The home is in. It’s the new, improved place to be.
But has home ever truly gone out of fashion for the domestic mystics out there? Does it matter if home might as well be razed, with mushrooms growing in the hall, no buzzer to speak of, an excuse for a door, behind which is the cache of all that remains of what is you, much reduced in circumstance by the tides of love and labor?
No, so long as there’s a hearth, there’s a home.
The idea for this project was to provide a nice ham over the Christmas holidays, but not one from the usual sources, either from the farmers in the Budapest outdoor markets or from the butchers in the bigger markets: oversalted, rubbed with some preservative I wouldn’t want on it, and so smoked that there’s hardly any ham flavor left. Now I'm trying it again in preparation for Easter, having about three weeks to for the salt to do its magic.
I did a little research in Mrs. Beaton and Larousse, and although I lacked a brine tub, I thought a dry salt in a plastic bag would suffice for my purposes.
Compare what’s in the can, preserved, or dried, or anything that’s sold as cured, smoked, or salted, and you can actually avoid all that by doing it yourself with just salt.
The same applies to the accompanying bread recipe. It’s a search to secure the best, cleanest foods possible.
Ham in a Bag
One 3.7 kilo haunch of pork or piglet, supposedly mangalica, but it wasn’t (Feny utca)
Six kilograms of sea salt
Three clean large plastic bags or salting tub
15 juniper berries
20 bayleaves
Three tablespoons rosemary
Seven tablespoons mortared mixed black and white pepper
Salted for 15 days, hanging from a coat hanger in three plastic bags, checked on occasionally, then soaked overnight (should have been air-dried a few days), cut at the knuckle, boiled for four hours (first broth thrown out after an hour, 2nd broth saved to the very end and used to make pasta and soup), served with homemade mustard, homemade horseradish and homemade bread. The flavor was mild and lovely.
And advance apologies for no pictures. If you're reading this and your mouth is watering, well, you don't need pictures.
But has home ever truly gone out of fashion for the domestic mystics out there? Does it matter if home might as well be razed, with mushrooms growing in the hall, no buzzer to speak of, an excuse for a door, behind which is the cache of all that remains of what is you, much reduced in circumstance by the tides of love and labor?
No, so long as there’s a hearth, there’s a home.
The idea for this project was to provide a nice ham over the Christmas holidays, but not one from the usual sources, either from the farmers in the Budapest outdoor markets or from the butchers in the bigger markets: oversalted, rubbed with some preservative I wouldn’t want on it, and so smoked that there’s hardly any ham flavor left. Now I'm trying it again in preparation for Easter, having about three weeks to for the salt to do its magic.
I did a little research in Mrs. Beaton and Larousse, and although I lacked a brine tub, I thought a dry salt in a plastic bag would suffice for my purposes.
Compare what’s in the can, preserved, or dried, or anything that’s sold as cured, smoked, or salted, and you can actually avoid all that by doing it yourself with just salt.
The same applies to the accompanying bread recipe. It’s a search to secure the best, cleanest foods possible.
Ham in a Bag
One 3.7 kilo haunch of pork or piglet, supposedly mangalica, but it wasn’t (Feny utca)
Six kilograms of sea salt
Three clean large plastic bags or salting tub
15 juniper berries
20 bayleaves
Three tablespoons rosemary
Seven tablespoons mortared mixed black and white pepper
Salted for 15 days, hanging from a coat hanger in three plastic bags, checked on occasionally, then soaked overnight (should have been air-dried a few days), cut at the knuckle, boiled for four hours (first broth thrown out after an hour, 2nd broth saved to the very end and used to make pasta and soup), served with homemade mustard, homemade horseradish and homemade bread. The flavor was mild and lovely.
And advance apologies for no pictures. If you're reading this and your mouth is watering, well, you don't need pictures.
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