Meet my new friend Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. We’ll call him meat-tacular for short. I have a feeling we’ll be getting to know him well over the coming months.

I am participating in Charcutepalooza, a blogger challenge to make 1 preparation from this book per month in 2011. I hope to accomplish all 12 dishes this year. Meat curing has been a craft I’ve been interested in for awhile, but until now have been too scared to try. Ruhlman’s book, like his previous books The Elements of Cooking: Translating the Chef’s Craft for Every Kitchen and Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, set techniques out in plain English with plenty of the hows and whys behind each ingredient/step. If you haven’t yet picked up a copy of Elements, you really should. Ruhlman has a straightforward and open writing style that makes things easy to understand (must be because he’s an Ohioan). I’ve had many a duh! moment reading this book. Think Alton Brown on Good Eats (whom I also absolutely love) but in well-indexed page form.

First up: Home! Made! Bacon! I’ll be posting about my trials and tribulations making fresh home made bacon around Feb. 15th or thereabouts. Duck prosciutto to follow some time shortly thereafter.

Mmmmm…… bacon……. *Homer drool*