Cheese, Eggs & Dairy, Vegetarian

Queso blanco, or Paneer (Panir)

Leave a comment

In 2012, I wrote:

Here’s a great cheese-related activity to do with a group of school kids that won’t break the bank. Paneer, an Indian vegetarian cheese – or the cheese your granny made out of sour milk!

That said, I’ve only ever made it from non-homogenised milk, which works out a tad expensive ‘cos those large cheap plastic containers of milk in the supermarkets are invariably homogenised.

Ah well, nothing ventured, nothing gained: the investment of a whole £1 coin got me 2 litres of ALDI’s best full-fat milk.

To make the cheese is simplicity itself: put the milk into a pan and bring it to the boil stirring regularly so that the milk doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan. Just before it boils (or at least when it’s over 80°C) add a couple of lemons worth of lemon juice or about the same amount of white vinegar. Give it a quick stir then leave it for a couple of minutes or so. The milk should split into white curds and a watery light-green/yellow/clear whey. If it hasn’t, boil it back up and add some more lemon or vinegar. Pour the whole lot into a cloth-lined colander and run it under cold water to cool it, then leave it to drain:

…you can save the whey to use in scones or soda bread if you want.

That’s basically it – you can go on to wrap the cheese up and press it (I did, under a stone mortar). You can add salt, herbs, spices etc to it or you can even use it for sweet puddings or have it dribbled with honey. If you press it for a couple or three hours, you can cube it or mould it into balls. Then, unlike virtually all other cheeses, it will fry without melting; it’s great in the Indian dish of peas and cheese – Mattar Paneer (Panir).

Air Dried Meat, Cured Meat

Lonzino

Originally posted in June 2009.

It’s not been a very productive week, however, I managed to start off a Lonzino Stagionata. I think this is the correct term for what is a cured air-dried loin of pork, Italian style.

It’s basically like a parma ham but from the eye of the loin. Expensive, but superb.

I started off with 4½ kg of pork loin from Joseph Morris’s. It was boned and the eye of the loin removed yielding 1½ kg of meat for the Lonzino and a further 2¼ kg of meat/fat that will be used in chorizo.

Now for the cure, what should I use? I am at something of a disadvantage here as I’ve never tasted Lonzino. Online recipes, of which I found only two from trusted sources, varied considerably in the spices used so I was left with making up my own interpretation from the (little) information available – it’s turned out as a sort of combination of the two online recipes. Whether it will be anything like the original is anyone’s guess! Anyway, here it is:

For 1 kg meat I used:

Salt 34gm
Sugar 10gm
Cure #2 – 2.4gm
Black Pepper 5gm
Fennel Seeds 4gm
White Pepper 3gm
Garlic Powder 2.5gm
Cinnamon 1gm
Mace 1gm
1 Clove

Grind the spices and mix with the other ingredients. Rub cure into the loin then put it into a food grade bag or vacuum pack it.

It will cure for 10 days or so.

The Lonzino was cured for 12 days. I washed and dried it and put it into a 90mm collagen casing. The casing was tied (badly!) and pricked to aid drying.

I left it drying at 10 – 15°C in a humidity of 60 – 70% (ish) until it lost about 40% of its weight.

The black wires in front of the Lonzino are from the humidity and temperature sensors in the fridge.

In late August I sliced some of it Getting to that stage was not been without its problems what with a new fridge set up for the drying it’s been a case of juggling things about to get the humidity at the correct levels – not helped by the weather we had at the time.

It’s a little dry around the edges, surprising as if anything the humidity was a little high in the early stages of drying. I dried it to a 36% weight loss. Next time I’ll dry it less and test for water activity to make sure it’s safe. I don’t think the drying was helped by the small size of the loin or the fact that I de-cased it after about 20 days as some undesirable moulds were starting to form under the casing – I obviously hadn’t got it tight enough around the meat. The mould? I brushed that off, rubbed the area with wine vinegar to kill any remaining nasties, and sprayed the meat with Penicillium Candidium – the white mould that is seen on Brie and Camembert cheeses. Within a few days a nice coating of white had appeared:

Pauline really likes its fennel overtones; I’m not as keen. Yes I like it, but think I will do a Lomo next time – basically, Lomo’s the same thing but with paprika flavours – Spanish as against Italian. That said it’ll make a nice addition to the growing charcuterie store.

