[Sca-cooks] Zervelat update

[Michael Gunter]

> What you're looking for if you want belly or side meat is going to be > a flattish, nearly rectangular piece of meat with skin on one side, > layers of muscle and fat, culminating in a membranous inner layer with > some bones running through it that vaguely resemble the bones in spare > ribs.
 
That's pretty much what I have. It was called "bacon" but it
doesn't look cured and is unsliced. It's some lean, lots of thick fat
and skin. No bones that I can tell but I haven't cut into it yet.
Cursed, work, getting in the way of important stuff!
 
> Sounds good. Bear in mind that there will probably be some slight > difference in texture, between using all uncured meats and then > smoking the sausage, and making a sausage with a mixture of fresh and > cured meat. My experience has been that if you use too much cured > meat, the sausage can have an unpleasantly grainy texture (akin to > what you might get if you ground a lot of cooked meat in there).
My sausage has been grainy but I think that is mainly to not enough/
incorrect type of fat being used. The cured meat is only about 1/10th
of the whole mess. The pork belly "bacon" appears to be fresh.
 
I'm using around 7lbs of shoulder, 2 lbs of belly and 1 1/2 lb or so of
cured smoked bacon. This will give me around 20% - 25% of fat to
lean in the final forcemeat.
> Cool! Happy grinding!
I may not grind this. Since this is for Kingdom A&S I'll probably hand
mince it. Of course there may be no difference in the final product
but I'm trying to do everything in as period a manner as possible.
Since I haven't heard back from the Tudor Cook guys on the best
way to prepare forcemeat (mincing or grinding) I'll just mince at
least a few sausages worth and maybe grind the rest.
 
After I've finished the sausages I'll be making manchet loaves to
freeze and bake the day before the competition. A week before
competition I'll make the small mead or barley water.
Then the final dishes the last few days although the egredouce
does very well frozen and reheated so that might get bumped
up.
 
Next thing is to haunt the Middle Eastern stores for fava beans for
the Makke.
 > Adamantius
Gunthar
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