Man versus pig … the author with the finished product. Credit:Helen O'Neill To be honest, since I learnt how to do it I've made a right pig of myself. Breakfast this morning was a sandwich made from the remains of a 2.5-kilo piece of middle loin I cured a few weeks ago, froze and then defrosted overnight on the shelf above the 1.5 kilo of pork belly that should have been marinating in a fresh batch of cure. It's been an interesting journey so far, but now it's getting seriously weird. That first batch was an experiment - objective and dispassionate - but this second batch ... well, to tell the truth, I'm stalking it. Replacing the brown sludge that accumulates in the bottom of the plastic container with fresh cure is one of the highlights of my day. And yesterday I forgot! Thus the nightmare. I blame Adam Humphrey, the chef and co-owner of Arras, the à la carte British restaurant in Sydney's Clarence Street. He prompted this, but he didn't say anything about becoming a pervert. It all started during a PR company dinner for which Humphrey had created a special menu of lamb with black pudding, a meat pie with a Bovril side "soup", a Snickers-inspired dessert and a plate of petits fours that included miniature nods to liquorice allsorts. But in describing his special menu, Humphrey also mentioned that he made everything he could from scratch, including the streaky bacon in his take on that old favourite, the bacon-and-egg roll.

Now bacon, as we all know, is proof that (a) there is a God, and (b) He laughs in the face of vegetarians. That, then, was where the idea took seed until I became consumed with being able to make my own bacon. Why? I think because it's such a manly thing to do, like Fight Club without the pain. There's something very basic, very hunter-gathererish, about making your own bacon. It's about as primeval as a city boy can get, especially for someone who'd rather cook a casserole than calibrate a carburettor. (Can you calibrate a carburettor? Come to that, what is a carburettor?) I got in touch with Humphrey to see if he'd teach me how to do it. He agreed, and my fate was sealed. The only things it really took, he told me, were time and dedication because you had to deal with the meat every day. Ultimately, it was all about the recipe. There were no special skills: you didn't need to know how to stuff a zucchini flower, julienne a carrot or apply a blowtorch to a snow egg. So here it is, the Arras dry cure for bacon. Ingredients: 1.5kg coarse rock salt; 500g fine table salt; 30g saltpetre; 400g dark brown sugar (such as muscovado); 6 bay leaves; 2 tbsp black peppercorns; about 2kg pork. Method: Mix the salts and sugar together, bash the bay leaves and peppercorns to release the flavour, and combine with the salt mix. Spread some of the cure on the bottom of a non-metallic container, rub more into the pork, taking care to get it into all cracks and seams. Place it flesh side down in the container and cover with more of the mixture. Seal the container and chill overnight.

Next day, the cure will have dissolved in the juices from the meat. Tip out the sludge, reapply the cure mix and return it to the fridge. Do this for five days. After the final cure, discard the contents of the container; rinse the pork under cold water. Rinse the container and fill it with fresh cold water. Submerge the washed pork in the water and return it to the fridge. Next day, discard the water and replace it with fresh. After a second day of soaking, remove the meat, rinse and pat dry. In a cool place (fridge, garage) hang your bacon to dry (hang it as long as you like but two days will suffice). You now have your own home-made fresh (also known as "green") bacon.It really is that easy. As long as you can resist talking to your meat. Because there's something oddly personal about the process. It wasn't all plain sailing, though. Humphrey advised I buy saltpetre by smiling sweetly at my butcher. Humphrey obviously didn't get a good look at my teeth, so I phoned instead. "You'll be struggling to get saltpetre in any butcher's shop," the butcher replied, "because it's poisonous and illegal for us to have it in the shop." He advised, in a tone last heard assuring the Anzacs they'd be perfectly safe going over the top at Gallipoli, that I might get some from a wholesale butcher. The saltpetre, it turned out, was a bit of a problem. It's used in curing to help retain the meat's red colour but also as a preservative and to prevent bacteria from growing, especially those responsible for botulism. To be honest, the butcher had me worried. So I did a little research and discovered that not only would too much saltpetre kill you but if you mixed the right amount of saltpetre with the right amount of charcoal and sulphur, you'd have gunpowder. According to dangerous laboratories.org, you must "never mix all three ingredients before grinding unless you want to turn your mill into a deadly grenade, or your mortar into a cannon that can blow off your fingers". They also add this little gem: "Usually when I mix the ingredients, I add just enough stale urine to make the batch bunch about like biscuit dough. The urine, substituted for water, gives the powder more oxygen and higher performance."

