The Prodigal Daughter

Charcutier Rachel Priestley of The Prodigal Daughter in Wairarapa uses traditional Italian techniques to create cured pork products.  The Prodigal Daughter is a local Wairarapa business using local products including Longbush Pork.

Rachel, a chef, spent more than 10 years in Italy, where she learned about cured meat production. In Europe she opened six different restaurants including in Italy and in Vienna, ran a truffle shop and opened a winebar.

Four years ago she moved back to New Zealand to set up her business. When she came home, she missed the cured meats and began making her own. “I couldn’t find the quality here. My Italian friends would come around and say, give up everything and do this.”   She uses the French word charcutier to describe her work – someone who makes artisan cured meats.

“I am not quite earning from it, but when I have a café and deli, I will be able to retail my products myself,” Rachel says. Her business is very hands-on. “I do love it, including the local aspect.”

She operated out of Lower Hutt until recently, but says the air in the Wairarapa is much better, as Wellington was quite humid. “It’s better if the humidity is around 70%.”  And operating in Wairarapa means she is closer to her suppliers.

“I also use wherever possible organic salts and spices. It makes it taste better. And I don’t use any preservatives or nitrates.”

Some of the products Rachel makes with pork, time, salt and smoke are:

Pancetta, which Rachel describes as Italy’s answer to bacon. She takes a whole pork belly, massages it with salt and leaves it in the coolroom, washes it in wine and rubs it in garlic and herbs and spices. It is cured for a few weeks before hot-smoking it with manuka for a day in an old French oak wine barrel.

Guanciale is made from pig cheeks which are washed and trimmed and cured in salt for a week or more. They are then washed in wine, rubbed with garlic, black pepper, fennel and chilli. They are cured slowly and then hot smoked with manuka wood.

Porchetta is made from roasted whole or partial pigs which were first massaged and marinated. They are roasted in a very hot oven followed by a long slow basting time.

Lonza is cured pork loin and prosciutto.

Mortadella is a sausage where the pork has been ground into a fine paste using a mincer twice. It is a large cooked sausage poached in water for hours and speckled with pork fat and pistachios or green olives for extra flavour and colour.

Rachel also makes bresaola which is cured air dried beef.

Rachel uses local products including Longbush Pork which she says has a great flavour. Each one is different, because instead of being factory farmed, each pig is treated as an individual. She gets two legs of pork a week from Longbush.

“I’ve been feeding acorns to pigs at the moment to produce prosciutto. Pigs can be finished on acorns and it gives the pork a great taste. Pigs can eat up to 6kg of acorns a day and put on about 2kg of weight.