Bacon lentil side dish

Like clockwork, as my return to Amereeka draws nigh, I begin burning through my pork reserves like an asteroid entering Earth's atmosphere. I've had some luck before uniting lentils and pork, so I figured I'd give it another go. I poked around the internet and found this recipe, and also this one, and sort of combined them.

Ingredients:
3 glasses green lentils, bacon, onion, garlic, carrot, celery, fennel, chard, red wine vinegar


I put 3 glasses of lentil in a pot with the scraps (ie, the leafy bits) of a fennel bulb and a teeny bunch of celery* and added 1 liter or so of boiling water and two packets of Goya Sazon powder. In the future, I'd add some bullion as well, or at least some salt.

As those cooked, I fried half a pound of bacon in two different pans over medium low heat. When it was done, I placed it on paper towels, and poured the grease into one pan.

I finely diced the fennel, two onions, and chard stems and put them in the pan I'd poured the grease out of, adding a little bit of grease from the other pan. I let that cook over medium heat until softened but still firm. Meanwhile, I chopped the celery and (peeled) carrot quite fine and put them aside.

At this point, my lentil were done, so I drained them, discarded the scraps, and put them in a big bowl. I added the sautéed onion, fennel and chard stems. In the less greasy pan, I cooked the celery and carrot for a couple minutes, until slightly mellowed but still crunchy, and added them to the bowl.

I chopped the chard leaves into strips then chunks of strips and put them in the pan, drizzling plenty of red wine vinegar over them. I pressed in 4 cloves of garlic and cooked over low heat, stirring. When the garlic had lost its bite and the chard was wilted and well infused with garlic and vinegar flavor (2-3 minutes), I added it to the bowl. Then I crumbled the bacon in and stirred everything.

I tried to make a dressing with mustard, bacon grease, salt, pepper and olive oil, but it wasn't very good so I trashed it. Instead, I added plenty of salt and pepper to the bowl and more red wine vinegar and served it. And it was pretty dang good, if I do say so myself. I think having the chard leaves be the primary dressing vehicle, as it were, kept the flavors of the other ingredients from being overpowered. The texture was nice, crispety and crunchety - important, I think, with lentils, which can very easily be sort of chalky. Overall, definitely a success!

*Turks don't seem to recognize celery stalks as food. You can buy celery root, but the stalks are hard to find, and usually scrawny, pathetic little things thinner than a drinking straw.

Bacon soda

I've been meaning to post about this but I think my taste buds are struggling to suppress the memory. Awhile back I was contacted by a representative of the Rocket Fizz Soda Pop and Candy Shop, asking if I'd review their new bacon soda. Of course I said yes, with the usual provisos - no guarantee of a positive review, but you do retain veto power, so if you send me something awful, I won't post a bad review if you don't want me to. Apparently, the Rocket Fizz folks decided that even bad reviews could be good publicity, so here's the deal: this stuff is super gross.




I was dubious of bacon soda from the get-go, but this was far more repulsive than even I imagined. It has a weird grassy flavor, like a vaguely bacon-y dirt. What's worse though - and maybe it's just my imagination, generated by some chain of associations that happens in your brain when you consume a pork flavored beverage, but I could swear it had a slightly greasy texture. And to top it off, it was sickeningly sweet. Essentially, it was all the worst things about both bacon and soda, united into one foul product. Even the smell is rank. I'm vaguely glad I tried it, in the way you are pleased with yourself for doing something that few others would, but it's not even the kind of interesting gross that makes you want to have another sip a few minutes later. It's just disgusting.

Easy Chorizo Hash

Sometimes the simplest things are best. Slice up some baby potatoes and put in a pot with cold salted water. Light a flame under it. Meanwhile, chop up a few onions and some peppers and peel some cloves of garlic.

Squeeze a few links of Mexican chorizo onto a pan and cook over medium heat, breaking it up. When it's browned, add the chopped onions and peppers, and squeeze the garlic in through a press. Add olive oil if needed - but you shouldn't need much, because chorizo is oily stuff. Your potato water should be boiling by now. Let the potatoes boil a minute or two, until they're just barely or maybe even not quite cooked through. Drain. Your onions and peppers should be somewhat softened. Add the potatoes into the mix, stirring well so that everything is coated with chorizo grease. Cook over medium heat, stirring often, but carefully - you don't want to turn your potatoes into mush. Grab your favorite hot sauce and drizzle it generously over everything. I used Co-op Mole Hot Sauce, which I love. It added a nice earthiness and a note of bitter chocolate. But I think regular old Frank's would be pretty awesome too. Or whatever else you like. Anyhow, stir, then turn the heat to high and let everything crisp up some. As a finale, sprinkle some grated cheddar over the top.





Pretty awesome.

Chorizo and fish?

Whoulda thunk it.

