Philadelphia City Paper, Meal Ticket, May 16th, 2013

Page 10

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QVO`QcbS`WS 7 bVW\Y Wa bS``]` 3dS\ T]` a][S]\S eV] `SUO`Ra VS` aSZT Oa O US\S`OZZg TSO`ZSaa V][S Q]]Y bVS `SOZ[ ]T Qc`SR [SOba OZeOga ZWSa Xcab O PWb PSg]\R bVS ^OZS EVS\ 7 eO\bSR b] abO`b [OY W\U QO\Rg 7 Xcab abO`bSR O\R bVS S\RSOd]` bc`\SR ]cb ^`Sbbg eSZZ UWdS\ bVOb 7 P`]YS W\b] bVS []Z bS\ acUO` UO[S eWbV ]\Zg O [W\]` O[]c\b ]T _cSabW]\OPZS `SaSO`QV c\RS` [g PSZb To bring that same attitude to aging a hunk of flesh for a year and then ingesting it, however, felt unwise. Beyond the fear of poisoning my loved ones, there’s the concern over the expensive waste of creatures I firmly believe have souls — not to mention the worry of becoming one of those people who define themselves by the pricey kitchen clutter they amass. Still, curing and sausage-making always seemed like exactly the kind of practical magic I could really get into — I just needed some guidance from someone familiar with the difference between, say, mold that is

delicious and mold that turns your vital organs to mush. I never got around to seeking that someone out. Then my editor here at City Paper handed down the assignment for this piece: learning charcuterie from Southwark’s Nick Macri, one of the brightest stars in our local constellation. She posed it as a nonchalant shrug of a question: “Would that be cool?� Uh, yeah, I could get out of bed for that. Even the most basic products under the charcuterie umbrella take a full day or two, though — how would my too-brief stint go down? A few hours didn’t sound like enough time to learn the first thing about the craft. Still, I dutifully made my way through the muck of a dreary morning, tracked down the perplexingly remote kitchen-access door, tied on the supplied apron, and headed to wash up. Pretty much the first thing Macri said was, “This isn’t going to be nearly enough time for me to teach you much about charcuterie.� At Southwark, where an exten-

sive, heavily praised cast of cured meats and terrines is made in-house weekly, rotating according to season and whim, even the simplest preparations are multi-day affairs. Before I arrived on a Friday morning, pounds of pork shoulder had seen knives and brines, liver had been cleaned and seared and precise weights and proportions had been calculated. Maybe if I’d had a few more days, I could have done more than scratching the surface of the basics. But seeing as how I had only one day, I figured I’d try to work my way through a portion of the process of some simple, fresh, entry-level charcuterie: a spicy fennel sausage and a rustic pâtĂŠ grand-mère. I ground bus pans full of meat, delighting in the slightly macabre pop-and-squelch soundtrack and nervously watching for smear. (“It should come out clean,â€? cautioned Macri, “like those Play-Doh things you had as a kid.â€?) I smushed the panade — bread soaked in eggs and milk, which acts as a binder — into the pâtĂŠ mixture by hand. I used a continued on adjacent page

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