Meet Lenny

Lenny

For the past year, I have been thinking about the situation with my sheep.  Ramuel Jackson is now the sire of half of my ewes.  Opinions differ on whether inbreeding fathers over daughters is okay.  It seems to be a standard practice in some areas, or ignored until lambs start showing deficiencies. 

I have issues with this.  I personally find such inbreeding distasteful and try to avoid it.  I know that the sheep probably don't care, it's my issue.

The first and obvious solution is to get a new ram. 

But what to do with Ramuel Jackson? I could try to sell him, but I can't give many details at all about him.  I don't know his age. I don't know his breed for certain, the best I can do is go by my shearer's guess that he's a Romney.  And not that many people are interested in a coloured ram.  I'm too much of a soft touch to have him slaughtered for dog food.

It had occurred to me to split my flock.  Ramuel could continue to service my older ewes.  They're all white and not related to him.  While his daughters could run with a new ram.  This would mean the new ram's flock would continue to grow every year but I would have to find another solution for the new ram's daughters as they'd be Ramuel's granddaughters. 

I have dithered, undecided for far too long.

Then recently I saw a post on facebook offering two young rams for sale.  They're two out of a set of triplets, purebred Suffolk and fine looking boys.  I did some quick research about the Suffolk breed.  Good hardy sheep, mostly meat producers and their wool is approximately mid-range for fineness, rating better than Romney.  I enquired, we chatted and a week later, Lenny arrived.

Lenny is friendly and has been almost a pet.  His previous owner was a little sad to see him go, although she accepted that she couldn't keep him.  Both he and his brother Benny had been showing interest in their ewes, all of which they were related to.

I think she felt a little hurt at how he ran to the fence, calling to the ewes in another paddock and wouldn't come back to say goodbye, but at the same time I think she was relieved to see him so happy to meet some new sheep.

We hadn't split our flock before his arrival.  So while we kept Lenny in the paddock he arrived in, we ran the others through our new yards. We also separated last years wethers from the others to make it easier when we call the homekill man in.

Lenny and his girls

Lenny was ecstatic with his new girls, doing his job before we'd even started moving them into their paddock.  By the time we had Lenny and his little flock in their paddock, he'd already formed a special friendship with Beyonce.

We're looking forward to seeing what kind of offspring we get this year from Lenny.

Lenny and Beyonce

Sweet Chilli Sauce

Hubby loves sweet chilli sauce.  Last year he asked me why I don't make it for him.  Well, um, I guess it's because we don't grow chillies?

So we bought some chilli plants in spring and Hubby planted them among the capsicums and tomatoes.  He thought he'd kept hold of the labels telling us what type of chillies and peppers we'd bought, but it would seem not.  Or if he did, we have no idea where they've gotten to. We seem to have a mix of banana peppers, bell peppers, long red chillies and some that look like a small bell pepper - a little smaller than a golf ball.

Since the chillies have started ripening, I looked for recipes for Sweet Chilli Sauce.  I found one embedded in a blog that seemed great on the surface, but as I got deeper, it used Sambal Oelek, a pickled chilli jam, that I don't have, instead of chillis which I do have and want to use. Using them was kind of the point of the exercise. So I carried on looking.

I found one on Taste.com.au, it seemed simple enough so I thought I'd try it.

The only problem was the proportions.  My seven chillies weighed a grand total of 40g, the recipe called for 500g.  That was quite a bit different.  So I added approximately 60g of capsicum to make it up to 100g, much easier to convert the recipe then.

It cooked up quite quickly, I didn't simmer it for the full 30 minutes in the recipe and ended up with about a cup of hard chilli jam.  A very hard chilli jam that was almost inedible.  The tiniest bit on the edge of a teaspoon was enough to set your mouth on fire.

So I left it overnight while I considered my options.  Today, I blitzed up two whole bell peppers and made it up with the full amount of white vinegar and sugar in the recipe, as the sugar dissolved, I added my hard fiery chilli jam from yesterday and stirred it around until it dissolved too.

After a taste test, I added more sugar.

We've tested it tonight and it's sweet and it's spicy.  It's got a nice bite of heat to it without being overpowering.

So now I'm watching my chilli plants so I can make more.

