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Today we got to sit down again with Meredith Lee, a butcher and author of The Ethical Meat Handbook, and ask her a lot of questions about confit, rillettes, and terrines.
Meredith has a course on these three items, a course which includes head cheese by the way, and Allison and I both took the course and made use of the recipes in our own kitchens and we loved
the tasty results so much, we wanted to ask Meredith more and get her on the air so you could hear her talk about these incredible, versatile, and thrifty preparation and preservation methods for storing meat, fat, and scraps that honestly would often otherwise end up in the trash.
Gary and I learned to make our new favorite lunch meat spread by going through this process, and we made what is now going to be a staple every time we process a pig.
We cannot wait to try these processes with ducks, sheep, beef, turkey, other animals we raise on the farm. I look forward to hearing about all the variety of spices and means you will use to make these delightful ancestral dishes.
Enjoy the episode and warning, you might get a little hungry.Welcome to the Ancestral Kitchen podcast.
I'm Alison, a European town dweller living in England.
And I'm Andrea, living on a family farm in Northwest Washington State, USA.
Pull up a chair at the table and join us as we talk about eating, cooking, and living with ancestral food wisdom in a modern world kitchen. Welcome to Ancestral Kitchen Podcast.
Andrew and I have both just taken a course that covers traditional ways of cooking meat in fat, and we've made some of the delicious things from it.
We've talked about it, if you've been on the Discord board of our Patreon community, we've talked about it on there, but we also really wanted to share it here with everyone who listens.
And we decided what better way to do that than bring in the creator of the course, Meredith Lee, who's a butcher, an author and a fermenter.Before we start, you can find the course at the Fermentation School.
It's called how to make confit, gillette and terrines.There's a link in the show notes.And if you go to that link, it will give you 10% off your purchase.So
I think the course will cost you a smidge over $30 and you'll also be supporting the work that Andrea and I are doing here at the podcast.So, let's dive in.Welcome, Meredith.Thank you for coming back and being with us again here.
Hello.Thanks for having me.It's great to be here.
So I'm not going to give you a long intro because if listeners want to get to know you, they can go back and listen to episode 77, which aired earlier this year, where we interviewed Meredith for an hour and you can learn all about her.
So yeah, just want to say hello.Andrea, do you want to dive in with some questions? I'm ready.
And of course, the first one is, what's the last thing you ate?We must know.
Oh, yeah, I forgot.This is a great question.I just had a little bit of rye toast with some ghee and honey and an egg, like a soft boiled egg on top.
Oh, wait, honey and egg on toast.That sounds amazing.
Yeah, I'm super into like savory and sweet together.And yeah, the honey with the rye and sometimes I even put a little red pepper flake with the honey on the rye.And it's thrilled.
So last time you were with us, you said that you were training for a half marathon.Did you do it?
I did it.Yeah.And now I'm still going.It was good.And now I'm going to do another one on trails with a bit more elevation in June.So yeah, I'm still going a bit.
You're still training.Nice.Wonderful.Okay.So let's get into this content.The course is called how to make confit. a roulette, I think I'm pronouncing that right, and tureens.
Tell us, I know that some of those words are French, tell us what those things are.
Yes, so all those words are French.Okay.So confit speaks, and I don't know the literal translation of confit, but one thing to, I guess, to sort of summarize all these preparations is that they're fat,
braised or fat-preserved, or like fat-dependent cured or preserved meats.And the terms kind of differentiate between them.So confit is traditionally
like a muscle with the bone in it that is cured in salt and then braised in fat and then preserved in that fat.So it's whole and on the bone.
So the closest, you know, a duck confit is like a perfect, you know, everyone's pretty much familiar with like the duck leg coming out of the crock of fat. And rillette is sort of the same, but it's off the bone, shredded.
So it's still salt cured, it's still braised or cooked in fat, but then the meat is sort of pulled off the bone and kind of pulled apart, really tender, you know, sort of flaked apart with a fork and then stored in fat, just like a confit.
So it becomes almost like a spread rather than whole and on the bone with a confit. And then a terrine, I mean, the actual, the translation of a terrine, I believe is the actual earthenware pan or dish that molded preparations. have been made in.