I have some Mexican chorizo that I smuggled in from the States, and was cruising the internet looking for some new ideas with what to do with it. I stumbled across this recipe and decided to give it a whirl, despite finding it kind of odd. As usual, some slight modifications:

*It doesn't really specify, but I'm pretty confident that the recipe was thinking of Spanish chorizo, not Mexican. Pretty different, but hey. Also, if i had Spanish chorizo right now I would just eat it plain, not cook with it. Oh man do I love Spanish chorizo.

*Not having dry sherry, I used white wine (which I think gave it a rather fruitier flavor, not entirely unpleasant but I definitely want to try the sherry version.

*Not knowing the Turkish word for haddock, or what any of the Turkish names for fish translate to, I ended up with a fillet of panga. The internet suggests that this is neither a tasty nor a healthy fish. I can't comment on the second, but as to the first, the internet has a point. It's pretty blah. A meatier white fish would have been much better.

*I didn't have crusty bread, I just ate it as it was. Which was fine.

*It said to season the fish, but didn't say with what. I just did salt and pepper.


Overall - wow! I will definitely make this again. A really interesting combination of flavors, and really, really simple to make. There's a slight risk of it being a bit on the sweet side, which probably has a lot to do with what alcohol you end up using. Also, I'm not big into parsley, but I think it was actually pretty crucial to this, for a bit of freshness. But it's a delicious meal, and I know it seems like a weird assortment of ingredients, but it's definitely worth trying.

Prosciutto, Arugula and Parmesan

My dear friend Daniel Leonard was in Italy in January and brought me back a souvenir:




I am naturally a hoarder, but I suddenly got worried that it would spoil, so why not, today was the day. Although prosciutto is completely delicious on its own, to be totally honest, I have a preferred method of consuming it. Tear it into pieces and add it to a hefty bunch of arugula. Squeeze a lemon half over it, drizzle with some high quality olive oil, and top with parmesan shavings (Daniel brought me some of that too!) and freshly grated black pepper. Toss and eat (do it fast-ish, because the acid of the lemon starts to act on the prosciutto pretty quickly). This might actually be on my top ten list of all-time favorite foods. It's so good that I didn't even really miss a glass of a good wine to go with it.

Baby favas with chicken and bacon

The other day I went to an organic food store with a friend. I bought what I thought was a container of green beans, but which turned out to be baby favas. I only know one way to deal with fava beans - boil them in salt water (shucked beforehand - in Poland you can buy them already shucked) and eat em. Delicious. But I was willing to try something new. I was, however, resistant to the idea of eating the pods, even if they are allegedly ok when still young. Just didn't appeal to me. The fact that recipes I found suggested grilling them didn't assuage my fears. So I shucked them, which left me with only a few handfuls of wee little beans. This quickly tanked my lofty plans to make several dishes out of them, Iron Chef style.

In the end, having browsed various recipes online, I defrosted 3 slices of the bacon from my cache, chopped them and fried until nearly crispy. Pressed in a few cloves of garlic, stirred, then added some diced chicken rolled in oregano (or maybe thyme. Jury is still out). Once that was nearly cooked, I added the fava beans, stirred, then splashed maybe 1/2 a cup of white wine in and simmered until it was evaporated and everything was cooked through. I served it over polenta with some grated Parmesan, and overall it was pretty decent. In the future though - I'd do it without the favas. They added very little joy. I'll have to find something else to do with those, I guess.

Bacon Greeting Cards

Awhile back I was contacted by a representative of Ron Kanfi, the president of Noble Works, a greeting card company, asking me if I'd be willing to review some of their bacon-themed cards on the blog. I agreed, and she sent over a pack.





To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what occasion calls for a bacon card. Happy Birthday, friend! Have I told you lately how much I love bacon (and you, I guess)? Though come to think of it, I get quite a lot of emails declaring that International Bacon Day is nigh (there seem to be many such days - is there some kind of international committee that regulates such things? They should investigate the Bacon Day issue), so maybe if you're bringing someone a gift of pork on a day that is devoted to it, you could match it with a thematically appropriate card saying Happy Bake-day (wink wink), or Happy Birthday (to Bacon, not you)? I really don't know. I'm actually not big into gift cards myself (though I do love sending postcards when I travel), but Better Half almost always includes them with gifts, which makes me feel like I need to step my game up. Maybe it is more conventional than I realize to have birthday cards that seem to be talking about things totally unrelated to the person or their birthday. Or maybe I could think of these as postcards with a lot more space and an envelope. I dunno.

ANYWAYS. These are very nice cards. Bright, lively colors, and reasonably clever messages. This was my favorite:





But if you go to the Noble Works website - www.nobleworkscards.com - you'll find that they have lots of cards of all different kinds, many of which have more obvious use than missives pledging love to pork.