Sweet Chilli Sauce

50g hot chilli peppers
2 whole red bell peppers
3 large cloves garlic
750 ml white vinegar
3 1/2 cups white sugar

Halve and deseed the chillis and peppers.  Put into food processor with garlic and a little vinegar.  Blitz until almost pureed. Put into a saucepan with the remaining vinegar and sugar.
Heat slowly, stirring constantly until the sugar has all dissolved.
Bring to the boil, then turn down heat and simmer until it starts to thicken. Taste test and add sugar if needed.
Be careful not to allow it to thicken too much - the sauce should still run freely when cold.

Doing Things With Peaches!

A workmate and good friend of Hubby's has a very prolific black boy peach tree.  Every year we're given peaches and when we have pigs, buckets of bruised and windfall peaches.  Have you ever seen a pig eating these?  It looks like they've been taking big chunks out of each other, dark purple-red peach flesh dripping down their jaws.  It's really quite disturbing.

Hubby got these on Friday, the same day as his motorbike came back from the shop.  Our plan was for him to bring the motorbike home and as I was going into Christchurch for the weekend, I'd drop him back at work Friday night to bring his car home.

With the Mosque shootings on Friday afternoon, all those plans changed.  We didn't go back for the car (with a bag of peaches sitting in it) until late Sunday afternoon.  Probably half of the bag has gone to the chickens and they look just as dreadful eating them as the pigs did.

So today I started to do things with peaches.

Previously, I have bottled them in a light syrup.  I think I still have a few jars in the depths of my pantry, we don't eat fruit this way very often.  A few years ago, I cut them up and froze them.  They're still there in the freezer too.  I have to move them now and then searching for other things.

I wanted something I was sure I would use.

Out came the recipe books and searches through their dessert chapters.  The old books, which are usually my go-to for anything like this, yielded nothing that excited me.  I considered the peach souffle, but as I've never made a souffle of any sort in my life before, I chose to try it another time with a simpler version.  Peach Flummery sounded interesting, but I didn't have enough cream or gelatine on hand.

Into the bigger, flasher and newer cookbooks I dove.  One had peach muffins.  The next had a peach crumble.  We like crumbles, they're simple and easy and adaptable.  I can freeze them.

The original recipe and inspiration came from River Cottage Gluten Free.  I'm a little wary of this book these days.  I made a cake from it about six months ago that had a lot of 'mix x, y and z together in a small bowl, then put aside'.  Six different bowls and a saucepan were required for this cake!  The cake was okay, but not anything overly special. So I read through the recipe carefully, looking for sneaky over the top dish usage.

I didn't have all of the ingredients, but crumbles are fairly adaptable.  Below is my interpretation.

Peach Crumble

Peach Filling

Approx 800g peaches, stoned and cut into chunks.
Brown sugar to taste (depending on how sweet the peaches are)
30g butter

Crumble Topping

150g hazelnut meal
75g brown sugar
30g sorgham flour or psyllium husk
30g potato starch
1 tsp ground cinnamon
60g butter

Preheat the oven to 180 deg Celsius.

Put the filling ingredients into a saucepan. Heat gently until the peaches have softened and the butter and sugar have formed a thick sauce.

Put the dry crumble ingredients into a food processor and blitz to mix.  Add butter and process until butter is fully rubbed in.

Pour or spoon filling into dish and spread crumble over top.  I like to get handfuls of the crumble and sprinkle it around and around until the fruit is completely covered.

Bake for 40 minutes.  Best served warm.

Birds and Fruit

Our Summer has been pretty dry and harsh this year.  I don't think we quite managed drought status and our humidity has been much higher than is normal.  Our temperatures have certainly been up there and I think officially it was the third hottest on record.

This year though, the birds seem to be struggling.  Their numbers appear the same, (despite having outdoor cats) but their preferred diet seems to have changed.

We will have no grapes this year.  We had masses of bunches as they were growing.  They are only just ripening now, there's the faintest hint of purple starting to show and there are maybe 5 bunches left.  When you go anywhere near the grapevines, at least 10 blackbirds and thrushes fly out from it.

We didn't get any nectarines.  They weren't ripe yet either.  I think it took the birds about a week to clean an entire tree out.

My little apple tree was doing well.  The apples were ripening and I'd been picking a few as they reddened.  I was giving the small ones or partially eaten ones to the horse next door.  He'd wait for me by the fence every day on my feeding rounds, patiently eyeballing me and pointedly looking at the apple tree.  There were about 20 left, mostly looking about ready to pick, so I decided that was tomorrow's job.  Only the next day there were 4.  I could only see 3 cores and remains on the grass beneath the tree.