And so it can take many different forms, but probably the most familiar within the world of charcuterie of a terrine is actually head cheese, which is just all the meat and fat from the head that is boiled with spices and aromatics.
And then it's pulled off the bone and then it's molded into a terrine or a loaf pan. And then over that you pour a rich, collagen-rich stock, which is called an aspic, into the pan.And that sort of creates a suspension of all the bits, right?
Because that aspic is going to, when it's chilled, it's going to solidify.And so then you turn it out and it's like a loaf.
And I remember hearing in the intro to the course you talk about a warmer as well.Can you explain what that is?
Yeah, so Awarma is like, uh, it's kind of the equivalent of Riyadh, but it's from, I believe it's from like North African origin.
Um, and, and I, I know there are some folks in, in like Lebanon and, you know, countries around like Tunisia, Lebanon, Morocco, like that area is where I heard of it from folks that are from that area, but it's basically Riyadh.
same preparation, but just spiced differently and often using different species of meat.Whereas in France or the European tradition, we would use pork or even species of poultry for a rillette than perhaps in other areas of the world.
goat meat or lamb's meat will be used, and the fat from a lamb or a goat will be used, and the spices would be particular to that region.
And so I think the reason I mentioned in the course is just to remind everyone that cured meats are not distinctly European in their origin.That's just what we're familiar with in the Western world.But almost everywhere in the world, people have
figured out how to cure me in salt and preserve me with and in fat.It's everywhere.
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Yeah, so I mean similar, before we had refrigerators, similar to the other courses you've got at the fermentation school with other methods of preserving meat through perhaps curing fermentation.It's another method of that.
I've certainly had people contact me through all the time I've been doing Ancestral Kitchen
sharing, when I've shared something like this, they tell me about what they do and I remember one particular one was made with minced meat and the minced meat was cooked and then it was put under fat as well.
It sounds like throughout all the three preparations you're using spices.Are you also always curing each preparation?
Not always.That's certainly the most traditional way to approach these preparations, because again, they were meant to last either like in a cellar, in a jar, or packed away if you're traveling.But now the the approaches of making a confit.
Anytime you braise something whole in fat, let's say, you're essentially producing a confit.You can confit a carrot.You can confit anything.
People are using the approach of confit just to make really fatty, unctuous, delicious foods that they're not trying to preserve long-term.Many times, for example, if you go to like a food truck or a restaurant in in the U.S.
and you order carnitas, which is like a pork shoulder sort of shredded meat. from the Hispanic traditions, it's confit.
So they'll be braising it in fat, just like you would a traditional confit, but it's not stored there and it's probably not as salted as like a straight up cured rillette or confit.
It's just salted enough to give it the right flavor and then braised in fat and eaten pretty quickly, if that makes sense.
And do they still use traditional fat for those, do you think?Or are they using other fats?
I have no idea, actually.I mean, I know that because pork fat is so abundant, when I was working in kitchens here, we certainly used pork fat a lot if we were making like a confit taco meat or something.But I don't know.It varies, I'm sure.
Yeah, yeah.So let's talk about the fat for a bit.Can you tell us a bit about traditionally why it was fat and why we continue to use fat this way in these preparations?
Well, fat is just inherently preservative.It can seal, right?It can keep oxygen out.It can keep moisture away.
So some of those elements that would lend to potentially rancidity or mold growth or other things that would turn the meat or other foods, fat kind of protects and provides shelter from not only moisture and microbes, but also light.
Sometimes light can be damaging. to sort of the stability of foods, particularly meats.And so, yeah, it's just a great medium, right, for sort of locking in flavor and locking in stability.And of course, it's not going to be like
Obviously, if you're making a dry cured salami and the fat is all the way cured and the meat is all the way cured, a rillette and a confit is not like that.It's not going to last indefinitely.
I'd say depending on the amount of salt that's in it, it will eventually be exposed and potentially grow mold on the top and potentially lose its preserved state. because again, it's a cooked preparation.It's not a fully shelf stable.
