Book Review
Title: Charcuterie; Subject: Slow Smoking and Smoke Cooking;
Sausage mainly
The book lists numerous recipes for the classics including knackwurst;
bratwurst; summer sausage etc. as well as smoked pork loins, terrines
such as veal terrine, rubs, barbecue sauce and one recipe for German
potato salad. These recipes however are not the book's strength. The
real strength lies in the authors'(two authors were involved) ability
to translate his/their knowledge of this type of cookery into a
relatively detailed account of ingredients and methods, even doing a
couple of pages on sodium chloride and sodium nitride(pink salt). It's
a great read even if you already think you everything there is to know
about smoke cookery and cold smoking. Also for the anal nitrides among
you I have found an error on page 36. The one author gives a method
for hog butchery. But according to him the butcher takes the bristles
off the skin, then stuns, kills, cleans and halves the hogs. Now I've
never tried to take the bristles off a steaming mad sow but perhaps a
southern man may make it work? I recommend that you spend your
Saturday afternoon in hunting down the author and letting him know just
what in God's name does he think he's doing.
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