Dry Cured: Chorizo and Landjaegers

A couple weeks ago I began my first experiment with fermented, dry-cured sausages. I figured it would be best to start small, with something reasonably easy. The big problem was setting up a curing chamber for this. Until I was sure it would work I wasn't going to risk a large sausage going bad on me. So salami was out.

Chorizo, on the other hand, is something I really love to cook with. That tangy, garlicky, slightly spicy flavor is great with so many dishes, and I like the neon-red color it brings to things. So I figured I'd make a round of it, and have it hanging downstairs ready whenever I needed it.

As long as I was getting the equipment out and, importantly, ordering expensive bacteria cultures, I figured I'd do another kind of sausage as well. I'm a huge fan of Landjaegers, and I liked the idea of having a stockpile ready that would provide snacks for a whole Summer's worth of hikes. Fermented, smoked, and air-dried, these sausages will last for a very long time, happily unrefrigerated and hanging down in the basement. Historically, Landjaegers were often in the rations of European soldiers and I like to think of the armies of Napoleon, Wellington, and certainly Blücher snacking on them during breaks in the action at Waterloo.

The Recipes

The Spanish Chorizo recipe was the one in Ruhlman's Charcuterie, with some minor changes.

• 5 lbs of Pork Shoulder
• 50 gm Kosher Salt
• 6 gm Insta Cure #2
• 10 gm Dextrose
• 8 gm Bactoferm F-LC (Ruhlman calls for 20 grams, which is most of the $15 packet. Nope, not doing it. Reasons explained later.)
• 60 ml distilled water
• 2 T Smoked Paprika
• 2 T Ancho Chile Powder
• 1 1/2 t Nambe Pueblo Chile Powder
• 1 T minced garlic + 1 t garlic powder.

My plan was to make a Chorizo that was basically Spanish-style, but with some Southwest twists. When it comes to the riotously red color of Chorizo, you need chile powder, and lots of it. Paprika is absolutely necessary and using smoked paprika gives a great flavor and saves you from having to smoke the sausages. I liked Ruhlman's use of Ancho powder. Fresh, it has an almost raisiny aroma and great chile taste without serious heat. For heat, I went with some heirloom Nambe Pueblo Chile powder that I've had for a while now. Unfortunately, it seems to be losing its kick over time. The chorizo didn't end up as hot as I wanted. The final last minute change happened when I ran out of fresh garlic and had to sub in some powdered. Next time I'll use all fresh, but this worked I think.

The Landjaeger recipe was basically the one from Len Poli's amazing sausage page. After a few changes here's what I put in:

• 2 1/2 lbs Pork Shoulder
• 2 1/2 lbs Beefalo
  
• 50 gm kosher salt
• 2 t Liquid Smoke
• 12 gm Dextrose
• 12 gm White Pepper
• 7 gm Insta Cure #2
• 1 1/2 t Caraway Seeds
• 3/4 t Mace
• 3/4 t Powdered Garlic
• 8 gm Bactoferm F-LC

Len calls for 2.5 lbs of lean beef, and while I was at the market looking for something that would work I spotted some very lean Beefalo steaks that were reasonably cheap. Perfect. So they're actually half Beefalo, half pork sausages. I also cut his Caraway in half because I'm not huge on it.

Grinding and Stuffing

The first step was ordering some things from Butcher & Packer. First up was curing salt. I've got plenty of Insta Cure #1, sodium nitrite, but for this I'd need Cure #2, sodium nitrate. Nitrites preserve sausages, keeping bad critters like botulism from growing, as well protecting the color and providing that 'cured' taste. Over time the nitrites will be used up, however. So for long term fermented sausages, you need to use sodium nitrate. The nitrate will break down into sodium nitrite and cause a slow-release of the chemical, protecting the sausage for much, much longer.

