Daniel Eliasson

According to plan, the pancetta should’ve been done curing this Monday, so when I came home from work, I immediately yanked it from the fridge and had a poke.

Both pieces of meat were very firm to the touch, a good sign that the cure had penetrated properly, so I got them out of their bags, rinsed the cure and spices off under cold water, and patted them dry with a towel. Unfortunately, I had made a mistake in not removing the skin from the fresh piece (shame on you, Ruhlman, for not mentioning this in the book, but only in your blog comments). A few cuts later, the skin was removed, and it was time to hang the pancetta. I made a hole in one corner of each piece with a toothpick, then widened it with a chopstick, and threaded some string through.

I hung the pieces from a rail in my cupboard, where there’s no direct light, and they should be safe from bugs. The recipe calls for hanging for 7 days, but that’s in a much colder environment than Cape Town summer, so I’m probably taking it down on Friday morning.

Of course, I couldn’t help but cut a small piece off and try it. I fried it gently and ate it straight from the pan. Wow. I had cut off a lean piece with little fat, and during frying, the meat shrunk very little, releasing no liquid. Quite unlike the bacon you get in the supermarket, which emits that white liquid that it then boils in, while it shrinks to a third of its original size.

As for the taste? Well, the meat is salty; not too salty, but just about to cross into that territory. Of course, paired with less salty items, it’ll mellow out. It’s chewy without being tough, and it was beautifully juicy, with a concentrated flavour. I could eat this stuff all day long.

Even without hanging or smoking, this is just plain better than the bacon you get at the supermarket, and comes at about the same price. I would strongly recommend my mother (hej Kerstin!) to give this a try, just cut it into thick slices and freeze in suitable portion sizes, then use in stews, pasta sauces, pea soup, with beans, or for an English-style breakfast.

I’ve been meaning to try to figure out a way to smoke meat in Stephanie’s little braai, and I think that I must get on top of it for my next batch of pork belly.

Speaking of terror against the global financial elites, a JP Morgan office in Greece was bombed, CNN reports here. The bomber called in and warned ahead of time, so no one was hurt. Yet the message is clear.

With some of the money my parents gave me for Christmas, I treated myself to a book I’ve been eyeing for a while: Charcuterie, by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. This brilliant books describes the techniques of salting, smoking and confiting, as well as sausage-making and throws in recipes for a number of pickles and sauces as well.

The book naturally inspired me greatly, and I decided that a suitable first project would be to cure a pork belly and then hang it to dry for a while, making something like pancetta (I would have gone for bacon, but I still haven’t figured out a way to smoke meat in my flat).

The first thing I had to do was source some curing salt, which is regular sodium chloride mixed with nitrite, which will preserve the meat from a number of nasty bacteria, as well as preserve a nice pink colour and give that special cured meat flavour. After some looking around, I found a friendly German butcher on Kloof street who sold me a little bag of pink salt (the curing salt is dyed to prevent it being mistaken for regular salt; nitrite isn’t good for you in large amounts).

Unfortunately, he and I struggled to arrange a pork belly for me. He could never guarantee that he’d get one, only say which days he might get one in, and I could only rarely get off from work in time to get to him before he closes at 18:30.

Finally, yesterday, I poked into Raith’s, a German deli in Gardens centre, and asked if they had pork belly. They did, and at R66/kg, it didn’t hurt my wallet all too much to get myself a whole 2.5 kg big side. I brought it home, cut the ribs off, divided it into two smaller pieces, and then cured it, using brown sugar, cloves, bay leaves, black pepper and allspice for the flavouring. Each piece went into a plastic ziplock bag, and they are now lying in my fridge, curing.

I will be turning them over every other day, and next Monday, they should be ready. Then I will wash them off, dry them, and then wrap them in cheesecloth and hang them to dry in my cupboard for about a week.

The recipe I’m using is the one in the book, but if anyone got inspired, Mr. Ruhlman has also posted it on his blog, so you can see what I’m going for.

Anyone with an interest in current affairs would do well to add John Robb’s excellent blog Global Guerrillas to their RSS reader (or, for the technically challenged, to their bookmarks). A while back, the following passage from Robb got me thinking:

Global financial elites have set up themselves up as a virtual global tribe through story telling, rites of passage, obligations, largely leaderless, segmented function, etc. The allure is definitely there (a similar process led the elites of the USSR to jump ship, which precipitated the collapsed of that superpower). Another way to look at it:  except for the method, there’s very little difference between this tribe and al Qaeda. Both do us damage.

This is an interesting thought; many (most?) seem to agree that the global financial elites have done a large amount of damage to us, yet the systems in place are unable to protect us from them. When threatened, the financial elites acted in their own interest, and succeeded in hijacking the nation-states to rescue them, at the cost of the little people.

The global financial elites (hereafter: GFE) are thus in some ways in control of us, and we are unable to protect ourselves using the approved channels: politics (elections) and the legal system (lawsuits). Yet the GFE is sorely lacking in protection from other methods, particularly that good old favourite: violence.

Apart from a select group of individiuals in the top of the pyramid, the staff of the banks, investment firms and government agencies that are hurting us are vulnerable.

Currently, entering the financial system is possible for many young, ambitious, people with an education. They will even garner respect for it, and the payoff is large. However, the GFE lack a really compelling culture that would attract people against the threat of violence.

Imagine an open-access website, possibly a wiki, where the identities, movements and habits of every level of employee in the financial system is tracked. Any knowledge that exists out there about every such person could be collected and presented nicely. Given a fictive investment bank trader, it would be possible to know his regular work hours, where he eats his lunch, when his wife drops the children off for football practice, and everything else.

