Lambing time

 

Yesterday, I was convinced it was spring. It was sunny, the kind of sunny where when the sun is full out, you want to take off your coat, but when it pops behind a cloud, you wish you had worn another layer outside. 

The first lambs were born, too, a surprise! They were eleven days early, at least, by the calendar, so lambs had not been on my radar. When Tim called me to say one of the ewes was in labor, I ran out without a coat and left the garden gate open—later found all our chickens in there. 

 

I was determined to see the second twin born. Our neighbor Christina dropped by to wait for a bit with me, and brought beers. Her six-month-old, Simon, played in the hay and laughed at the mama ewe. Finally, I did see it happen. It was sort of terrifying. I have been listening to James Herriot stories from the library recently, so I found myself thinking, James! What do I do?! I did nothing and the ewe did everything and it was fine. It was neat to hear her grunting with pleasure as she licked off the lamb, and to watch the lamb struggle up within minutes and start to head-bonk the mama's udder for milk—Herriot talks about both of those things as sights that never got old for him. 

So what with the lambs, the slender green shoots of garlic in the garden, the myriad tulip stalks in the pots on the patio—it really did seem like spring. 

But then today it was fifteen degrees colder and snowing for most of the morning. I guess that sounds like spring too. 

 

Snow days

This morning, we woke up to four inches of snow. I still feel that giddy surprise when I open up the curtains and see it blanketing the pasture—snow day! The Friendly Red Pen office stayed open . . . no slippery commute to endanger travel to the desk. But snow days always feel special, not a little magical, somehow set apart. 

 

 

 

But of course it's tonight that the antsyness that's been growing within me recently decides to really move in to stay. Spring. Doesn't spring sound nice? I'm all for lazy winter evenings, for a season. But I've just about had my fill of them now. I'm ready for it to be light later, to set out for the garden after work or, gasp, after dinner. Does it really stay light out that late in other seasons? Sometimes in the dark of winter that seems too improbable to be true. 

The weird thing is that I'm perfectly happy knowing tomorrow will be another snow day and full of childlike dread of the Wednesday rain that will wash all this away. I want it to stay. 

But spring . . . The tulip bulbs in the pots on the patio, which have already sent up green shoots, agree with me. It's almost time. 

From the forest to the freezer, part 2

Last weekend, at a family get-together, the first thing my twelve-year-old cousin said to me was "The meat is sooooooo good!!"

We sold a quarter pig to my aunt and uncle. He proceeded to tell me a few of his recent favorite pork dishes--pasta with bacon, a slow-cooked ham, and a few other things--all unprompted.

This weekend, at a family get-together, after a long walk through the woods, Tim whipped out a beautiful charcuterie plate for snacking while we played games: saucisson sec (a simple French sausage featuring a lot of garlic), coppa (cured pork shoulder), and cured bacon alongside sharp cheddar cheese, kalamata olives, and a selection of homemade pickles.

Those two moments are the deeply satisfying ones we were dreaming about on day three of pig butchering. We had come so far, but had so far to go. Yesterday's last pig half had hung overnight in the cold, from the cedar tree out back. After breakfast, Tim and Dad went to work on it. More giant slabs of bacon for our bulging fridge, more chops for the freezer, and two big hams for holidays: a Christmas one and an Easter one. I had had fun with the three previous pig halves, but I was happy to turn my attention to the pate that morning.

When we butchered pigs on Vashon, our friend John made a ton of pate with the livers. I didn't grow up with pate, or liver, and for whatever reason I never got up the courage to try it. I have always felt silly about that and wished I had at least sampled a bite. So I was excited to craft my own pate, a la Ruhlman and Charcuterie. I had combined the chopped liver and cubed pork shoulder with salt and thyme and pepper the night before, so first thing I seared the liver chunks--which smelled heavenly--then the pork shoulder, and sauteed shallots. Brandy, cream, milk, and eggs combined with the meat and shallots before I ground the mixture through the electric sausage grinder that we borrowed from our landlords. I lined three loaf pans with caul fat, the lacy fat that encases the pig's innards, and filled the loaf pans with pate. The caul fat kept the pate moist. Then low and slow heat cooked it all up.

 

 

While it cooked, we moved on to cubing shoulder meat for sausage. Working with super cold meat and keeping everything cold in bowls set in ice was key here. Gosh, it takes a while to cube up so many pounds of sausage. After cubing it, we weighed it out into portions for chorizo, Italian, and breakfast freezer sausage, and salted it. The funny thing is, I had thought long and hard about all these sausage recipes, the ingredients, and the process of making them. But I never once thought about bowls until basically the day before we began. Bowls to fit a scaled-up recipe for 15 pounds of chorizo?! Luckily, Mom and Barb came to the rescue with some truly giant bowls and tubs that saved the day.  And somehow, with a lot of jigsaw puzzling, our fridge was able to fit it all--40+ pounds of cubed sausage meat, 30 pounds of bacon slabs, some of it already curing, the 30-pound proscuitto ham, eventually the three loaf tins of pate, and miscellaneous other things.

 

Dad and Mom carefully weighed out the herbs, spices, and alliums for the freezer sausages. The chorizo spices were a study in shades of red--chipotle chili powder and smoked hot paprika--with ground cumin and fresh oregano. The Italian got a cascade of toasted cumin seeds, more fresh oregano, and sweet paprika. Minced fresh sage leaves and minced fresh ginger spiced the breakfast sausage.

