Bucket List

There is no other way of putting it – This past week, I had a bucket list day. This is how it went:

After a week and a half in Osso's production facility, I was moved on Tuesday to the kitchen to work with the saucier, William.  I noticed a lot of people call him Gordito, which I didn't like. I asked if he would mind if I called him "Willie." Willie is Renzo's guy charged with making sauces, seasonings, and chicharrones. Together, we started cooking up massive pots of BBQ sauce, antichucero sauce, and ají asado.

The beginnings of Osso's BBQ Salsa. 

Animal Sauce - what your hamburger has been missing!

 As thrilled as I was about leaving production to learn something new from Willie, I was even more thrilled to learn Renzo was waiting for me in front of the shop around mid-morning -  we were going to the downtown San Isidro location!
 
It’s a decent trip to San Isidro, mostly due to traffic. Lima has some ridiculous traffic and some of the most aggressive drivers I’ve ever seen, but that day it didn’t matter. I had a solid two and a half hours, one-on-one with one of my idols.  I had Renzo Girabaldi trapped in a car, and we talked about all the important stuff in life... like golf and meat.

I'll be honest - I didn't get any photos of us in the car. I was too busy asking questions! Here is one of the older pieces in the dry-aging room from the San Isidro location.

Renzo was just back from an exhaustive trip to Russia and used the previous weekend to catch up on a little R&R out on the links.  He was in need of some serious golf therapy. As Renzo described one of his rounds, I found myself missing the game. I haven’t picked up a club in the last three years - not since I started this crazy butcher adventure. About that time, Renzo said, “The club president cleared you to play – WE are playing with him next week.” 

Pinch me - are you kidding me?  I'm in a car with Renzo Girabaldi, and I'm going to play golf with him next week!  How do you say, "Bucket List!" 

I didn’t waste the opportunity - I had Renzo one-on-one, and I had a thousand meat questions I wanted to ask. For a guy who eventually wants to open his own shop, this time with Renzo was priceless. 

I gave him the general premise of my future endeavor, and he helped me focus and peel back the onion. The location has always been a big question mark for me. It is still a question, but after Tuesday, perhaps I have honed it down. 

We talked Dan Barber, Dario Cecchini, David Chang. We talked costing, machinery, and utilities. You know, the boring stuff you don't want to read or hear about, but I ate up every single word. 

Remember, when I started this carnivorous journey, I said that I wanted to work for Dario Cecchini, Renzo Girabaldi, and Francis Mallman. I've been working towards this for almost three years - a lot of hard, manual, and often free labor. And every ounce of sweat and blood that I've shed is worth it because of days like this past Tuesday.

Renzo Girabaldi, check.
 

Lamb chops and figs - a little special treat cooked up for Renzo and I.

The main grilling station at Osso San Isidro - in crunch time, that have plenty of space to crank out some serious meat.

Lamb saddle chops that I was charged with cooking. Renzo calls them "Batman" chops - I think that is the better name!

OSSO

I arrived mid-morning on Monday to Osso Carnicería, strapped down with my backpacks and sweating profusely. I had gone from the extreme cold of Denmark to extreme humidity of Peru, and I was starting to question if I’d packed correctly. 

As I entered the shop, Renzo Girabaldi stood next to the counter chatting with some patrons. God, I was nervous. I mean, this was the guy I had wanted to work with for over three years. He and Dario Cecchini were my idols and the key reasons I became a butcher. And here he was, standing before me and offering the opportunity to apprentice with him for a few months.

A peak into one of the dry aging containers in the carnicería.

I didn't need to be anxious - Renzo was very welcoming. After he finished his conversation, we ventured upstairs to the roof where his office was located. After conversing a bit, Renzo laid out his suggested two-month plan. 
- an intro week on the cutting table in the butcher shop
- two weeks in production, making hamburgers, chorizos, and other value-added products.
- a week ghosting Osso’s CFO Alejandro, analyzing logistics.
- two weeks of working at the adjoining Osso Restuarante
- two weeks working at Dondoh, a new restaurant collaboration of Renzo's.

When it came to accommodations, nothing had been planned prior to my arrival. Renzo and Alejandro went to work on a place for me to crash. In the meantime, I’d have to sleep at the butcher shop - not the first time that had happened. 

Renzo had to jet - literally.  He had less than 48 hours in Lima before he departed for a culinary gig in Moscow for 11 days. I’m thinking I’m at the right spot.