If it wasn't for all the birds visibly attacking my bigger apple tree, I would have believed that someone had come and stolen them.  My bigger apple tree was losing at least 15 whole apples a day.

We missed out on the plums.  Strong winds took care of them.  The late winds also took the first apricots we've ever had off our young tree.

I've never seen anything quite like it.  Well, I've seen the grapes go to the birds before, but not the other fruit and certainly not the way they're cleaning them up completely.  I haven't decided how much I begrudge the birds my fruit.  I, at least, have the option to go and get it from other sources.

Easy Cheesy

There are a few simple and quick cheeses that anyone can make.  Here I've given recipes for my favourite three.

These cheeses don't require culture or specialised equipment, most ingredients are things that can easily be found in the average kitchen.

Be aware that your finished cheese will be about 10% of the milk you start with.  If you start with 2 litres of milk, you can expect approximately 200g of cheese.

In the first two recipes, the curdled milk should look like this.

Queso Blanco

Queso Blanco is very much like ricotta, in the process and in the finished product.

Bring milk to the boil, stirring to avoid scorching as much as possible.  Very slowly pour in white vinegar, while stirring, until milk curdles and separates.  Make sure that it has separated completely into white fluffy curds and green whey.  If it's just like grainy thick milk, add more vinegar and keep stirring.

Let sit for about two minutes then pour through a cloth lined colander.  Strain until there is no more liquid to come out.

Add salt, garlic and/or olive oil to taste and use like ricotta.
This doesn't keep very well, I'd recommend using it within a week.

Cumin Paneer

I make this one often for my Hindi friends.  I'm told it can be frozen, but I haven't tried freezing it myself.

The recipe I started with said to strain it through a cloth lined colander, twist the cloth around and weight it down.  This made the finished cheese a rounded ball.  My Hindi friends are used to buying it in a square shape, and say this makes it easier to cut into cubes and use.  My solution was to use a cloth to line a feta basket and make cube paneers.

The addition of salt and cumin not only gives this rather bland cheese some flavour, it extends it's keeping time.  This should stay good for about 2 weeks.

My original recipe used lemon juice.  I found myself out of lemons at one point, but my lime tree was so prolific, they were falling all over the ground underneath the tree.  So I tried lime juice and it has worked just as well.

For every 2l of milk, add a tsp of non-iodised salt and a tbsp of cumin seeds.  Bring to the boil gently, stirring constantly to minimise scorching.  Let it boil for 3 minutes before adding lemon or lime juice.  Pour citrus juice in slowly until milk curdles clearly into white fluffy curds and green whey.

Ladle into a cloth lined colander (or cloth lined feta basket).  It may take some time for it all to settle, so be prepared to come back every so often to add more, but try and get it all in while it's still hot.

Fold cloth over and turn upside down in the basket.  If you can find something square to weigh it down, this makes a better, firmer cheese.

Mozzarella

True Mozzarella is made with buffalo milk.  This recipe uses ordinary cows milk.  This recipe also requires liquid rennet.  There are several varieties available in more places than you'd think.  I often buy mine from Bin Inn (various cheese cultures and equipment can also be bought there) but there are plenty of websites that sell rennet fairly cheaply.  Make sure that you are buying either calf rennet or vegetarian rennet and not junket rennet.  Junket rennet is often sweetened although most modern recipes for junket seem to use normal rennet.

I found that mozzarella doesn't keep very well, so I grate it and freeze it in zip lock bags.  This makes it easy to use on pizza and the like.

For every 2l of milk, you will need 1/2 tsp of citric acid.

Dissolve citric acid in 1/4 cup of lukewarm water and stir into milk.  Heat milk to 31 deg C, stirring gently to prevent scorching.

Dilute 1/4 tsp of liquid rennet in 1/4 cup of cool water, add to milk and stir in gently.

Cover and let set for 30 mins.

Check for a clean break.  This means run your knife through the centre of your curd and then either lift the split or pull to one side.  If a clean break has been achieved, the two sides should part easily and hold their shape.  The curd won't be firm, but will hold.  If the curd seems a bit soft or not set, let it sit for another 15 mins.

