Well on Saturday my wife usually does the weekly menu, found here What's for Dinner and as the top link on the blog. Well on the 12th we had gone out to Dietrich's for meat, see Meet the Meat. So before I filled that freezer up with the new loot, er pork, I got out Sid. I even took a picture of Sid to use to compare red beef with red pork.

Sid is the one on the right.

Now Sid came home with me from Fairway Food in Harlem some time ago. Now Fairway has a 10,000 sq food meat department, the entire department is inside a refrigerator. And they sell large pieces of chuck roast, 20+ lbs in a block. They also have large put ups of short ribs.

This is what 20 lbs of chuck looks like.

Now as discussed else where, this block primarily was for sausage, however I did have
Sid and two siblings left over.

I believe Sid to be the blade steak on the left.

Well as I said we got Sid out (he was on top) Sunday, and my wife marinated him.

Now sauerbratten is a German dish originally used to make tough venison and beeves palatable. Beef is a lot more tender now, but the preperation is still a tasty one. It can be done in a lot less than a week now, but this isn't a fast recipe. This is how Sid looked on the morning of the 17th.

And here he is simmering away

Now I was in a hurry this AM, and forgot to check the name of the recipe source, but she is from a collection of San Francisco Chronical recipes (I believe) and I will try very hard to remember to get it. I'm commuting a different way these days and have to leave the house at 6 AM to get the express train to NYC.

Now I must point out that all the cooking for the meal was done by my wife, my only contribution to this was the meat fabrication. However we usually start the weekend dinner with an appetizer and having recently made a lot of dry cured sausage, described here. And last week we not only went to a butcher but to Hendrick's Farm where Bob DelGrosso does salumari. On a post he has a picture of a Tuscan Salami from Ruhlman's and Polcyn's book, Charcuterie. I did taste his sausage and it is excellent, however my dear wife reminded me that I already had 20 lbs of dry cured sausage and I didn't need any more. So I bought three cheeses.

My Tuscan Salami, it is the big sausage, my Hungarian Salami and the three cheeses became our appetizer on both Saturday and Sunday. And the pork behind the plate? That is Sunday's dinner.

The Tuscan

The Hungarian below

And that is what it looks like with a slice off of it.

And that is it plated, with potato pancakes, red cabbage and cranberry sauce. You can also see where I gave the table cloth a good share of the sauce.