The water activity is still high enough to where you can still get some microbial activity.
Yeah.Okay.I think that's useful for people who perhaps don't have experience with curing and thinking, oh, this is a curing dish and I've got to have all this knowledge to do it.
So yeah, actually you don't have to because the curing is very short and very simple.
One of the things that I was really interested about, I told Alison with your course, was the terrines, because I have no experience with that.So in your course, you make terrine with meat that came off the bones that were boiled for stock.
And I know Allison has told me before, Rob is the one who gnaws on the bones.And sometimes we shred the meat off and use it things.And often we just give the bones to our dogs to enjoy.
But following that practice, we shredded off an insane amount of meat when we did a whole pig. and cooked the bones and then shredded all the meat off as you had instructed.So you made them into a really nice terrine.
Can you talk about some of the thrift in this option?And then also you did mention head cheese.So if you could talk a little bit about that also.
Sure.Yeah.So I think there You know, terrines are interesting.I think in the West, the Western palate is not necessarily super keen on them.
I'd say they are having a bit of a renaissance here in the US, but it's, you know, they're traditionally eaten cold, right?So it's like this cold, gelatinous loaf of meat or, or a veg.
Um, so I think the one I made in the course is like, it's like pickled vegetables and meat.Um, and it was more just an experiment of like, how can, how will this turn out?Um, but, uh, yeah, they're, they're excellent for,
kind of putting in odds and ends, shall we say, the scraps from stock especially.I think probably my favorite thing to do with the scraps from stock is making a garum, which I also have a course about.
But if you're not, that is a little bit more involved. And so if you're not getting that deep into the rabbit hole of making like a fish sauce or something similar, then making a terrine is a super great way of using those scraps.
And I think where I want to mention head cheese is head cheese is traditionally a bit more meaty and it has a little bit more fat in it and less of that gelatinous aspect.
So that might be more to the taste of folks that are just not really sure how they wood stomach, the aspic itself that's just really gelatinous and cold.
Whereas the tree I made in the course is definitely more aspic heavy, and it just has layers of that meat inside.So you can really play around a lot with it.And yeah, I think it's worth mentioning how much meat comes off the bone.
Even when you're cooking a chicken frame or you're cooking meat for some other purpose, we don't necessarily always realize how much we are
I don't know, quote unquote, wasting and how we could get a whole other meal or or something to share with community out of what we would otherwise consider, you know, for the dogs.
That is exactly what my husband observed, too, because I think. He shredded off, he weighed over five pounds and we had already made stock.So I had already canned a ton of jars of pork stock.
And then he shredded all that meat off and it made, we counted how many jars, you know, a ton of jars.And then we would sit down and eat a jar for lunch.And we would say, wow, you know, if it weren't for
Like this is an entire meal that would have not happened if it weren't for that little tidbit of information.
Yeah.And I think Terrine's aside, like you can make rillette with, I mean, rillette is one of my favorite things to make and to share and to addicted now.Yeah.It's so good.And it's so approachable.And people are like, what on earth is this?
It is life changing.And so I think even just shredding that meat off of those bones and then just, you know, setting it, you know, it'll already be cooked at that point.
So it'll be interesting, but you could season it and, uh, you know, put it down in fat and see what you can come up with.I think it might be really interesting what he did.
Yeah.Yeah.He packed it under like he poured. Because you know when you make stock and all this fat comes off the top?
So he had already skimmed all that fat and then he poured the fat on top of each little jar and made these tiny pots of meat with the seasonings that you had recommended.
If people are trying to imagine how the rillettes tasted, I don't know if anybody is familiar with deviled ham, the canned, probably hyper-processed food that some of us grew up on.
And I always loved deviled ham when I was a kid, but it kind of reminded me of that, a little bit of the tanginess from the lemon in it.That's true.Yeah, there's lemon in the recipe.It's just so good.Yeah, it's delish. Cool.
Nice.Yeah.Let's just talk a little bit about the role that these three preparations played in ancestral food preservation.Can you talk to that, Meredith?
