Charcuterie Archive
Posted on October 12, 2011 in Charcuterie
Elias Cairo founded Olympic Provisions in 2009 in an effort to bring together the tastes of his childhood and what he learned as an apprentice in Europe. What began as a one-man show has blossomed into two restaurants and a charcuterie business amounting to 65 total employees.
I catch Elias just at the end of his daily cleanup. He tells me he must call me back, as he doesn’t want to leave the rest of his staff to clean the place without him. When he is all done, he tells me about how he got into the charcuterie business. Growing up in Salt Lake City, Utah, Elias’ family didn’t own much land, but did own many animals. He recalls having 4 sheep, 4 goats, 15 chickens and a pig every once in a while. Oh, and beehives, who can forget the beehives, but “that’s what the Greek did” Eli told me. His family made everything from their own glue to all their liquor and even their own candy.
His love of food took Eli first through culinary school and then to Europe where he apprenticed in old charcuterie shops in Switzerland. When he came back to the states he started going to a lot of farmers markets and noticing a trend: plenty of fruits, plenty of vegetable, no charcuterie. From there, Olympic Provisions was born. Eli decided he wanted to cure meat the way he learned in Europe, done very hands on in a very small way. Take for example his Saucisson: just pork and salt. He works very closely with local Oregon farmers to develop different flavors by changing the pig’s diet and environment.
When I ask Eli what his favorite thing about working in the food industry is, he doesn’t hesitate to answer. “The people. People that take time and make craft food. Everyone is positive, passionate and excited about what they are doing. Seems like every person I meet is just opening up a restaurant or coffee roastery, starting a cheese business, making chocolate or becoming an urban farmer. It’s kind of hilarious, but they are all very great people.”
If I had been lucky enough to be able to stop into the Olympic Provisions meat shop up in Portland, I would have been serenaded by the sounds of Willy Nelson and Neil Young. Did I mention they always (and only) listen to records and sports talk radio in the meat shop? Eli has created a personal oasis for himself and his staff. Though sometimes the work can be daunting – a daily cycle of cutting, curing, packaging, lifting and cleaning – it takes little more than a trip to the farmers market where he can see his customer’s happy faces to make him remember what he loves so much about this business.
And what does being a Good Food Award winner mean to Eli? “It is insanely flattering,” he tells me. “You’re very busy and very tired and very hard on yourself, and then when you receive an award from your peers and people you look up to…the fact that they tried it was great and the fact that they liked it…it was insanely flattering.”
Posted on September 29, 2011 in Charcuterie
A three-year stint living in Italy and passion for healthy, delicious food led husband and wife team, Herb and Kathy Eckhouse, to consider how they could use the vast resources that their home state of Iowa had to offer. Herb thought that although there had been a huge development in artisan cheeses and premium wines, there hadn’t been much progress in high quality dried meats. After heading back to Italy to learn the basics of making prosciutto, the Eckhouses decided to take a leap of faith and open La Quercia.
Speaking with Herb, it is clear how much he enjoys food. Making it, eating it, talking about it – he loves it all. He credits a lot of that love to the time he spent with his family living in Italy, “Most Italian people believed that each day they were going to eat something that made them happy to be alive. That’s what we strive for”. For the Eckhouses, going into the prosciutto business was an easy choice. Besides the meat itself being rich in protein and nutritious fat, Iowa’s farms provided more than enough resources for their growing business. Herb and Kathy made a commitment to using no confinement or commodity pork “anytime ever” and make it a point to work only with local farmer groups. Now that La Quecia’s customers are ordering meat on a regular basis, they’ve had to start ordering from multiple farms including Niman Ranch and Eden Farms.
Opening La Quercia meant taking a giant leap financially, and it was incredibly nerve wrecking waiting for those first hams to finish curing. “One night,” Herb tells me, “I woke up in the middle of the night worrying about it, so I just went in there and told those hams to be delicious. And now it’s a tradition. We always make sure to tell those hams to be delicious.” Now La Quercia’s program is evolving to all different cured meat varietals. “We got into this as eaters,” Herb explains, “We make prosciutto and eat it. When we eat it, we learn about this one versus that one. Differences and similarities.” The Eckhouses hope that people can learn to appreciate the subtle differences in prosciutto just like those in a fine wine. Different breeds of pork, just like different varietals of grapes, age and develop flavors differently. This is only one of the challenges La Quercia faces working in the cured-meat industry, another is the preconception that the only good prosciutto is Italian prosciutto.
Ultimately, however, Herb and Kathy love being a part of the craft food industry. Of course, there’s the perk of constantly being able to eat the great food, but what really makes it great is the people. They are “genuinely passionate, committed, innovative and exciting to be around.” When I asked Herb about what it meant to him to win a Good Food Award he answered, “I appreciate the recognition and respect of not just peers but experts in our industry and endeavor, but its much more personal than that.” Since 2005, La Quercia has grown to have 22 full-time employees as well as be recognized by countless print, online and radio media, but still employs the same value it started with: eat great food.
