Curing and Smoking with a Christmas Twist

The last of the Curing and Smoking Days took place last weekend and Marc was asked to provide a Christmas twist which he did in style.

The course, which had long been fully booked,  was jammed packed with ideas. During the morning Marc brought out the two whole salmon which he filleted and cured in gravlax style. Fortunately there was enough left for me to have some prepared for Christmas - excellent, I hope I can refrain from trying it before then!

Everybody prepared their own piece of salmon and then made a wet brine for their poussin.  After soaking for a couple of hours, the poussin were boned and rolled up with a piece of guinea fowl, pork forcemeat and wrapped in bacon.

After lunch Mark tackled the pork. There was a piece for everybody to dry cure. He also removed the neck muscle from a piece of shoulder which was used for coppa. The rest of the pork was minced and used to make a stilton sausage which was cooked, wrapped in bacon and placed  in a kilner jar with pork fat. This confit of stilton sausage can be stored until Christmas when the jar can be heated to melt the fat. The sausage wrapped in bacon can be pan fried for a few minutes to reheat.

As usual the group has a hot smoked chicken for lunch along with other cured goodies and a piece of hot smoked salmon for try later in the afternoon.

Full marks must go to the supplier of the salmon Real Scottish Salmon from Westeross (http://www.realscottishsalmon.co.uk/shop/fresh-salmon). I ordered Wednesday afternoon and the fish arrived the next morning, looking super on their bed of ice. The fish were fresh with bright gills. If you ever have a need to buy whole salmon online, look no further than this company that operate to very high RSPCA welfare standards.