Ruhlman's Twenty (5 page)

Some cultures use the juice of preserved lemons and limes as a beverage, mixed with soda water and served over ice (in this case they’re preserved whole, not halved).

Preserved lemons will keep in your pantry indefinitely, though you’ll see various levels of oxidation or browning as they age. The only thing you need to be concerned about is mold; if for any reason your lemon is in contact with the air, mold can grow. I hope it’s needless to say that you shouldn’t eat this mold. Cut it away and discard.

Scale the following recipe up or down as needed. The only critical requirement is that the lemons remain completely submerged and that you use a nonreactive vessel in which to cure them.

2 pounds/910 grams kosher salt

1 pound/455 grams sugar

5 lemons, halved vertically

1 cup/240 milliliters water

In a large bowl, combine the salt and sugar and stir with a spoon or whisk to distribute the sugar in the salt. Put the lemons in a 2-quart/2-liter nonmetal container and pour the salt mixture over them. Jiggle and rap the container to make sure the mixture falls into all the crevices. Add the water (the moisture will help the salt stay in contact with the lemons). Cover the container and store in a cupboard or in the refrigerator for 3 months (it’s a good idea to date the container or mark your calendar when they will be cured). The lemons will keep indefinitely.

Making your own bacon is as easy as marinating a steak. When you do, you’ll find out what true bacon is all about, as opposed to the brine-pumped, water-logged versions available at the supermarket. It’s about the power of salt. American bacon is traditionally smoked. If you have a conventional smoker or a stove-top smoker, by all means use this instead of your oven. In Italy, most bacon, pancetta, is not smoked, though it’s often dried. But smoke is by no means the critical part of the preparation.

With most salt-cured items, it’s important to balance the salt with sugar or some kind of sweetener. I like to use brown sugar, just enough for balance, not sweetness. Bacon that will be smoked benefits from sweetness, but here you want the savory notes of the garlic and herbs to come though.

Traditional bacon has a curing agent, sodium nitrite. Sodium nitrite is not a chemical additive; it’s an antimicrobial agent that prevents the growth of harmful bacteria, keeps the meat rosy, and gives bacon its distinctive flavor. The vast majority of nitrite in our bodies comes from vegetables, which pick it up from the soil. In the preparation here, the sodium nitrite is optional; be forewarned, though, that if you don’t use it, your bacon will be the color of a cooked pork chop, and it will have a much more porky flavor to it, more like spareribs than bacon. (For a source for sodium nitrite, see
SOURCES
.)

Pork belly takes about a week to cure and requires a two-part cooking process. First, it’s slow roasted or smoked to cook it through. Then it is typically cooled, sliced and sautéed to render the fat and crisp it up.

Below are two excellent cures: one savory, more in the style of Italian pancetta, and a sweeter honey-mustard cure. I find the sweet cures to go well with traditional smoked bacon, so if you intend to smoke the bacon, use the sweet cure. Otherwise, I would use the savory cure. Both work beautifully however you want to finish your bacon.

SAVORY PEPPER BACON CURE

3 tablespoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon sodium nitrite (optional)

2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

4 garlic cloves, smashed with the flat side of a knife

1 tablespoon coarsely ground black pepper

4 bay leaves, crumbled

2 teaspoons red pepper flakes

Honey-Mustard-Garlic Bacon Cure

3 tablespoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon sodium nitrite (optional)

2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

¼ cup/60 milliliters Dijon mustard

¼ cup/60 milliliters honey

8 to 10 garlic cloves, smashed with the flat side of a knife and then finely chopped

4 or 5 sprigs fresh thyme (optional)

5-pound/2.3-kilogram slab pork belly

TO MAKE THE CURE:
In a bowl, combine all the ingredients for your chosen cure.

Place the pork belly in a large resealable plastic bag, about 2½ gallons/9.5 liters, or in a nonreactive container of the same capacity. Rub the cure all over the pork. Seal the bag or cover the container and refrigerate for 7 days, occasionally rubbing the meat to redistribute the seasonings and turning the bag or the belly every other day.

Remove the meat from the cure, rinse well, and pat dry with paper towels/absorbent paper. Discard the cure. The belly can be refrigerated in a fresh plastic bag for several days until you are ready to cook it.

If roasting the pork, preheat oven to 200°F/ 95°C. Place the meat on a rack on a baking sheet/tray. Roast until the internal temperature reaches 150°F/65°C, about 2 hours. Begin checking the temperature after 1 hour. (If you have cured a belly that still has the skin on, slice off the skin now while the fat is hot; save it for stocks and stews such as the
WINTER VEGETABLE GARBURE
.)

If you have a smoker, smoke the belly with the wood of your choice at 200°F/95°C until it reaches an internal temperature of 150°F/65°C.

Let the bacon cool to room temperature. Wrap it well in plastic wrap/cling film and refrigerate until chilled. The bacon can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks or cut into slices or chunks, wrapped well, and frozen for up to 3 months.

When ready to use the bacon, cut it into
¹
/
₈
-inch/3-millimeter slices or ½-inch/12-millimeter lardons and sauté (see
THE WAY TO SAUTÉ BACON
) slowly until the fat is rendered and the bacon is crisp.

I’m not a big fan of cooked salmon, but I adore cured salmon for its deep flavor and dense texture. It’s easier to make than bacon, and salmon is easier to find than fresh pork belly! I like the freshness that citrus zest brings to the salmon, but once you’ve got a sense of how curing salmon works, you can add different flavors, such as fennel or dill, and change the sugar to brown sugar or honey.

Cured salmon is best sliced so thinly that it’s translucent. If you find this difficult, it can be diced or finely chopped.