NON-COLD CUTS VEG WITH KOJI

Non-Cold Cuts Veg with Koji takes plant-based charcuterie where it had never been: real curing, with time as an ingredient and koji as the agent of transformation.
The starting point is the difference between a non-cold cut cooked and eaten the same day and one cured for weeks. The raw material changes, the structure changes, the way of thinking about the product changes. Wheat gluten becomes the load-bearing structure, pulse flours provide flavour and substrate, and koji does the work that in traditional charcuterie is done by months of waiting.
The book builds the base dough piece by piece: the order of the dry ingredients, the aromatic liquids, the critical moment of hydration, the marbling, the rest, the compacting in the mould. Then cooking, with the three possible methods and the only indicator that really counts, internal temperature.
The chapter on inoculation explains how to prepare the koji, how much to use, how to apply it and what happens in the first twenty-four hours. Next comes the six-phase curing protocol, from the curing chamber and controller settings through to vacuum refining, with weight-loss monitoring, weekly checks and the management of case hardening.
Six complete production sheets bring the method to the bench: salami, bresaola, soppressata, rolled pancetta, ventricina and cacciatore salamini, each with ingredients, processing, inoculation, protocol and variants.
The book closes with the chapter on faults, which is what separates those who try once from those who learn: moulds of the wrong colour, case hardening, spongy structure, sour or ammoniacal smell, a chamber that will not hold its parameters. For each one, the cause and the correction.