Sure.I mean, I'm maybe not as educated on this, throughout all traditions, right?But I do know that, you know, say you're working with a whole animal, which is where this stuff comes from, right?
It's like, we're not going to have a perfect balance of fat and lean for
um you know making only sausages and cutting fresh cuts like there might be a little extra balance of fat or there might be um cuts which don't store well off of the bone and we can salt so many of them and we can cook so many of them at a time but without a refrigerator
say we have an excess of fat, then what are we going to do with these?How can we use fat to our advantage?And so I think that's where these preparations came from.
I also know that there are just inherently fatty areas of the animal that were immediately just put into a pot upon the harvest day to just start cooking things right away or start getting things dealt with.And so in a lot of cultures, you'll see
Like, for example, a hog would be slaughtered, and then the entire rib section would just be pulled and put to confit right away.
And I don't know if that's just because we figured out that was really delicious, and so we made it into a tradition, or if it was a matter of practicality, like, we've got to deal with this in the best way we know how as soon as possible, and it's going to lend itself in this way.
I know that in Appalachia, where I'm from, when hogs were slaughtered, the entire backbone... So we might pull off the loins or the back straps, but then the backbone itself and all the meat that was still on it would be cooked much like a rillette and then put into jars and sort of canned, essentially.
Which is another thing that you could potentially do with rillette, is once you get it cured and seasoned appropriately and then braised down, it could be canned. and sealed, which would help preserve it a little bit longer.
So I know that a lot of folks from the mountains, where there's not a lot of good conditions for air-curing meats, like things have to be cooked or smoked, then these traditions are pretty prevalent.
And you'll hear people, oh, I remember eating canned meat.And it's very much like a rillette.It's just sort of the Appalachian tradition of that, whereas a true rillette is more French of origin.
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One thing that we noticed, Meredith, your course versus everybody else was we read a ton online about briettes mostly, but both of all of these three and all the recipes expected us to go shop for, you know, buy a two pound pork butt or whatever.
And your instructions were the only ones that actually came from the aspect of, Hey, look, we can use up these pieces that are left over, which was really important to us because that's what we were doing.Right.
We had already packaged up all the pieces. and we just had the scraps.And I really, really like that aspect of we felt like it.We we felt like this was the pig we got more out of than any other pig we've ever done.
Nice.That's so great.Yeah, I feel like it's really important to me to bring that perspective every time because, you know, curing meat is really about thrift.
It's about making the best use of the entire carcass with the full knowledge that you can't eat it all fresh.And if you've got to, you know,
throw a bunch of stuff over the back of your horse and ride to the next place, which a lot of our ancestors did.You have to have a way to pack and preserve parts of the animal without wasting it.
And so I think to do that truly in the ancestral tradition is to be really attuned to not only your environment, like what are the flavor components that I have available to me right here?How can I be responsive to the climate?
with the way I approach it, but also like, how can I be flexible with myself in terms of what I consider acceptable for this preparation?
I think so much of our modern cooking has taken to like, oh, well, you have to use the shoulder or you have to use this and you have to do it the way that Escoffier did it. You know, because what?We're obsessed with chefs?I don't understand it.
But it's kind of, you know, refreshing, I think, to realize that this is about, yeah, this is about being reverent and thrifty and flexible.And, you know, it's really not as complicated or gourmet as some might have you believe.
Yeah, that's what I feel.I looked up the English equivalent of these preparations in a book that I've got by Dorothy Hartley called Food in English.I'm trying to hold up now, it's 700 pages, quite heavy.
and again it was kind of needs in that they were initially used for long voyages and people who were going out to sea.
I just wanted to read for the listeners, I've got a small section which is on page 346 which talks about, in England they're just called potted meats, so she says originally potted meats were meats cooked and preserved in pots
The top of butter with which we now perfunctorily run over our small pots of paste was a thick layer of suet or butter set stiffly over the meat to exclude the air and the sprig of parsley laid atop is no less than the boughs of aromatic herbs laid across the old potted meats to keep away the flies and help preserve the contents under the airtight surface.
The best parts of the meat were cooked in the pots.It was essentially a condensing process used to compress extra food value for seamen and travellers.
