The Story

In mid-2019, I was introduced to the idea of curing during a friends gathering. The group was lovingly called “Pasta Club Jr.” where friends would try different recipes and essentially turn their home kitchen into a food lab every month. Luckily, one of the regular members could not make it and I was called off the bench. I had one goal in mind; not to piss everyone off so I would be invited again. This planned worked flawlessly and I was invited back to more food experiment sessions.

During one of the later sessions, the organizer introduced me to his homemade duck prosciutto. Duck isn’t normally an amazing go-to dish for people but that was different for me as I was amazed by this. I was put in charge of slicing duties and savored every oily cut I made into the first piece of homemade charcuterie that I had ever tasted. It was divine. When the organizer told me that it only took him 2 weeks to make it, I quickly jumped into the group chat to pester him for a recipe and bought some duck breast from the local grocery store.

The first duck breast I made (pictured below) was disgusting. it was over salted because of my own carelessness and deformed to the point where it looked akin to expired seafood. The taste was equivalent to sinking your teeth into putty that invoked the essence of a pure block of salt. Fortunately, I had a willing guinea pig (my brother) who told me that the duck was a great piece of ham equivalent to Jin Hua Ham (金华火腿), a salted ham which is primarily used in soup in Chinese cuisine. This was not result that I wanted. I stayed up later that night slicing up every piece of that duck and eating eating every salt-infused bite in frustration as if to induce a heart attack. I wanted to do better and prove to myself that I could do it.

A little bit after this moment, news had reached me that one of our friends, the organizer of the food gatherings, had suddenly passed and our group was stunned. I took it upon myself to honor his memory by recreating the exact same dish he served us and to continue his fervent efforts to push foods past conventional norms. As such, I wanted to create charcuterie that would redefine our understanding of what made it special in the first place.

After this, I set about to experimenting with anything I could get my hands on. As I had no formal cooking education, this was all new to me and provided an excellent time to learn and hone these skills that I never had.

With time, these pieces became bigger and recipes became more complicated. Next thing I knew, I was talking about this more than my actual job. This was when I knew that I wanted to take more seriously and something I wanted to share with friends old and new around the world and excite the palates of those who want to come on this journey with me.