Theories of Bacon

duct tape jacket for iPad 2

2011-12-16T23:56:00.000-08:00

To be honest, this is only tangentially related to bacon, but the creator has emailed me twice already (d'oh! Sorry for not doing this sooner!) and it does seem like an awesome project, so hey. He makes iPad cases, and he's got a Kickstarter project going to collect orders and money so that he can buy supplies in bulk. The cases come in different designs - of course you can get a custom one, but you can also get Basic, Pattern (the zebra print is pretty awesome looking) or... Inspired, which is where bacon comes in.

I recommend going to the Kickstarter page and reading the history section, because it's a feel good DIY story of someone dissatisfied with a product and inspired to make a better one. The video also shows you the case, which looks rather more impressive in person, especially when you see what it can do.

Brussel Sprouts with Bacon

2011-11-26T00:25:00.001-08:00

I broke out the reserves for Thanksgiving and made brussel sprouts with bacon. I'm actually coming to think that the best way to eat brussel sprouts is to halve them and just toss them with some olive oil, salt and pepper and roast 'em, but this way, with bacon, isn't bad either.

I used:
2 packets brussel sprouts. Um. 1/2 pound maybe?
2 slices bacon
1 chicken bullion cube
some water
salt, pepper
olive oil

Wash brussel sprouts, trim off the ends, cut the bigger ones in half. Coarsely chop the bacon. Fry it with some olive oil. When it's cooked but not browned, add the brussel sprouts and fry until they begin to brown. Add water enough to almost cover and bullion cube, as well as salt and pepper, and cook until brussel sprouts are soft but not mushy, ~8 minutes, less if you added boiling water.

I thought they were decent but not amazing - perhaps because I'm not that into brussel sprouts - but my dinner guests adored them.

Bacon T-Shirts

2011-11-18T03:20:00.000-08:00

I just got an email from Amy at Crazy Dog T-Shirts - they have a few different bacon shirts, and would like to offer the readers of this blog a discount. Enter the secret code Pork5 at checkout for $5 off.

I can't comment on the size, comfort, and quality of the shirts, though Amy mentioned they'd be willing to send me some samples - if it works out, I'll definitely let you know.

I should maybe point out that they've also got plenty of other, non-bacon related but amusing t-shirts, if you're into that sort of thing.

Bacon lube

2011-11-16T22:26:00.001-08:00

I guess it was only a matter of time. But yes, from the makers of bacon salt, bacon lube. It's all over the internetz (the LAist piece on it is my favorite.

Buy it here and you should probably hurry - supplies are limited.

Piggie Plug Hub

2011-10-12T04:35:00.000-07:00

Omg how adorable is this!

Can be found here, if you parlez the ruski. Note that this swine is a European, ie, will not work for American plugs.

Bacon infographic

2011-09-12T02:18:00.000-07:00

Emailed to me by the makers, but nice looking, and interesting. I've never tried the bacon dates at Avec (the only thing I've had from the Chicago list is the bacon mignon at Fogo de Chao, and it definitely wouldn't have topped my list for Chicago bacon dishes), but I have had a bacon-wrapped dog from Crif's, and it was indeed delicious.

Created by GiftRocket gift cards

I love me some good animation

2011-08-20T11:25:00.000-07:00

I just got an email with this video from a person who I think might be its creator. In any case, the video is pretty great.

Edit: Hmmm. It seems that it's getting cut off and only showing the left half because blogger is dumb. I think if you click on it, it'll take you to YouTube, where you can watch it properly.

Too hot for cassoulet

2011-07-20T01:08:00.001-07:00

Actually, it's too hot for anything. Right now, as I type this at 3 am, it's over 30C in Chicago. It's pretty unbearable. I'm trying to not turn on my air conditioner, because the shock of stepping out of my bedroom into a thick blanket of heat makes me reconsider brushing my teeth and begin contemplating staying in bed all day. And I've talked to several people recently who don't even have air conditioners so it must be possible to survive. But what kind of life is this????

Paradoxically, I've been cooking a lot lately, which makes my apartment an inferno. I did Pork Salome last night, which wasn't so bad because it cooks quickly. Today, bizarrely, I decided to make lentils and sausage. I looked around online for a recipe and found something that touted itself as a modified approach to cassoulet, and decided to give it a try. Here's what I did. Do give it a try, but seriously, wait until autumn.

You need:
1 2/3 cups lentils
4 cups water (with maybe 2 tsps chicken broth powder)
Fresh thyme
I didn't have bay leaves but I'll bet they'd be nice
White wine

Chorizo (I used 3 sausages)
Chicken (I used 2 breasts. I don't really like thighs, but if you do, you'd probably prefer them).

1 bell pepper
1 onion
4-5 cloves garlic
2/3 cup chicken broth

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Put the lentils in a pot with the water/broth and thyme and bay leaves if you have em. Bring to a boil, lower heat, simmer for maybe 20 minutes. Add some wine when it occurs to you it might be a nice touch. A dry white would be good, all I had was an alvarinho, and I added about a glass. When they're done. Turn off or cook on very low heat while you do the rest?

Sprinkle chicken with salt, pepper, and maybe some dried thyme (or oregano? I love oregano. The dried thyme was kind of meh.) Chop your onion, pepper and garlic. Then chop the chorizo. Fry the chorizo until it's brown and the fat runs off it some. Add onion, pepper and garlic. Sauté until the onion is soft, add to lentil pot. Chop chicken. Add some oil to the pan, and brown your chicken in it. Then add that last little bit of broth and cook until done. Pour all of it into the lentil pot. Squeeze lemon juice into it. If you have and like it, maybe add parsley. I don't really care for it myself.

So, overall it was pretty delicious, except:
1. Omg who wants to eat when it's this hot out. Not me. I took a cold shower after cooking and even so, I had to force myself to eat half a bowl, tasty though it was.
2. The lentils kind of turned to mush. not really a problem. But the other night my sweetie and I had dinner at Avec and we had this amazing lentil dish where the lentils were totally cooked, but still kind of firm on the outside. Each lentil was autonomous, they kind of scattered beneath the spoon like giant grains of sand. It was great. My lentils, on the other hand, were almost like refried beans. How do I make them independent creatures? Did I cook them too long? Do they need a simmer followed by an ice bath? Wouldn't they lose all those great flavors if I did that? What do you think, Internet?

China's pork reserves

2011-07-19T08:27:00.001-07:00

Via my friend Ben

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/16/world/asia/16china.html?ref=dining

Pork reserves. What a curious concept. Not even real ones, I guess, because it's not an actual freezer full of pork, it's a payment made to farmers to keep their herds at a certain level. And apparently unleashing these reserves will barely made a difference. The whole thing is very odd.

Cost of bacon rising

2011-07-05T19:53:00.000-07:00

My google reader alerted me that bacon will be more expensive this summer. Which is interesting, because I've always been somewhat alarmed by the fact that it's cheaper than anything else. Seriously, a lot of Chinese restaurants in Chicago charge $1-2 less for the pork dishes than even the vegetable ones. According to the article, a major factor is the rising price of corn (can we PLEASE quit with the ethanol subsidies people? This is ridiculous.), but I kind of wonder if general trendiness isn't playing a role as well.

Bacon Ipsum

2011-06-09T10:57:00.000-07:00

Credit to Harold for the discovery: Bacon Ipsum.

I did not know what loren ipsum was, but it's kind of neato.

The straight up meat ipsum is kind of... horrifying in a way. Overwhelming. The Meat+Filler is more entertaining, to me at least.

Pork Salome

2011-05-21T18:42:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, I no longer have a smart phone: it has been replaced with a $20 device whose camera leaves much to be desired.

I lived in Boise, Idaho for awhile as an adolescent. I did not like it very much, and there's very little I miss about it. But if I had a teleporter, I would be having lunch at Bar Gernika on a weekly basis*. And I would order the Solomo sandwich with croquetas on the side. The warm, soft, chickeny croquetas - I have never encountered their equal, and attempting to make them at home would probably break my heart. The Solomo, or rather, its pork and pimiento filling, I did decide to attempt however, and this is what I came up with:

PORK SALOME**

~1 pound pork - my grocery store sells what appears to be a pork loin that has been thinly sliced. You basically want relatively thin slices and/or medallions, how you get 'em is up to you.

1 jar roasted peppers (I happened to have some Trader Joe's brand handy)

1 lime

1 clove garlic (or so)

salt, pepper

Juice the lime into a bowl. Add the entire jar of roasted peppers, liquid included (you may want to dice them a bit. I didn't, out of laziness, figuring I could just do that once they got to my plate. It worked out fine. But if you are making this for a group, I'd suggest strips or something along those lines). Add pork, stir well. Leave to marinate for a few hours (probably not more than 2-3, and maybe it'd be better to do less. I think the lime juice dries the pork out some. I guess you could potentially add it during cooking, but I think maybe it like, shocks the meat into absorbing more flavor? I dunno.).

(If, as I did, you're making kale and rice to accompany this dinner - which was quite delicious - you'd begin put the rice on, then get the kale going, then turn your attention to the meat. The timing worked out perfectly.)

In a large pan, melt a pat of butter and add a bit of olive oil. Fish the pork out with your fingers and brown it on each side, adding garlic salt and pepper to the side facing up once you've put the piece down. Once it's browned - ie, basically cooked, if it's thinly sliced - squeeze in the garlic (I admit, you can probably skip this step) and then dump the marinade over the top, bring to a boil, and turn it off. Boom, you're done.

