Rumbling and squeaking up the Irish coast on a vintage DART under a gleaming robin’s egg sky, waves crashing on the steel grey rocks just under your toes, the carriage groans around the curve to dive under Bray Head. It’s unseasonably warm and unseasonably clear; fellow passengers eyes crease against the gleam and happiness as we pass through towns with names you know you’ve heard once or twice before; Shankill, Dun Laoghoire (done-leery), Sandymount. The hospital-green-themed train is filling up; when we got on in Greystones it was nearly empty. Of course, I’m writing to you aboard a train, again - are we starting to sense a pattern here?
We’re on the hunt for a Bacon Bap, the sandwich that those from these parts yearn for while away - it’s not uncommon for folks to snag one straight off the plane. White bread, cured meats (cooked), butter, and crucially, a tomato-based sauce. Heading into Dublin, we’ve pointed our noses towards the posher ones, though they are to be had just about anywhere up and down the coast of Ireland. While my stomach groans nearly as loudly as the traincar while I consider First Lunch in The City, I’m distracted by my memory of last night’s apero - some perfect Saucisson Royale (from my October’s AWKP Workshop) that I’d secreted into my luggage up from France (via Berlin!) over to County Wicklow for a pre-holiday treat.
Saucisson Royale, you say? We like to give it a bit of regal distinction because of the work and care we put into each one. Using only perfectly clean meat from the jambon (i.e. the hind leg of the pork devoid of any sinew or silver), hard back fat, salt, and freshly ground black pepper, we created a balanced and ultra creamy dried sausage. Other folks making their saucisson might consider our process a bit overkill - treating theirs as more of a by-product of ham making, using perfectly fine trim. However, we purposefully want to create this product at the very highest level, so it requires a much more discerning and critical edit, so to speak, of what’s on the cutting table. If it’s going to be Royale, it must be fit for a King or a Queen, right?
What’s exciting about this product, for me, is its ability to travel incredibly well, needing only a bit of paper or clean cloth for transport. I like to slice it a bit thicker than you would expect and eat it from the hand, in one or two bites, no baguette necessary. So, of course, I packed about a half-dozen into mon poche to share, and hit the road. All we needed last night was a few rusks, the Saucisson, and a few bottles of icy vin blanc.
For this particular batch we used 3% salt and .2% ground black pepper to the weight of the pre-grind batch, which itself was 80 / 20 meat to hard fat. In other words, you use 30 grams of salt and 2 grams of black pepper per kilo of product you’re looking to make, for cured and dried ready to eat foods. Further, this particular Saucisson Royale needed about 5 weeks to reach 37% weight loss in an ambient 5*C environment with very gentle and intermittent airflow.
This, by the way, is the level of detail you can expect from the workshops I offer in France. I’m only offering one session of A Well Kept Pig this Winter in 2025, and this is the super double secret final call for you to join in - when I land back in France next week I’m finalizing all the details and need to know how many jambons I need to reserve from my suppliers. If you’d like to join us or have any burning questions, please send me over an email or a message, tout suite. If not, we’re just going to have to do our best to make you positively pink with jealousy for how much fun we’ll be having at
’s Relais de Camont.I may put together one of those 2024 round up / looking forward into the New Year messages, but I’m sure you’ve got enough of those clogging up your inboxes already. All I can say is that I can’t wait for everything that’s yet to come.
Catch you, sooner than later.
P.S. We might’ve found the best damn bacon bap - Fallon & Byrne, bacon (cured loin), halved sausage, tons of butter on white bread, and home-made tomato pepper jam. Absolutely knockout. (OK, so getting some immediate feedback from the local peanut gallery, that this sandwich is neither a bacon sandwich nor a bap - it’s a breakfast BACON AND SAUSAGE sandwich, apparently. Damn good, nonetheless.)
