Hanging around

Last week Ronnie the chef at my work got the idea to try and start drying/curing some of our own meat. None of us knew where to start and as i had the next day off i got put in charge of heading up the research part of it and by the end of the week, and after a lot of reading up on curing techniques we got the project going. We wanted it to go quick so we chose lamb breast as it is so thin and will dry quickly aslo we tested some wild malard duck from our main course, lamb tongue and hearts so here we go.

The Lamb breast we started with.

 

 This one had been salted for 9 hrs and hung for 3 days and looks to be comming along nicely the fat is starting to become translucent and the meat a nice dark red  colour. It tastes not to strong of lamb at the moment and has a nise saltyness to it.

 Heres the duck, tongue and heart samples. The tongue had a very strong lamb taste and pleasnt texture,

The heart a deep rich red colour and alot nicer texture than i was expecting.

And the duck is incredibly gamey, rich in duck flavour.

 Tasting session

 These tongues had been salting for an extra 2 days before hanging

 The hanging rack

 The next whole lamb breast in spiced salt

 The whole lamb hearts after 5 hrs in salt

Well thats the first part of the project ill keep the posts comming when we get some more progress with the results.

Sailors Grave

A couple of weeks ago i stumbled across a tattoo shop i hadnt seen before even though ive ridden past it probably a hundred times. What made it even better was that the owner of the shop (Sailors Grave) was a aussie by the name of Judd Ripley.  After a phone call and a quick consult before work one day he said he could fit us in for some smaller work if he had space on my days off. It took a little while but we finaly managed to get something going on saturday and heres the result.

Anchor time

 Swallows just for fun

Needless to say i was stoked on what he did in the hour or so he could fit me in for,  before he had to run off on a winter surf trip to sweden. So ill defiantly be seeing him in the new year for  some larger work but for those who are interested in some seriously good traditional tattoos as well as japanese style too i sugest you check his website out  www.thesailorsgrave.com oh yeah and he has 2 pugs which made  the conversation that much easier during the session.