The pork is juicy and infused with the flavor of the roast peppers. I think the lime is key, because it cuts the heavy sweetness of the peppers just a bit. I'd recommend a nice white wine to go with it. I had some Espirito Lagoalva 2007 in the fridge, so I drank that. Pleasant a wine though it be, it was a little too sweet. I think you want something slightly dry, but still fruity.

*It's a strange quirk of Boise - it is a strange magnet for various ethnic minorities. There is a Basque part of town, which is actually one block, consisting of a small museum/cultural center, some sidewalk art, and Bar Gernika. Or at least, that was the case when I lived there, which was about 15 years ago.

**Yes, I changed the name slightly.

Bacon Lentil Pap

2011-05-16T15:56:00.000-07:00

I was sort of scavenging around the kitchen for scraps to make into dinner last night, and figured that lentils would probably make for a solid meal. In searching for what to do with them, I came upon a number of recipes, one of which suggested cooking them in pork fat. This, of course, seemed like a great idea. I then found some other recipes, and combined them in my head with inspiration from a recipe I really like for pappa al pomodoro* (now that I look at it, the resemblance is actually quite minimal, and is based mostly on the bread and vinegar part, but whatever), from which this dish derives is onomatopoeic ish? name.

So.

2/3 cup lentils

2 slices thick cut bacon (more is great too, that's just what I had handy)

8 cloves garlic

3 slices bread (day-old/stale works well, but fresh is fine too. but it needs to be real bread, the quality kind with a proper crust, not some sliced sammich shit.)

oregano

vinegar (red wine is best, but I ran out and supplemented with apple cider and then, in desperation, balsamic)

salt

Peel and finely chop the garlic. In a heavy bottomed pot over medium-low heat, fry the bacon. Once the fat has rendered, remove the strips, setting them aside to cool. Maybe throw in some extra bacon grease - I did. Add the diced garlic to the fat, and as soon as it starts to sizzle and get fragrant - ie, before it turns brown or black, which happens so much faster than you'd expect - add the lentils and toss. Then add 4 cups of water, some salt, a bunch of oregano, and a good few glugs of vinegar. Cook at a medium-low simmer until the lentils are done. Every recipe I consulted said this would take about 25 minutes, but wtf, my lentils took like an hour. What's that about**. Anyways, be sure to check on 'em occasionally and add more water if necessary. Once the lentils are basically cooked, toast your 3 slices of bread (stale bread would not require toasting), roughly chop it, and add it to the pot. Boom, you're done.

EDIT:

Oh, I forgot - about 20 minutes into cooking, I discovered that I had two very nice tomatoes, so I chopped them up and added them as well. You could probably use a can of diced ones too. I think they're a good touch.

*Which, by the way, I have made with a surprise addition of chorizo, and it worked very well. I thought I'd posted about that, but apparently not. Mea culpa!

**Incidentally, one recipe I saw said to put the lentils in cold salted water, bring it to a boil, cook 5 minutes, remove from heat, let them sit for an hour, then cook 25 minutes. This seemed like a royal pain in the ass, but maybe it would be more effective?

Bacon Van Gogh

2011-05-11T07:56:00.001-07:00

Via Charlie: step by step instructions for recreating Van Gogh's Starry Night in bacon.

Bacon Draws for the ladiez

2011-04-08T08:02:00.000-07:00

Via Charlie, bacon panties for the ladies.

These are fairly standard, run-of-the-mill bacon fan undergarments:

I'm not wild about the cut (if you have a large bottom, it doesn't tend to be so flattering), but the font is well chosen, and they're nice enough.

These, although there's the same design/cut issue (notice in this second picture, the tell-tale sag at the crotch, which to me always makes it seem like you've shit yourself, or consciously bought underwears that allow you the space to do so in comfort), are simultaneously awesome and somewhat sinister:

To begin with, I have a large fatty bottom, and putting a butcher's diagram on it seems a little bit unsettling. Couple that with the fact that the swine in the picture seems to be examining itself hungrily, the whole thing screams cannibalism.

...I totally want a pair.

Charcuteroulette

2011-03-24T19:13:00.000-07:00

Via my friend Ben: Charcuteroulette. So sexy.

Bacon maple milkshake

2011-03-22T11:40:00.001-07:00

I stumbled across this post about a bacon maple vanilla milkshake today and oh wow, I really want to try it. Because you are probably as lazy about internet things as I am ("seriously, I have to click a link? give it to me already!"), here's the recipe itself:

2 slices bacon (about 2 ounces/57 grams), cut into thin strips
6 tablespoons cold whole or lowfat milk (about 3 ounces/90 milliliters)
2 tablespoons pure maple syrup, preferably grade B (about 1 ounce/30 milliliters)
Pinch of salt
8 medium scoops French vanilla ice cream (about 1 quart/24 ounces/680 grams), softened until just melty at the edges

(yes I know the formatting went screwy on that copy/paste job, but I think it looks kind of neat. also it would take a modicum of effort to fix. EDIT: wait, so now it's gone back to normal? ARGH!)

1
Fry the bacon in a small skillet set over medium heat, stirring frequently, until rendered and crisp, about 5 minutes. With a slotted spoon, remove the cooked bacon to paper towels to drain, and nibble on it or reserve it for garnishing the shake. Off the heat, brieﬂy cool the fat in the skillet.
2
Place the milk, maple syrup, 1 tablespoon of cooled bacon fat (if there is any more, you can discard it), salt, and ice cream in a blender and pulse several times to begin breaking up the ice cream. With the blender motor off, use a flexible spatula to mash the mixture down onto the blender blades. Continue pulsing, stopping, and mashing until the mixture is well blended, thick, and moves easily in the blender jar, roughly 30 to 90 seconds. Pour into a chilled glass or glasses, and serve at once, garnishing with rendered bacon if desired.

Huh, now it's gone screwy on the instructions too. I kind of like the mystery of it, but ok, here's what it comes down to: basically, fry the bacon, set it aside for garnish and use the fat only. Throw it in a blender with the rest of the ingredients. Blend.

Incidentally, I saw this after clicking through some links connected to this post, which is about ways to make your ramen more exciting. Some of them look so good that I actually want to get some ramen. Check it out. There's even some bacon-related stuff in there.

Burger's Smokehouse Bacon Steak Cuts

2011-03-22T11:03:00.000-07:00

Awhile back I received an email from Tara from Woodruff Sweitzer on behalf of Burger's Smokehouse. Burger's Smokehouse (smokehouse.com) sells meats - especially bacon - on the internetz. Tara asked me if I'd be interested in a free sample of their new Bacon Steak Cuts. Obviously, I said yes (aduh), and a few days later this arrived:

And inside it were a few of these:

This was, of course, tremendously exciting. As Tara explained in her email, this is dry-cured, with no water added. It's not just bacon, it's bacon STEAK. I tried to take a few different pictures to show off its girth better, but this is the best I could get.

Which doesn't really do it justice. It's fat. And meaty. You think you've had thick-cut bacon, and then you get a strip of this in your hand and you're like damn.

So, you're wondering, is it good? Listen, this has nothing to do with the fact that I got it for the free - the shit is delicious. It's incredible. It takes a long time to cook, and if you cut a strip in half to make it fit in the pan better, it'll roll up like one of those plastic fortune telling fish, so pan-frying it is indeed somewhat tricky, but omg, it's so good. Because it's so thick, you get more of that pork belly type feel, where it's crispy on the outside and chewy warm fat on the inside. Boyfriend was unimpressed ("it tastes like bacon, what's the big deal"), but to me it was like manna from heaven. I think grilling it would be neat.

I was trying to decide what to cook with it, but aside from using two strips for a pot of kale (crap, I guess I never provided an updated version of my kale recipe! the secret is red wine vinegar) - which it worked brilliantly for, by the way, the thick cut lends itself perfectly to this type of thing - I actually ended up eating all that I got in basic fried fashion. And loving it.

Much, much recommended. It's seriously off the chain.

Bacon: the gateway meat

2011-02-11T09:52:00.000-08:00

Sent by Ligaya, who linked to a story that linked to a story - a piece on NPR about bacon as gateway meat. Or why even vegetarians can't resist bacon.

Pork Belly at Hing Kee

2011-02-07T10:55:00.000-08:00

On our way to see Talib Kweli at The Shrine on Friday, we hit up Hing Kee for dinner. I've praised its amazing ramen in my other blog already - seriously it's fantastic - but I figured I'd let you know it's also a place to find some pork belly.

Pork belly with chinese bread. It's pretty tasty, though not for the squeamish - you're getting straight up jiggly fat here people. I mean, there's more meaty parts too, but it's still a whole lot of jiggle. I have a hard time with that, myself, but if you sammich it into the bread, it's pretty frickin' awesome.

Porky polenta breakfast

2011-01-29T13:02:00.000-08:00

The sun was rather too bright when I woke up this morning, to quote Philadelphia Story*, and I was craving grease and grits, but there were none in the house (grits, I mean. There's plenty of grease.). In desperation, I grabbed a bag of fine ground cornmeal and made mush instead (1/4 cup cornmeal, 1 cup of water, cooked over medium heat with salt, stir to break up the lumps). Cornmeal mush is not as tasty as grits, not at all. So I added a bunch of pepper jack, which helped, but still, something was missing. So I forraged in the fridge and found a Garret County Chorizo sausage and a few strips of bacon and fried them up and dumped them on top. Genius. Like chirashi, except with pork and corn instead of fish and rice.

I didn't take a picture, because I was busy shoveling it into my mouth. But trust me, it was tasty. Though grits would have been better.

