urbandryad

I think I've finally hit a food goal.

Food, for me, is always evocative. It always means something, it's a statement of acceptance of some kind of identity, it's some kind of memory, or it's some kind of new adventure. It's embodiment. And I've written before about how preserving feels like creating hope for the future, how it helps me look forward to the world I'll be eating the food in. Then, when I eat it, that food reminds me of the time when I made it. It sews me into time, and into my life, stitches me firmly to my self.

I found a case of food from the first year I did canning: 2013. There was some blackberry crabapple juice I made that I collected fruit for on one of my first walks with Dave. We went up by UBC, I remember making the juice, I remember thinking that if I were ever to marry him it would be neat to go get the same fruits from the same place, make wine, and serve it at the wedding (he taught me to brew beer). Goodness, do I ever like romantic gestures when they aren't assumed to be a new baseline. There were also pickles and blueberry mint jam from when I learned to can with Julia, that same summer, when I basically did canning for that little farm's excess. I loved doing that work, I loved that role. They paid me in food, which allowed me to make that the summer of my canning challenge, putting up one jar of food in summer for each day in the oncoming winter. Now here I am in a home I'd hoped for but wasn't able to envision then -- it was the beginning of my journey to forestry but I didn't know it yet, and hadn't envisioned leaving Vancouver at that time. And there I was embedded in community that I wish I had now, and also that I'll work towards in my future again.

So that is an example of how food ties deeply into my emotions and experiences. But. For me so much of it has been linked to memories and to what was going on at the time; people say the things I make are good but I know they don't connect in the same way.

Today I experienced something completely new.

There's always an ad hoc quality to how I cook. There's an element of serendipity, an external trigger: this is ripe, I have a lot of this other thing, let's combine them! Well, this spring while I was making bacon I had a jar of spruce tip syrup that hadn't sealed.

I want to go on record as planning to make gallons of spruce tip syrup next year, it's one of my favourite things on earth and it's an alchemy: it's floral not resinous, but it keeps the warm quality of the conifer.

But. I had this extra syrup, so I tossed some into the bacon cure I made. That was just 2% salt, 0.25% nitrite, and then the spruce tip added sugar as well as essence. The bacon sat in that for six weeks -- an equilibrium cure, which functionally means the salt and flavourings have time to work their way deep into the meat and you don't need to worry about it getting too salty -- and then I cold-smoked it yesterday on some neutral Applewood.

I fried up a piece this morning and sat down to write this.

This is the first time my food has achieved a complete sense of place not tied to the experiences of harvesting. I'm not sure how else to describe it. It was an end bit of bacon, salty and fatty, from the pigs I can see through my window as I write this. There was almost no sweet, just a tiny hint to balance the salt, and a very balanced spruce flavour from the trees I can see out my window, though not the same trees the pigs scratch on. Tasting it should have taken me to my farm, grounded me right here, made me look out the window and smile.

Instead... the spruce tips without their sugar, and with the extra smoke, had de-alchemized a little bit. Instead of flowers they gave the feeling of a campfire in a deciduous forest, and not any deciduous forest but *this one*, the one I've been shouldering through for work for the last 5 years. I reach my arms around those trees to measure their diameter and my cheek lays against their bark and I breathe the scent in, not every day but many days. This forest, my forest, with a little controlled smoke like from a fire, with fatty salty pork richness that wasn't quite crispy: I'd evoked something with my food that hadn't happened but that managed to completely embody me in this invented experience anyhow.

I suppose in a lot of ways food is my canvas, my communication medium. When I'm giving people food I'm always trying to give them some of my feelings and experiences. I don't think it usually works. But this time I was able to invent something completely new but also completely from *this place*, from the north, and it makes me so happy.

So: spruce tip bacon. Perfectly balanced by some bannock made with fresh-ground flour, a little milk powder, a little salt, and a little baking powder fried in the bacon fat.

Alchemy. On so many levels.

Killed a pig for sausage last week. There are a bunch of recipes that came out of that. All pork is 25-30% far with the remainder lean, put through a 7mm plate, unless otherwise noted:

Hot Italian Sausage
0.5% chili flakes
0.35% coriander
0.7% fennel
0.25% black pepper
1.25% mild paprika

^Toast these then grind

1% fresh or 0.25% dried oregano
1% fresh or 0.25% dried basil
1.5% salt
1.4% sugar
Per 1kg: 1/6 cup water and 1/6 cup red wine

I didn't stuff this, it makes an amazing pasta sauce base.

Mysliwska
This one is super great.

1.5% salt
0.25% cure #1
0.2% black pepper
0.1% sugar
1 clove garlic and 100g water per kg
1% juniper berries (dried)

smoke low 2 hours min, then bring up to 155 internal temp

Andouille
1.5% salt
0.25% cure #1
0.6% black pepper
3tbsp fresh plus 4g dried thyme (supposed to be 6tbsp fresh or 8g dried)
0.9% cayenne
4 cloves garlic, 1/4 cup juice from fermenting jalapenos, and 1 tbsp. water per kg

Smoke 2-4 hours then cool in water or poach until 155 internal

Russian
(25% fat was backfat hand-diced into 1/2" cubes)

1.5% salt
0.25% cure #1
0.20% black pepper
0.20% sugar
0.20% cardamom
0.20% allspice
Per kg: 60ml brandy and 30ml water

Add backfat after myosin development.

Smoke 2-4 hours then internal temp to 155.

Polish
1.5% salt
0.25% cure #1
0.20% black pepper
0.25% sugar
1% marjoram
To each kg: 1 clove garlic, 100ml water

Add fat after myosin development. Smoke 2-4 hours then internal temp to 155.

Argentinian Chorizo
1.4% salt
0.3% black pepper
1.5% smoked paprika (this was a mildish one)
0.25% cayenne
Per kg: 1/2 cup wine

Fresh sausage, no smoking.

Mexican Chorizo
1.4% salt
0.4% black pepper
0.5% cayenne
0.15% dry oregano
Per kg: 4 garlic cloves, 50ml white vinegar, 50ml water

Fresh sausage, no smoking.