Using a long bladed knife, cut the curd into half-inch cubes.  I cut front to back and side to side, then turn my knife onto a fairly steep angle and cut the horizontal lines on an angle. I go back and forth with the knife about half an inch deeper down the side each pass.  It doesn't make true cubes, but cuts them into roughly the right size.  I turn the pot and do this four times to be sure I've got them all. Let stand for 5 mins.

Place pot over low heat and slowly bring the curds up to 41 deg C, making sure it takes 20 mins to get there.  The curd will have cooled slightly from it's original temperature, but you're looking at approximately 1 degree raised every two minutes.  Don't let it warm up too quickly. Stir constantly while heating.  Turn off the heat and stir for another 20 mins.  Let stand for 5 mins.

In another pot, bring fresh water to the boil.  At least 2 litres but 4 often works better.  Add non-iodised salt at a rate of 1 1/2 tbsp per litre and stir until dissolved.

Drain whey from curd through a cloth lined colander.  Let the curds drain for 15 mins.

Place curds onto a clean chopping board and cut into 1 inch strips.  Place into a large bowl and pour hot salted water over.

Wearing heat resistant gloves, or using a wooden spoon, work the strips under the water until they become soft and pliable.  Knead, pull, stretch and fold it back on itself.  Keep working until the cheese becomes long and stretchy, it will also become shiny and smooth.  Work all the strips into a single large ball or into small bocconcini sized pieces.

I found another recipe that recommends microwaving the curds in 30 second bursts until an internal temperature of 72 deg C has been reached.  I have used this method and it works, but can be messy and frustrating.

Place the cheese into a bowl of ice water for 5 mins. Drain on a paper towel.

Enjoy simple cheese making!

Pork Sausages

With the butchering of four pigs, came plenty of meat that was only good for sausages. Offcuts, trimmings and thick, tough neck meat.  Most of the trimmed fat (except for the fat around the shield) had gone into the sausage bucket too.

I have previously written about some of my trials making sausages, this time I was hoping to do things a little better and also hoping that I've learned a few things since then.

I had to buy some more sausage casings.  No idea what happened to the previous leftovers, they'd probably gotten old and been thrown out.  My awful dry sausages (some that no amount of gravy or sauce could make pleasant eating) had put me off sausage making.

While I was waiting for the casings to arrive, the sausage meat was bagged and frozen.  This was actually quite beneficial to the process.  If the meat and fat is partially frozen it tends not to render when it's being minced.

Dad had gone through his pantry and cupboards since Mum went into care.  If he comes across something he thinks I might find useful but he doesn't use, he brings it over.  Included in this was a mincer attachment that fits the old cake mixer he'd previously given me.  He thinks the mincer was Grandma's as he doesn't remember ever having or using it, and it has a piece of the foot broken off, so it's clearly had some use.

I am in love with this mincer.  It doesn't clog up when you're mincing meat.  It just keeps going and clears itself out.  I can put 2kg of meat through it in a very short amount of time and it does a great job.  There only seems to be one blade for it though, so everything is coarse or goes through the mincer several times.

The sausage stuffing attachment (a kind of large plastic funnel) from my old cheap mincer didn't fit this one, so Hubby and Dad decided to trim it down a little to see if they could make it fit.

No.  The outside edge of the funnel shape was too wide for the ring.  Now they've trimmed the edges down on it, it doesn't stay on the old cheap mincer either, so I have to stuff sausages by hand.  It's a little frustrating but I can cope.

So these days, I take about an hour to make 5kg of sausages from start to finish.  The sausages are much better than they were previously, although, I find that I don't really like the texture of the skin if it hasn't dried up completely in cooking.  It's a little thing though.

I wondered if I'm not drying them properly before I freeze them.  A later batch (since I first wrote this piece) was hung to dry in my pantry overnight.  They were far better and the pantry smelled amazing.

I've also learned that it pays to put the casings onto the sausage stuffing attachment approximately a metre at a time.  If you put too much on, it can dry out before you've finished.  The casings tend to break then and you waste a lot of them.

One last comment to make before I hit the recipes - I have learned to read the recipes completely several times before I make the sausages.  Some give the spice mix first in specific quantities, but it's easy to overlook that you are only using a small amount of your made up spice mix to x volume of meat.  My first batch of English Bangers are not for the faint hearted, the spice mix is mostly white pepper and there is at least three times the amount there should be.