With such intelligence about a person, it is easy to perform attacks, which could range from relatively innocent, like public shaming for supporting the system, to downright violent, like arson, or assault.

Police methods for solving crimes like these rely heavily on personal connections and motives. Leveraging a public database of information, anyone sympathetic to the general cause of stopping the GFE could perpetrate attacks with little likelihood of being caught and sanctioned.

With the police unable to protect them, the GFE would need to turn to private security solutions, but these would be prohibitively expensive to extend to low-level employees (even bank clerks could be targeted using the above-mentioned methods), and this would likely lead to very few people being prepared to risk it by going for a career in finance. The multiplier effects on the investment in attacks would be enormous; attacks can be performed at extremely low costs, whereas protection is highly expensive and inconvenient.

Please note that I do not intend to setup this service, nor will I condone it, or participate. This is purely a hypothetical argument, but it is interesting to me. I think we are likely to see solutions like these pop up as the economy worsens and loyalties shift from the nation-state to tribal, religious and other affiliations.

It is time, dear readers, for a real treat. Afrikaans rapper Jack Parow. Enjoy.

Jy dink jy’s cooler as ekke, want jy rook Yves Saint Laurent sigarette
Jy dink jy’s cooler as ekke, want jy’t ‘n tattoo van ‘n slang op jou tette.
Jy dink jy’s cooler as ek, want jy’t ‘n plakkaat van Led Zeppelin bo jou bed
Jy dink jy’s cooler as ek, want jy’s elke jaar by die J&B Met.

Jack Parow bra ek’s n poes woes
Jy eet caviar en couscous
Ek drink Klipdrif, jy drink Peroni
Jy’t vriende in Swede, ek het vriende in Benoni
Ek koop al my klere by die local Pep Stores save more
Jy koop al jou fokken klere by a store
Jy dra net fokken Polo shirts
Shame, jy luister na die Dirty Skirts
My naam’s Parow, dik heavy uitgeskollie
Jy lyk soos Jeremy de Tollie
Jack Parow, die life van die party
Jy dra net fokken Issey Miyake
Jy’s too cool for school, eks mos kief
Ek’s grasshopper, jys Lacoste sportief
Jy lat die koek flop, ek lat die huis rys
Jou meisie het ‘n foto van my piel op haar Space Case

Die Heuwels Fantasties feat. Jack Parow – Die Vraagstuk

Ek soek kaffïen
ek soek nikotien
ek soek my steak gaar
ek soek ‘n meisie wat wag as ek dronk uitstap by die bar
ek soek ‘n enkel
ek soek ‘n dubbel
ek soek ‘n triple sonder vrae
ek soek ‘n wensmasjien
so as ek vra is alles kla daar
ek soek meisies sonder high heels
ek soek meisies sonder base
ek soek meisies wat saam met my staan en vir almal dit wys
ek soek regte vriende, vriende wat deur alles staan by my
ek soek vriende wat heeltyd by dieselfde styl bly
ek soek my jeans los
ek soek my hare een kleur
ek soek ‘n lewe sonder dwelms sodat ek weet wat gebeur
ek soek dronk inhibisie
ek soek uitkyk en ‘n visie
ek soek minder wannabes en meer mense met ‘n missie
ek soek minder MTV
ek soek mense wat in hul psige delf
ek soek net fokken mense wat fokken dink vir hulle self
ek soek goeie waves
ek soek paarties op die strand
ek soek ‘n yskoue bier en ‘n joint in my hand
die mens is ‘n tropdier
dis saamwerk wat klop hier
ons het nie meer die energie
om hierdie fakkel agterna te jaag nie
geen vrae op hierdie antwoord nie
ons het nie meer die energie nie
ek soek kruise
ek soek labels
ek soek engele
ek soek duiwels
ek soek mense met messe
ek soek mense met bybels
ek soek mense wat hou van trip-hop
ek soek mense wat hou van trance
ek soek mense wat hou van hip-hop en wat langarm dans
ek soek poppies
ek soek gangsters
ek soek jocks
ek soek boere
ek soek mense wat drink, kots en kruip oor die vloere
ek soek paarties by evol
ek soek paarties by shack
ek soek paarties by danskraal
ek soek paarties by my flat
ek soek castle
ek soek hunters
ek soek port
ek soek wyn
ek soek die cane-trein
ek soek bottels brandewyn
ek soek water
ek is dors
ek soek tjops
ek soek wors
ek soek mense wat nie kwaad raak nie as ek mors
ek soek liefde
ek soek haat
ek’s bly
dan is ek kwaad
ek soek mense wat by my kuier tot dit laat raak
drinking games waar niemand ooit wen nie
ek soek ‘n bar waar ek kan drink waar niemand my ken nie
so wie gaan by my staan in die koue oggendryp
wie gaan by my staan as die donker suutjies inkruip
wie gaan lê in my arms as die tortelduiwe roep
as die son opstaan opsoek na vars bloed
want vriende bly vriende maar jy staan eintlik alleen
as die donderweer slaan staan jy alleen in die reën
as die vloede kom soek jy alleen vir ‘n brug
ek stap in die donker strate opsoek na ‘n straatlig
die enigste ligte in die nag is die vure van hel
die enigste vriende wat jy het het al lankal geval
in die donker ure skink net duiwels nog ‘n dop
satan sit saam met sy kinders en kyk hoe kom die son op
as ek op die dood is wie gaan langs my bed sit en vir my bid
wie gaan in die grys mis blomme op my graf sit
ag fokkit
kla’ geworry
ek’s kla’
as jy my soek ek’s die ou met die snor by die bar