Text 23363, 79 rader
Skriven 2009-04-17 07:22:48 av DAVE SACERDOTE (1:123/140)
Ärende: Capicola!!!
===================
With the weather starting to warm up, my attic is no longer 
staying consistently cold, and for the past couple of weeks
I've been checking on the capicola to see if it was ready to
take down and open.  When they're ready, they're very firm 
(but not hard) and slightly yielding, and the smell (up close,
one has to get one's face right into the work) changes from
"porcine" to rich meatiness with nutty overtones.  Last week,
I decided that their time had come.

Easter weekend is busy for both Roger and I, so we agreed that
he'd stop in on the Wednesday following, after work, and we'd
open the cappies and process them.

And so, on Wednesday, the capicolas came down from the attic and
were piled onto the kitchen table for the final stages of the 
process.

We ordered a pizza from Enzo's - a local joint that makes a
decent thin-crust Brooklyn-style pie - and opened a bottle of
wine, and got to work, starting off by cutting the plastic 
cable ties off of the capicolas, then prying loose the wooden 
slats. Capicola right out of the splints is an ugly looking 
thing. The wood hides a bloom of mold which ranges in color 
from white to blue to green. It's better than harmless - it's 
actually beneficial and helps develop the flavor of the capicola - 
but damn, it's hideous.

(As an aside, the mold gives an artisanal quality to the meat.
Because the native molds in my attic are different than those
in, say, Nick's wine cellar (where he hangs his) our capicolas
have slightly different flavors.)

The next step is removing the casing. This is best done by slipping 
a knife between the casing and the meat and using the blade to 
help loosen the casing from the capicola underneath. Once it's 
loose, it can be peeled off. It will have the stiff feel of rawhide.

Sometimes, when you take the casing off, you'll find more mold 
underneath. We did, on a few of our cappies. This is caused by 
trapped air that didn't get sufficiently bled off when we were 
packing the casings (even though I pricked the casings with a 
needle as needed, we missed enough of the air that we did get 
some mold.) Again, this isn't really a problem, as long as the 
mold is green, blue, or white (red mold indicates genuinely 
toxic spoilage.) For the pieces with inside mold, we scrubbed 
them clean under cool running water.

Once the capicola were peeled, we gave them another bath in 
white wine to prepare them for packaging. Using a heavy Chinese 
chef's knife, we cut each capicola into four more-or-less 
equal portions and sealed each portion into it's own little 
cryovac pouch with the vacuum packager.

It's my experience that, left unopened in the cryovac, the 
capicola chunks will be safe to eat for about a year, perhaps 
more. I plan to put most of my packages in the freezer just 
to be sure.

And, of course, we broke out the slicer and slivered one 
of the chunks so we could enjoy the fruits of our labor 
and our patience. The meat is a translucent dark rose color, 
tending to mahogany near the ends of the loins where the 
diameter was thinner and more moisture evaporated out, and 
the fat is creamy white and melts in your mouth. The capicola 
has an earthy, nut-like aroma and a rich, deep meaty flavor. 
The taste and texture is very similar to a Parma ham.

Success!



---
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blogged with photos at Dave's Cupboard.

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(The extra shelf in Dave's Cupboard.
 * Origin: Doc's Place BBS Fido Since 1991 docsplace.tzo.com (1:123/140)