It is an exciting time for our resident charcutier Matt Bedell, as he prepares for battle at the Young British Foodies final today.

The YBF’s :

“They’re the men and women using lost arts and new skills to bring craft back to the kitchen” HELL YES!

If ever there was an award for Matt’s passion for meat, then this would be the one.

I take this opportunity to wish Matt the very best of luck.

Break a leg x

Crabs are a messy business. Both cleaning them and then later trying to extract the meat out from the shells isn’t for the faint hearted. And you need the right tools. We didn’t, so we used a small sherry bottle (with said sherry still within), a knife, a bottle opener, and a screwdriver – all to no real effective success.

The sherry bottle ended up being the best tool, and any attempt to maintain the mess to one small area was in vain. The following days were spent trying to find the source of the lingering sea pong.

Saying that, it was so worth it, and we almost regretted giving back the other 10. Almost.

This would be his 4th oven. They tend to be a relatively common sight from where I am from, and one very famous pizzeria in particular in Willunga has even a book about it. Although you can buy them in kit form online from various Italian outlets and through Jamie Oliver, they are simple enough and can be made yourself if you know what you are doing. When Dad said he could come over to build mine, I was over the moon.

The premise of making the oven is a simple and primitive one. Using bricks, fire or otherwise, to create a dome, the bricks hold themselves into position, and retain the heat from the fire within. The idea is to maintain the heat within the oven as much as possible so you are able to utilise the energy and heat throughout the day so this is done by creating an additional skin and insulating within it. Once we will be cooking throughout the day, the heat generated will be able to cook breads in the morning, pizzas throughout the day and evening and then we can slow braise overnight.

Wanting to make as economical oven as possible, we sourced some kiln bricks from Coventry which we used for the majority of the first skin. These bricks weighed as much as marble, and it took me a full 2 days to cut through the 200 that we bought. Although we had planned to use them for the entire first skin, the sheer weight of them couldn’t withstand gravity once we got past a certain point.

Once the all important first skin was done we seemed to speed up somewhat. The second skin is critical if we wish to make bread. Those wedges you can see above are all important, which allows us to go around in a relatively tight circle using half bricks. They are used to create tension between the bricks allowing you to use cement only on the outside, and maintaining a clean, cement free internal wall.

I’m going to wait for a bit to show you the final oven, fully completed. These photo’s are of the first skin and the second skin partly done.. But below is the great moment of pulling down the roof..

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Graham & Ruth Waddington have been working tirelessly on building their new business, and after much success it was time to celebrate.

Guests included the lovely Kate Humble, and Kevin Gratton of Hix. I met with the jersey farmers of Saint Hill and The charming Maurice Trumper who supplies the Saddlebacks.

We ate a feast of meat that highlighted what such amazing makers they are – We are all in for a treat.

You can now buy monthly charcuterie boxes from them. Contact them on the link below.

Native Breeds

By doing so we were able to trial a few different styles of cures – one of them wet brine, some others dry, some with fresh herbs (rosemary and juniper) others without anything else except the salt.

The first hams to be ready were the Fruit-fed Mangalitza leg muscles.

The two muscles that were ready were the topside that was cured in juniper and rosemary, and the silverside that was cured and then rolled in black pepper. The topside, being the less fatty muscles of the two had a deep almost purple colour, and had a heady fragrance of the herbs.

The silverside had the added benefit of the fat, and this gave a rich flavour of the meat, which was also helped balance with the pepper.

Now that the rest of the muscles and lardo would have been curing for an additional few weeks over the christmas period, we will have the rest to sample this January. And this means we will be setting up shop in a few markets in London very soon.

Last week I was at One Pig, a aural trace of a pigs life from the comforts of the farm to my fork. The very same day I had just returned from Wales, where we celebrated by slicing up our first samples of our hams. Timely?

I have been a fan of Herbert for at least 10 years when a friend of mine invited me to a gig in an upstairs venue in Melbourne. I remember some use of a toaster, and a sample of a kettle. I hadn’t seen him for years, but then I saw that he was to perform his new album One Pig, with a dinner prepared by the guys from Shaklewell Nights and Rosie Sykes. I was nervous that after the dinner my apetite would be suppressed - my dinner partner was fearful I was going to turn her vegetarian – all unfounded.

The performance was set-up like a barn dance. The hay barrels were actually instruments, and the pen was linked to electronic pig samples that were played like a loose harp. The whole thing was added drama by the white lab coats the musicians wore, and specifically the months on Yann Seznec’s coat, who played the pen, which counted down the pigs months to live.

Having spent the last year doing my own research on pigs – involving the visiting of beautiful farms at parts, and then also the more gruesome abattoirs, this event seemed more personal. The six month life span of a pig previously had been discussed as a factual farm term that we had used to reference weight, and also the cost impact for the farmer. Suddenly now seen from the perspective of the pig, 6 months which equates to around 5% of it’s potential life span, becames apparent.

The conversation that preempted the performance dallied with some of these pretty big issues revolving commercial food production. This album approaches this topic which so often can be interpreted as sanctimonious at best in a new and refreshing way. It is hard to find an answer to this ever growing issue while you are about to stuff your face full of pork, but I am glad that the conversation was being had.

Unlike many of the great albums of the year, I don’t think I will hear the One Pig album again with intent, although I was in a cafe yesterday and the music they played there was very similar. Perhaps it wasn’t so obscure that you can’t listen to it while drinking latte’s. One thing this event did do was lead me to  the purchase of Eating Animals, by Jonathan Saffran Foer. Up to now I had tried to avoid this book in the fear that I too would be changed for life. But going into a world of meat production has made me face the true realities of the food chain and part of eat is surmised brilliantly by Foer. I would recommend anyone who eats meat to read this book, but as I am sure you know already, it isn’t all beautiful.

More reviews of it here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/worldfolkandjazz/8962176/One-Pig-Cafe-Oto-review.html

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/music/review-24022174-matthew-herbert-one-pig-dead-and-alive-cafe-oto—review.do

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15930-matthew-herbert-one-pig/

After curing in brine or in a dry cure for nearly 3 weeks, we pulled out the muscles and lardo last week to place in our temperature controlled ‘cupboard’ to proceed on the final stages of the fermentation.

After some disappointment with our Salami’s we were very curious to see what the muscles were doing – They had firmed up nicely, and the colour of them was cheering. We remained hopeful that our meats were going to produce some beautiful product.

The stage of pressing was quite new to me – The process makes a more uniform shape, allowing for a more consistant maturation process throughout the muscle and it also reduces any further water that may remain which speeds up the process of the maturation further. They all were lined up in individual sections of the press in a very orderly fashion. It isn’t surprising that all German cured products go through this process.

So, now they are out of the press and are into the maturation room. We hope that these products will be ready for sampling nearing the festive season.

Chen Chen is a product designer. That is about all there is to know about Chen on the website. But the thing that got my attention is the brilliantly poppy Cold-Cuts coasters.

As soon as I have a drink to coast, I am going to get myself a joint of meat..

You can buy them here, or here..

Carl Warners book Food Landscapes is a delicious look into the world of food, but not in the plated variety – More Willy Wonka on meat acid. I can’t help but feel this one is a little ‘red riding hood’ but it could just be the tones..