It’s very trendy in 2012 to know where your food comes from.  Gourmet guzzlers the western world over love seeing a stamp of ‘GMO free’, organic or a note of reassurance that this calf was allowed to roam free with its entire extended family and dance the Zorba across lush green paddocks until its peaceful slaughter with a heart shaped stun gun.

But I don’t believe what I read. Certainly not on supermarket shelves or the labels of mass produced items packaged in countries with poor animal (and human) rights standards.

Recently a photograph appeared on the internet with the slogan ‘This is what passes as Free Range’.  The image was of chooks roaming ‘freely’ around what appeared to be some kind of building dump site, covered in rubbish. 

Nobody said 'free range' meant 'great location'.  So what right do we have to complain? Have we truly been misled? Or are we just stupid consumers who still havent figured out the way marketing works.

As a rule of thumb, it's a good idea to take large scale food producers ‘proclamations’ with a grain of salt.

Closer examination is always required.

A moraltarian once told me she was only willing to eat animals that she had the chutzpah to kill with her own hands. To this ends, and not fancying her chances of being able to look a cow in the face and kill it, she is a pescetarian.  

I’ve often wondered if most meat eaters, if challenged to confront the source of their carnivorous diets, would be able to swallow (sorry) the tough reality.

In 5th Grade we had a ‘shochet’ (one who performs jewish ritual slaughter of animals) demonstrate some of the process with a chicken in our school.  (In hindsight this seems a poor choice for curriculum content for 11 year olds and for the life of me cant fathom how there was no protest from parents.) The result of this was a classroom of sworn traumatised vegetarians, who could not look at a roast chicken for months to follow.  But the effects of the trauma were short lived and eventually most of us found out way back to the crispy skinned, garlic infused juicy goodness of a Friday night roast.

I had stared an ex-chook in the face, observed its inner anatomy and escaped relatively unscathed, despite the brief intermission. It was gross and the thought of it is not a pretty one. But I’m still sitting happily at the top of the food chain.

And I had the opportunity afew winters ago to find out just how comfortably. A group of us were visiting friends up at Dadswell’s Bridge near Horsham and a goat farmer from nearby got chatting with my friend Harry, a butcher by trade. Before the women folk could even begin to gasp in shock, the men folk had already arranged to head out in the morning to kill a goat. Harry’s wife was mortified ‘How can you go out and kill a goat? What are you? a murderer? You’re not going!’ The rest of us felt a little foolish attempting to point out the more than obvious irony that Harry cut up murdered animals for a living – something she’d never protested.

The next morning we awoke to the boys returning with something large and suspiciously ‘goat-shaped’ under a series of garbage bags. We opted to stay in the relative warmth of the tin shed around the fire and continue our conversation.  But after afew minutes of hearing the boys heaving, ho-ing and the occasional ‘thud’, I decided it would be far more interesting outside in the cold where I’d just heard Harry yell for some rope. I put down my knitting (yes, I was knitting, and despite the ending of the story, I will never live down the fact that while my friends were throwing back beers and bourbon like bogans, I sat like a Nana drinking my tea and knitting), and ventured outside in time to see the boys hanging up the goat carcass on the veranda of one of the other sheds. The truth was, without a head, to me it was just a carcass, not a goat. And without its skin, it was just meat.

While the boys washed the carcass, Harry’s wife appeared in hysterics ‘I told you not to go killing goats, I married a murderer, oh my god I am the wife of a murderer!!’ Harry tried to calm her down, ‘Listen to me, I didn’t kill it, I am just cutting it up, like I do every day of my life’. When that didn’t work he tried reminding her ‘Where do you think the lamb we had for dinner last week came from? Someone had to kill it!’  She replied ‘Yeah but I bought it in a shop and didn’t have to kill it! It’s just different ok!!’ For me this was the clincher. Although I knew she was genuinely, frighteningly upset, the hypocrisy was irrefutable.

She was inconsolable and was unable to look at the goat carcass, enter the kitchen the next day while it was being cut up and refused to come to the table to enjoy what was the most beautiful, tender and aromatic Indian Goat Curry ever created in the history of ever.

Throughout the meal, the trip and the 3 hour car ride home she cried, actually cried tears, that it was just a goat - An innocent little goat only a year old, who had barely began to live and all of us vile individuals had been accomplices to the little guy’s untimely demise.

