed getting a picture of that. Then, in the pan with about a kilo of browned onions and some apples:

Had to do the onion in batches.

Then I boil up cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, while black pepper, caraway, coriander, cumin, cayenne and anything else that takes my fancy in some vinegar, strain through a cloth into the tomatoes, tie off and drop the “bag” in.

Plenty of sugar goes in, a bit of salt, and then it boils away for a while.

Six jars, some of them whoppers! This is great on roast beef.