LG SOTD Jun 26 2024 - Wild CARB Wednesday
photocontest
Theme: Bird (egg-laying chicken, deceitful chicken)
- Brush: Coop D'Osa - Pennello da cucina in silicone
- Razor: Bic - Single blade - Disposable
- Blade: Bic - Single blade - Disposable [1]
- Lather: u/MudAccording - Home made carbonara cream sauce
- Post Shave: Braulio - Amaro Riserva 2008
- Fragrance: Providence - Haitian Rum Blanc
additional post shave: Saponificio Varesino - Pro Victis - Skin Repair Cream
additional fragrance: Haitian Vetiver EO blended with Providence - Haitian Rum Blanc
ON THE RUN WITH CHICKEN, EGGS AND PIGS
Yesterday’s photocontest theme, Do It Yourself, has become today’s necessity.
My escape brought me to a remote place in the countryside.
I have to admit I was too optimistic.
No shaving soap available today. The closest stash is hours away.
“Work with what you got”, they say.
Here, in this farm, I only have access to some of humankind’s oldest options in terms of animal resources: chicken, pork, and some dairy products.
I wonder if karma brought me here: after all these posts of Americans using shaving products that smell like food, and sometimes even eating their lather, I am forced to do the opposite.
Use food as lather. Not junk food, but something home-cooked.
NOT MY MOM’S SPAGHETTI
(Sorry u/Enndeegee )
I was born in Tuscany. Carbonara is a recipe from a different region, so it did not belong to my mother’s range of spaghetti options. But it became an affordable and essential survival option during my uni years, thanks to the mentorship of some fellow students from Rome, the homeland of carbonara.
Today I prepared my most updated version of a carbonara sauce base (eggs yolk, low-temperature melted pork jowl fat, grated cheese) and then used it as condiment for my spaghetti dinner, as a well as a pseudo-lather for my shave.
This is not a re-hash of the glorious Yard Raised Fresh Chicken Egg story.
I did use free range chicken eggs, but I did not make a soap out of them. Just a Mac-Gyver'd shaving cream.
Now, I don’t believe in evangelizing recipes as if they were a dogma written in stone. Non-gourmet household cuisine always needed to adapt to the ingredients available at hand.
It’s all about making it work for you, using what you have.
For carbonara, in addition to the flavor variants (you can even make a veggie alternative with zucchini, asparagus or other crispy greens), a big factor that somewhat reminds me of shaving is the importance of a slick texture.
ON THE RUNNY
If you don’t want the sauce to overheat and turn into scrambled eggs, then you need to work on the elements that contribute to slickness/creaminess, and ensure a timely application of sauce onto the pasta when the temperature lowers just enough so that it does not make the eggs proteins overheat and become too dry.
For ideal creaminess, I follow the practice of making a bain-marie savoury zabaione (if you insist, look at this reference recipe here, but take it with the proverbial grain of salt). I mix it with a considerable amount of melted fat from the pork jowl (alternative: bacon), which adds taste to the pasta, and thickness / slickness to the shaving cream.
Every cured pork has different fat characteristics. Today I had good results heating the fat at 125°C, so that it melted without getting any burnt note. Melted fat on the bottom of the pan, crispy sticks of cured meat ready to be added when you put together the sauce+pasta.
The history of carbonara is still debated and most Italians will claim it's related to local traditions, but recent research points to a strong dependance on the food supplies - dehydrated eggs and bacon - brought to Italy from US GIs at the end of WWII.
Once again, as in previous entries this month, I am confused and inspired by the complex, paradoxical history of Euro-Atlantic exchanges.
SHAVE AND SCENTS
As I have no shaving brush at hand, I had to make do with a kitchen brush, which actually worked quite effectively in covering my face and neck with the dense carbonara cream.
For FOF, the scent notes are: egg yolk, cured pork (including the accompanying aromatic pepper notes), seasoned cheese (tastes umami, don’t know how to translate it into a scent).
I shaved with a Bic disposable. My previous shaves with this gentle single-blade product were all very superficial. Today, I got an impressive and unexpected BBS.
I was astonished by the slickness of the thick cream that I made out of egg yolk and melted pork jowl fat (with the addition of some cheese fat and proteins heated at bain marie at 60°).
I then splashed some Amaro Braulio Riserva: it’s an alcohol based solution of herbs distillates, on paper so not so different from many “natural” EO-based AS. The bitter and fresh herbs contrast very nicely with the greasy scent of the carbonara cream. The sugar present in the recipe is not immediately perceivable, but after a few minutes it contributes to a slightly sticky drydown feel.
After a while, my super-smooth skin felt bizarrely dry, so I decided to apply some Pro Victis from Saponificio Varesino, to balance any shortcoming of the carbonara and amaro with respect to post-shave properties.
As a fragrance, I used a 58% alc Haitian Rum Blanc.
I recently wondered: why looking for fragrance reconstructions of boozy scents that are already available as strong alcohol solutions?
Well, I now have an answer: the funky and original "agricole" scent profile of the rum was very vibrant during the first minute, then the evaporation of the alcohol basically stopped it from continuing being perceivable.
On the other hand, I am surprised by the long-lasting sillage of the "rooty" scent of the herbal accord from my Amaro AS.
For fragrance longevity, I did a second attempt with a small rollerball of the same rum that had been macerated since over the last six weeks with a few drops of Haitian Vetiver EO,. The persistence of the EO has remained perceivable for a much longer time compared to just the rum scent.
While I remain skeptical with respect to boozy fragrances, I guess there is an actual point to the art and craft of perfumery, after all.
FOF
Today's Challenge: I use mostly synthetic brushes, and I don't feel the need to clean them with a water / vinegar solution. I once used soap dish to clean one that kept smelling like a particularly strong-scented soap, but other than that my brushes are still waiting for me to learn how to properly take care of them.
ROTY