The next thing I needed was a bacterial starter culture. Bacteria! But you just said the nitrites stop bacteria. What gives? Well, certain bacteria are useful in sausage making in that they can consume sugars and produce lactic acid, which lowers the pH of the sausage and prevents harmful critters from growing. Another line of defense, as it were. They are also helpful in getting the nitrates to break down, and they give the sausage a nice lactic tang.

Ok, time to shout into the void. Bacteria Culture industry! Listen up. A 25 gm packet of Bactoferm runs $15 and is enough for 220 lbs of sausage. I am not going to make that much sausage in years of work, maybe ever. But the packet goes bad fairly quickly once you open it. Also, the bacteria are suspended in a media of some kind, so that you have to use at least 1/4 of the packet to insure that enough live bacteria make it in. So I had to put in enough to do 50 lbs of meat in order to make 5 lbs of sausage. It's not going to hurt anything to put too much bacteria in, there's only so much dextrose to eat, but it's still expensive and annoying. Take a hint from the homebrew world and make 5 gm packets for us home hobbyists making 5 lbs at a time! Sheesh. Ok, end rant. I ended up using 1/3 of the packet for each of the batches, so I've still got 1/3 left over for something else in the near future.

One of the really great things I ordered in was this 25 lb meat lug. Food grade, fairly strong, very useful. So I diced up 7.5 lbs of pork shoulder and the 2.5 lbs of beefalo, then put the lid on and set it outside. It was about 40 out, so I figured that would keep it cool enough while I got the grinder set up.

I ran 5 lbs of the pork through the largest die for my Chorizo. It's supposed to be chunky and rustic after all. Then switched out for the 3/16" die, combined the remaining pork and beefalo, and ran it through for the Landjaegers. Spices were added and both recipes were mixed in up in my KitchenAid.

I stuffed the sausages into what I believe are 29 mm hog casings. They are really pretty small casings, but unfortunately I have a lot of them (had to buy a full butcher's pack) so until they're gone all my sausages will be a bit on the skinny side. C'est la vie.

Here are the Landjaegers on the right, all in links.

For the Chorizo I needed to make individual servings. So I stuffed them out in about 12-16" lengths, pulled the casing forward about 4", then stuffed another link. When I was done I went back, cut the links and tied up the sausages with kitchen twine. These were then hung in my kitchen for a while to air-dry and to get out of my way while I worked on the Landjaegers. You can see one is a bit off colored. It had the last of the Landjaeger still in the tube, so it's a half-and half-Landrizo.

Fermenting

The sausages needed to be fermented, and the bacteria really like a nice warm, humid spot. Something a bit hard to find in Seattle in the Winter. Also, the Landjaegers needed to be pressed, which helps them dry out later. The solution came to me thanks to my new meat lug.

I put the Landjaegers on the bottom, arranged in a single layer. Then I put a cookie sheet over the top of them. They need about 5 lbs of weight pressing them. Guess what, my chorizos weighed about 5 lbs! A match made in heaven. So I put them on top, and put in a bowl of water to keep the humidity up. Then on went the lid and into the oven they went.

But turning it onto the 'Warm' setting for a few minutes every now and then, I was able to keep the whole mess surprisingly, ridiculously, impressively close to 85 degrees for two days straight. At that point, I took the chorizos off and gave the landjaegers a break from the pressing. By now they had become somewhat rectangular, and though not as regular as ones pressed in a mold, they had a nice shape. Chorizos went back in and they all got a third day at 85. The whole kitchen smelled garlicky and fermenty.

Smoking

Landjaegers are cold smoked, which apart from flavor gives them another layer of protection from mold. This presents a problem for me, as I only have a hot smoker. But I've been able to jury rig a solution using my Weber Smokey Mountain. By putting six lit coals in the bottom, and piling the smoke wood around them, I've been able to do a fairly good job of keeping the temp around or below 90 degrees. I say fairly good job because it is by no means perfect, but it works well enough.