Posted on August 4, 2011 in Charcuterie
Weeping Radish Farm Brewery was founded by Uli Bennewitz in 1987. The brewery was officially open for business only after Uli collaborated with a local senator to pass a bill allowing microbreweries to sell their own beer on site. After years of brewing, Uli realized that when it came to quality beer and quality food, the issues were basically the same. About ten years ago he started the butchery with his joint venture partner Gunther Kuehle, a 5th generation craft butcher. Gunther chose the equipment, helped with the layout and hired a craft butcher from Uli’s native Germany to come over and start charcuterie production at Weeping Radish, using meat from small local farms.
Uli’s vision of what his charcuterie business would look like quickly evolved into something very different. Originally he planned to buy meat from local farms, add value and then sell the products himself. Instead he found that many of the small local farmers in his region frequently ended up with parts of meat they couldn’t sell; he therefore shifted his focus to creating a sustainable business. By both adding value to these unwanted but perfectly delicious meat cuts through cooking, smoking, labeling and then returning the products back to the farmers for them to sell themselves as added profit to their farm business, Uli found a new way to make small agricultural farms more sustainable. Uli calls this new idea of using otherwise wasted resources “side-streaming.” And it does not only apply to meat production, he also explains that he is now planning to install windmills on 5,000 acres of corn farmland. The idea is that not only will the land produce corn, but the space above will be used to create energy.
Uli’s goal as a local business owner and innovator in North Carolina, where the two extremes of factory farming and small family farms are located side-by-side, is to try to enhance what small farmers are doing. He tells me of an experiment he did in which he compared pork from a factory farm and from a local farm: “We took a Smithfield hog and then a free range hog and we made a spiced goulash. You would think you couldn’t taste the difference with such strong spices but we did a blind tasting and everybody got it right. If we can play an infinitesimal part in helping those farmers we have done our duty.”
One of the biggest challenges when it comes to creating value-added meat products on a small scale is that USDA regulations are geared towards large-scale meat production. These regulations however, make small sustainable production much more challenging. Uli gives me an example of an issue he has been debating just this week. He tells me that in North Carolina it is essentially illegal to sell eggs at a farmers market because of the regulations that are currently in place. A law written in 1985 states that eggs must be refrigerated at time of sale, clearly labeled and sold in a company carton. Though these restrictions may make sense for factory farmed eggs, they do not apply to small farmers and act as a disincentive for responsible production. Uli believes that education will be the best way to improve our system and he sees that interest in good food is increasing: “Our community is growing at a rate of thirty, forty, fifty percent. We’re obviously doing something right so the future is ours despite the problems we face.”
Winning a Good Food Award meant a tremendous amount to the employees at Weeping Radish Farm Brewery. Uli articulates what the award has meant to him: “Living in the rural south we look at markets like San Francisco and the West Coast as being 10 years ahead of us at least in terms of good food. Winning the Good Food Award we felt like we were equals and we were blown away.” After receiving the award, the food communities in the metropolitan areas near Weeping Radish began to pay more attention to the great work that they are doing and their business continues to grow.
Posted on July 14, 2011 in Charcuterie
Before opening Pine Street Market in 2009, Rusty had 15 years of experience as a chef. He had worked in restaurants in places as diverse as Florida, Hawaii, and Austria but in each location he always found himself working as a butcher. Through these experiences, Rusty picked up the techniques of charcuterie making and gained valuable experience working with meats. He found that he loved making charcuterie so in 2009, he and his wife, Travis, opened Pine Street Market in Atlanta, Georgia.
Rusty is currently getting ready to release two new products at the end of the month. The first is a pepper-seasoned prosciutto that has been aging for the past year and a half. The second is a speck made from boneless ham that has been laid out flat and smoked on beachwood before being aged for several months. He is extremely excited about these two new products and in particular the speck. Although Rusty admits that picking a favorite product is “like picking a favorite kid,” he reveals to me that the speck is going to be better than Pine Street Market’s award-winning coppa. Rusty has been watching the speck closely and notes that it has a beautiful color and smells amazing, and while it is not quite ready, he confesses that he has snuck a taste and it lives up to his high expectations.
Pine Street Market produces their charcuterie from 100% local pork. They source the meat from the local Gum Creek Farm and most of the other ingredients they use are bought from the local farmers’ markets. This alone makes Rusty’s products representative of his Georgia location but he also enjoys creating recipes to highlight both his charcuterie products and the local produce. For example, Rusty’s favorite way to serve his dry cured coppa is in a summer salad: “We take Georgia peaches, slice them into 6 sections and wrap them with the coppa. We then grill it, which gives it a smokiness, and the peaches start to melt. We then put it over an arugula salad with some cheese. It’s a really great summer salad.”
The owners of Pine Street Market are proud of their local success in addition to the nationwide recognition they have gained from winning their Good Food Award. Rusty explains how rewarding the award has been for him: “It was the highlight of our year. Being in Atlanta…there aren’t a lot of people doing this where we are. We might be good for our region or even the East Coast, good for where we are, but to find out that we were appreciated nationally was a big deal. It was amazing, a really big honor.” Pine Street Market continues to grow with the increasing demand for their products. They have recently taken on two new employees and hope to continue to expand their production.