And it is significant that the luxury potted meats, the luxury potted salmon, potted hare and so forth are still found around the old seaport towns and posting inns.
And I just like the fact that that is, you know, that's the English kind of equivalent and there's a reason why it developed there to give food to the seamen and people who are traveling.It's kind of a sad thing.Yeah.Thank you.
So taking that now from, you know, ancestral preparations, tell us why we should be making these dishes in our modern kitchens now.
Why you should be making them in our modern kitchens.Well, I think, yeah, I'll tell you why I do it.Yeah, I think it's some of the stuff we've already covered.It's to make use of things that I might not otherwise have a plan for.
But I know that I need to make use of them.For example, say I'm boning out and this is something I do is I would
potentially have a whole ham and I would be boning it out and I would have a specific intention of making sausage or of curing a couple of little pocket hams.
But then I would have just some trim and some meat left over that has a lot of connective tissue or it has a lot of soft visceral fats in it.I'm not going to grind that into sausage and I'm also not going to cook it as a full meal.
But a rillette, for example, is a perfect thing to do with that because the braising process is going to break down some of that connective tissue, say in a shank, that is difficult to chew through or to grind even.It's a practicality.
It's a handy tool to have. I think secondly, it's massively delicious, as you've noted. Um, and then I think, you know, I find it a little bit less practical to make terrines or like whole on the bone confit in the modern kitchen.
I think Rhea is the most applicable, but at the same time, you know, if you are the type of person that cuts up your chickens, for example, and you want to make the breasts meat for a quick meal one night, but you tend to save, you know, some of the legs because you want to amass them all.
A confit chicken leg is a delicious, delicious meal.And you can even put it in the fridge for a bit, you know, because it's been a little bit salted, a little bit more heavily and braised in fat.It's going to be a little bit more preserved.
So say you take all those amassed chicken legs and you confit them, you can enjoy some of them right away.You can put some of them up, have a quick meal another night.So I think if you really start to think about it, creatively.
It's a way to approach thrift.It's a way to get creative and add some new flavors.It's a way to use pieces that you otherwise may not feel you had a use for.And it's just yummy.So I think that's
I think the yummy bits are important.I shared with you after we made the rillettes that Gabriel was just like, he said, this is the best meat ever.
And you know, so not only did it give us absolutely delicious food and there's so much, like you said, creative variety in that because you can use umpteen number of different spices and flavour those dishes up in any way you want.
But what I found really useful was I put the meat under the fat in small pots and then I put it in the fridge.
And then it was so easy for me to, when I was preparing a lunch for Gabriel for the next day, to just take one of those out and use it and spread it in his sandwiches.It was just like a spread.Absolutely delicious.
And he was like, oh, I love my lunch, mum, you know.So it was
It also was really useful for me to have, like you said, as a standby in the fridge for me to then just pull out and give him something really delicious and something that I know is really nutritious as well.
Yeah, and I want to add on to that, I guess, because I see these preparations really as like a celebration of fat, like a way of leaning into using fat to its full potential in the kitchen.
Because as we know, fat is not only preservative, it carries flavor.It coats all the flavor molecules and lets them linger on your tongue. a little bit more.
And so that's why things cooked in fat have such, you know, just a delicious flavor to them or a lasting flavor to them.
And then I think, you know, furthermore, as I mentioned before, there are certain types of fat, if you really are eating whole animal that are a bit harder to use, and you will find yourself with an excess of it if you are truly doing your own, but you're eating whole animal.
And so these preparations, provide a way for you're like, Oh, now I actually have a need for all of that fat.
And I have a need for specific types of fat for making these fat dependent braised preparations that maybe my mind was closed to when I was just a sausage maker or just wanting to eat steaks and pork chops.And so
I think it's a real, you know, and fat, as we also know, is very important for our bodies in a lot of ways, and obviously in moderation.
But yeah, I just really think of these preparations as ways to really just begin to love working with animal fat and all of its, you know, positives.
Oh, and it finally gives us, Allison, now we have something new to say when people say, what do you do with all that water? Yeah, I can make the list.