After three days of fermenting I took the landjaegers out and hung them to air-dry for a few hours. They'd taken on a nice color, were somewhat rectangular now, and smelled really quite good already. I fired up the smoker and they went on for four hours. For wood I used hickory, maple, and alder. I also put some cheese on because, hey, smoked cheddar is tasty too and the fire was already going.

Drying

Careful drying is the really tricky part in making dry-cured sausages. Too hot and you encourage spoilage bacteria. Too humid and you encourage bad molds. Too dry and you get what's called Case Hardening. The outside casing of the sausage dries too fast, creating a hard barrier that prevents the inside of the sausage from drying properly. Since it never really dries out, something eventually starts growing and the inside of the sausage rots. Not good eats. I wasn't really worried because my sausages were so darn skinny, but still, this was uncharted territory.

I suspected that my basement cellar, where my wines, mead, cider, etc. were all aging away, would also work pretty well as a curing chamber. My experience has shown that it maintains a pretty close 60 degrees in the winter. On the hottest day ever recorded in Seattle it was only 74 in there. It's totally dark, so light won't spoil the fat in the sausages. It seemed reasonably humid, but I also put a bowl of saltwater in there just to help it out. Finally you need a bit of air circulation to help dry off the casings. I had a small fan from my old beer fermenting chamber back in Miami, so I plugged it in and aimed it near but not at the sausages to get some air moving.

I hammered some finishing nails into one of the beams and used pliers to bend them into a J shape. Then hung the chorizos off the hooks. The Landjaegers were in long chains, so I hung these off some hooks in the back of the closet. All in all I was pretty happy with the setup.

The basement smells really interesting now.

The chorizo gave a sort of tart, cured smell while the landjaegers gave a smokiness. That small room now smells delicious. Hopefully the airlocks will do their jobs and my wine won't end up smelling like sausages.

I figured it would be three weeks before the sausages were properly dried, but due to their skinny casings they were pretty much ready after about two weeks. I cut a chorizo open after day 10, just to watch its progress and check for case hardening. Still a bit mushy in the middle, but almost there. And no hardening to report. A couple days into it I did notice a few small mold spots on a couple of the chorizos. This was easily dealt with by wiping them down with a little white wine vinegar. Didn't come back.

The Big Moment

I'm very happy with how both sausages came out.

The chorizo has a really rustic appearance, and a great dark red color. As you can see it has a nice definition, with large white chunks of fat standing out against the red background. It has a good tangy flavor, garlic and chile are there too, with just a hint of smoke. It cooks up nicely, producing vibrant bright orange grease, but it's good raw too. This one went excellently in some scrambled eggs for breakfast. My only complaint is that it's not spicy enough. I need to ditch my older chile powders I guess. Next time I may put some cumin and Mexican oregano in as well.

The Landjaegers are excellent. Nice texture, good level of smoke, excellent spicing. I regret not adding all the Caraway just a bit, biting into one is a mini-flavor explosion. The sausage has a nice definition, small chunks of fat and a good distribution of spices. The smaller grind gives them a good texture, dry but not tough. Like beef jerky, but in sausage form. They're still weeping a bit of oil, I'm hoping that will stop eventually and isn't a bad thing. But I'm quite happy with them, and they have already made a good snack on an outing. And there are about two dozen more hanging downstairs. Summer is set.

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Pot-Roast Half Pig's Head

"I say only half a head, as it is a perfect romantic supper for two. Imagine gazing into the eyes of your loved one over a golden pig's cheek, ear and snout."

Yeah, Fergus Henderson is a strange guy. But apart from the recipes it is his little comments and mannerisms that make Nose to Tail and Beyond Nose to Tail so entertaining to read. So here is Part One of a two part Pig-head Project: his recipe for Pot-Roast Half Pig's Head from Beyond Nose to Tail.