 

We had originally intended to be finished with the work by Saturday night and had invited out landlords, Barb and Ger, to come for dinner to celebrate with us. By then, we knew we weren't close to done, but we paused to celebrate anyway! Tim cooked strip steak and potatoes, my parents made salad, and Barb brought brussels sprouts. It was a treat to stop working, sit down, and eat yummy food and chat and laugh together. One memorable moment was when Barb asked us if this pig thing was like having a kid--if, after the laboring process, we would swear off having another for at least a few years, to recover! Tim and I didn't hesitate; no, we'd do it all again in a heart beat.

After dinner, it was nose to the grindstone again--actually, sausage to the grinder! This was easy and fun; the grinder did most of the work, and we just had to make sure the ground meat poured into the bowls set in ice. And it was a serious treat, and so delightfully satisfying, to fry up little patties of sausage to sample it. Crispy and browned on the outside, and punchy with flavor...it was impossible to choose a favorite.

 

 

 

Day Four
Mom and Dad left after breakfast. I honestly don't know what we would have done without them. Looking back, I think we were somewhat naive about the amount of work that we had cut out for ourselves, and what we could accomplish with just the two of us. It is the little things that end up taking the most time, the things like washing mounds of dishes, measuring out spices, cubing sausage meat, tearing off strips of masking tape and labeling butcher-paper-wrapped packages. Mom and Dad jumped in to help with the little things and with the big things, worked tirelessly and uncomplainingly, and--I think!--had a great time experiencing the process with us. We were so thankful.

Tim and I spent the morning with more spices: crushed juniper berries and peppercorns to rub all over the coppa, bay leaves and garlic cloves for savory bacon, maple syrup for sweet bacon. Mounds of garlic for the saucisson sec, more chili powders and paprika for chorizo, and plenty more fennel for salami. And a whole lot of salt for everything.

 

Yesterday's pate was ready to eat, and it made a fitting lunch: slabs of pate on good bread, with Dijon mustard and lots of sweet pickles. I will pause here to say that I wanted to like it--so badly. I put so much care into the making of it, and knew that all the ingredients were quality, but the more pate I ate, the less I liked it. I know that it was delicious pate. Tim loved it. Our landlords said it was exquisite. I tried really hard to like it. But I just didn't. 

The afternoon brought the new adventure of stuffing sausage casings. While we packaged our freezer sausages loose, we needed to case the saucisson sec, chorizo, and salami so we could hang it to cure. We were both nervous about this part. Making sausages for curing requires an extra level of precision and cleanliness, and not to sound dramatic, but actually life and death hang in the balance! Everything you do along the way--from using squeaky-clean sterilized equipment to fully incorporating the curing salt and table salt with the meat to following precise directions for prepping lactic acid bacteria and mold solutions--is for the purpose of doing what seems impossible: preserve meat without ever cooking it. With cured whole cuts like bacon, you never have the chance to introduce bacteria into the interior of the cut, where things like botulism toxin could thrive in that anaerobic environment. With sausage, though, you cut up the meat and mix it, then stuff it into casings to recreate an anaerobic environment. There is potential for contamination all along the way.

So, with some trepidation, we ground the batches of meat with the spices and weighed-out salts. The chorizo and salami got lactic acid bacteria, too, like yogurt. This not only adds tangy flavor but also offers another protection for the meat; bad bacteria don't like the acidic environment that the LAB provide.

Then it all went back in the fridge while we prepped the sausage casings. Which, hey, is hard! All the recipes say to soak the casings in water for at least 30 minutes before using them, which we did, but none of the recipes mention the fact that hundreds of feet of casings tend to tangle. Super tangle into massive slippery knots. That smell kind of like spaghetti. Needless to say, we spent more time than anticipated bent over the dining room table teasing out the knots.

 

Once the casings were in knotless coils, we began to stuff. This was a learning process--figuring out how full, or not full, to fill the casings, without making them burst. Burst a few of them did, but we got the hang of it and pretty soon long links were sliding into coils all across the table. It is pretty cool to watch fettucine-sized casings balloon into 1-inch-thick ropes of sausage. The only downside of the stuffing was that the sausage stuffer was too small for our purposes, and we were constantly stopping to refill it.

 

After each length of link was stuffed, I divided them into 6-inch twists and dunked them in the mold solution. The purpose of the mold solution is to inoculate the sausage casings with a good kind of mold, a harmless white kind, so that bad molds never have the chance to grow on the outside of the sausages while they hang. 

Then we laid the chorizo and salami on baking sheets, pricked the casings all over with a sterilized sausage pricker, covered them with towels, and put them on a table in our guest room, which was toasty warm at 80 degrees. Yes, 80 degrees! It felt totally counterintuitive. But this temperature gives the lactic acid bacteria a kick start. We hung up the saucisson sec immediately, as it is not a fermented sausage, in our curing chamber--the closet of our extra bedroom. We used butcher's twine to hang the links from the closet rod, a portable radiator heater to keep the room temperature around 60 degrees, and some pans of water to keep the humidity up.

 

And, besides some mounds of dishes, that was it. Most of the pork was in the freezer. Some of it was still in the fridge, packed in salt to cure for a week or so; the rest of it was embarking on its air-curing adventure. It was immensely relieving to crawl into bed with a clean kitchen and no pigs on the conscience.