SC - Purchasing Salted Lard

[Alderton, Philippa]

Adamantius sez:

>Hmmm. If the recipe suggests pancetta as a substitute, I assume what
they mean by salted lard is essentially a salt-cured, "green" bacon,
which you'd have to render somehow, or at least fry slices of to get
cooking fat. <

Educate me, A. What exactly is pancetta? What about green bacon? How are
they made and salt cured? Heavily salted, immersed in a brine, then hung?
I'm assuming by green bacon you don't mean that stuff I found when I cleaned
out my refrigerator last week ;-)

>Failing green bacon, how about salt pork? Petit salé? Salt fatback?
Possibly some kind of corned or brined pork product? If pancetta isn't
available, how about fatty prosciutto, which isn't too different from
pancetta in flavor? Failing all of those, maybe you could find a lightly
smoked bacon without a lot of sugar in the cure. <

Petit sale ? Fatty prosciutto? I at least know what prosciutto is, but I've
never seen any I'd call fatty- and if I did, at the price of prosciutto, I
wouldn't be buying it to render the fat.

Since it seems the substance is hard to come by, might it not make more
sense if Susan simply  got the fresh fat, salted it down well and air dried
it herself? Or is this one of those things where it has to age for several
months or so?

Phlip

Nolo disputare, volo somniare et contendere, et iterum somniare.

phlip at morganco.net

Philippa Farrour
Caer Frig
Southeastern Ohio

"All things are poisons.  It is simply the dose that distinguishes between a
poison and a remedy." -Paracelsus

Johnson: Oats -- a grain which in England sustains the horses, and in
Scotland, the men.
Boswell: Indeed, and where else will you find such horses, and such men?


============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================