*Or I thought I was, but I just searched the script online and that line isn't in there. Maybe it's in another movie? Or I'm just misremembering? I need to lie down.

Epic Meal Time

2011-01-27T15:45:00.001-08:00

"We built a breakfast fortress... to keep the haters out"

My parents are big fans of these videos. They feature some (clearly professionally trained) chefs designing epic meals of high caloric value, and then eating them. Here's the epic breakfast, much of which does look genuinely delicious. I think it's one of the earlier videos in the series, because it doesn't feature the calorie total in the sidebar, which tends to get pretty mind-blowing.

Most of the videos are pretty incredible. If you like Man vs Food, you'll probably love them.

Homemade Bacon at Double Li

2011-01-27T15:32:00.000-08:00

Very tasty. We'd read about this one, maybe, in Time Out Chicago (it was a Best Thing They Ate All Year in 2009 I think?), but it was called pork belly there, and there's nothing on the menu that says pork belly. There's home made bacon and there's pork stomach. We ordered the former, and this is what arrived:

A plate of thin slices of chewy bacon in a pile of snap peas and sliced leeks, flavored with garlic, ginger, and I think some Chinese five spice? Anyhow, it was great.

You can get your own at Double Li, 228 W Cermak Rd, Chicago, IL 60616.

Crif's Dogs, NYC

2011-01-04T19:22:00.000-08:00

On a recent trip to NYC, my man and I stopped at Crif's Dogs. We were actually trying to go somewhere else (extra cool points for you if you can guess where), but that didn't work out, because it turns out that most things in NYC involve a 2 hour wait and we're not really into that sort of thing. But I decided to make the most of it, and examined their menu. Obviously I was going to have to try a bacon-wrapped hot dog. I settled on the tsunami, bacon wrapped dog, pineapple, teriyaki, and green onion.

The pineapple was almost certainly from a can, and not a very tasty one at that - it was slightly cold and somewhat flavorless. The teriyaki, when I could taste it, was fantastic and a great compliment to the other flavors involved, but most of the time, I couldn't taste it. The green onions were nice! And the bacon wrapped dog was AWESOME.

In conclusion: hot dogs are better when they're wrapped in bacon.

Rachael Ray's Late Night Bacon

2011-01-04T19:17:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Dunx for passing this on: Rachael Ray's recipe for Late Night Bacon. A recipe so incredible it has spawned its own facebook group. Be sure to read the reviews - the best are on page 3 (look especially for MrTopHat's).

Some pig!

2010-12-03T15:06:00.000-08:00

Jared van Camp, the chef at Chicago's Old Town Social*, has a charcuterie blog that is seriously awesome. Detailed photo entries on how to make various pig-related things. There are only 5 entires, and the last update was in April, but hopefully he'll get back into it. I should warn you, perhaps - the pictures are pretty graphic. If you're not read to see a roll of charcuterie with the snout still attached, or some de-boned pig carcasses, do not click on the link. For everyone else though: Some Pig!

*Which is a strange kind of place. It's basically the classiest sports bar you'll ever go to. In other words, there are tvs everywhere, they are showing sports, there are tons of people around watching them, and it's loud as shit. Strange, because otherwise, the interior and menu is more reminiscent of a nice gastro-pub. I understand that people may want to watch sports in a classy place. My point, I guess, is that if you're not interested in watching sports, this might not be the place for you, despite the fact that the food is great.

Chorizo, Bean and Brussel Sprout Soup

2010-11-24T14:31:00.000-08:00

This is one of the most delicious soups I have ever made. I based it off this recipe, but with a significant variation which saved two hours of cooking time, turning it into a soup that could be made in 20 minutes.

It involves:

5 oz dry cured chorizo (I used Daniele chorizo, which I am completely addicted to)

1 small onion

2-3 large cloves garlic

2 big handfuls (?) of brussel sprouts

1 small bag frozen shelled soybeans

1 small sausage (I used Garrett County Farm chorizo, because I love it, but any sausage that you love will work)

Chicken broth (I use Knorr chicken broth powder and water)

Finely dice the dry cured chorizo and put it into a pot over low heat. As the fat renders and it gets crispy, chop your onion. Add the onion, stir, then mince the garlic and add that. Let this saute over the same low-ish heat until the onion is translucent. Also, fill your kettle with water and set it to boil (unless you're using actual chicken broth, in which case, boil that)

Meanwhile, wash your brussel sprouts, trim off the ends, and halve them. When the onion is good to go, add the brussel sprouts and toss them. Let them fry a bit - rumor has it, this is what gets rid of the bitterness. When the water/chicken broth boils, pour 6 cups of it into the mix (adding chicken broth powder if you're going that route.) - actually, you might wanna do 5 cups and one cup water, depending on how salty your chicken broth is. Mine was just a hare too salty. Anyhow, yeah, add the boiling liquid and turn the heat to high. Meanwhile, slice your sausage into thin rounds and put it in a pan on low heat. When your liquid has returned to a boil and been boiling for approx 4 minutes, add the frozen soybeans. Once it's returned to a boil, it takes another 4 minutes or so for the soybeans to cook.

I should say that this is a corrected version - I cooked the brussel sprouts for ca. 8 minutes before adding the soybeans, and then cooked all that for 5 minutes or so, and my brussel sprouts were overdone. It wasn't the end of the world, but it would have been better if they were less mushy.

Anyhow, ladle into a bowl and top with some of the fried sausage. Serve with some good crusty bread.

It's seriously incredible. The brussel sprouts and beans are nice and buttery (I really wanted to use fava beans, but couldn't find any in the store), the dry-cured chorizo bits are crispy, the fried sausage is slightly chewy, and the broth is rich and porky. Really warms the soul.

Bacon Egg and Cheese Biscuits

2010-11-13T13:18:00.001-08:00

I stumbled across a delightful cooking blog* which included this wonderful post on bacon egg and cheese biscuits. So I decided to try it myself.

I basically followed his instructions, except I only used 2 eggs, and only made 4 biscuits (and I didn't grease the muffin tin - no need to, I figured, and was right). It turned out, 2 eggs is way too much for 4 biscuits. I realized this when Better Half kindly pointed out that one of the biscuits was spilling egg, and that adding bacon would only make things worse, but his idea of emptying out some egg and adding another biscuit did not seem feasible. So I stubbornly forged ahead, which is how I ended up with this monstrosity:

Fail! Next time, two eggs for 6 biscuits will be just fine I think.

The good news is, after peeling off all that egg spillover (I tried eating it, but it was kinda gross), the biscuits were still pretty fantastic. I don't know what Pillsbury puts in their shit, but goddamn it's tasty. I'm a complete fiend for their crescent rolls, and the biscuits turn out to basically be a bigger and chewier version. Bliss. But the egg, bacon and cheese (I used cheddar) are definitely a worthy addition, and less messy than making a bacon egg and cheese breakfast sammich. Also, actually less effort, though you do have to factor in baking time.

*The author seems to have gone on long-term blogging vacay, and most of the last posts were pictures of his (very cute) cats, but it's worth checking back from time to time to see if he's started up again, because the writing is entertaining and the food looks tasty. He has a post about Monkey Bread that links to this recipe, which looks frickin' incredible.

Bacon Cheese Turtle Burger

2010-11-07T18:01:00.001-08:00

I randomly stumbled across these on the internet, and I don't know why, but there's something really endearing about them. I think it's the little toes.

Beer Braised Cabbage with Bacon

2010-11-04T14:45:00.000-07:00

Although the recipe I used said that bacon was "distracting" when added to this, I decided to give it a try anyhow, and I gotta say, I didn't think it was distracting at all. I thought it was delicious. The recipe is fairly quick and straightforward, and tasty. However, I ended up having to make quite a few modifications, so I'll give my version, with some discussion to follow.

Beer Braised Cabbage with Bacon

4-6 slices bacon, chopped

1 onion, chopped

1 beer

2 tbs whole grain mustard

1 tsp thyme (preferably minced fresh)

4 tbs cider vinegar

1 small head cabbage, cored and chopped

salt, pepper

Fry up the bacon. Drain some grease, but only some - you want a good tablespoon or two still in the pan. Add the onion, saute until softened over medium heat. Add the thyme, beer and mustard and simmer for a minute or two until thickened. Add the cabbage and cider vinegar and cook covered, stirring occasionally, until tender - about 8 minutes. Season liberally with salt and pepper.

So, the recipe I used called for half a cup of beer, preferably a light-bodied lager. All I had in the house were a few bottles of porter and cream stout and a can of Busch light that someone left behind. So in went the Busch light. This was somewhat unfortunate, because, ahem, it doesn't have a whole lot of flavor. So next time, I'd definitely pick something with more character. However, half a cup didn't seem nearly enough. Same with the cider vinegar, which I doubled - though I wouldn't do more than that, because it'll get too vinegary. I also increased the thyme and mustard, because they weren't especially noticeable, and I might even increase them more if I do it again. I might also up the onion, come to think of it - it called for one medium, but you could do two. You might wanna do them on low heat into a more buttery brown kind of onion style. Also - don't assess until you've really seasoned it up with salt and pepper - that made a huge difference.

Overall though, definitely tasty, and definitely quite improved by the bacon, in my opinion.