This isn't my first time taking a crack at one of his more "heady" recipes, har har. A year ago I used his recipes for Brawn and Trotter Gear, which were my first introductions to both pig heads and trotters. I ended up putting the trotter gear in just about everything over the next few months. So I figured it was time to do some more projects with heads and feet.

It begins with a pig head. As typical for these sorts of projects I ordered one from Seabreeze Farm out on Vashon Island. A week later I showed up at the market and waiting for me was 16 pounds of pig head and trotters. Most pig heads you find come split, so I technically had two half-heads, and I'd ordered four trotters. Hefting it over my shoulder in a mighty sack I carried it about the market, like Santa Claus with presents for some very naughty children.

Once home it was time to get cooking. Step one is cleaning the head. This is by far the worst part. See, the pig gets scalded to help remove the hair and clean it up a bit for butchering. This does a pretty good job. But not a perfect job. So step one is shave your pig. A disposable razor works great for this.

Or you could do what I did and use your wife's razor. A word of caution: only do this if you know your wife/girlfriend/sister/mother/etc. really well. When she got home she was not upset, and was actually quite happy to swap out the blade for a clean one. But pig got deep into the workings and despite my best attempts I couldn't quite clean it out satisfactorily, so I had to get her a whole new one.

Anyhow, it's totally gross, but piggy had some whiskers and eyelashes that had to go. This was probably the only point in the project where I was a little freaked out by the pig head. Shaving is a bit personal isn't it, and it made this meal far more visceral than most. Once done I gave it nice wash in the sink. Time to cook it.

Here's Henderson's Recipe:

• a dollop of duck fat. I was fresh out of both lard and duck fat, but I did have some chicken fat and a bit of olive oil.
• 8 shallots, peeled and left whole
• 8 cloves of garlic, peeled and left whole
• 1/2 pig's head
• a glass of brandy
• 1 bundle of joy - thyme, parsley, and a little rosemary
• 1/2 bottle of white wine
• chicken stock
• a healthy spoonful of Dijon mustard
• 1 bunch of watercress, trimmed, or other greens - a case of Liberty Hall. Since I was free to spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard I used some kale, as it was in season and is one of the few greens at the farmer's market in January. Cut the stalks out, roll up the leaves, and slice.
  
• sea salt and black pepper

I had trouble finding the right size roasting pan for this. My 9x13 was too skinny. My pots and dutch oven were too round. I settled finally on my large roasting pan. Set it on the stove, melted the fat and oil and added the shallots and garlic until they had some color. Covered the pig's ear in foil so it wouldn't "frazzle", then nestled it into the pan. Poured a glass of VSOP over it "to welcome it to its new environment", then nestled the bundle of joy in, and poured a half bottle of WA Chardonnay in.

Here Henderson has you add chicken stock according to what he calls his "alligator-in-the-swamp theory", in which the head is supposed to lurk in the swamp like an alligator. Well I just spent the last five years living in Miami, so I think my idea of what alligators lurking in swamps looks like is maybe a bit different than his, and in this roasting pan it would take a lot of stock to get there... But I get what he's hinting at. So I just added chicken stock (made from an awesome truffle-roasted chicken I'd cooked the week before) until I was out of stock. The size of the pan will dictate the amount needed, but use good stock.

Season with salt and pepper. Henderson says cover the pan with grease-proof paper, but I used aluminum foil as it wrapped around the pan's handles more easily. Then into a Medium oven for 3 hours. I set mine to 350. With about a half hour to go I took the aluminum off the top to give the skin some color. In retrospect I might have cranked up the oven too, it could have been a bit browner.

Once it was out of the oven, I moved the head to the serving platter. Then whisked in the dijon and added the kale to wilt in the hot stock. Dished the kale, shallots, and garlic around on the plate and ladled a fair amount of stock around it. Served up with something red and delicious, a King's Estate Oregon Pinot.

Moon, January, Spoon.

