The Perfect Prosciutto

2009's Prosciutto

Many of you foodies know that Prosciutto is absolutely delicious. Ham cured to perfection with the greatest balance of saltiness and flavour makes this food a favourite. This deliciousness comes at a steep enough price, a leg of Prosciutto di Parma can cost as much as 400.00$ once it’s been cured while local brands will cost upwards of 100$ and often be of very poor quality.

Over the past few years, I’ve been making Prosciutto quite literally in my parent’s Montreal basement. Over the next few days/weeks, I’ll be writing about how you too can make a great prosciutto at home given a cold damp room (I’ll take temperature/humidity readings in my parent’s cold room to give you an idea of what you need), lotsa salt, some herbs and of course a pork thigh!

At the left, you can see one of the Prosciutto I prepared in February, 2009. I cut this particular piece in late January 2010. Yup, almost 1 year to the day! There’s the most important fact about Prosciutto preparation: once the 12-day curing process is complete, the meat must slowly dry over the course of a year. If you’re anything like me, it’s not so easy to wait but the results will speak for themselves!

So call your butchers, clear out your cold rooms and start looking for table salt in your grocery flyers, we’ll get cracking soon!

Amazing, Zillion-Calorie, Stuffed Dates

I was hoping to be able to take a picture of this dish but unfortunately my family snapped it all up before I could grab a camera. This recipe is remarkably easy to prepare and the results are a flavourful combination of sweet ‘n salty creaminess that can’t be beat.

You should resist the temptation (I didn’t) to use the gorgeous Medjool date variety. Although this prized variety is delicious, their size makes them impractical since they take multiple bites to get through. You’ll really want the flavours to come through in one short and intense burst. On that note, you’ll also want to try to score some low-sodium bacon. You don’t want to overpower the sweet flavour and creamy texture entirely, simply complement it.

Gozman’s Amazing, Zillion-Calorie, Stuffed Dates

Ingredients

• 12 dates
• 12 teaspoons of softened goat cheese or mascarpone
• 4 strips of bacon (preferably low-sodium)

Procedure

1. Slice the dates along the long side in order to butterfly them and remove the pit.
2. Scoop cheese filling into the dates. Fold the dates back together
3. Wrap each date with 1/3 of the bacon strip making sure to overlap the edge.
4. Secure bacon to date with toothpick.
5. Broil at 500F on center rack for 7-9 minutes or until bacon is crisp.
6. Cool for 10 minutes and serve

Quickly Adding an Admin Interface to a Rails App

I’ve been messing around with Ruby on Rails for a while now. It’s a great way to paradigm shift away from desktop/mobile stuff and quickly develop a web app that’s fun to play with.

As part of some portfolio building I’ve recently been up to, I needed a quick and dirty admin interface to my site’s data. Enter Typus a really handy Rails plugin that automatically generates an admin interface from your database and implements simple access control in order to let an individual or a small team manage a site’s data.

The interface is snazzy and the setup is literally three lines of bash:

$ script/plugin install git://github.com/fesplugas/typus.git
$ script/generate typus
$ rake db:migrate


Take a look at the project’s github page to learn the nitty gritty. I’m not sure if I’d use this for anything production grade, but it’s definitely worth looking into if you need to prototype something with Rails.

Marlow and Sons’ Shortbread

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Yep, you’re lookin’ at ‘em!

Ever since thoroughly enjoying Walkers’ shortbread cookies and then suffering terrible disappointment when I found out that getting them in Montreal is nearly impossible (unless you fly to and fro on Porter airlines that is), I’ve been on the lookout for an interesting shortbread recipe.

I surfed through to Lottie+ Doof from 101cookbooks the other day and came upon an interesting recipe for a walnut-ridden shortbread. I tried the recipe this weekend and I can surely vouch for their deliciousness.

I halved the original recipe :

2      sticks (1/2 pound) plus 1 tablespoon softened unsalted butter
4 1/2  ounces light brown sugar
2.5    ounces white sugar
1   egg
1/2  tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1/2   pound + 1 1/2 ounces bread flour (though all purpose will probably work just as well for this)
1/2   teaspoon salt
3/4  cups of coarsely chopped walnuts

Prepare a quarter sheet tray by buttering the pan, placing parchment paper over it, then buttering the paper. Lightly dust the buttered paper with flour.

Cream butter and sugars in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla until combined, then mix in dry ingredients. Combine completely.

Divide dough evenly into prepared sheet trays, spreading smooth and level. Sprinkle with granulated sugar and bake at 325° until golden brown, about 35 to 45 minutes.

Lottie + Doof suggest to cut the shortbread once its cooled. I found it easier to cut it when it’s warm to avoid too much crumbling. Your mileage may vary. They say that the cookies keep well for at least a week, unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to fact check this as they were consumed in a matter of hours.

Crisis of Credit

In yesterday’s business strategy class, the professor spurred class discussion on ethics and greed by showing us this video by Jonathan Jarvis. I consider myself to be a bit of a finance geek (indeed it’s one of the reasons I’m pursuing an MBA after all), and I still found this video quite informative. I’d say it’s one of the clearest explanations I’ve seen of the American housing bubble and subsequent recession.

Enjoy!