Jones Bacon Soda

2010-11-04T14:28:00.000-07:00

I received an email today from Annie Arnold, who does PR for Jones Soda. She wanted me to know that Jones Soda released a Bacon flavored soda today (in parternship with the people who make Bacon Salt). She included a cocktail recipe -

Yankee Breakfast Fizz

1.5 oz bourbon

1 oz Jones Bacon Soda

1.5 oz Natural Maple Syrup

1 Egg White

2 oz Heavy Cream

Soda water

- Combine everything except the soda and cream in a shaker with ice. Shake like mad (on account of the egg white) and strain into a glass. Add the cream, stir to combine, then top off with soda water.

I have to say, it does sound tasty, though I reserve judgement until I've tried the bacon soda. As you may recall, I had rather mixed impressions of Bakon vodka, so without tasting the soda, it's hard to say. I'm definitely curious though. I'm surprised that the cocktail recipe calls for the addition of soda water - you'd think the soda itself would provide that?

In any case, the bacon soda can be acquired at www.myjones.com/store or www.store.baconsalt.com.

They have assembled a bacon grab bag of sorts:

bacon fans can purchase two bottles of the salty new soda; a bag of J&D’s Cheddar BaconPOP™ bacon and cheddar flavored popcorn; J&D’s Bacon Lip Balm and a package of J&D’s Bacon Gravy for $9.99 plus shipping and handling.

Pretty reasonably priced, all in all. Feel free to buy me one =-)

I will point out that I was unable to learn from the webpage whether or not the soda is made with actual bacon, which is pretty important information. I will also note that they apparently also have a tofurkey and gravy soda. Woah.

Edit: I asked, Annie says it's vegetarian (and kosher). Which is all well and good, but it does make me worry about the flavor, I gotta say.

Chestnut and Pancetta Soup

2010-11-02T14:13:00.000-07:00

¾ lb chestnuts, or 7 oz. dried, soaked overnight in cold water
half stick butter
3 oz pancetta, diced
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 celery, finely chopped
1 tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped
1 bay leaf
2 garlic cloves, halved lengthwise

The first thing to do is peel the chestnuts. There are several ways to go about this – the cookbook we were using suggested that you slit the shell along the rounded side, and then either cover in cold water, bring to a boil and simmer for 15-20 minutes, or roast in a preheated oven at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. I did not notice that it said to slit them beforehand, consequently several of them exploded in the oven. Ooops. Peeling them wasn’t as big of a pain as I expected, though it was slightly tedious.

Next, you’re probably gonna wanna chop your pancetta and vegetables (or you can do that while your chestnuts roast). Once everything is ready: melt the butter in a large saucepan and add the pancetta. Fry over medium heat until the fat runs. Add the onions, carrot, and celery and cook for 5-10 minutes, until they’ve softened. Add the chestnuts, rosemary, bay leaf and garlic and cover with water. Bring to a boil, half cover, and simmer for 30-45 minutes, until the chestnuts disintegrate. Season with salt and pepper (we also grated a little parmesan in there).

This was a very tasty soup, and surprisingly flavorful, given that it was cooked with water, not stock. The rosemary really came through powerfully, it was great. Better Half loved it, but personally, I had some reservations. One, I thought it was a hair too salty. This may be because Better Half over-salted it at the end, or it may be the pancetta. Secondly, I thought it lacked a certain je ne sais quoi – I think maybe a touch of white wine could make the flavor a little more complex? Finally, I’d also wanna add some texture to it – I think it would be fantastic if there was some crunch in there, maybe with some croutons. Still, it was very tasty. We don’t make soup much, but now that it’s getting colder, they’re much more appealing.

Porcini Gnocchi with Prosciutto and Parmesan Cream Sauce

2010-10-29T14:05:00.001-07:00

I'm not gonna lie to you - this one is pretty labor intensive, and somewhat expensive, what with the prosciutto and mushrooms. But it's so unbelievably incredible that it's absolutely worth it. We ate it as a side dish (because we were having a pretty insanely extravagant dinner), but it could definitely be a main course.

Gnocchi:

1 medium Idaho potato, peeled

3 oz grated parmesan

1 egg

1/2 tsp kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup flour, or more as needed

1 ounce dried porcini mushrooms

Sauce:

1/2 cup liquid from rehydrating the porcini (see above)

2 tbsp butter

1 small red onion, sliced

1 tbsp minced garlic

2 oz shiitake mushrooms (can be dried and rehydrated) - separate caps from stems and slice the caps (but keep both)

handful of parsley stems

1 tbsp chopped parsley

1/2 cup dry white wine

1 cup heavy cream

1 oz prosciutto - doesn't have to be top quality, as it will be cooked

1/2 cup greens (we used arugula, but spinach or swiss chard might be more appropriate)

2 tbsp grated parmesan

First, make the gnocchi. Pour boiling water over the porcini and let them rehydrate for 15 minutes. Cook the potato in boiling salted water until tender. Mash it (or put it through a ricer, I just don't have one). Put in the refrigerator to cool, about 15 minutes. Drain your porcini, being careful to reserve 1/2 cup broth, stick on a food processor and blend until smooth.

Remove your potato from the fridge, dump it onto a clean work surface, form into a little volcano shape. Sacrifice the porcini paste, parmesan, egg, salt and pepper to Cthulu by throwing them into your volcano. Then destroy your volcano with your hands and mix it all up. Then add the flour and knead into a dough, using more flour if needed (I think I ended up using almost double the original amount). Divide the dough into quarters, wrap each in saran wrap. Clean the work surface. Take one of the quarters, roll it into a tube about as thick into your finger, and then cut into gnocchi side pieces. Indent each piece with a fork if you're feeling fancy; I quickly tired of this process and just made them into pillow shapes. Lay them out on a cookie sheet and set aside.

Start boiling water for your gnocchi. It is helpful to have two people at work here - in this case, I was on gnocchi duty, and Better Half made sauce. If you're doing it yourself, I guess you should probably do gnocchi first, because they'll re-heat in the sauce). When your salted water is boiling, add the gnocchi in batches. When they float to the surface, remove them with some kind of implement and drain.

Now, the sauce.

Melt 1 tbsp butter in a large pan and saute onions, mushrooms, garlic, parsley stems and shiitake stems. Cook until soft but not brown, approx 4 minutes. Add wine and porcini liquid. Bring to a boil then simmer until reduced to about 1/3. Add cream, reduce again "until the sauce coats the back of a spoon". This part, we had a hard time with, because it didn't seem to reduce. The recipe says you then strain it into a bowl and set aside. I dunno that you need to strain it, because everything in it is delicious.

Anyhow, in your newly empty saucepan, heat remaining butter (1 tbsp) until it begins to brown and add the chopped shiitake mushrooms caps. Saute 2-3 minutes. Return cream sauce to pan, along with prosciutto, greens, and half the parmesan. Cook 3-4 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add gnocchi to your cream sauce. Add remaining parmesan and parsley.

Fantastico!

Bacon blogging

2010-10-29T13:59:00.000-07:00

Cheryl emailed and told me about her bacon blog, Bacon Glory. Check it out. She seems to actually post stuff, unlike me.

Related to that... I am sorry I'm so inactive, I really am. One thing is that I'm really busy - my other blogs have fallen idle as well - the other problem is that honestly, I'm pretty sick of the whole bacon craze. And I feel like a poser, because I actually don't eat all that much bacon. But I do cook a fair amount, and enjoy cooking. I'm tempted to just turn this into a cooking blog, a la my friend Gemma's wonderful Pro-Bono Baker, so I could tell you about things like the awesome sammich I just had made from home-made Maple Walnut bread (I baked bread!), apples, cheddar and argula (awesome!), but honestly, I don't really update that much as is. So instead, I'm sticking with the general idea, and only posting stuff related to pork. I've basically made that shift anyways, posting about things that involve, say, chorizo, or prosciutto, but now it's official. So there ya have it. Sorry to the die-hard bacon fans out there who may be frustrated.

Fun facts about bacon

2010-08-25T16:06:00.000-07:00

Via Ariel (who by the by has an etsy shop and makes some neato things): some interesting things about bacon.

Chicago Bacon Takedown

2010-08-23T17:05:00.000-07:00

Via Gemma, who should practically be getting co-author credits on this blog at this point: the Chicago Bacon Takedown. September 11th, 1:30 pm at Lincoln Hall. Anyone can enter - you get 15 lbs of bacon and your quest is to make it tasty. For prizes.

Meanwhile, the rest of us can buy tickets to the event here. Curiously enough, they're only $15, even though you apparently get to sample all the recipes. I might actually go, I'm kind of curious.

National Bacon Day

2010-08-20T07:38:00.000-07:00

So it turns out that the Saturday before Labor Day (ie, September 4th this year) - EDIT: wow, missing sentence anyone? It turns out that it is National Bacon Day. Kinda. Vicki, who works for the Edwards Virginia Ham company, sent me an email recommending their products as suitable fare for the occasion and describing the different varieties of bacon they have. I have no idea if it's good or not. All I know is that they had the initiative to send me an email. Most of the people who email me because of this blog are resourceful media people for various companies. Sigh.

Anyways. Come to think of it, I may have posted about Bacon Day last year, because I think someone sent me a link to a Bacon Day blog. I note with amusement that it has not been updated since 2009. I note with concern that the last post mentions illness, and I express my hopes that the author is still amongst the living. I put on my cloak and wizard hat...

So, I wanted to give this post some substance, and started looking around on the internet for the history of this alleged national day of bacon. From what I can see, wasn't nobody celebrating it before last year. Curiously enough, however, the internet does seem to have come to a kind of consensus on the date, though there are some competitors out there. More broadly speaking, it seems like the whole "National Day" thing gets started when someone in a specific place (like a city) sets aside a day for something (as with National Pig Day in Lubbock, Texas) and then it spreads and ends up being national. Bacon Day, I'm guessing, was started in a little place called the internet, hence it doesn't have any groundings in a specific geographic location (oh, this postmodern world we live in!) or any specific observances attached to it.

