I took out the other two tenderloins, and both are wonderful.  The french garlic-and-pepper version is a little dull, but the Lomo de Embuchado is spectacular.

I’m going away sailing for a week on the 6th of June, so I’m not going to start anything new, especially since I haven’t really dealt with the problem of too-high humidity.  My humidistat has the wiring to turn on a dehumidifier - I just have to find some time to work on it.

I’m running low of everything except Chorizo, but it’ll have to wait, unless JJ steps up and want to watch it while I’m gone.

I took the two surviving lonzino out of the cabinet today.  They’re pretty hard - I probably could have taken them out sooner.  Really delicious though.  I left the other two for a few more days.

Almost overnight, the humidity in the house (and the State of Connecticut) flipped from being too dry to too wet.  I watched as the curing cabinet went from 70 to 75 and on to 85, then took my eye off the ball for a few days and… MOLD!

I pulled the six loins out of the cabinet and washed the mold (mostly white but with a couple spots of green) off using white vinegar and put them back in the cabinet with the door open for the moment.

Two of the loins were too far gone - the two that didn’t really fit into the casings.  I tossed them and will have to hold my breath for the rest.  Hopefully the green mold won’t reappear.

Took the French and Spanish versions of the tenderloin out of the cure and stuffed them (without trouble) into casings today.  Maybe they were smaller tenderloins, maybe the casing was bigger.  Who knows?

They look great.  For the record, the Lomo de Embuchado was 540g and the Saucisson Sec version was 650g.

I took the cured tenderloins out of their bags today (after 9 days) and stuffed them (wait…) into beef middle casings I’d soaked overnight.  It worked pretty well, except when I’d bought the tenderloin I’d paid more attention to shape (not having a narrow end that dried out too soon) than to size.  The result was that one of them wouldn’t fit all the way into the casing, and another wouldn’t go in at all.

As a result we have an experiment: 4 nearly identical tenderloins, two in casings, one in a casing that’s open at one end, and one just bare naked.  We had a comment in the beginning from brandon that said

“dont even bother stuffing the lonzino into a casing…….just cure it then hang it”

So I did, poking a hole in one end and tying a string through it.

Time will tell…

Before I put away the photos and documents littering the floor of my office, I thought I’d scan this one of my Great-Grandfather Henry Hohorst’s store at 80 Monticello Avenue in Jersey City:

He’s the second from the right, in the bowler hat.  Look closely, you can see the sausages hanging next to the hams along the ceiling to the right.

I’ve been using the terms Lomo and Lonzino interchangably, but I’m realizing that’s wrong.  You may remember that, flush with the success of the first pork tenderloin I cured, I went out and bought four more, rolled them in spices (using the same base recipe from the Cured Meats blog, with cinnamon, clove, fennel and allspice) and put them in the fridge to cure.

It was only after talking to Chris this weekend that it occurred to me that maybe I should have used some other spices to try something new.

Everyone who tried the first one had the same reaction: “Ummm”,  “UMMMM!” and then… “it tastes like Christmas”.  And who wants Christmas every day?

So I went on line and looked around for recipes, and found some for a French version with only garlic, salt and pepper, and a Spanish one that is called Lomo de Embucado (with pimenton, naturally).  The latter, of course, is the one I eat in Spain, but there it just sits in a pile with no labels on it.  I served some to my in-laws (who live on the Costa Brava) and they said “Oh, Lomo”.  “Lomo”, of course, just means “loin”, and usually refers to beef.  “Lomo de Cerdo” is pork loin.  “Embuchado”, according to Google, means either “sausage” or “electoral fraud”; I’m assuming the first is closer for our purposes, but probably not an exact match.

So today I bought two more tenderloins (on sale at the A&P) and am planning to do a Spanish and French version.

I also harvested the rest of the Sopressata today, and tasted the smallest of the new Chorizo, which was done.  It’s spicier than the last batch - if only I could remember which brand of spices I used for both!

I pulled the Lomo (pork tenderloin) out of the cabinet this morning.  It was probably ready yesterday, but I didn’t have a spare moment (between filing taxes, lunch in the city with Michelle & Liz, the matinee of Hair with Kate and drinks with Marcus, Bruce, Michelle and Tom after) to deal with it.

My expectations were low because of how unevenly it was drying - it’s tapered at one end, and that end was hard as a rock last weekend, while the fatter end was still soft.

To my surprise, it’s fantastic!  The meat is like silk, with a rich deep red color and some strong spice flavors, like the juniper.  I’m planning on picking up three or four more later today at the store and starting another batch.  What a spectacular alternative to dried sausage!  Just need to find more uniform tenderloins (and they have to be small, to fit in my casings).

Sopressata is doing fine, but still a little soft.  Coming up on three weeks.  Some of them may be done, but I tied them in strings of three sausages, and they’re not all ready to come out.  The humidity seems to be holding at 70-75 percent without much help from the humidifier.  What a difference it made when the weather warmed up.  Chorizo looks nice as well, although I worry that I might have pulled it out of the fermenting room too soon, or not have had the temperature high enough, as they seem a little softer than I remember the others.  Hopefully just my fretful imagination.

I was up early this morning and, with the meat JJ and Oliver cut up yesterday, made another batch of Chorizo.  I think it will be my best batch yet.  Everything went smoothly, and I didn’t forget any ingredients.

I ended up with 3.2kg of meat, and used a spreadsheet I’m building to recalculate the other ingredients.  I added some fat as well, but ground everything together through the small die.  They look great, and I was done before JJ was up for breakfast (which isn’t saying much).

For breakfast we made buttermilk pancakes with the buttermilk from making the butter last night and the last of the Bratwurst we’d made in January and frozen.  I’m ready for the big car ride.

I know this is a sausage blog, but I’m going to talk about butter anyway.

I’ve been making bread upon occasion for some time, based on Mark Bittman’s story in the New York Times about No-Knead Bread (Click Here to read the stories and the recipe if you don’t already know about them).  Last week Mark ran a story on his blog about making butter (Here), claiming it was incredibly easy.

Turns out it is.  I took a quart of heavy cream and left it out overnight.  Then I chilled it (which may or may not have been necessary) and whipped it in my mixer with the whisk attached.  After it got through the whipped cream stage, it started to clump, then BANG!, it broke and the buttermilk appeared.

I kneaded in 1 tsp of table salt, which seems to be just the right amount, put it in ramekins and covered each with parchment paper before putting them in the fridge.

I happened to be making bread for dinner tonight (or, I guess, I chose today to make butter because I was making bread).  I don’t know if it was the bread or the butter, but the two together were out of this world.  I was ready to forego dinner and just eat bread.

With so much other food around I thought we might have one of the loaves of bread leftover.

Not a chance.