This was not the sort of thing I needed to be finding out just before making bacon. I emailed Humphrey for reassurance and got this in return: "The bloke is correct in saying you must use it properly, as it contains nitrates, but it will not kill you. I use it in my recipes, and those who ate the bacon at that dinner are still alive - including you!" I finally found a wholesale butcher who would sell me a 1.7-kilogram bag of the stuff for $10 - a bit much given the recipe asked for 30 grams, but it was the smallest bag they had. I could have bought it online elsewhere but knocking three times and asking for Vladimir was so much sexier. The bloke who served me was nervous about selling it, looking around the shop as if expecting coppers to come popping out from behind the eye fillets. It was as if I had accidentally tapped into an underground saltpetre network. The day suddenly turned into an episode of Under(pork)belly: The Saltpetre Years. It was dangerous stuff, he said. Indeed, the bag was marked "POISON". "It's poisonous. Do you know how to use it?" he asked. Of course, I assured him, I had a recipe! Eventually I rode off with a bag of very dangerous saltpetre in my bike pannier. To which, at Coles, I added 2 kilos of rock salt ($7.30), a kilo of fine salt ($1.09), a kilo of dark brown sugar ($4.49) and a pack of bay leaves ($1.18). I had plenty of black peppercorns at home. Total: $14.06. Having bought all the ingredients for making the cure (or, if I piddled in it, blowing the roof off my house), it was time to get the bacon. This was a lot easier; I just walked into a butcher's, asked for 2.5 kilograms of middle loin and they gave it to me. After I had handed over $80 or so.

This might seem insane - the same amount of bacon at the supermarket would cost less than a third of that - but this stuff was happy pork from Berkshire pigs raised outside Byron Bay. And remember, this was all about getting the best bacon possible, about quality not quantity, about taste, not price. I repeated this, ad nauseam, wee, wee, wee, all the way home. Actually, I cuddled the pork all the way home. I felt manly, almost Neanderthal; I was quite literally bringing home the bacon. The saltpetre saga wasn't over yet, though. My other half, having seen the word "POISON" on the packet, was now paranoid and lingered about making sure I didn't spread it all over the kitchen or somehow mix it in with the butter. "I am NOT having that stuff in the kitchen." Picky, picky, picky. The mixing was a no-brainer but initially it seemed odd to be fondling meat like that. I almost felt bad when the time came to close the lid and put it in the fridge, as if I was sliding a friend's corpse into a morgue drawer. The next day there was a centimetre of brown sludge in my container. My bacon, which had already gone a bit darker, was drowning! I emailed the long-suffering Humphrey for advice and was assured this was normal. On the evening of the third day we went to the pub. I felt bad leaving the bacon home alone but got over it by talking about it all night. Her Indoors started going on about being poisoned but Roger and David were fascinated by my tales of dodgy deals in the seedy saltpetre underworld. Towards the end of the evening (and I think some beer might have been taken), Roger suddenly leapt up and dragged the pub restaurant's chef over with the words, "Meet Keith, he's making his own bacon." This could have been very embarrassing, but the chef, Jason Roberts, was all ears. He, too, was fascinated by my saltpetre. Mainly because the amount I had (in a jar now marked "POISON") would last him three years.

That said, we talked saltpetre, cures, saucisson, boudin (blanc et noir) and cassoulet, and when he learnt I had used dried bay leaves in my cure, he brought down a sprig of his own fresh bay leaves from the herb garden on the roof. He also lent me his bible on the subject: Jane Grigson's 1967 book, Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery. At the end of the five days, with the pork resting at the bottom of a container full of fresh water, doubts began to surface. It resembled a medical specimen in a jar. The fat had gone a flaccid white, like something from a horror film. I expected to see two eyes open in the fatty tissue and look at me in surprise. However, given that about $100 had gone into this, it was too late to get squeamish. Finally, I took it down to hang, only to realise that my shed stank of motorbike degreaser and cleaning fluids. So, after fashioning a little cage out of two wire hangers and a covering of muslin, I hung it on meat hooks in the wardrobe between a Kenzo waistcoat and a Pal Zileri suit. I remember hoping the cops didn't come calling (possibly to ensure I wasn't making a bomb) because the wardrobe looked like Hannibal Lecter's larder. You know the scene, where the younger cop says, "Boss, you'd better come take a look at this", before lurching out the door and vomiting. Whereupon the older, wiser cop looks thoughtful and murmurs something along the lines of, "Looks like Austin's been making bacon again." When it was finally ready, we made BLTs to honour it, but not before I took pictures of it: me with the bacon, the bacon with me, the bacon alone, the bacon with a knife, me and the bacon, again.

So how was it? Well, probably the best bacon I have ever had. Frying it resulted in lots of fat but none of that disgusting saline mucus that oozes out of the supermarket-bought stuff. Grilling it created not only terrific bacon but fine crackling. The whole process was immensely satisfying (and manly, let's not forget manly), which is why there's another lump in there now. Two more days and it will be ready for cooking. I'm thinking, though, that this might be the lot for a while because someone recently sent me a new recipe that I am aching to try: beer ice-cream. Now that could be a dream come true*. * I did. It wasn't. Loading This story first appeared in Good Weekend, which now has a Facebook page: www.facebook.com/GoodWeekendMagazine