English Bangers

Spice Mix
5 tsp ground white pepper
2 1/2 tsp mace
2 1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp rubbed sage
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Sausage
1 kg lean pork shoulder
1/2 kg fresh pork fat
1 1/2 C dry bread crumbs
1 1/4 C chicken broth (I make up a stock cube)
3 1/2 tsp Banger Spice Mix

Grind pork and fat together.
Add Spice Mix and other ingredients and mix well.
Grind again.

Stuff the mixture into casings and tie in 4-5 inch lengths.

Chorizo

I've found lots of variations in recipes for chorizo.  Rick Stein always talks about the paprika in it, but half the recipes don't seem to contain any.  The notes on sausages that I got somewhere (I never noted down the source) speak of the differences between Mexican and Spanish chorizo and also say that the casing should be removed and the sausage crumbled before cooking.  I can't speak to the authenticity of such a statement.  It doesn't fit most of the times I have seen chorizo cooked.

This recipe might not be authentic, but it's my blend of several and works for us.

1 kg lean pork trimmings
1/2 kg fresh pork fat
vinegar
2 medium onions, quartered
8 cloves garlic, pressed
1/2 C cider vinegar
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground oregano
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

Rinse the inside of the casings with vinegar before using.
Grind the meat and fat.
Grind the onions and garlic and mix with other ingredients to taste. Mix into meat.
Grind all again together.
Stuff the casings and lay them out on a cookie sheet covered with baking paper and refrigerate.  Allow flavours to develop for at least 8 hours before using.

Pork and Thyme Sausage

1 kg lean pork trimmings
1/2 kg fresh pork fat
2 medium onions
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tbsp dried thyme

Grind meat and fat together.
Grind onions and add to meat mix with other flavours.  Mix well.
Grind again.
Stuff into casings.

This recipe works as a lovely breakfast sausage.

Pork, Ham, Bacon and Salami

All four pigs were living quite happily in their pig run plus extensions for a couple of months.  The extensions were areas that butted up against the pig run, they had grass reaching too high and nothing else of value in there.  Hubby and Dad would make a new fence out of timber and corrugated iron and extend the range of the pigs.

After the first few escapes, we added a hot wire to the top as well.  It's incredible how much damage four pigs can do to a lawn in a very short space of time.

Determined pigs also learned to dig out stakes and if they push hard enough in the right spot, they can tear the nails right through the corrugated iron.  And there went 15 tiny Hazelnut trees that had survived all our usual neglect for the past year.

During the last escape, Sour Cream nipped at me as I was trying to coax them back in.  You couldn't call it a bite, it didn't hurt, it didn't do any damage, he barely made contact with me.  But he scared me.  A lot.

It was time for them to become dinner anyway.   They were already a month or two older than I'd planned on letting them get to and this was the push I needed.

The Homekill man was booked.  I planned to butcher them myself because sending them away for processing is expensive.  Last time I checked, it was $5/kg plus extra for bacon, ham and sausages.  I was fully aware of my limitations.  We would get two done now and the other two maybe a month later.  Four pigs in a day would have just about killed me.

Hubby, Dad and I discussed the processing.  I had said months earlier that I'd like a smoke house or the ability to smoke some cuts from these pigs.  Plenty of research was underway. Did we want cold smoking or hot smoking? Were we planning to smoke for flavour or to preserve the meat?  Hubby came home just before Christmas with a smoking gun bought with his FlyBuys points.  Dad started reading hunting magazines that contained instructions on how to build your own smoker and the best options for different types.  A workmate of Hubby's had a fridge that no longer worked, so that came home with the intention of turning it into a smoker.

As there is always plenty to do on our little farm, nothing had really progressed towards the smoker when the first two pigs were slaughtered.

I have had a number of issues over the past few years with my back and shoulder.  I have learned not to overdo things as that will leave me almost crippled for the next few days.  I am usually pretty good at recognising when I've done enough for now and taking a break.  That break might only be 20 minutes, but it leaves me fine to carry on.

With this in mind and with warnings from friends about overdoing it, I set out to butcher these pigs.  I think I took too many unnecessary breaks out of fear and the end result was that it dragged out my day to the point of complete exhaustion at 11pm when I finally finished and the clumsiness that always comes as a result.  Only one nastyish cut though.