(I would like to point out at this juncture, that a year would be considered quite old. In the beef industry Beef Cattle are slaughtered at 12 months old and Veal at 6 months. For a creature that lives 20 years, this seems marginal and is one of the reasons I don’t have a problem with Veal. –except Bobby Veal which are young male calves only afew days old taken from their mothers, treated horridly in poor and crowded conditions and slaughtered. This seems cruel and unusual.)

She was angry at her husband for weeks and we are all still forbidden from mentioning the ‘incident’.

Harry's wife still eats lamb every week. Bought from a shop. She has no idea who kills it and what quality of life it had in its final days.

The bit that I find intriguing is the thoughtlessness with which we all (and I include myself) purchase meat from retail outlets.  Would you have had the courage to kill it? If so would you be able to eat afterwards? If, like me, you had only seen the carcass, could you still eat it? I now know I can. But must admit that I feel I cheated in not having been present at the killing or having killed it myself and wonder if I would feel differently had I been.

But what I have discovered is the tremendous importance of valuing every part of animal.  Make hide into leather,  intestines into sausage casings, bones to make stocks, fat into rendered mulitpurpose ‘shmaltz’, fatty cuts for salami, lean cuts for Bresaola and of course the long slow roasting of the tougher cuts.

Mass produced meat is expensive because we only buy one small piece at a time. The goat in my story cost $40.  Not a cent more.  Had it have been sold in the commercial market half of it would have been discarded (I am crying with the vegetarians now!) and the other half would have been purchased in pieces for a total of about $250 – and farmers still get about 1/10th of that.

I am definitely a foodie of the school of Hugh Fearnley – Whittingstall. Read his books or watch an episode of ‘River Cottage’ and you’ll observe a cook and human being obsessively respecting and marvelling at his beautiful native Dorset and preserving the delicate balance between plant and animal, fresh flavours and sustainability.

To my way of thinking a full awareness and practice of a ‘sustainable & humane paddock to plate’ process and full ‘nose to tail’ use of the animal are the only justifiable conditions under which humans can possible justify munching at the top of the food chain.

So my new year's resolution (ok granted, one of many) – to keep this as a food mantra in everything I buy, prepare, sell, teach and eat.

It can be tough, supermarkets are so so cheap (and therefore irresistible) and organic/health food stores so ridiculously expensive, but there are things you can do in your home today to change the way you use our agricultural food chain.  The good news is it will benefit your bank account, your body and our whole planet.

It can be done and the change starts right now.

…check out the first murmurings of Made with Luv's 'Foodskills' for making just about ANYTHING FROM SCRATCH and check out USING WHAT YOU HAVE.

In the meantime, if you want to know how to make something without a supermarket... just ask! It's all possible! 

As one of millions of Jewish chicks who has grown up not eating Pig in any form, I can't help but be intrigued by the global following it seems to have. An American colleague of mine even runs a website exploring this very notion (called Pork Memoirs) of how we observe this meat from afar (or others from a little bit closer up). 

But as a young teenager, what intrigued me even more was discovering that the Kosher Butchers stocked an item called "Facon". 

In a world of reputably miraculous Jewish chicken soup, Brisket, Stuffed Goose, Pastrami and Schmaltz, how could it be that non-bacon eating Jews might still be suffering some serious FOMO. What taste sensation could we possibly be lacking in our smorgasbord of smallgoods?

And of course tv and movie references to bacon are endless. Characters seem permanently mesmerized by the thought of crispy bacon sizzling in a pan. From comic Garfield to Grace Adler of TV's 'Will & Grace' yelling at her housemate that "Turkey bacon is NOT bacon!" or Will frying up a batch of bacon and switching on a small handheld fan next to it, to get Grace out of bed in the morning in what is termed the "Bacon alarm".

Even on cooking shows and in recipe books around the world it seems chefs and foodies alike insist that everything tastes better with a piece of Prosciutto, the ultimate Bacon form, wrapped around it. 

A friend explained to me that its all about the saltiness, the richness of flavour, married with the layer of fat surrounding the wafer thin meat and the rest.. well he said it would be like trying to explain the colour maroon to someone who's been blind from birth. 