Personally, I think it's kind of dumb. The holiday I mean.

Some recent failures, and my other blog

2010-08-17T13:49:00.001-07:00

I know, I know, I haven't been posting much. The thing is - the bacon related things I've tried to make lately have not been very good. And if you're already feeling lazy about updating your blog, it's kind of hard to motivate yourself to tell the world about your failures.

So, right quick:

Bacon Hush Puppies.

These could potentially be good, and I will revisit them. The bacon wasn't the issue here, it was the hush puppies themselves, which were awfully dry and kind of tasted like a mouthful of dust.

Bacon vodka.

I've mentioned, I think, several times that I was working on infusing my own bacon vodka. So, I did do it, but for whatever reason, I didn't feel like actually trying it. By the time I did, it had been sitting in the freezer for over a year. Which may explain why it tasted so ungodly awful. Another potential reason is that while I did skim the fact off the top, there was clearly some still in there. Next time, I'll try to strain it through a coffee filter before I dump it down the sink.

BUT I will say this: it DID taste like bacon. Intensely so, in fact. In a very pleasing way. So I really ought to give this another try. All I did to make it was fry a few pieces of bacon and stick them in a jar with some vodka, which I then stuck in a dark corner of the pantry for a few weeks.

Accordioned baked potatoes with bacon:

This too could have been ok, but for some reason wasn't. I suspect the problem was that I was using small red potatoes, which have a kind of sweetness to them that was really not good for some reason. Those, though, were fairly easy to make. Take a potato, wash it, then take a sharp knife and slice almost down to the botton, every centimeter or so. It fans out as it bakes, and it does look kind of cute. You can do just that (you probably wanna rub yr tater with some olive oil and salt), or you can squish a bit of bacon in between the slices, and that's very nice too. You can do the same thing with an onion, though the slicing gets a little more complicated there. You bake it for about 15 minutes at around 350 if it's a wee potato, maybe longer for bigger ones. When you pull it out, before it cools, you can get some cheese involved too, that's nice.

So those are three things I could've posted about and didn't. I think the real clincher is that I feel like I should upload pictures, but man, that takes more effort.

Anyways, one other piece of news:

I have yet another blog, which I've also been lazy about updating but vow to be better about. It's called Leave Room for Delight, and it's about restaurants. Check it out. Mostly Chicago based, as that's where I live, but who knows.

Maple Bacon ice cream recipe

2010-07-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

Gemma just forwarded me this - it looks pretty delicious. I don't have an ice cream maker, but if I did, I'd definitely give this a try: Maple Bacon ice cream. The ice cream sammich idea is especially intriguing - maybe with some basic coffee cookies, for the full on breakfast effect?

Bacon Camp

2010-06-24T09:51:00.000-07:00

From my mom, an article in the Washington Post about Bacon Camp.

"It's a thinking person's bacon camp," said Ari Weinzweig, co-founder
of Ann Arbor's gourmet mecca Zingerman's, which hosted the event. "I
want to get people off the 'I love bacon' thing: 'Give me any and give
me more.' I want them to know the differences between them and how to
use them."

Paddy's bacon tasting deal

2010-05-27T09:18:00.000-07:00

Via Gemma: Paddy Long's is offering a deal to followers of Baconfest Chicago whereby they can get in on a bacon beer tasting for $20 rather than $35. Given, however, that the link tells you what the "secret password" for Baconfest Followers is... uh... wanna discount on a bacon beer tasting?

By the by, if you're in Chicago, my bf and I had dinner at Rootstock last night, and it was full of porky delights. There was an absolutely divine charcuterie plate, and a pork belly sandwich that was so rich and creamy and crispy and wonderful that I almost swooned. Yes, that's a hyperlink. I have yet another blog - this one is about restaurants. Check it out. I just started it, so there's not much going on yet, but given the frequency with which I dine out, it oughta get updated at least weekly.

Bacon hot sauce

2010-05-25T16:17:00.000-07:00

Via Max: Bacon hot sauce.

I'm a great lover of hot sauce*, so I'm kind of curious to try it, but I don't currently feel like shelling out $5.99 plus s&h. But the makers apparently flew to Chicago for Baconfest, which is pretty impressive.

*One of my favorites, by the by, is Co-op hot sauce - it's not bacon flavored, but the stuff is absolutely delicious, so I can't resist the opportunity to give them a plug. Totally worth mail ordering.

Veal Saltimbocca, Kale with Pancetta, and Gnocchi

2010-05-17T11:07:00.000-07:00

I didn't actually make this; my boyfriend did - I just assisted. Also, it technically doesn't involve bacon (though the kale recipe actually called for it originally instead of pancetta), but it does involve delicious cured porks, so...

(edited with bf's corrections)

For the veal:

Veal cutlets (2 per person)

Prosciutto (as many slices as you have cutlets)

Sage

Flour, salt, pepper

lemon wedges

some white wine

1/2 cup chicken stock

For the Kale:

2 bunches kale

4 thick cut slices pancetta

5 gloves garlic

2 cups water

Gnocchi:

gnocchi from the store...

The most time-consuming part of all this is the kale. Wash it thoroughly, making sure to get rid of all the grit. Shake dry and separate from the stems, then roll the leaves into long tubes and chop width-wise every half inch or so. Set aside. (at this point, you probably wanna set the water to boil for your gnocchi)

Dice the pancetta. Fry in a medium-sized pot (it's gonna have to hold the kale) until crispy. You're gonna wanna be on medium-low heat for this operation. Remove with a slotted spoon onto some paper towels and set aside.

While it's frying, finely dice your garlic (I dunno why my darling doesn't believe in garlic presses, but he doesn't. You could probably just press it though...). Add to the pot, to the pancetta fat. Sautee a moment (because your heat is so low, it shouldn't even brown), then add the kale. Stir for a minute or two, watch the kale turn bright bright green, then add the water. Cook for about 10 minutes, then turn off the heat and let it stand for a few minutes. Drain the water, add the pancetta back in, stir. A squeeze of lemon (once it's on the plate) really ties it all together.

For the veal (which I was doing with a friend while the kale was cooking):

Shake some flour onto a plate. Add garlic salt and pepper.

Set the cutlet on a piece of wax paper. Lay sage leaves on top of it - as many as you like. I basically covered mine. Lay a slice of prosciutto on top, eating the overhang or folding it over so that it's on the cutlet, up to you. Lay a second piece of wax paper on top, then take a glass or thermos or if you have one, a rolling pin, and firmly roll the cutlets until the prosciutto and sage are soundly smooshed in. Carefully peel the cutlet off the wax paper and bread in the flour. Fry in butter and vegetable oil (also moderately low heat on this one), about 2-3 minutes per side. (at some point around here, cook the gnocchi - they only take 3 minutes)

When you've fried them all, deglaze the pan with some white wine and the chicken stock, increasing the heat to reduce into a sauce. Pour that over everything. Squeeze lemon on top. Pour a glass of wine. Enjoy one of the best meals you've ever had.

Bacon bracelet set from etsy

2010-05-06T08:16:00.000-07:00

I got an email from Gary Simpson, creator of these bacon bracelets, informing me of his product and reminding me that Mother's Day approacheth. I'm kind of more into the fried egg ring myself.

Bakon vodka

2010-05-04T13:45:00.000-07:00

My man and I went to Oceanique for dinner last night, and on our way home we stopped in to the Morseland to see our friend Chris, who bartends there. We were chatting about whiskeys and beers and such, and suddenly he said - oh! you have got to smell this! He grabbed a bottle off the shelf, opened it, and waved it under our noses. The smell of bacon was enough to knock you on your ass. That's right: it was Bakon vodka. Of course, we had to get a shot to try.

So first off, the smell. The smell is intense. It's like bacon. But it's also not like bacon. It's like hot fat that's been sitting in the sun too long, bathed in preservatives. It smells like it's supposed to smell like something good, and it kind of does, but it also really doesn't.

The flavor is much the same. It's unmistakingly, overpoweringly reminiscent of bacon. But it doesn't exactly taste like bacon. My better half, who is prone to putting bacon bits on his salad, said it was a very recognizable flavor. My palate, however, has not been properly primed to appreciate artificial bacon flavor, so to me, it's kind of narsty.

Nonetheless, I can imagine that it'd be nice in a cocktail, like a bloody mary. I added a hefty splash of Cholula to the last gulp in my shotglass, and that already dramatically improved the experience, so I imagine throwing some tomato juice, horseradish, celery salt and lemon after it would be a boon.

Overall though - I'd recommend going with an actual bacon vodka. Notice how the Bakon website, for all its talk about ingredients, never discloses where the "smoky bacon flavor" comes from. Yeah. That's because that liquor has never met a pig.

Bacon, Mushroom and Kasza Pierogi

2010-04-19T10:58:00.000-07:00

I decided to honor Poland by making pierogi with friends. I checked out some recipes, and was particularly intrigued by this one. I love kasza (buckwheat groats in English) and figured it was something many of my friends may not have tried - if you're trying to buy it, it's generally in the "ethnic" section of the grocery store, along with matzoh and kosher products.

The recipe is rather approximate, as such things tend to be.

The dough:

2 cups flour

1 cup water

pinch of salt

The filling:

1 cup kasza

a bunch of dried mushrooms (I used the gourmet blend from Costco)

1 onion

5+ strips of bacon?

