Cure all

Home

Cure all

Daily Meal - pic credit: Mark Simmons

Artisan charcuteries are thriving round these parts. Tony Benjamin’s our man with the smoked sausage. Pics: Mark Simmons.

It’s a hot August day and our bickering hands are picking away at the platter of delicious local charcuterie on our pavement café table. Does the super-moist salt beef score over the rich Jambon de Paris ham? Or have the succulent duck rillettes more flavour than the earthy pork terrine? Everything has the freshness of great home cooking but this isn’t a Dordogne village – it’s the Daily Meal on Bristol’s Gloucester Road, the latest manifestation of a wave of local artisan charcuteries.

Elad Shames - pic credit: Mark Simmons

Word of mouth about young Israeli chef Elad and his home-cured produce has put the place on Bristol’s foodie map. Pungent pickled herring, mackerel and gravadlax salmon are as tempting as his home-cured meats and pâtés. Surprisingly, Elad learned his skills – pork products included – in a top French restaurant in cosmopolitan Tel Aviv. “Our boss would challenge us to make things to his standard,” he recalls. “We had to find recipes and perfect them but I would always try to put my own touch into it – something Mediterranean, Italian or French. It became my love and passion, the art and craft of curing meat.”

Over in Fishponds, Vincent Castellano has been making cured sausages including saucisson sec and boudin noir (black pudding) for three years, using skills he began learning some 30 years ago in the French Alps. His pâté de campagne, pancetta, dry-cured bacon and Italian ‘coppa’ cured pork have all won ‘great taste’ gold awards, making Castellanos deli a destination for the discriminating.

For Vince it’s all about the flavour, and local meat is the key: “Our local free-range pork makes wonderful charcuterie – I reckon it can stand in its own right against anything from France or Italy!” He’s experimenting now with wild boar, making salami and air-cured prosciutto-style ham that takes 18 months to mature. His biggest battle is to meet demand: “I really need a small manufacturing unit now: I just can’t make enough for the range of markets and customers!”

It’s a problem shared by Mash Childs of The Bath Pig. Three years ago a conversation about chorizo with friend Tim French led to a fact-finding trip to Spain. “We converted a room at my place and spent six months trying to get (the chorizo recipe) right. Then we spent another six months learning how to get it into production.” Once on the market, however, sleb chef Mark Hix proclaimed it as good as the Spanish original, prompting orders from restaurants and delis up and down the country. Like Castellano, Mash also puts great emphasis on the quality of British pork. “For us, provenance is vital – we only use British Freedom Food standard meat. We even ship it to the Spanish factory where they make our mini chorizo.”

Chorizo - pic credit: Mark Simmons

Good restaurants are now offering home-cured food – Michelin-man Josh Eggleton makes bresaola beef and hodge podge (“the Cotswold version of black pudding”) at his Pony & Trap gastropub, while chef Ross Wills features beetroot gravadlax, salt beef and tea-smoked trout on the menu at Source food hall. Scott Chance has installed a special smoking oven in Clifton’s recently opened Fifty restaurant, enabling him to offer hot smoked salmon, aubergines and seafood. (“If we’re doing scallops we actually put some smoke in a glass and seal it in. It all adds to the theatrical effect!”)

All this new activity is welcomed by Jonathan Newberry of The Valley Smokehouse. Now twenty years old, the Dundry-based business has been preparing hot and cold smoked fish, meat and cheese for some of the country’s top kitchens including The Dorchester and Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. “It’s a good time to be an artisan producer,” Jonathan observes. “Customers are expecting more and more and there’s people doing some serious charcuterie round here now. Provenance is vital, though. All our trout are from the (Chew Valley) lake, all our salmon from Loch Duart – it’s bloody delicious! I could buy stuff for half the price but it’s horrible. We’re not the cheapest but we are one of the best!” And – like all the other producers here – they’re on our doorstep and just a mouse click away.