Charcuterie_ The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing - Michael Ruhlman [119]
5. Remove all the meat from the head and trotters and cut into 3⁄4-inch/2-centimeter dice. Peel the skin off the tongue; discard the skin and cut the meat into 1⁄2-inch/1-centimeter dice.
6. Line a 11⁄2-quart/1.5-liter terrine mold with plastic wrap, leaving enough overhang on the two long sides to cover the filled terrine. Combine all the meat in the mold, and pour enough of the cooking liquid over to just cover. Fold the plastic wrap over the top and press down to make sure all the ingredients are covered. Refrigerate overnight, or for up to a week.
Yield: 24 slices; 12 appetizer servings
7
FAT:
THE PERFECT COOKING ENVIRONMENT
....
Slow-cooking poultry, pork, or even fish submerged in fat may be the best possible way to cook it. Fat is dense and flavorful, the perfect cooking medium for a leg of duck or a chunk of pork belly. Fat that’s solid at room temperature also becomes the perfect environment in which to store your cooked meat, protecting it from oxygen and light. And, finally, the fat ensures that when the meat is reheated, it remains moist and succulent. The following recipes illustrate the basic confit technique, followed by numerous variations on the theme.
Duck Confit with Clove
Duck Confit with Star Anise and Ginger
Goose Confit
Pork Confit
Jim Drohman’s Pork Belly Confit
Classic Pork Rillettes
White Veal Stock
Smoked Trout Rillettes
Mediterranean Olive and Vegetable “Rillettes”
Simple Rillettes from Confit
Onion Confit
Tomato Confit
The literal translation of the word confit is “preserved.” When the word is applied to a type of meat, it means poached in fat and, strictly speaking, stored within that fat until it’s ready to heat and serve. Because it was originally a preservative technique, confit falls within the charcuterie rubric, and it is perhaps the most accessible and easy charcuterie technique for the home cook. It is also the most delicious and the most versatile. Once again, we no longer need this method to save our food from going bad, but we use it because it tastes exquisite.
In this country, confit is almost always associated with duck or goose, but most any meat can be confited, and many chefs use the term to apply to any meat or fish poached in fat. Ducks and geese may have been the raison d’être of the confit. When it came time to harvest the foie gras, the valuable fattened liver from specially raised birds, French farmers would have had far more meat than they could eat or sell. Happily, the birds produced extraordinary amounts of fat. So they first cured the meat with salt, then poached it in its own fat and left it to cool submerged in that fat. Prepared this way, and stored in the pot in which it was cooked, the duck (or goose) would last for months in a cool cellar, provided the fat stayed solid to prevent air from reaching the duck. Quantities of meat could thus be preserved and eaten throughout the year. The fat would would also be used repeatedly, first to cook the duck and then to fry potatoes.
Pork is excellent for confit. In fact, confiting a pork loin from a commercially raised hog is a superb way of cooking this debased cut of meat. Actually, any part of the pig can be confited with excellent results. Confited belly and shoulder are rare treats in the home kitchen, extraordinary for their succulence and flavor.
Moreover, confit is extraordinarily versatile. Duck confit may be best with the skin simply crisped up in the oven and eaten as is, but it can also become a part of a cassoulet, a traditional French bean stew. Its rich, spicy succulence is an exquisite