(I actually made a vegetarian version as well, so you might want to halve the kasza?)

Step one, which is probably best done a few hours in advance? is to rehydrate the mushrooms in warm water.

Then, bring 2 cups mushroom water to a boil (adding regular water if needed to make 2 cups) with salt and pepper. Add the kasza, stir, cover, and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 10 minutes, fluff, and set aside.

As its cooking, chop the bacon (finer is better) and fry it in a large, deep pan. As it fries, chop the onion, and once the bacon is browned, add it to the pan. Then chop the mushrooms (squeeze out the excess water, but don't worry about it too much) and add them to the pan. Saute for 5 minutes or so? Or until the flavors combine, then add the cooked kasza and stir. Let it cook a minute or two to combine the flavors, adding salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.

Now, the dough. According to what I've read, you want to use hot - even boiling - water. Add it to the flour and salt (you want a decent amount of salt here - I think I used too little), stirring with a wooden spoon. Then knead it with your hands (let it cool if need be) until it forms an elastic dough. Cover your "work surface" (ie clean table) with some flour, grab a hunk of dough and roll it out. You want it about 2mm thick - thin, but not so thin that it becomes porous or breaks. Use a glass to cut out circles, put a spoonful of filling in the center (you always need less than you think) and pinch shut.

This is the most labor intensive part of the process. I underestimated just how much work it involved. By the end, it had turned into an 8 person operation (though I made a seriously ridiculous amount of pierogi, with several other fillings too).

When you're about halfway through or so, set a large pot of water to boil with plenty of salt. Once it's boiling, drop in about 6 pierogi at a time, or however many the pot seems to hold comfortably (there should be room for them to form a single layer, with some space). Boil 2-3 minutes, or until they float to the surface.

Garnish with fried bacon and onions, and enjoy!

(We also did a potato and cheese filling, which just involved boiling some potatoes and mashing them with grated cheddar, salt, and pepper. I might have to try doing those again with some bacon bits folded in...)

Bacon pint glass

2010-04-13T12:06:00.000-07:00

Gemma sent me a link to this lovely pint glass from etsy.

Custom Bumper Stickers and Banners

2010-04-01T14:14:00.000-07:00

This isn't necessarily bacon related - but it could be? Cheryl, from BuildASign.com, sent me a very nice email asking if I had any interest in designing (and buying) a bacon-related bumper sticker or banner. While I don't, really, I did appreciate the email. And I thought maybe some of y'all might be interested - custom bumper stickers are definitely tempting. The prices are quite reasonable - so long as you buy in bulk.

Comments

2010-03-21T10:09:00.000-07:00

Ok, so it turns out people have been posting comments on here. Although I have the settings configured such that I am to be receiving an email whenever someone leaves a comment, uh, turns out I haven't been getting them. Instead they've been waiting in some kind of comment purgatory until I accept or reject them. So good news - today I accepted them all, except the spam ones (no spam! just bacon!).

HOWEVER, for some reason, I can't actually see which post you're commenting on, so I can't reply to the comments without going through the entire blog. So, to the people who wanted my contact info - it's on the right side of the page (and always has been) - kasiab at gmail dot com. To the person who asked what kind of submissions I'm looking for - uh, read the blog. That kind. Whatever bacon related stuff you've got. And to the person who left a long post about being in a labor camp and the food being terrible; I have no idea what inspired that comment, or what in the hell you're talking about. Sorry.

Anyhow, I reminded blogger that I want to get emails (by deleting and re-entering my email address), and at least now I know to look out for comments that need moderating (heh heh), so feel free to leave some comments.

As a side note, goddamnit, what the hell is wrong with blogger? My other blog gets emails about comments but won't post to my GoogleBuzz - no matter how many times I've told it to - this one posts to Buzz but won't tell me about comments. ARGH.

Celery and Fennel with Bacon

2010-03-16T16:07:00.001-07:00

My man and I found ourselves saddled with an entire bunch of celery recently and were trying to figure out what to do with it, having decided that we didn't especially want celery soup. I searched on Epicurious (such a useful iPhone app) and turned up this recipe. I'd never actually tried cooking fennel before, so I was intrigued. Although it sounds like a lot of effort, it was pretty easy - especially if you mod the recipe a little bit.

Basically, you chop the fennel and celery and boil them for 2 minutes (in salted water), then pull 'em out and run cold water over them. Cook the bacon in whole slices, and as it cooks, chop the shallots. When the bacon's done, set it on some paper towels and dump the shallots into the fat. Saute for a few minutes, add the celery and fennel and saute for another 10 minutes or so. Then add a cup of chicken broth and simmer until it's mostly gone. Crumble the bacon in, and voila, you're done. Sure, maybe the celery and fennel leaves and parsley would have been nice. But it was just fine without them. The picture on Epicurious is totally wrong, here's what it actually looks like:

I was actually surprised by how delicious this was. The celery was surprisingly flavorful. The fennel's anise-y flavor paired beautifully with the bacon - and this is coming from someone who despises licorice. The texture was maybe a a wee bit more mushy - especially the celery - than I might have liked - I'd probably cut down the chicken broth a bit, I guess? And upped the bacon, definitely. But overall, it was fantastic.

dyed bacon

2010-03-16T16:01:00.000-07:00

A guy named Neil emailed me a link to information about his Bacon Color Wheel project. Check it out.

I have to admit, I'm a wee bit suspicious. Neil is a graphic designer, and the link is to a graphic arts forum, and I can't help but wonder whether these lovely hues should be attributed to food coloring or Photoshop.

But they certainly are weird looking.

Bacon Apple Sage Stuffing

2010-03-05T10:48:00.000-08:00

My friends and I recently had Second Thanksgiving, which gave me a chance to try this Bacon Apple Sage Stuffing recipe that I randomly found online awhile ago. I love stuffing, but I've never tried making it before, so I was a little nervous. I followed the recipe pretty much exactly, and here are my thoughts:

1. Stuffing doesn't seem like stuffing without celery. If I were making this again, I'd probably add some.

2. It's really quite dry. I baked it in a pan not a turkey, so that's part of the problem (though I added extra broth as per recipe), but I thought it was a bit too dry. On the other hand, my friend James told me that his favorite thing about the stuffing was that it was so nice and dry, making it a good vehicle for gravy, and generally stuffings are way too moist. So who knows.

3. The parsley seemed unnecessary. But I'm probably biased, because I really don't like parsley very much.

4. The apples were a fantastic addition, nice surprise amongst the bread chunks, and wonderfully moist.

5. Oh! It's worth noting though, that I ended up having to bake it in ceramic dishes (my metal pans seem to have mysteriously vanished), which meant that I actually baked it for an hour rather than 30 minutes. That might be the real cause of the dryness.

6. Overall - the flavor combinations were fantastic. The bacon definitely added a certain oomph, and the apples and sage and onions went together beautifully. I bet it would be really fantastic if you actually shoved it into the bird and baked it that way.

Baconfest Chicago

2010-03-05T10:47:00.001-08:00

Baconfest sold out in 10 minutes yesterday. No, I did not get a ticket.

bacon art and more random baconalia

2010-02-24T14:23:00.000-08:00

via Charlie, another photo gallery of omg more bacon things from The Daily Beast. I have a certain amount of sympathy for the feeling that bacon has become ubiquitous and annoying and the whole thing has gone too far. But bacon coffee might be delicious. And bacon has been a bloody mary garnish for ages, as have other meats, and that's because it's delicious.

Secondly, I just received an email from m. Brady Clark (that's how he writes it), an artist based in Austin Texas who has created some lovely bacon-related prints that are available for purchase on his bacon art website. I also recommend his main page, which can be found here - he's got some really cool work on there. I would totally buy one of the bikinis he's designed for Glamour Kills if I could try it on first - I'm not quite brave enough to buy a swim-suit online, especially from a place with a no-return policy. But if you're brave enough to buy me one, I'd guess I'm a size XL.

Bacon Benedict

2010-02-14T12:47:00.000-08:00

As we glory in our successes, so too must we admit of our failures. I have long maintained that there is very little point in making eggs benedict for yourself at home. It's not only difficult, but time consuming, and produces a lot of dirty dishes, and in the end, gosh, just get in the car and shell out the money to have it done right, with minimal effort on your part. Nonetheless, I occasionally dream of perfecting eggs benedict at home. First off, if you can do it, you will make someone's day*. I mean, seriously - they get all the joy of eggs benedict with none of the wait or expenditure**. Also, some friends of mine have done it, and they actually make it sound fun. So there has long been this small part of me that has wanted to actually make the attempt.

Furthermore, today is Valentine's Day. Which means that all of my favorite breakfast spots will invariably be full of moon-eyed couples on their annual outing (ditto for dinner)***. So I decided to shift for myself in the domicile. As it happened (which it doesn't, all that often), I had both lemons and english muffins, so I thought, hey, benedict. Let's do it. I didn't have canadian bacon, but I figured regular would do. I discovered that I only had 4 eggs, so that was a problem, but hey, we'd soldier on.

So first off - timing wise, eggs benedict are a nightmare. You have to make the Hollandaise, poach the eggs, fry the bacon, and (if you so choose), fry the English muffins in the bacon grease. The smartest thing to do is to make the hollandaise first - once it's done, it can rest happily without any real problems. But I for some reason decided to do it all at once. This led to burnt English muffins, poorly poached eggs, and an utterly failed Hollandaise.