It was pretty darn excellent looking. But Henderson doesn't mention one very important part of this dish: how the hell do you carve it? We sort of stared at it for a bit, trying to plan our next move. Fortunately I'm fairly familiar with pig heads from last year and my guanciale experiments, so here's the top three places to go on the pig head.

First, the cheek. There's a lovely bit of meat in there and a whole lot of fat. Second, the tongue. Peel the skin off and it's excellent. Third, the back of the neck has some great pockets of meat.

Otherwise, there's the brain. It's a texture thing, you'll love it or hate it. Here some crusty bread goes well. I might be a little wary if it were a commercial hog. "Mad Pig Disease" isn't rampant (or even an actual disease), but there are some concerned scientists out there and I'm always distrustful of commercial pork industry practices. But I know where this pig came from, how it was treated, fed and cared for. Which, of course is why I bought it from them. So the brains are fair game, though personally I'm not a huge fan anyway. There's also the ear and snout, that depending on how well you roasted them (and how clean they were before!) you may want to go for. Eventually we had it flipped over and my wife was happily excavating away. Biologists... I married a very special lady.

It looks like a really big amount of meat, but really there's a lot of bone and a head this size would probably feed 3-4. We finished picking over the head, then saved all the leftover meat, kale, shallots and stock. This became lunch for the next few days and it was outstanding. Really, the head was great but the pot-roast soup made with it was the real winner. What's not to like? Wine, brandy, garlic, herbs, shallots, excellent chicken stock, unctuous pig goo.

So it was fun, and visually stunning, but I think that's my head for the year. It's quite impressive but in terms of economy I'd rather use the cheeks for guanciale and the rest of the head for headcheese.

Or soup dumplings, as we did with the other half of the head...

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Foie Gras Ethics

I came across an excellent essay from Mark Pastore at San Francisco's Incanto, entitled Shock and Foie. Despite being a renowned Italian restaurant dedicated to local, sustainable, and underused cuts of meat, the owners received threatening letters, videos and calls from Foie Gras protesters. Executive Chef Chris Constantino described this as "their Alamo" and they have refused to stop serving it. Foie Gras protesters have become an active and extremely vocal minority in recent years, frequently picketing restaurants, pressing state governments, and even threatening chefs in an effort to ban the process. For example, last month Seattle's local artisanal Lark restaurant was targeted by NALN, a vegan animal rights organization.

Pastore's essay pretty neatly encapsulates my feelings on the subject, and it is interesting how he frames the debate to be about personal choice, rather than based on any kind of food-chain argument or addressing the protesters on their own Animal Rights ground.

We respect the right to oppose the production and consumption of foie gras. We relate to many of the reasons that some choose to do so. However, we no more cede control over our morality than we would presume to compel someone else to conform to our notions of how they ought to live their life. We do not grant permission to someone who has no legal, moral, or spiritual authority to impose their beliefs upon us, whether that person is demanding we adopt their point of view regarding foie gras, abortion, or what books we should read. These are all personal choices and should remain so.

While I agree with most of what Pastore says and his conclusions, his juxtaposition of the problems of automobile accidents and foie gras production is simply a red herring. Though we may be unable or unwilling to address a large problem does not mean that we are unable or unwilling to address a smaller one, if it is indeed a problem as the activists claim. There are millions of problems in the world, and we as a country are capable of multitasking. And just because a solution may not solve the whole problem does not mean the solution should be scrapped. This pops up in Administrative Law all the time, where opponents to a regulatory scheme claim that it doesn't fix the whole problem. Time and again the Supreme Court has upheld those regulations.

The debate over the regulation of foie gras is a moral one. The safety of the end product is not in question, it is the treatment of the ducks during the process that causes concern. At its heart this debate addresses how we as a society wish to treat animals, and whether this should be up to the state or informed individuals to decide.

