Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Porkstrami Extravaganza, Part the First!
No, I haven’t been blogging much lately. Yes, I’ve been writing — editing, to be precise. I finished the second/third pass-through on Gator & Shark, and I’ve sent it to an editor. Now I’m trying to breathe new life into The Brakan Correspondent. It’s rough; I finished it eight years ago, and have been fiddling with it ever since. I have some great set-pieces in this novel. Just a question of cutting away the crap to find the novel within.
But on to the food. I’m going to give you a play-by-play of my latest grand experiment: porkstrami! I’m allergic to beef, I miss pastrami, and I’ve heard that pork pastrami is at least as good as the real thing. Unfortunately, porkstrami isn’t the sort of thing you can get mail order. You have to make it yourself, and that means corning, smoking, and cooking the pork.
I chose a seven-pound pork shoulder. For the brine, I’ve modified from Alpoe the Mad’s recipe (mostly because I don’t like juniper berries). Here’s mine:
One gallon of water
1/2 cup of brown sugar
3/4 cup of kosher salt
1 tablespoon of “pink salt” (see below)
2 cloves
Four bay leaves, broken up
8 garlic cloves, crushed
5 whole allspice berries
1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns
2 tsp freshly ground coriander
1 cinnamon stick
1 slice of ginger
Boil the ingredients, then cool the brine to room temperature. Add the brine and the pork to a garbage bag and put it in the refrigerator. I’m going to let it brine for at least ten days. Every day, I will shake it up a bit to redistribute the ingredients.
Pink salt: I bought this from our local butcher, who had no idea what it was or how it was used (I think he was a junior butcher — took him ten seconds to bone the pork shoulder, but he was lost on the pink salt). According to Alpoe the Mad’s blog, this is 6.25% sodium nitrite. Kinda necessary, I suspect.
I’ll keep you posted, with pictures too once it gets interesting.
D.