Fresh Sausage, Sausage

Pork and Apple Sausage

Leave a comment

I don’t write much about fresh sausage, mainly because we generally stick to the two recipes I’ve already put online, my Thurlaston sausage and Lincolnshire sausage. However, I thought I’d do something different for a change and chose to make Pork and Apple sausages. Now I’ve tried these before and wasn’t happy with the results so I trawled the web to see what I could plagiarise from other people! The results received rave reviews from the family, so here’s my recipe with thanks to Welsh Wizard and Parson Snows from the sausagemaking.org forum on whose recipes’ it’s loosely based:

Sausage Seasoning Mix

16g Salt
3g White Pepper
1g Fresh Rosemary
0.5g Dried Sage

Chop Rosemary then mix together well. I mixed them in a coffee grinder.

For 1kg of meat

1kg Locally Produced Pork Shoulder (about 20% visible fat)
85g Rusk
40g Dried Apple
110g Apple juice plus extra (see below)
20.5g Seasoning mix (above)

Start with about 400ml of good-quality apple juice. Boil it in a pan until it is reduced by half and leave it to cool. Then soak the dried apples in it for about 1 hour before chopping them.

Having kept the pork in a very cold fridge, mince it. I minced it through a plate with 6mm holes and then through one with 4.5mm holes. Add the rusk, seasoning, and chopped apple and then pour 110gm (110ml roughly) of the remaining apple juice over. Either mix by hand until you think you’re going to get frostbite or use a Kenwood-type food mixer (not a food processor) to mix it for 3 or 4 minutes until the mixture is sticky sausage meat. That is, it changes from just a burger-type mix into a sticky mass; the smell seems to change too. It’s hard to describe but you need to do this to develop the myosin in the meat that will stop the sausage from becoming dry and crumbly when you cook it. You may need to add a little more apple juice to get a good mix. Don’t add more than an extra 20ml – 25ml though, otherwise, the sausage will spit like a camel when you fry it!

Stuff the sausage into pre-soaked casings (follow the supplier’s advice for soaking the casings), then hang them to ‘bloom’ (develop flavour) in the fridge for 6 – 8 hours. Some fridges are very dry so check the sausages regularly and if they appear to be drying out too quickly put them on a tray and cover them for the rest of the ‘blooming’ period.

You could use cider instead of apple juice in this recipe. Preferably a local one.

The only disappointing thing about these sausages is that I had to buy imported dried apples; it looks like I’m going to have to dry some myself when they’re next in season

Calculators, Cooked Sausage, Sausage, Sausage Calculator

Mortadella with Pistachios

Leave a comment

It’s great to get back to doing some real sausage making. We’re fast running out of ham, bacon and sausage from my last mammoth session, so it’s time to clear all the frozen meat out of the freezer to make way for the next lot.

Given that the meat’s been frozen, it shouldn’t then be refrozen unless it’s been cooked – making fresh sausage is, therefore, a no, no. I was going to make hot dogs but the weather looked a bit iffy and I’m very much a fair-weather smoker, so that left a choice of the many and various other cooked sausages/luncheon meats.

Continue reading Mortadella with Pistachios →
Air Dried Sausage, Calculators, Sausage, Sausage Calculator

Chorizo

Leave a comment

When I started making my latest batch of ASDA clone chorizo it was my intention to photograph everything and create a sort of mini-tutorial. Needless to say when I got involved with making them I forgot to take most of the photos!

I started off with a big chunk of pork collar, also known as shoulder spare rib, and cut it into strips. If you have a small mincer you will have to cut it smaller. I prefer strips to chunks as the screw in the mincer pulls them through with very little need to use the pusher.

The meat with plenty of fat attached was cooled right down and then minced through an 8mm mincer plate.

Continue reading Chorizo →
Calculators, Fresh Sausage, Sausage, Sausage Calculator

Far-Famed Cambridge Sausage

2 Comments

When I came across a sausage called the “Far-Famed Cambridge Sausage” in a 1938 ‘Handy Guide for Pork Butchers’, I couldn’t resist making it? But what type of sausage was it?

