Happy Mornings and Cured Pork

Some mornings are extra happy, things like your partner next to you, or really good black coffee are the things that can make or break a day.  Or you can be pleasantly surprised when an overnight shipment of pork products arrives from La Quercia.

• Two 6 oz bags of Prosciutto crumble
• One 1 lb piece of Guanciale
• Two 3 oz packages of Pancetta cubed
• One 1 lb piece of flat Pancetta
• One 6 oz bag of Speck crumble
• One 8 oz jar of Lardo

Four pounds of pork, Ben!  What are we going to do with all of this.  Happily, cured pork products will keep in the fridge for 6-12 months of tightly wrapped and stored.  Should any mold assault your piggy treasures, like most cheese, you can simply scrape off the mold, rinse, and use as normal.  

There is a move among foodies these days roughly known as "meat as condiment" instead of meat as "hulking, dripping centerpiece" of every meal.  This is exactly how four pounds of pork is going to be used.  Some things that we might do with all of this:  

1. Tossed with pasta
2. Sauteed, cooled and crumbled over green salads
3. BLT.  Anyone?  Bueller?
4. Folded into Polenta  
5. Wrapping a terrine or pate
6. Sauteed with mirepoix and used in the base of soups or sauces

I'll dispense with giving a lecture about buying and eating sustainably.  Read Michael Pollan.  However, I do recommend that you buy a large chunk of any type of salted pork and let it hide out in your fridge.  If bacon makes everything better, pancetta makes it transcendent, and if that's true prosciutto, lardo, speck, and guanciale can only make it #$%ing awesome.