What I think is interesting about the Foie Gras debate is how the sides seem to be talking past each other. It comes down to a difference in world views, and the basis for their assumptions. To argue that Foie Gras is wrong an opponent must ground the basis of his argument in some form of Animal Rights theory, generally coupled with an appeal to empathy. "Ducks feel pain/can think/are alive/are also one of God's creatures and deserve the same rights as you do! Look at those poor ducks, you wouldn't want to have a tube down your throat would you?"

This of course brings up the physiology debate about duck esophagi, and a false anthropomorphic conception of their experience, etc. etc. but I am not a fowl physiologist or, indeed, phenomenologist. (How can we really know what it's like to be a duck?)

On the other end you get a sort of libertarian foodie freedom of choice mindset. "If it can be eaten, I should be able to eat it if I chose to." What is interesting is that there is an implied assumption that the choice to eat or not eat includes a self-derived moral component regarding what is right for me, the individual. The people who take this debate seriously, on both sides, have thought hard about the kinds of food that it is safe, sustainable, and indeed moral for them to eat. They live their lives by the results of those decisions. The difference lies in prostelyzation. On the foie gras opponent's end it is "It is wrong to eat, therefore you should not eat it" versus the proponent's "It is right/wrong to eat, therefore I will/will not eat it."

Ultimately I side with the foie gras fans because I trust myself to make a moral decision about my consumption habits more than I trust someone else. This is also why I still eat meat, even after knowing all that I now know. I trust my own food morality compass more than Congress, PETA, Monsanto and the McDonalds. Of course compasses need orientation, and that is where the government and PETA should be focusing their efforts. Information, not intimidation. And of course it doesn't hurt that I'm still a poor grad-student and Foie is well out of my price range, relegating it to a rare and wonderful treat.

Which most really good things should be.

Finally here's a great video of Anthony Bourdain talking about Foie Gras for Reason.tv.

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CSA Week 18

Only two more weeks left!

• Spring Onions
• Italian Parsley
• Carrots w/ Tops
• Three Yellow Squashes
• One GBP
• Grape Tomatoes
  
• And a massive White Beet that I am henceforth naming Turnipus

From the extras bin: one big zucchini, one wilted head of Romaine, some wilty dill.

Also into this week's calculations go the facts that we're going to be making some yogurt this week, and it seems that everything is ripening in the garden at once. We have about two dozen ripe red serrano chiles, some pasillas, about six RBPs, two huge flowering bok choi, and soon we'll have about eight ripe huge heirloom tomatoes. Plus the mint patches, basil, rosemary, chives, and cilantro are all doing well.

Turnipus is a beast, weighing in at 3lbs 4oz with tops. Also, the only thing I have ever used beets for is raining some root-vegetable doom down on the doomed heads of my doomed enemies in Super Mario Brothers 2. Oh 1988...salad days indeed.

Suffice to say Beets are not really my forte. I hate the pickled ones in a can. Roasted they're ok I guess. But there's no chance of roasting it like smaller red beets, it's enormous (could probably chunk it though). I'm thinking it could be soup, or some kind of gratin, mash or pancake?

My first thoughts for this week are use yogurt and use herbs. I'm thinking we'll go Greek and Indian this week. Maybe some grilled lamb and squashes, with dilled yogurt on the side. We've got a lot of parsley, maybe a quinoa taboule? I'm thinking the carrots would go well in a cold curry-yogurt sauce. Chicken Tikka?

Or I'm thinking this Moroccan Vegetable Stew with Harissa Yogurt would solve all of my problems at once: carrots, turnip, green onions, parsley, yogurt, chiles! Only problem is there is a large chance that we will be cooking a multi-course Moroccan feast for eight next Saturday, can there be too much of a good thing?

