This charcuterie board puts chef skills on display
I don’t buy the whole “charcuterie boards are Lunchables for adults” argument. Sure, it’s funny, but it simply isn’t true, especially when you’re talking about a fantastic charcuterie board put together with care — like the one at Persepshen.
To my mind, Persepshen owners Jason and Katherine Dwight (he butchers, cooks and pickles; she bakes) make one of the best charcuterie boards in this town or any other. Every single item on their gorgeously rustic boards is made in-house, including the charcuterie that most restaurants would rather buy than go to the trouble of making themselves. Not the Dwights.
Jason worked as a line cook for the Cave Creek Binkley’s before learning butchery and charcuterie at Chicago’s revered Publican Quality Meats. Having worked construction with his dad in his teens, the guy even built his own curing chamber. Now, that’s about as inhouse as you can get.
Meanwhile, Katherine baked at prestigious L20 in Chicago and at MJ Bread here in Phoenix. Her credentials are as impeccable as her husband’s.
Local ingredients and fine dining techniques set this board apart
As a lover of all things local, Dwight sources his poultry and meat from Arizona farms — Top Knot, Two Wash Ranch and Moon River, to name three — making a slew of different meat preparations throughout the year.
On any given day, the charcuterie board will feature five of them. Some might be dry-cured, others dry-fermented. Some are cooked sous vide, while others are smoked. A few receive a combination of preparation methods, and all require different lengths of time for curing. You might find coarse-grained sausage, salami, capicola or soppressata, maybe a terrine, a pâté or rillettes.
Binkley’s influence — both in cooking methods and presentation — is obvious. The flavorful duck neck rillettes of one recent visit were cooked sous vide for 48 hours, held in rich demi-glace with aromatics, duck fat, vinegar, beer mustard and shallots. The shredded and gloriously fatty final product was then spooned into an elegant, oval-shaped quenelle. Add a glistening drop of house-made whole-grain IPA mustard for a little sharpness and be prepared to swoon.
Chicken heart pâté, pink and creamy, is smooshed, then pulled across the board with a spoon. Its Asian inflection — a subtle but heady blend of shallots, ginger, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, chiles and barrelaged fish sauce (so good Dwight swears he drinks it) — is fantastic on its own, but off-the-chain with a tiny dollop of sticky, amber-colored jam, made with two kinds of chiles for a hot-sweet kick.
But there’s more. Supple ‘nduja, a spreadable, naturally fermented pork, bears the bite of Calabrian chiles, while shaves of silky capicola, smoky and ribboned with white fat, look and taste like ham, only more aromatic, thanks to a two-week cure in chiles and fennel, a hit of cold-smoking and a final sous vide finish. Sturdy beef heart terrine comes studded with chiles and almonds, a splash of Three Amigos tequila lends it an herbal, almost minty quality.
It’s unlikely you’ll ever have the same board twice
For accent, wondrously sweet local apples, pickled in fall baking spices; pale pink pickled onions that have miraculously retained their crispness; and golden beets in a muted chile-mustard pickling brine—all so perfectly balanced I find myself wondering if these are the best pickled veggies I’ve ever had.
And then there’s Katherine’s earthy, brittle lavosh— dark as a board of mahogany and sprinkled with sesame seeds. She grinds organic flax seeds, amaranth, and sesame seeds into flour, then ferments that flour to coax out more flavor. Trust me, you’ll be ruined forevermore on prepackaged varieties once you’ve had her version of the cracker-like bread.
Because Persepshen’s charcuterie board is based on seasonality — and what’s ready in the curing chamber — you never know what you’re going to get. What you can expect are scrumptious surprises and not a second of charcuterie board-om.
Details: Charcuterie board $28 at Persepshen, 4700 N. Central Avenue, Phoenix. 602-935-2932, persepshenarizona.com.