Guanciale
I first experienced guanciale about a dozen years ago in Rome. We took a trip, kind of on the cheap with friends who offered us 6 nights (no charge) is a time share that they were using. It certainly made the rest of the 2 weeks more affordable.
After touring Tuscany and surrounds, we spent another 6 in Rome......
No matter where we are, we always seek out restaurants that don't have someone outside hawking tourists in. We did the same think in Rome and came across Hosteria Grappolo D'Oro not far from Campo de Fiori. Instead of someone standing at a podium telling us how wonderful the food is, we found a leathery older man sitting at an outside table in front of the place smoking a cigar and watching the world go by, and in front of him on the street a line up of scooters -- clearly locals inside for lunch.
To say we picked well is an understatement, we managed to eat there for three different meals on that trip, went back five years later and did the same during a 1-week stay in Roma. Thanks to the Guanciale, I made friends with Simone the owner and make sure to connect him with anyone I know who's heading to Eternal City.
Back to the Hosteria, dating back to the middle ages, a Hosteria was an inn providing shelter and libation to pilgrims and traders. According to Simone, Grappolo D'Oro, did the same, but also allowed local fisherman to bring their daily catch to be prepared for them. As of our last visit, Simone boasted that he still had a couple of old timers who took him up on that service.
Since we didn't bring fresh caught fish for prep, I ordered the house specialty, pasta Carbonara at our first visit. Aside from the deliciousness of the creamy egg & Parmesan sauce, the meat was like noting I'd ever tasted before. In my world, Carbonara was made with bacon or pancetta, I soon learned the delectable chunks of meat were guanciale (translates to pillow or bolster in English) which is cured pig jowl. It was love at first bite.....
I'll spare you all the story about how Simone ordered a whole one for us thinking that the rules about bringing cured meat had changed to allow us to bring it stateside. Apparently customs had missed the memo and our precious cargo was confiscated.
Plan B: figure out how to make it myself.... Conveniently, D'Ameri Acres Natural Meats was a short walk from our house. When I asked the owner, Wendy, about pig jowl, she seemed a bit taken aback but made sure to grab me a couple the next time they processed pork.
It is definitely handy to have an extra refrigerator in the house if your basement isn't conducive to hanging the meat to cure out in the open. Some modicum of patience is necessary as the curing process is about 3 weeks. I hung the jowl in a spare refrigerator as opposed to the open air in our musty cellar.
If you like bacon or pancetta and want to take the plunge into curing meat, this is definitely an easy entry option, and as far as I've gone myself. It feels safe because even though this is cured, it still gets cooked to serve. I'll just continue to buy my prosciutto and salami from the experts.
THE RECIPE:
1 pig jowl 2 lb. +/-
For the Cure
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c kosher salt
1/2 c course pepper
1/4 c peppercorns
1/4 c garlic powder
1/4 c onion powder
1/4 c rosemary
Whisk all dry ingredients together and transfer to an air tight container.
Day 1
Weigh and record the weight of the jowl. By day 21 it should lose at least 30% of it's weight from drying.
Towel dry jowl and coat with 1/3 of the cure.
Refrigerate on a rack set into a baking pan.
Day 2
Re-coat with another third of the cure
Day 4
Re-coat with remaining cure
Day 7
Remove jowl from pan, rinse with water or wine and pat with paper towel to dry a bit.
Using butchers twine tie the jowl in a crisscross like when you tie ribbon around a gift box Leave a length of the twine for hanging the jowl. If it's difficult to get the twine to hold the jowl, you can wrap it in a single layer of cheese cloth and hang as pictured here. It may dry better without the cheese cloth though.
Hang the jowl to continue to dry keeping the original pan under it to catch any drips. (you can use the rung of a wire shelf in the fridge to tie the extra butcher's twine to for hanging)
Day 21
Weigh the jowl if it hasn't lost the 30% , let it hang longer and weigh every week or so until it reaches the 30% goal. Some thinking is that once it does reach that level of drying, it's cured enough to eat without cooking, I have not taken that chance.
The couple of times that I've cured guanciale, I used an electric slicer to cut the enter jowl into slices:
1/2 at a thicker setting to use for soups, carbonara and other recipes
1/2 thinner for use like bacon fro breakfast and brunch recipes
I then wrapped 1/4 pound packages of sliced guanciale in wax paper and plastic wrap and then stored the individual packages packages in 2 freezer marked with the date and whether it was thick or thin sliced.
A recipe variation that I came across but haven't tried is to process all the cure ingredients until they are fine, and then use all the rub on the jowl and store it in an air-tight bag for a cure time of 3 days / inch of thickness of the jowl. After that, the method is the same as what I have here. If I can get my hands on a jowl, I'll be trying this. Sadly I don't live around the corner from D'Ameri's anymore.