It was also dragged out by problems with the reciprocating saw I'd planned to use to cut down the spine.  The blade was in correctly, but kept popping out and flying across the shed when in use.  The handsaw I replaced it with had some damage to the handle that meant by the time I was halfway through the first pig, the fleshy part of my hand, between thumb and first finger, was bruised and swollen.  I gave up and boned each section as it was hanging.  This became awkward and painful and more time consuming.

Dad looked at the reciprocating saw later, the locating pin had worked itself partway out, so it wasn't doing its job of holding the blade in place.  It was a tool issue and not an operator issue.

I still had ham and bacon cures from when I'd previously had pigs and I dug out the salami kit I'd bought back then but never used.

My book on preserving had quite a variety of curing methods but most also required hanging each cut in a temperature controlled curing chamber for several weeks to several months.  This was something I did not have, nor did we have the time or resources to build one.

I was quite curious to see how the bacon especially would turn out.  My last lot of bacon was made with kunekune pork and was rather unpleasant on the whole.  I wasn't sure if it was the process or because the pigs had been a few years old and were rather gamy as a result of their diet.

Two legs, which I had boned, went into the brine for ham.  It was a week before Christmas and I hoped that this gave us long enough for the cure to work its way through.  The calculations on the recipe suggested it should be enough, but I'm never entirely confident until I've cut the finished product.

I boned the shoulders and put them into a brine for bacon.  My 15l bucket wouldn't hold all of it, so a couple of pieces went into the freezer for another time.

I decided to try making the salami.  The recipe called for beef as well as pork, so I hauled beef stewing cuts out of the freezer and used some of the pork I'd put aside for sausages.

The salami casings were a lot bigger than I'd thought.  They were at least 50cm long and about 4cm in diameter when stuffed.  Each weighed approximately a kg.

The recipe called for them to be smoked for at least an hour.  The smoking gun came out.  I followed the directions for covering the salamis in a large bowl with cling film, with the end of the smoking gun tucked in and sealed around.  I used the hickory chips that came with the gun.  We very quickly spotted the fine holes and places where it wasn't sealed very well, so they were fixed up.

Within 20 minutes, the smoke had all dissipated in the bowl.  So we filled it with smoke again.  And again after another 20 minutes.

The recipe then called for the salamis to be poached in water.  That water was to be kept below 85 degrees Celsius for one and a quarter hours, to allow the internal temperature to reach 70 deg C.

My biggest stainless steel bowl was not wide enough for the entire salami to fit under the water. I heated them (on a double boiler type system) for several hours longer than the recipe said.  I wasn't able to check the internal temperature as that would have put a big hole in the casing.  I hoped for the best.

The salamis had broken and bent in the middle.  All the fat now coated the outside of each salami inside the casing.  They looked okay inside, but I should probably have minced them with a finer blade and stuffed the casings more firmly.  They tended to crumble a little when cut.

Just to be safe, I fried slices to eat them.  Delicious.  A month or so later, I decided to try some without frying.  Still delicious, if even more crumbly.  It's almost spreadable on crackers.  It's been a month now and I haven't gotten sick from them so we're quite happy with the way they turned out.

Dad worried that they hadn't smoked properly, so he turned up one day with a charcoal grill and smoker as an early birthday present.

The ham was delicious on Christmas day.  The rest was sliced up and frozen ready to be pulled out for lunches.  There were a few patches in the middle that hadn't cured.

The bacon was very nice.  Bacon is quite hard to slice so our slices were probably 8mm thick.  They're more like bacon steaks than bacon rashers so you only need one with your breakfast.

We decided it was time to try out the new smoker and smoke two of the pieces of bacon.  They need to sit out at room temperature for 12 hours to form a pellicle.  So that was overnight.  The next morning, I put the smoker together.  That was simple enough.

Everything I'd read said to be careful of what fuel you use as this may taint the meat.  Dad had gotten some charcoal briquettes with the smoker, made of coconut shell and therefore safe for smoking, but getting them started was not the simple task it should have been.  Methylated spirits poured over wasn't enough, no amount of carefully chosen cardboard or kindling worked.  Dad spent a patient half hour with a blow torch to get the charcoals started in the end.

To begin with, we put the damp wood chips in an aluminium foil dish on top of the coals.  They kind of blackened but didn't really smoke, so after a while, we just dumped them directly onto the coals.