They made lunch meat.A hundred things now.
It really is the most convenient thing, as you alluded to Meredith, and then Alison, as you just pointed out with Gabriel, it was very useful as a, you know, I think in Lark Rice to Candleford, they talked about how the men would take a chunk of fat
on a piece of bread and go work in the fields all day and then they'd stop at noon and eat it.So it's kind of affordable.
And Gary packed a lot of it into really small jars so then he can take a small jar and some pieces of sourdough and take that to work as his lunch.And I've made some into really delicious sandwiches with cheese and lettuce and tomatoes and stuff.
So versatile.Are these meat under fats?This is the question that Allison and I will get. emailed to us immediately after the episode.Are they safe?What about botulism?And how do you store them?Most of us don't have root cellars.
Yeah, they're safe.First of all, botulism thrives in slightly acidic environments without oxygen, but I wouldn't say that this would be an acidic environment.And again, remember that they're cooked.
They're braised, so they're typically cooked at lower temperatures, but they're temperatures that are high enough to kill botulism toxin, and they're cooked for quite a long time.
And so I typically braise my confit, my rillette, depending on the size of the cut for like four hours.So I'm not really worried about botulism with these meats.
Some people put curing salt in them, but as you know from the episode we did before, the curing salt cooked will produce a lot of free radical nitrosamine.So I leave the curing salt out of my rillette.
That being said, if you're concerned about botulism, you can put it in.But then once they're packed into the fat, they will store for quite some time.I would say if you have a refrigerator, go ahead and put them in there.
because that's going to preserve them a bit longer, obviously, and just with a reminder that your refrigerator is its own ecosystem.
And so whatever, you know, molds, spores are living in there will eventually colonize the fat surface on the top because there is, again, enough water activity in there to support some microbial stuffs.
Some people do water bath can, a cured briette, for example.That's not going to be the case with a terrine or a comfy, but that's another option provided that you are
somebody who's familiar with canning processes, I would say that that would be a safe approach.But I generally store them in the fridge.I do also freeze them so that I can pull them out later and thaw them and use them for a longer period.
Yeah, that makes sense.Thank you.That's what we're doing.We're going to freeze some of these.And I just wanted to throw out there that Allison, you said the course is with the 10% discounts, like 30 bucks, basically.And I'm just thinking about
Just so far, the one thing we've done, looking at how many jars I got, that's basically a dollar a jar.But I'm going to do this with every animal that we do from now on.So it's going to come down to like a penny a jar by the time I'm done.
So thank you for that education.Awesome.
Let me talk the listeners through kind of what I did.The first thing I did from the course, because I wanted to have a go at the Riet because it seemed like the simplest one for me.I used a slow cooker to cook it, which worked beautifully well.
And you've got such wonderful mixes for curing with different spices and herbs in them.And I'm excited to try those next.The week before I'd cured a lamb shoulder and we'd loved the kind of mixed up cure that I made.
And so I used that again on pork for the rillettes.It had, I'm trying to remember, Nigella, lots of Nigella seeds because I love that, lemon zest, garlic, rosemary, and a couple of other things.
And it smelled absolutely wonderful as I was kind of smearing it on.And then I cooked it in pork back fat.I get kind of a delivery of pork back fat quite regularly because I'm making lard all the time.
So I just added an extra kilo on and kind of put that around it.And the smell as it was cooking, like I said, was absolutely wonderful.And then once I was done, you know, it's not that I just had this product of the roulette, which I did.
I had jars of it, which I put in the fridge.But I also had the cracklings from the fat.
So I strained the fat through a sieve and I had the liquid fat, which of course was flavoured with all the absolutely delicious, you know, spice mixture from the meat.
But I also had the cracklings left from the fat that I put in there, which then I put into a bread
Then when I let the liquid fat sit for a bit it separated and underneath I had like a really really concentrated bit of meat juices which I poured into another jar and put it in the fridge and I tried to hide it at the back so no one else would find it.
So I could put that on my toast because the concentrated juices that had separated from the fat were absolutely lovely.So, you know, I not only did I have the actual yet, but I had some delicious flavoured fat, which then I could use to cook with.