Last Week Roundup

We had a leftover/garden night with Chinese Stuffed Red Bell Peppers and Steamed Bok Choi. I took two ripe RBPs from the garden, cut the tops off about half an inch down and removed the seeds and veins. Into a saute pan went some oil, onion, ginger, garlic, two small diced lop chong sausages, diced carrot, green onions. Sauted all that till done, then mixed it with an egg and some leftover rice. Stuffed RBPs. Placed tops back on, stood them upright in a pan, poured a couple T's of the daikon dipping sauce from earlier in the week around them and some Shaoxing Rice Wine. Threw a lid on and into the oven at 350 for 20 minutes or so.

Meanwhile, I made a bok choi recipe based on one from Tom Douglas' Tom's Big Dinners. One of the big flowering bok choi from the garden was cleaned and chopped into 4" lengths. Into the bottom of the wok went about 3 cups of water, four coins of ginger, and half one of the oranges from that week. On went the bamboo steamer, in went the bok choi, steamed for about 12 minutes. Meanwhile, fried some garlic chips in some veggie and sesame oil. This went on the bok choi along with a tablespoon of the daikon dipping sauce.

Once the peppers were ready, I took them out, put them on plates. Put the pan back on the stove and added a teaspoon of cornstarch to the soy/ricewine/pepper drippings in the bottom of the pan and made a tasty sauce for the peppers.

All in all not an outstanding meal but a good use of stuff we had leftover and around. The bok choi was good but not as ginger/orangy as I'd hoped.

• Caesar Salad with Dandelion Greens

We had the head of romaine and the dandelion greens left, and the last two rice-batards were going stale. So I made a Caesar salad with it all.

Diced the bread, rolled it around in a couple cloves of chopped garlic, chopped rosemary, and a little olive oil. Baked at 350 till golden crispy.

Made the dressing. Here's the recipe I use for two people, based on one that feeds six from Mark Miller's Coyote Cafe.

• 1/3 Cup Olive Oil
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2-3 anchovies
• 1 t Dijon
• 2 t lemon juice (or less if you prefer)
• 2 t sherry vinegar
• black pepper to taste
• an egg yolk
  

Blitz the oil and garlic in a Cuisinart. Strain into your salad bowl, pressing garlic to get maximum goodness. Mince the anchovies, in they go with the Dijon, lemon juice and vinegar. Add black pepper to taste. Right before serving whisk in the egg yolk.

A note about Food Safety. Yes it's a raw egg yolk. No you won't die. The CDC says about 30-40 people die a year from salmonella, mostly the young or elderly. In 2006, 46 people were killed by lightening. In 2005, 20,000 people died from accidental falls. You're more likely to die from slipping and falling on a broken egg. Does this mean you should lick that raw chicken cutting board you've left festering in the sink for a couple days? No. But a raw egg yolk once in a while won't kill you. Particularly when it's in a vinegar solution like this dressing.

I'm no more happy with the current state of U.S. factory chicken production than you are (or should be). And I'm skeptical about the cleanliness and safety of any of it. Buy local, buy organic, and know where your food comes from. For an eye opening look, you can check out Michael Pollan and others, but for a really in your face statement of the problem check out Jamie Oliver's Fowl Dinners (here's the first episode. Warning, many dead chickens.) Brutal but it's the truth, and it needs to be told, which is why this series cemented Jamie's place as one of my Food Heroes.

A raw egg now and then in your salad, egg nog, or cookie dough won't kill you. Still, no meal is appetizing if you spend the dinner worrying. So if you're still freaked by the idea, you can either coddle the egg first, or use a pasteurized egg. Or omit the egg altogether. Same goes for the anchovies. (But you really should leave them in, otherwise it's not really a Caesar!)

Ok, sorry for the food safety rant...back to the recipe.

Washed and chopped the lettuce and dandelion greens. Into the salad bowl with the croutons, and about a quarter cup grated Parmesan cheese. Mixed around, top with some more Parmesan and cracked black pepper. Delicious.

• Bucatini All'amatriciana

By the end of the week I'd pretty much cleaned out our veggies (yay!) so I made this recipe using a big heirloom tomato from out back and some of the guanciale I've still got. It was very good, and very easy.

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