I’m guessing that it was far better known in those days: I’d only ever heard of it in passing. A quick online search told me that the best know brand was Palethorpe’s ‘Royal Cambridge sausages’, though they were made in Shropshire, and that there were 2,500lbs of them were aboard the Titanic when she sailed on her maiden voyage!

Continue reading Far-Famed Cambridge Sausage →
Calculators, Fresh Sausage, Sausage, Sausage Calculator

The Not Lincolnshire Sausage

9 Comments

This sausage formulation was posted on the sausagemaking.org forum. It has had a slight alteration by me. It was developed from a recipe that was originally supplied by the butcher Phil Groth to forum member Parson Snows with some adaption by another forum member, Oddley.

I have since been informed that the only herbs and spices in a ‘true’ Lincolnshire sausage are sage, salt, and pepper. This was supported by The Lincolnshire Sausage Association’s application for EU PGI status. So, this recipe is ‘technically’ not a true Lincolnshire; it is, however, a great recipe and a Lincolnshire sausage in spirit.

Continue reading The Not Lincolnshire Sausage →
Cured Meat

Safely Drying Meat and Sausage

Leave a comment

With more and more people air-drying meat having seen programmes like those made by Hugh Fernley Whittingstall (HFW) there seems to be a very blasé attitude sneaking in regarding the production of air-dried sausage and meats.

The, “Well they’ve been doing it for centuries in Italy/Spain etc without sophisticated equipment” brigade, and the, “Well they have them hanging in bars in Italy/Spain, so they must be safe” camp.

What they say may be true but we do not have the same conditions as those people, nor do we have the accumulated knowledge of generations of forebears on our side so we need to be cautious in what we do for reasons that I hope will become clear.

By the way, the meat above the bar abroad will be perfectly safe – once the meat has dried sufficiently bacteria won’t live in it – but only after it’s dried, not during its production.

Anyone wanting to read in detail about the safeguards needed when air drying meat or sausage will find some of the best information available here.

In this summary we can see that we need to protect against the growth of bacteria by:

  • Using meats with a low bacteria count. We can’t assess this at home but can:
    • Buy the freshest meat and keep it cold.
    • keep our tools and work environment clean.
    • keep the meat as cold as possible when making the product.
  • Cure the meat properly
    • Adding the correct amount of salt.
    • Using sodium nitrite and nitrate which protect against Clostridium botulinum, the most toxic poison known.
  • Increase the acidity of the meat to discourage bacterial growth – lower the PH
    • Using a starter, or other methods, to increase acidity and produce beneficial bacteria.
  • Reduce the amount of water available for bacteria to breed – lower water activity (Aw)
    • By careful drying at the correct temperature and humidity

Smoking the meat, which also dries it and provides surface protection against bacteria may also be used.

The first of these hurdles I hope is self-explanatory; if you don’t feel that it’s necessary maybe you should take up skydiving instead of sausage-making!

The second has caused much debate recently with scares about the use of nitrite and nitrate but we also know that salt alone will not protect against Clostridium botulinum unless used at unpalatable levels. The scares have mainly been related to meat cooked at high temperatures and given that the amounts of nitrite/nitrate used in modern recipes are lower than those naturally occurring in many vegetables, my opinion is that they should be used. The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.

Increasing the acidity – lowering the PH of the meat – is generally done by producing lactic bacteria in the meat. In sausage, the addition of a small amount of glucose will assist this process as will the use of a commercially produced lactic bacteria starter. This is usually combined with an incubation/fermentation period at a high temperature and humidity. Ingredients such as wine and vinegar, in some sausages, will assist.

Drying the meat sounds easy but should be done in a specific environment. Many people dry it outside during the cooler parts of the year and this is fine but given the fluctuations in temperature we have been getting in recent years, it’s not always as safe as it once was. What is needed is a temperature of around 12°C – 15°C. We also want a Relative Humidity (RH) of between 60% and 85% (depending on the type of product) and some airflow. We need to achieve an environment where the meat dries steadily: not too fast, not too slow. Drying too fast or dry can lead to a problem with ‘case hardening’ where the outside dries before moisture can escape from the middle leading to a spoiled, or at least, an inferior product

Food, Curing and Sausage