Here's how hollandaise works - you combine egg yolks, lemon juice, and some salt and whisk em together. Then, you want to heat them up. Not too much - not so much that the eggs will actually cook - just enough to thicken them. Then you wanna add a shit-ton of butter. The proportions vary here - because I was making it for just me and was low on eggs, I did 1 stick of butter, two egg yolks, and the juice from half a lemon. Which probably would have worked out fine, if I had done it right.

Obviously, the tricky part is the heating. I tried Alton Brown's method, which is to get a saucepan of water simmering, then lower the heat, and place your mixing bowl in it and whisk away. This unfortunately proved too hot, my eggs clumped up, and the sauce was ruined. Because whisk as you will, once the eggs do that, no amount of whisking will restore them to a thick liquid form. It's game over. But I had no other eggs, so hell, I ate the whole monstrosity anyhow.

Note the flecks of cooked eggs and the runnyness. Le sigh.

But you know what? It was actually pretty effin' tasty anyhow. I ended up toasting another english muffin just to sop up the remainder. So it was actually a pretty righteous breakfast.

Still, I don't think I'll attempt it again for a very, very long time, if ever.

*It is absolutely key here that you not only learnt to do it, but learn to do it calmly. Being tense and frustrated SHIT! I FUCKED UP THE FUCKING HOLLANDAISE AGAIN! AAAAARRRRGGGH! kind of ruins the whole effect.

**Seriously, if you bust this one out after the first night you spend with someone, all like "oh hey, feel like some breakfast? lemme throw something together, you wait right here", that person will probably want to marry you. I know I would.

*** HEY! ASSHOLES! I know some of you don't go to restaurants all that much, so maybe you're not aware of how things work. Allow me to enlighten you - TIP YOUR SERVERS! Oprah be damned, tip your servers 20%. Realize that this is their livelihood. My Valentine works in the industry, and though he gets way more tables on Valentine's Day than most any other, it is also the absolute worst day for tipping. I'm not kidding. One of his coworkers received a $10 tip on a $400 tab. It's ridiculous. Don't be a jerk.

Bakin and Eggs, Chicago

2010-01-22T12:24:00.000-08:00

Just saw this in the Reader. Color me intrigued.

Bakin' & Eggs

3120 N. Lincoln | 773-525-7005

AMERICAN, BREAKFAST | BREAKFAST, LUNCH: SEVEN DAYS, SATURDAY & SUNDAY BRUNCH | RESERVATIONS NOT ACCEPTED

If bacon has officially jumped the shark, someone forgot to tell the folks behind Bakin' & Eggs (also the owners of Lovely: A Bake Shop). At this new breakfast and lunch spot, you can get it on anything from a burrito to a biscuit—even the waffle involves bacon. It's a good thing it's done well, or the bacon flight might seem a little over the top; as it is, you'd better have either a hearty appetite or plenty of reinforcements if you plan to attack the five large rashers of jalapeño, honey, mesquite, cherry, and maple-pepper bacon. Portion sizes are ample here, and at eight to nine bucks apiece are a good deal as entrees at moderately upscale brunch places go. Even a half order of rosemary-parmesan drop biscuits with sausage gravy and—inevitably—a slice of bacon (available weekends only) is a reasonable-size meal in itself. Pumpkin pancakes, only subtly pumpkiny, were three big, fluffy discs topped with chopped caramelized pecans and served with pear butter, maple syrup, and whipped butter on the side. And while the spinach, mushroom, and Gruyere frittata was more than decent, it was the side of cheesy potatoes that really won me over. Our waiter kept checking to see if everything was "perfect"—a tall order at any restaurant—but we couldn't find any reason to complain. —Julia Thiel

Pizza and Beer in NYC

2009-12-31T18:18:00.000-08:00

My man and I spent a few days in New York, and among other culinary delights, we stopped for a slice at Ray's Pizza, where I got a bacon and pepperoni:

You'd think, by now, I'd have tried bacon on pizza, but in fact no. And it turned out to be incredibly tasty, bacon and pepperoni go well together.

Later in the evening, we stopped at Char 4, a fantastic whiskey bar in Brooklyn, and my boyfriend got one of these as a beerback:

Unfortunately I have some kind of mysterious beer allergy, so I wasn't able to partake, but I absolutely love the can.

Tortilla Española with Chorizo

2009-12-15T17:15:00.000-08:00

I know, I know, chorizo isn't actually bacon. But I figured it's been awhile since I updated with an actual recipe, and this really called for chorizo. And chorizo is made of pork (at least I think it is?) so it's kinda the same idea at least. Feel free to sub in bacon if you want.

ANYHOW. Tortilla Española is a kind of potato egg and onion omelet. Its typically served over bread, sliced into wedges. It is delicious. My friend Russ was mentioning how much he loved it the other day, and it inspired me to try making it myself. It turns out to be kind of difficult, at least for me, mainly because anything that involves trying to flip an omelet is difficult for me. The recipe is sort of improvised; I googled it and then made it up as I went along. In the process, I used:

5 (very) small potatoes

1 onion

4 eggs

a few slices of chorizo

garlic salt, pepper, olive oil

Cut the potatoes into slices that are maybe 1/4 inch thick. The recipes I found said to do the same with the onions, and I did, but I think next time I'll dice 'em, actually. Pour a goodly amount of olive oil into a pan and set it on medium low heat. Put in a layer of potatoes, sprinkle liberally with salt, then add a layer of onions, more potatoes (and salt), onions, you get the idea. I happen to think potatoes are terrible without salt, so I used plenty of it. Note here that the heat remains on medium low - you're trying to cook the potatoes, not deep fry them. They shouldn't be sticking to the pan. If you cover them, they actually take less than 10 minutes to cook. Meanwhile, crack the eggs into a bowl and beat em with some pepper. When the potatoes are ready, dump the potatoes and onions into the egg bowl. Chop the chorizo and fry it a bit in the pan. Turn up the heat a bit and add some more oil. Then pour the potato egg onion mixture on top. Use a spatula to prevent the egg from sticking to the sides.

Now comes the tricky part. Once the whole thing appears to be 3/4 cooked, ie, the top is fairly solid, if you are a very brave person, you can try to flip the omelet. If you are somewhat trepidatious, as indeed you should be, get another pan of roughly the same size, put a bit of olive oil into it, heat it up, and then put it on top of your other pan and try to do the flip that way. It mostly worked for me, though it turned out that I hadn't been as good with the spatula as I thought, and parts of the creation stuck to the pan, leading to the loss of a few brave potatoes. Let us remember them a moment in silence.

Anyhow, so here's what it looked like then:

Which, aside from the slightly flawed surface, is basically what it should look like. Ideally, you should then only need to finish cooking the other side and then flip it onto a plate. Unfortunately, the next step didn't go nearly as well. I think, actually, I may have used too few eggs - another one or two might be wise - so the top part wasn't eggy enough. Or maybe I didn't cook it quite long enough. In any case, what happened was this:

The good news is though - it was still totally delicious.

Underground Charcuterie

2009-11-27T13:47:00.000-08:00

An interesting article in the Reader about the secret world of pork.

I have mixed feelings on the issue myself - on the one hand, I love food and am naturally inclined to be in favor of those who want to make delicious things for me. On the other hand, yeah, food sanitation laws exist for a reason. A very good reason. Personally, I am somewhat fearless when it comes to meat, and regularly make steak tartarre with ground beef from Whole Foods, but yeah, e. coli and salmonella are for realz yo.

Another pasta idea

2009-11-17T18:17:00.001-08:00

The inspiration for this came from a recipe in Claudia Roden's Middle Eastern Cooking - one of my all-time favorite cookbooks. It doesn't involve bacon, surprise surprise, it involves stewing beef for over an hour. I didn't feel like doing that tonight, but I saw a recipe on Epicurious for a bacon-tomato-onion pasta that looked sort of mediocre, and I thought hmmm, what if I combine the two, and season the boring pasta recipe with Roden's suggested spices? Voila! Delicious dinner.

Yeah - not the most appealing picture. I dunno why it looks so... pink.

To create, you need

4 slices bacon

1 onion

1 tomato

cumin, salt, allspice, cayenne, cinnamon, ginger, chili powder

pasta

Chop up the bacon and fry it up on medium heat. Meanwhile, set the water to boil, with salt and get to work chopping the onions. At some point in this process your water will boil, and when it does, add the pasta.

Once the bacon is mostly done, reduce the heat to low, push the bacon to one side and add the onions. Saute a few minutes until soft, using the time to chop up the tomato. Add the tomato, and then the spices - basically, as much cayenne as you want, depending on how much spice you can handle, a large pinch of everything else. Continue cooking over low heat, basically until your pasta is done - as the tomatoes cook, they sort of collapse, and the whole thing becomes a bit more saucy.

It's a really lovely dinner. I know the spices sound totally bizarre, but together, they're really quite amazing, and are wonderfully complemented by the bacon, as are the softer textures of the tomato and onion. It's an incredibly simple meal, but really quite tasty.

Twitter Bacon Thing

2009-11-17T18:14:00.000-08:00

Lauren, who works for a major fast food chain, has asked me to post something about a Bacon competition that's happening on Twitter between November 9th and 20th. So, I guess for a few more days? Huh.

Anyhow, it can be found at @UrBaconMeCrazy (ooooh, I get it now. I was all, who're you calling Bacon, Crazy?) on Twitter. I assume that gives you enough information to find it? I personally kind of despise Twitter. But this apparently allows you to win some money, so I figured hey, you might wanna know about it.

