Delicious. 2016 PRODUCE AWARDS WINNER
PHOTOGRAPHS JOAN RANSLEY
Jan Jacob is telling me how he and his wife Anja transform wild deer into charcuterie: “I can’t reveal exactly what goes into our venison salami,” he says guardedly. It’s not unusual, when I meet producers, to be told recipes are top secret but recipes are more than just a list of ingredients and instructions. They’re also a combination of expertise, people and place mixed with a few elements of chance. As Jan Jacob tells me how his venison salami came into being, he’s sharing a special and unique recipe.
The Great Glen Charcuterie story has its roots in Holland and its base in rural Scotland. Jan Jacob’s journey from student to wild-meat charcutier is full of twists and turns. Tall and dark, with an intellectual intensity, he admits he has a low threshold for boredom. He grew up near The Hague, moving to the countryside when he was eight, at which point he became fascinated by farming. Later he trained as a veterinarian and studied environmental science and biology, but his studies were cut short when he developed the long-term illness myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).
DEBILITATING ILLNESS
“It was a blow,” he recalls. “The doctors told me there was no cure, that I had to rest and not study too much. For me, actually, that was a ticket to freedom as I used the time to think about and plan setting up my own business.” He worked as an interim farmer on estates doing everything from dairy to fish and eel farming, then started breeding koi carp (not for the table…).
When he and Anja met and married, they ended up in Scotland, via Ireland. Not the most predictable move, perhaps, but it came about through a chance meeting with a Dutch businessman, who happened to be from Jan Jacob’s home village: “He was the catalyst. He said, ‘I have a place in Scotland – would you like to run it?’ Anja and I wanted space and freedom for a growing family, so we decided to give it a go, thinking if it went wrong we could always get on a plane and go back.”
Part of the job involved managing the wild deer herds to prevent overpopulation. At that time (around 2003), prices for venison were low, and Jan Jacob began thinking about what could be done to add value to the meat. That’s when he started experimenting in the kitchen.
A ROCKY ROAD TO SUCCESS
“The idea came from when I was young,” he explains. “Where we shopped, the butchers made their own-recipe droewors [dried sausage], which I loved. Every week when we picked up our meat, they’d cut off a bit and give it to me. All the way home I’d chew on it. I loved it. That stuck in my mind.”
The droewors idea morphed into salami, at which point Jan Jacob decided to get a professional opinion. He sought advice from Dutch charcuterie expert Paul van Trigt, who wasn’t encouraging: “Venison isn’t ideal to make salami,” he said. “I think you’ll struggle to get it right.”