Apparently the love of crispy bacon is so strong that the product of Facon needed to be created so that those who used to eat bacon were in some way filling their void of pig-eating days gone by. (And I am told it is a heartbreakingly poor replacement for those who attempt to fill said void.)

Another friend suggested to me that "It's all in the preparation", meaning the curing, the salting and how that process affects the state and flavour of the meat and fat. Much like other smallgoods and cured meats.

So it occurred to me that this preparation for pig meat could surely be adapted to other meats. 

I thought about Duck, because of its gorgeously delicious layer of fat and how this would give it a unique boost in the curing process. (I already render this beautiful fat when I roast my ducks. -Duck fat can be used instead of margarine or oil, creating sublime roasted vegetables, kreplach, liver pate or chopped liver.)

After much research I discovered Duck Prosciutto. Like regular prosciutto it requires salting, drying and curing under controlled conditions. The beauty of this product is that it has a flavour all its own which is intensely rich, due in part to the 'locking-in' power of the surrounding fat which makes the duck melt in your mouth and of course due to its smaller size it is lots easier and faster to cure. 

In the process of making the duck prosciutto I cut away larger sections of fat making it available for duck 'crackling'. Or as I daggily term it - 'quackling'. 

Of course it is also only sold as whole ducks, and as since the prosciutto only requires the use of breasts, this means I am blessed with not only more duck fat that I can shake a stick at but also and endless supply of duck legs. And that means confit, which is fabulous because it stores in the fridge so well and means the availability of the softest most delectable meat at a moments notice.

The ultimate eating accompaniment for this divine nibble is something sweet to contrast the saltiness. Such as roasted figs, slow roasted capsicums, mostarda or other similar glace fruit or candied fruit. A bit of sweet tartness with the duck prosciutto goes a long way to really multiplying the complexity and lengthen the flavours.

So far the verdict on my Jewish/Muslim friendly Prosciutto by those who've had the rare pleasure of tasting it is " ---------------!!!" (*Friend closes his eyes and falls silent as an enormous, silent, chewing and cheeky smirk spreads across his face)

"It's definitely not Pig prosciutto, but it doesn't need to be. It's better".

Duck Prosciutto is available from the MWL Gourmet Larder
or if you're game (pardon the pun) make your own at home!


Duck Prosciutto 

2 duck breast
2 cups kosher salt (not table salt)
2 tblsp mixed spice rub of your choice (bay leaf, juniper, star anise, coriander, paprika, black pepper, thyme, etc)
1 tsp ground coriander
Paper towels
Plastic wrap
Kitchen twine
Muslin cloth (2 pieces x 3ocm squares - wash well & sterilise in the oven)  
1. Leaving the skin on, prepare your duck breasts by removing any large chunks of fat (keep them for "Quackling" or melt for cooking duck fat), then rinse under cold water and pat dry with paper towel. (note: the fatter/larger the breasts, the better.)

2. Make up your salt cure. (you can put some of the spices in at this stage if you'd like, but there's no need as it will get the spice rub later.) Lay down the pieces of plastic wrap and put 1/4 of the salt on it, placing the duck breast skin side down on the salt. Add another 1/4 of the salt onto the flesh side of the duck. Ensure that all the duck is well covered in the salt and wrap the plastic tightly around it like a bon bon. repeat with the second breast and place in a dish in the fridge for 48 hours.

3. Remove from plastic. The meat should have shrivelled a little. The curing removes water content, which is why the salt will be wet. This is good!

4. Wash off all the salt and pat dry very well. Rub your spice mix into the meat and roll up the duck in the muslin, making sure it rolls around the meat twice. (i.e. double layer of muslin.) Tie both ends with the twine so it resembles a little bon-bon. Hang in your fridge for 14 days. You can check it after a week. You'll notice the meat becoming firmer and shrinking. 

5. At about 2 weeks (depends on the size) unwrap the duck and check that it is firm but with some 'bounce'. The meat should have lost 30% of its size. With a sharp knife, thinly slice on the diagonal (for larger pieces) and serve with your favourite Tapas or Antipasto compliments such as roasted figs and capsicum, glace fruit, apple chutney, spanish almonds, kalamatta olives...and enjoy the party in your mouth!