I went to the front counter, knife bundle in hand. The rest of the afternoon, I’m jumped in where I could help, mostly removing fat from pig skin. Renzo is a nose to tail man as well - he believes in saving every single little bit of fat. The hard fat is sent into hamburger production. The soft fat, the one that is usually thrown away or declared “too much work to remove” by some, is converted into Manteca de Cerdo, or Pork Lard. Renzo uses it all.

When dealing with dry aged meat, you have to trim off the outside surfaces - mostly dried meat and mold - in order to see the beauty hiding within.

My first week was spent in the shop, working around the large wooden cutting table. I was under the direction of César and Jose, Renzo's two main butchers. Every morning we started by setting the case - I took note of all the cuts, trying frantically to remember all the names in Spanish. My usual tasks were cleaning tenderloins, skirt steaks, and chorizo displays. Once the shop case was merchandised, we begin breaking down carcasses to fulfill the restaurants’ needs as well as wholesale orders. 

José reminds me of some of those super quick butchers you see on YouTube: he can cut a mile a minute because he has done it a million times. He has been kind enough to share some his cutting "secretos" with me. José has taken a liking to my set of F. Dick knives. My large flat honing steel is now the preferred one at the table, and my boning knife stays busy, even when I'm on lunch break. 

One of my morning tasks at Osso has been to restocking the sausage treys. Every shop displays their meat a little differently so I've tried to learn quickly - I still am having difficulties deciphering between the eight different sausages.

The guys at the cutting table realized I knew my cuts and that I knew a decent amount of Spanish. They wanted to learn English. By the end of my third day, my nickname had become “teacher.”

Or Jack "Sparrot." Not Sparrow.

Massive ribeyes headed to the restaurant.

I've enjoyed breaking out my Spanish again, but damn, I didn't remember it being this difficult! It doesn't help that my brain has a little Danish, French, or Italian rolling around in there.

I am fascinated by the setup at Osso, especially all the dry aging facilities. Cèsar demoed the famous sake-infused dry-aged ribeye on the DonDoh menu. After cleaning up the strip loin, he wrapped the entire hunk of meat in dried kelp leaves, then tied it up using medical netting. Cèsar carefully saturated the netting with just the right amount of sake before storing it in the dry-aging cooler.

César working the medical netting over the kelp-covered strip loin.

 
My second week was supposed to have been in production, making massive amounts hamburgers and chorizos. José and César pulled me up to the shop every morning - maybe they enjoyed my insanely sharp knives, or I was actually helping out.

I hope it was both!

Osso, just like the many European butchers I've met, deals with a bunch of quality pork meat. To supply super markets with artisanal chorizos, you need to have a lot of it!

This company has an incredible brand and top notch packaging!

---

Sidenotes:
Save the Gringo 1:
After a trio of nights in the butcher shop, Renzo and Alejandro fixed me up with my own pad - a small single room in La Molina, roughly a thirty-minute walk from the shop. I walked for the first week, but the humidity and the insanely cheap cab fare finally won me over. I'm very appreciative of the room. They didn't have to help out some gringo stranger from Texas, but they did.

Save Gringo 2:
It was about this same time I noticed an alarming number of bug bites on my arms and legs. For weeks, I had heard about "chinchas" or bed bugs down in South America - that was my first thought! I mentioned it to Renzo, and 15 minutes later,  a company employee whisked me away to a public health clinic down the street to get treated (turns out it was an allergic reaction to a mosquito bite). Again, Gringo in trouble and Renzo saves the day - incredibly generous.
 

The Carnicería crew getting together for a group picture after my first week in La Molina.

I don't know what it is about staff meals, but I love them. Perhaps its the regathering of the troops to break bread together - the bond of a shared meal. At the Reata, I loved the tacos that the guys served up after the doors closed for the night. Fleishers staff meals in Red Hook were always spectacular thanks to Jason V. Here, a pan-fried potato stuffed with boiled eggs and minced chorizo meat. As with every staff meal here, there is rice and some sort of flavorful and fresh juice.

The Kitchen at Camont and the Art of Charcuterie

Leg 2 of my Culinary Journey is down and it was a crazy, busy week. I am still on the road, but I wanted to give everyone a short recap of the week. Don't worry, I will revisit this subject in depth when I have a bit more free time.

Renzo Girabaldi, one of my butchering idols, was quoted saying,

"If you want to learn to surf, you go to California. If you want to learn charcuterie, you go to France."

Thus, I made the journey to France for a week long advanced charcuterie class with the culinary master, Kate Hill. Kate is an expat, who has called the Southern French countryside her home for the past thirty years. In the culinary world, she has done it all - a professional cook, a published author, a teacher and a consultant. At one point, Kate even bought a French barge where she hosted magnificent dinner parties abundant with fabulous foods and the best of wines.