Then I had my cracklings, which I was using in bread, which were also flavoured with all the flavourings from the meat.And I also had that kind of really, really deeply coloured juice, which was really a wonderful treat.
And then the meat, I kept it in my fridge, and I think it took us about two weeks. to use it.So it just, it kept giving.It wasn't just the roulettes, it kept giving all this other stuff as well.
I took lots of photos of the process because it was just, it was beautiful to watch, you know, to see this pork in the centre of my slow cooker and all the fat around the side and the beautiful curing mix on it.
And then all of the stuff that I was left with afterwards and I I put them all on the Discord channel for our community to see.And I just, I can't wait to do it again with a different meat.I'd like to try it with lamb.
And I haven't done the confit yet, but I know that my farmer Flavio has ducks quite often.So I'm kind of watching for the next time that he has a duck available so I can try an actual whole joint with the bone in as well. with a different cure.
So Andrea, do you want to share anything else about what you did when you made Jaws?
Well, I just want to say how much I love the way the class is organized and the way everything's laid out and the way you filmed it, where you had sometimes filmed from above.I don't know how you did that, but it was really nice.
And showing us all the ingredients and then also the way you would say, maybe you're using this, maybe you're using that, because it feels so much more accepting than some of the things online, which, like I said before, say,
buy this, you know, boneless, skinless, meatless chunk of whatever.I'm just like, I don't have that.So we really, really enjoyed it.It was actually really frustrating trying to find anything online.
And so it was a relief to be able to just relax into your course.And yeah, we felt very confident the way you walked us through everything and also very hungry because it looked really good. Well, thanks.
And I am just so excited to do the terrines now because, yeah, those they look really good.And I know those those have been traditional in lots of places.And all my old cookbooks have versions of terrines in them.Yeah.
So it hasn't been out of sight for very long.So I'm excited that you're bringing it back.
I'm trying.Yeah.And there are some chefs doing amazing things with terrines if you go on Instagram. you can have a heyday with like gelatinized things.So certainly there's a, there's a revival happening.
I need to get a bigger pot before, cause I want to do a whole pig's head and I don't have a pot big enough yet.So I need to invest in a bigger pot.
Yeah.Yeah, it does.We have two more pig's heads to go.So I need one of your pots.Back to the course.
Yeah. Can we talk a little bit about the spices?Because I know you've got a French spice blend, which sounds absolutely delicious in the course.
Can you talk a bit about how listeners can make their own, how they can pull from different traditions and just really have endless variety through all of these dishes?
Sure.Yeah.So I learned about Riette from a French butcher and he used, um, quatre-épices, which is French for spice on the mix.And so that's what I used for many years in my pâtés and in my, um, Riette and confit.And it's in my book.
Um, it's a blend of black pepper, ginger, nutmeg, and What else?Oh no, excuse me.It's white pepper, white pepper, ginger, nutmeg, and clove, I believe.And it's really yummy.It's very distinctive.
And it's one of the oldest spice ones that's used in Western sort of European preserved meats.That being said, I used it quite a lot and I became quite tired of it.And I used to travel with it and my entire suitcase would smell like it.
And I was like, okay, I can't handle this anymore.And so I started playing around with different things, took a course with a Spanish butcher who familiarized me with the tradition of confiting the ribs of the hog during the matanza.
So while the hog was being slaughtered, the ribs being immediately put under fat and into a cooking situation.And those were flavored with lemon, cinnamon, and bay leaf.And I just thought that sounded so delicious.
And so I think maybe that's the spice blend that I share in the course.And it's probably one that I use more frequently.It's just my preference.And I also have added smoked paprika to that same blend.
And so I think to that point, you can really do whatever you want, whatever tastes good.I make rillette at Christmas time, so very often we'll add more earthy, Christmassy, aromatic spices to it.And I love your putting Nigella in there.
I think it's great.It's like any tradition, many times these traditions are named after the cut of meat that's used or the particular spice blend that's used, but you can riff endlessly on
which cut you use and which spice blends you use and make your own thing as long as you understand the basic principles behind the preparation and certainly give a nod to tradition.