We left it for most of the day.  The bacon didn't seem cooked as such, but its texture had changed.  And this lot tasted amazing.

Ham (wet brine method)

3/4 C salt (non iodised)
1 C Brown Sugar
1/4 C Molasses
1/4 tsp ground cloves
3 tsp Prague powder #1

Mix in warm water.  The salination of the brine is right if a fresh eggs floats when placed in it.  If not, mix equal parts of brown sugar and salt and add until the egg floats.

Place ham in brine and ensure that it is fully submerged.  Place in fridge for 1 day per kg (or 7 days per 4cm thickness).

Check the cure has gone right through the meat.

Rinse ham and let soak in clean water. Check for saltiness by cutting off a thin slice, fry and taste test.  Ensure you check pieces from the bottom of your vessel - the ham at the top might have rinsed well, but the rest might not.

Cook at 150 deg C until internal temperature of 68 deg C has been reached.

NOTES: This mixture is sufficient to cure about 10 kg of ham.
Be careful to add the water slowly.  If you add too much water, you might need to add more cure.  I use a 15l food grade bucket with lid to do this - the volume of water required is less than you might think and much of it spills out when you add the ham and weight it down.
I use a small bowl to hold the ham under the surface of the liquid.
I've found the time period listed in the recipe (1 day per kg) isn't quite enough.  I always seem to end up with small patches of plain pork in the centre of my hams.  I found another recipe that gave time based on the thickness of the ham and that is what I now go by.
Meat cured with Prague powder #1 must be heated before it is eaten.  For small goods that are not going to be heated, use Prague powder #2 and a different process.
I didn't have Molasses, so I added an equivalent volume of dark brown sugar.
If you have a different quantity to cure, a calculator can be found here.

Bacon (wet brine method)

1 part Bacon cure
1 part Salt (non iodised)
1/2 part Brown sugar

Mix and dissolve in warm water.  The salination of the brine is right if a fresh eggs floats when placed in it.  Let cool.

Place meat for curing in brine.  Ensure that it is fully submerged.  Keep in the fridge for 7 days per 4cm of meat thickness.

Check the cure has gone right through the meat, rinse in clean cold water and check for saltiness as above.

NOTE:
I buy my bacon cure from Oskarbutcher. This link gives its ingredients.
I smoke bacon after curing.  When I am sure it has rinsed sufficiently (and be sure to check the pieces at the bottom), I let it sit out overnight and then smoke it the next day.
Smoked bacon is easier to slice.
This same recipe can be used for a dry cure.

Rub the mix into the pork, making sure the whole surface is covered and make sure to work it into any holes.  Place the meat into a zip lock bag and leave in the fridge for 2-3 days.  After this time, rub the meat with the curing mix again and leave for a further 2-3 days. 

Check that the cure has penetrated all the way through the meat, rinse and check as for wet cure.

Salami

1.7 kg Beef or venison
0.8 kg Pork
0.5 kg Pork fat (back fat is the best)
300ml water
40g Oat or wheat fibre (optional)
180g salami mix

Mince the meat through a coarse plate.  Mix in water, fibre and seasoning.  Mince again through fine plate.
Stuff into casings.
Hang in smoker and dry for 20 mins, then smoke for 1 hour.
Heat in water (not to be over 85 deg C) for about 1 1/4 hour or until internal temperature is 70 deg C.
Cool in cold water for 2 hours.
Keep in fridge overnight.

NOTES:
I added Cayenne pepper and whole black peppercorns to this recipe.
I bought the Salami mix from Oskarbutcher, it contains a number of salts, minerals and sodium nitrite.

Overall, we were quite happy with the end products.  So I've been doing it all again with the second two pigs.

This batch of ham spent twice as long in the cure and we still ended up with a small spot that didn't cure.  At least this is a small spot compared with last time.

That pale spot is where the cure didn't reach.

Smoking the bacon was a bit different too.  Hubby poured the charcoals in for me.  I said to him that I thought he'd put far too much in, but he was sure I needed that much.  This meant that it got too hot and the bacon cooked as it was smoking.  I also bought some fire lighters and they started the charcoals very easily.

It was still very good bacon.

Lighting charcoals

With soaked wood chips

First layer of bacon in

Second layer of bacon in

Smoking away quite merrily