In the Charcuterie

Boetticher and Miller are a match made in hog heaven. Having met at the Culinary Institute of America, the couple worked at several Bay Area restaurants before establishing the Fatted Calf charcuterie in San Francisco in 2003. There they provide a variety of cured-meat wonders and offer classes such as “Pig, Woman, Knife” and “All About Duck.” They bring their work to the page here with photo-enhanced instructions on butchering, rendering fat, properly aging salami, and the like. Over the course of 125 recipes, they explore stand-alone vittles like pork sausage, corned beef, headcheese, and a soup stock made with ginger, chilies, and 12 pounds of duck and pork bones, as well as offering many a hot dinner entrée. A chapter titled “Skewered, Rolled, Tied, and Stuffed” features options like fig- and sausage-stuffed quails, and grilled rabbit skewers with chicories, olives, and almonds. Among the spicier selections are goat shoulder; birria, which is a Mexican stew (birria literally means “mess”); and a Oaxacan-style chorizo that calls for four types of chilies. It perhaps takes a butcher’s mind-set to see meat loaf as a “classic American paté,” but there can be no arguing with the authors’ ménage of sirloin and pork, served with a ketchup-based cocktail sauce. (Sept.)