Kate Hill working on a pâté en croute.

For this particular charcuterie class, Kate teamed up the Chapolard family and long-time friend, Dominic Chapolard, who runs a local organic pork and charcuterie farm. To further enhance the educational value of the course, Kate enlisted the help of Dr. Michele Pfannenstiel, the guru of food safety and HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points).

Ok, I realize I probably lost you there.

Essentially, HACCP is a systematic preventative approach to ensure your food is contamination free of physical, chemical, or microbiological hazards. And in the charcuterie game, where you dry and cure meat anywhere from a month to a couple of years, HACCP procedures are pretty important. If you don't follow every step with extreme caution and care, you might end up with a ham full of harmful pathogens instead of a scrumptious Noix de Jambon.

The class was small and exclusive with only two fellow students, Ben and Tyllan. Ben is a good ol' mate and third generation butcher from Australia.  He recently took over his father's butcher shop, The Beef Joint. Ben signed up for the class so he could incorporate a charcuterie program into his offerings and market delicious cured meats to the people Down Under.

Tyllan is on the other side of the business, selling acorn-fed pork.  His company, Walden Hill, is feeding New England top-notch pork infused with incredibly flavorful fat that comes from hand-picked acorns. The three of us made for one hell-of-a butchering trio and I was extremely blessed to be among this group.

My charcuterie class with master butcher, Dominique Chapolard.

Our accommodations and classrooms were stuff dreams are made of. Most of the work took place on the Chapolard's farm or at Kate's residence, The Kitchen-at-Camont. In our downtime, Ben,Tyllan, and I were housed at the Château de Mazelières a French castle built in the 17th century. It boasted a Lebanese Cyprus tree, brought back by Crusaders from their travels in the Middle East. We chided Kate we would have learned charcuterie in half the allotted time if our accommodations hadn't been so nice!

Grape vines at the Château Mazelières.

Château Mazelières

To start the course out, we began with an introduction to HACCP.  Luckily, this wasn't my first go-around with the tricky food safety beast -I actually became HACCP certified last summer down in Aggieland (College Station, Texas). At times, all this information is a tad overwhelming and confusing, but if you want to make great, and more importantly SAFE charcuterie, you need to know this stuff. Luckily, Dr. Pfannenstiel is the best in the HACCP business, and by the end of the week, I had a much better grasp on food safety.

HACCP class is in session!

On the second day,  we set out to visit the Chapolard farm.  Dominic, the eldest of the four Chapolard brothers, is a former headmaster turned head butcher.  He prides himself in growing organic non-GMO grains to exclusively feed his entire pork operation.

Pigs at the Chapolard farm.

Dominic gave us a short tour of their charcuterie production facility and when the truck with the freshly slaughtered pork carcasses arrived, Dominic showed us how he broke down the pork side best suited for his charcuterie needs.  He ended the day by teaching us how to make blood sausage.

Charcuterie aging in the attic of the Chapolard home.

Saucisson curing in the Chapolard facilites.

Over the next few days, each piece of our Chapolard pig was slowly transformed into some form of traditional French charcuterie:

• Saucisson (sausage)
• Saucisse séche (dry sausage)
• Noix de Jambon (small, boneless cold-smoked hams)
• Ventrèche (rolled pork belly)
• and Coppa (neck muscle from the Boston Butt)

Dominique showing us caul fat.

A Fricandeaux - a ball of pate meat wrapped in caul fat.

After the larger pieces had been made and laid to cure, we took the remaining odds and ends and turn them into pâté and rillettes.

I made one amazing Texas pâté, if I might say so myself!

It took me a little bit longer to complete my pate, but I'm sure you can see why.

Final product turned out pretty decent - I recognize that shape!

We even went as far as to render down pork lard. That's what I like about charcuterie - it puts the entire animal to use.

Later in the week, we visited the Laverdac Market where the Chapolard family sells all their production. Their pork and by-products are highly regarded and sought after in the area so they sold out quickly.

Fresh Mushrooms at the market.

Some sort of delicious egg and ham mixture set in jelly that we procured at the Laverdac Market.

My week with Kate Hill and her French Charcuterie class was an incredible week that I wish didn't have to end. I made some incredible new friends, learned to make incredible cured meats, and packed an incredible amount of HACCP knowledge into my brain! We ended the week with a typical champagne toast and requisite group pictures.

Dining al fresco

Getting my pictures in

So with my second goal accomplished and to officially close this chapter of my culinary adventure, I got Kate to autograph my topper.

God is good.

Next stop, Panzano Italy!