Mortadella (Lucky Peach 4)

Bologna a la Bologna, Marco Canora

 Mortadella (Italian pronunciation: [mor-ta-ˈdɛl-la]) is a large Italian sausage^[1] or cold cut (salume /sa-'lu-me/) made of finely hashed or ground, heat-cured pork sausage, which incorporates at least 15% small cubes of pork fat (principally the hard fat from the neck of the pig). Mortadella is a staple product of Bologna, Italy. It is flavored with spices, including whole or ground black pepper, myrtle berries, nutmeg and pistachios, jalapeños and/or olives, though those with flavours other than ground pepper and myrtle are not made with the original recipe from Bologna.

Okay, sure, I agree now that mortadella could be made with olives.

• 1 3/4 lbs fatback (1 lb cut into 1 1/2" cubes, and the rest cut into a 1/4" dice)
• 2 egg whites, briefly beaten
• 1 C pistachio nuts
• 5 pounds pork shoulder, cut into 1 1/2" cubes
• 18 g pink salt (aka curing salt)
• 65 g kosher salt
• 2 T paprika
• 1 nut nutmeg
• 1 t almond extract
• 1/2 C dried milk powder
• 2 C frozen whole-fat milk
• 4 T black peppercorns
• Amaretti liqueur [I couldn't even bring this up on Google and wound up just using Disaronno instead.  Hey, it worked.]
• 100-mm-wide collagen casings, or plastic wrap

An untrimmed, bone-in pork shoulder.

The trimmings and the major bone.

Mise en place.  After a lot of hunting, I eventually found fatback at Savenor's in Beacono Hill.  Of course they have fatback and caul fat and all sorts of things I might employ someday in my cooking.

Blanch the diced fat back for 3 minutes.  This somehow firms up the fat a big.  I did the same thing to the pork rind before I scraped the fat off for chicharones.

Fatback is preferable in the dish in the first place because it is so firm and definitely not adjacent to any muscle unlike belly or fat from any other part of the pig.

Blanched fatback and pistachios tossed in egg white so they stay in place when the mortadella is sliced.

The larger pieces of fatback and the shoulder tossed with the dry ingredients.  The single teaspoon of almond extract was supposed to get in here, but I failed to remember while measuring the rest in a single pint container.

A measly teaspoon wasn't going to ruin my product, surely.  Even when all along I thought it was a tablespoon.  Ha.

Grinding meat: pretty much a nightmare.  I managed.

Season with liqueur and process as finely as possible with frozen milk.

Looking a hell of a lot more like lunchmeat.

Fold in the pistachio mixture and peppercorns and cure for 4 days in the fridge.  Where it wound up getting even more brighter pink.
And all these years of wondering whether Oscar Meyer dyes their bologna.  They probably do?

One portion was obviously way bigger than the other.  I barely managed to squeeze the two babies in my stockpot.

Casings totally burst from my sausages.  Hey, it was my first time out.  The meat is simmered until the internal temperature reaches 155 degrees.

Plunge the mortadella in ice baths and cool completely.  I was tired and they were still giving off heat after I had put them in the fridge.  Oh well.

Harold's Mortadella with Wilted Dandelion Greens

Top Chef: The Quickfire Cookbook

Dieterle's Quickfire win from Season 1, Episode 7

• 2 slices sourdough bread
• 1/2 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 ounce oyster or stemmed shitake mushrooms
• Salt and pepper
• 1 handful dandelion or other bitter green [I found some bagged blened of baby kale, spinach, and chard and figured I was close enough.]
• 1 1/2 tablespoons mayonnaise
• 1 1/2 tablespoons tapenade
• 1/4 cup sliced red grapes
• 3 ounces of mortadella
• 1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley [As usual, I didn't have any]

Mise en place.  Look at that beautiful meat.  Most of the supporting players hailed from Trader Joe's: grapes, tapenade, sourdough, greens.

Sautee the mushrooms.

Wilt the greens.

Mix mayonnaise and tapenade together.  Layer mushrooms on one side.

Followed by the greens and grapes.

And then the star: my HOMEMADE mortadella.

The sandwich itself is a pretty fantastic utilization of the meat and I never really thought I'd ever make the sandwich (I read the cookbook close to when I started cooking many years back) until 2013. 

I wish I could've sliced the mortadella thinner, but I am not master.  Also not an owner of a $600+ food slicer (though sure, I wish I was).  The combination of the two condiments were really stellar, the mushrooms added lovely texture, and the grapes were this fantastic, juicy, fresh counterpoints.  The greens were also essential and I'm sure the sandwich would've been ever more lovely if I had dandelion.

And what of the mortadella itself?  It is pretty awesome and the whole process of producing lunch meat is pretty zany.  I've been plotting for a while the fact that I would attempt to make sausages this year (I have this charcuterie book all lined up on my Kindle.  Cured meats, here I come.).  Lo and behold, Lucky Peach publishes an article on mortadella.  Mortadella was something I'd heard of occasionally (probably initially from this sandwich on TV) .
I knew it had something to do with bologna.  And bologna is...  Something I have just never understood.  I love roast beef (boursin, caramelized onions, tomatoes, horseradish...) and can endure the rest of the array, but I've always objected to baloney.  It had always seemed essentially flavorless and textureless; a whole lot less "real" seeming than even process turkey, chicken, and ham.  "Salami" was just bologna with some pepppercorns stuck in it.  And why was it so pink?

After laboring for hours and hunting and ordering the ingredients for weeks (I hardly used a tablespoon of the pound of curing salt I bought and am not sure when I'll use my 100-mm collagen casings again), this mortadella was certainly not a sheer waste of time.  Even though the casings burst and I forgot the almond extract, the mortadella was still very extraordinary.  I was extremely proud of myself before I even tasted it (the day I finally cooked it).