But tradition is meant, I think, to be evolved towards your environment and towards the times that we're in and the necessities that we face.And so
I get really excited to hear the different spices that folks are putting into their rillette and their confit because I think we can all share and create new things that we wouldn't have thought of on our own.
I'm excited to unleash this on the Patreons and say to them, go do it your way, because they've all got so many different influences in their kind of ancestry and where they're living.
And so I think they're all going to come at it from very, very different angles.And it will be inspiring for me to go in there and see what they're up to.
Right.And like a Larma, I believe is made with like a lot of Middle Eastern, you know, spices.And so you can imagine it's quite different than like a French four spice or even like a Spanish sort of preparation.
And so, um, yeah, the possibilities are endless.It's really exciting.
Yeah.Cool.Andrea, do you have more questions for Meredith about this?I know that you're going to say yes, you have about this in particular.I do actually.Yeah.
I have this question, which is, are there any, you talked about confit. Rhea and Tyreen today, are there any future things that you're planning to make that would be new to you that are kind of piquing your curiosity?
You know, I have taken a bit of a break from curing.And mostly because so much teaching and traveling, I got really burned out.
And so my interests right now are actually in like the gardening side of things and land getting my hands back into the soil and perfect air.Yeah.And so I actually what I'm mostly interested in, so I'm doing kind of a deep dive into biodynamic.
And so one thing that I'm working on, this is not like an edible thing, but I'm interested in making some of the biodynamic preparations, which involve animal parts like skulls and stomachs and bladders and intestines, but like combining them with herbs and basically putting them into sort of like a fermentation process.
Um, and then inoculating like compost or, or garden sprays with those things.And so that's my like funky thing that I'm getting into right now, um, fermentation wise and like whole animal wise.
Um, but I'm not really in the kitchen as much as I used to be.And mostly what I'm doing is like stuff that is kind of wrote and, um, comes easily to me from what I've already done before.So sorry, I don't have any, I think.
No, no, I think that's actually really brilliant what you said because you do get your You know, you sort of perfect the things that are ideal to you.And then Rietz is no longer new.It's habitual, familiar, comforting and delicious.
And now you have the brain space opened up for a whole new endeavor, which I think is one of the coolest aspects about going deep and just really marinating in one specific thing in the ancestral food world.Well said.
Yeah.And like, there's always room for a new intimacy, but it might not be like in the same thing.It might not be cooking, it might not be whatever.
And I, you know, trying to stay open to like, what is the new intimacy that like wants to present itself to me has become like really important to me in my practice.
That's brilliant.I like that new intimacy as a phrase that feels like something that is in a dynamic relationship and kind of coming towards and then changing us as well as us changing that.Totally.Thank you.
Is there anything else you want to say, Meredith, about people, to people who are listening, people who might be thinking of taking the course or anything that we've forgotten to ask about this?
No, I mean, I feel like we've really talked about it a lot and I appreciate you both for your, you know, you're so thoughtful and, and yeah, practical about the way you go about these things and you practice them before you speak about them.
And I just really respect that.So thank you.
Thank you.The same is true of how we feel about you.That's why you're back here again.Thank you very much.So if people want to have a look at the course, as I said, the link is in the show notes.
It's at the Fermentation School and you can go and have a look and there's a little video at the top it that you can watch and see what the contents are.
Meredith got a lot of other courses at the Fermentation School and the school is also full of wonderful courses from female creators, all of which listeners to the podcast can get 10% off.
Where can people find you other than at the Fermentation School, Meredith?
Well, my Instagram is ethicalmeatbook and my website is ethicalmeatbook.com.You can reach out anytime via Instagram or the webpage and I'm happy to chat with you about your preps and answer any questions.
Wonderful.I shall make sure that the book and your Instagram are in the show notes as well.So people can just go there and click through.Wonderful.Thank you ever so much for your time, Meredith.Yeah, thanks for having me.
Hopefully we'll have you back again.Thank you.Bye for now.Bye.Bye.
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