Jamie Bissonnette Debuts Charcuterie Cookbook

EDGE READ TIME: 3 MIN.

James Beard Award-winning chef Jamie Bissonnette, of Boston's Toro and Coppa and the recently opened Toro in New York, launches his debut cookbook - "The New Charcuterie Cookbook: Exceptional Cured Meats to Make and Serve at Home" [Page Street Publishing, August 2014, $21.99 US], featuring a foreword by Andrew Zimmern.

The book celebrates charcuterie in all its forms, preserving and processing meat to create ham, sausages, salami, pastrami, pates, and confit, using all parts of the animal. Bissonnette shares his knowledge of how to prepare these cured meats at home, adding a level of accessibility to a seemingly daunting task.

The New Charcuterie Cookbook provides over 100 recipes, as well as the step-by-step and information on ingredients, geared towards both professional chefs and home cooks alike.

Sections in the book cover Cooked Charcuterie, Offal, Cold Cuts, Cured, and Confit, among others, and features recipes like:

  • Lemongrass and Green Curry Sausages
  • Cured Pork Loin Prosciutto-style
  • Whipped Pork Butter with Chestnut Honey
  • Pork Roll, A New Jersey Classic
  • Rabbit Mortadella
  • Foie Gras Sausage
  • Lobster and Sweetbread Terrine

    Bissonnette makes this age-old cooking technique accessible, fun, and flavorful: "You can teach anybody how to roast a chicken or saut� a piece of trout," says Bissonnette, "but it takes a lot more finesse to take something different and make it delicious. I get satisfaction cooking the kinds of things that other people might not, and to using all parts of an animal. To me, this is the essence of being a chef."

    Vietnamese Bologna

    INGREDIENTS
    2 lbs (1 kg) pork shoulder, deboned and diced into 1/2-inch cubes
    1 lb (500 g) pork fat back, diced into 1/2-inch cubes
    5 lb (2 kg) ice cubes
    5 oz (200 ml) fish sauce
    4 oz (115 g) palm sugar, grated
    2 tbsp (30 g) kosher salt
    2 tsp (10 g) garlic powder
    1 Red Thai bird chili pepper, seeds removed and minced to a paste
    1 tbsp (15 g) whole black pepper corns, toasted
    1/2 teasponn cure salt no. 1
    1 banana leaf

    DIRECTIONS
    First, dice the meat, and throw it in the freezer for an hour. Doesn't need to be frozen, but should be wicked cold. The ice should be in small pieces, and held in the freezer as well.

    Put 1/4 of the ice into a bowl and set a smaller metal bowl inside it. Set up a meat grinder with the smallest grinding setting and grind the meat and fat together into the metal bowl inside a bowl of ice to keep it cold. Add 1/4 of the ice and repeat the grinding. Add 1/4 of ice and repeat again. Repeat these steps until the ice is gone. On the last grind, add the sugar.

    In a small bowl combine the salt, garlic powder, peppercorns, cure salt, Thai chili, and fish sauce. Stir to combine. Add the salt mix to the meat, and knead like dough until it sticks and all the ingredients are thoroughly mixed in. Pan-fry a small amount of the farce and taste for seasoning. Adjust the seasoning in the raw farce as needed.

    Chill the meat in the refrigerator until ready to use.

    When ready, cut banana leaf into 10 inch by 30 inch rectangles. Towards the front of the leaf, place 1/2 of the farce. Roll the farce in the leaf so the leaf overlaps a bit. Wrap again in plastic wrap, tying tightly with twine at both ends and three times throughout the length of the sausage.

    Bring a large pot of water to boil. Place the sausages in the water, turn the heat off and cover with a dishcloth. After 15 minutes, check the temperature of the sausage. Remove and let cool when it hits 160�F/71�C. Cool in the fridge. When ready, remove plastic wrap and banana leaf. Slice or dice as desired.

    Recipe from "The New Charcuterie Cookbook" by Jamie Bissonnette
    Page Street Publishing/August 2014.


    by EDGE

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