Bacon Nail Art

2009-11-11T15:52:00.000-08:00

Tiana sent me a link to some seriously incredible bacon nail art.

Seriously awesome. It's from a blog that contains a new nail design every day. It is my new favorite blog.

More complaints about bacon

2009-11-02T14:04:00.001-08:00

From SF Weekly, another enough already with the bacon! article.

This one, however, has a pretty weak argument, in that it lists 5 things that are meant to serve as evidence that the bacon craze has gone too far, and all of them sound kind of delicious.

Incidentally, they also have a piece on Top 5 Caffeinated Things that Shouldn't Be that's kind of interesting. I don't eat sunflower seeds myself, but I do love coffee cookies, bloody marys and coffee during Sunday brunch (and Sparks! don't even get me started on how much I love Sparks! and how sad I am that it's banned in multiple states and generally seems to be going the way of the dodo). I keep a thingy (tube? stick?) of Spazzstick in my coat pocket (it tastes delicious) and back in college I bought Water Joe by the CASE. So fie on you SF Weekly, y'all are a bunch of haters who don't know what's good in this world.

Caffeinated soap and/or body wash, however, seems kind of ridiculous to me.

Bacon cook-off winner and enough with the bacon!

2009-10-27T13:36:00.000-07:00

I mentioned the Baconfest Cook-off awhile back - well, it came and went, and nobody hooked me up with a free ticket. But you can read about the winners, and the entries, in the Reader. They sound pretty tasty - nothing too wild, aside from maybe the vanilla bacon ice cream.

Meanwhile David Tamarkin at Time Out Chicago says enough with the bacon already people!

And look - he's got a point. I am (obviously) a person who likes bacon. I enjoy cooking with it, and particularly exploring its versatility and the unexpected joy it can add to other things. I started this blog mostly to post bacon recipes - I'd been thinking of doing a food blog for awhile (and occasionally regret that I didn't) - and then figuring, hey, there's all kinds of weird bacon-related stuff out there, I can totally keep a blog going on this. But yeah, personally - the t-shirts, the stickers, the paraphenelia - it's pretty over-the-top. Unlike Tamarkin, I'm all for bacon fest and discovering new ways to eat bacon, but the accessorizing is kind of ridiculous. Though come to think of it, I do have bacon band-aids, and they're pretty awesome. Also, Tamarkin is incorrect - bacon and chocolate can be a fantastically delicious combination. You don't need to be a bacon lover to appreciate it.

wordle

2009-10-20T20:37:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine just sent me a link to wordle.net, which generates word clouds from any source text you give it based on frequency. I put in the url for this blog and it made a very nice one, I think.

(click on it for the full size)

Bacon tattoo

2009-10-17T08:54:00.000-07:00

From Chicago Now, thanks to Gemma for passing it on.

New link, and Bacon and Halibut at Elate

2009-10-12T11:39:00.000-07:00

First off, I received an email from Michael, author of The Daily Bacon, asking if I could post a link to his blog. So here it is, The Daily Bacon. Bacon recipes, info on bacon sales at grocery chains in Michigan, and lots of Twitter updates.

Secondly, I never really know if this kind of thing is worth posting about*, but I ate some tasty bacon food last night. My boyfriend and I went to Elate, the new restaurant at Chicago's Hotel Felix. We were a bit agog at the prices, but also tired and hungry and unsure what to do, so, well, we stayed and ordered some food. This is why the good lord made credit cards, right?

Sidegripe - I love tapas and small plates. It's a brilliant concept. At a place like Province, where I had a delicious dinner the other night, it's a way to get a lot of different dishes. However, although Province offers a plethora of different small plates, they also do "Bigger" plates, which are basically entree sized, and run you about $12-$17 - entirely reasonable, I think, and you'll get a proper amount of food. Elate, on the other hand, is the kind of small plates place where you need to order at least 6 of them between two people to get a decent meal. Even the "Plates", ie what are presumably the bigger ones, are pretty effin' small.

ANYWAYS.

Amongst other things, we ordered the Halibut, which the menu described rather provocatively as Halibut: chanterelles / favas / mussels / bacon broth.

Which is pretty much what it was, I guess. Oh, except also: / delicious.

The halibut was perfectly cooked, crispy on the outside, tender on the inside. The chanterelles were juicy and a gorgeous earthy compliment to the delicate fish, nicely balanced with the somewhat woody favas and the chewy, salty bits of bacon. The broth was delicate and wonderful - I seriously deliberated drinking the rest out of the dish. The mussels were also done just right, and a wonderful accompaniment to the whole. All in all - very nice, and an intelligent use of bacon. It added a nice bit of saltiness, but didn't overwhelm the other flavors at all.

* I generally imagine that the most useful thing in this blog are the recipes. I figure that posting pictures and descriptions of bacon-related things I've eaten in restaurants might be nice, in that you could easily be a better cook than I, and could perhaps recreate these delicious things I've eaten (if you do, please post a recipe in the comments!). On the other hand, you may not be such a talented chef, and you may also not live in the city of Chicago, in which case, reading a post like this just makes you an angry, bitter human being. So I dunno.

Bacon, Egg and Greens

2009-10-08T17:06:00.000-07:00

That title really doesn't do the elegance of this dish justice, but c'est la vie. There are more important things to discuss. Credit for this amazing creation really goes to my friend Harold, who made it himself and told me about it. Oh my god. It is so delicious. The basic concept is fairly simple, though the execution is somewhat tricky - some greens dressed in a light vinaigrette, topped with crispy pork in some form - be it lardon, pork belly, or bacon - and then crowned with - are you ready for this? - a poached egg. Oh, it is a thing of delicious beauty. I had it as a pre-dinner appetizer, but it would really shine on a brunch menu, I think.

The mechanics:

First, cut 2 strips of bacon in half, and roughly chop another one (or more). Set them to work frying over low heat. Next, in a small pot with high sides, pour in water such that it's at least 3 inches deep, and set that to boiling. Now, take a small bowl and prepare your vinaigrette. This can obviously be however you like to do it - I used about 2 gloops of olive oil, 2 gloops of red wine vinegar, the juice of 1/4 lemon, and some garlic salt. Were I doing it again, I'd actually half the oil and double the lemon juice, but do whatever you like. Whisk merrily with a fork.

Now, your bacon should be pretty close to done (you remembered to flip it, right? I know I didn't tell you, but I figured you'd put that together on your own), so pull out a plate and assemble a pile of greens. Your water is boiling, is it not? Turn it down to a simmer. Now, back to the greens. I used a baby arugula blend, because it's what I had lying around (because I LOVE arugula, like the liberal commie I am). Dump the vinaigrette over it and toss carefully (or you could use a bowl, which would require less care with the tossing, but also a somewhat less exciting presentation). Next, remove the bacon from the pan. Toss the chopped bacon in with the salad and lay the strips on top to form a little bed.

Now! Here comes the hard part - the poaching. This was the first time I did it, but it turned out not to be far less daunting than I had anticipated.

Rinse off your egg (because chicken poop is bad for you) and crack it carefully into a bowl (I just used the one from the vinaigrette, because I don't have a dishwasher. And am environmentally conscious.). Your water should be at a very low simmer. Stir it once and slowly slide the egg in. Let it bathe in there for 2-3 minutes, or until it looks like the whites are basically cooked, then turn the heat off and carefully remove it from the pot with a spatula or slotted spoon. Ease it onto its little bacon bed. Mine actually slid off and refused to move thereafter, but whatevs. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Then, with your fork, lightly scrape the surface of the egg, allowing its tasty little belly to ooze all over your salad.

Oh my gosh. The crisp, slightly sweet bacon, the bitter arugula, the creamy egg yolk, the slightly acidic vinaigrette - it's a symphony in your mouth. It's absolutely incredible. The only thing to add is a slice off good bread to mop up the juices at the end with.

Bacon Cocktails in the Red Eye

2009-09-23T14:21:00.000-07:00

A short article on bacon cocktails in Chicago's Red Eye. I'm not generally a Red Eye reader, but this piece was brought to my attention by my better half, who works at Nacionale 27 with Adam Seger, the mixologist featured in the article. Non-Chicago readers may be excited by the url to purchase Bakon vodka (for $29.99 a bottle), though be forewarned that it doesn't actually contain bacon.

Incidentally, I infused my own bacon vodka ages ago and for some strange reason, haven't tasted it yet. But there'll be a post on that sometime soon, I imagine. I may have infused mine for way too long - Seger apparently only does his for 72 hours. Mine was significantly longer than that. The color of my creation is... unappealing, to say the least. But I'll report back soon.

Baconfest Chicago Pro Bacon Cook-off

2009-09-21T13:49:00.001-07:00

If you're living in Chicago and love Bacon, you might wanna check out the Pro Bacon Cook-Off, part of general Bacon Fest events (though Bacon Fest isn't until April), which will be held at The Publican (and they are definitely worthy hosts - their pork is awesome). It involves 10 chefs competing for best bacon dish. The audience not only gets to watch and enjoy the sweet scent of bacon in the air, but will also receive a tasting portion of each chef's dish, 10 2 oz samples of beer (I wonder if these are official pairings or just, you know, tasty), and a bacon gift bag. Sounds pretty awesome. Tickets are available here.

You may notice that they are not cheap. It's times like this I sort of wish that I had a wealthy benefactor, or wrote this blog in some kind of professional capacity that would involve me being sent off to cover the event with a free ticket. Oh well. I'll cook MY OWN bacon! Yeah! So there!

Bacon-Maple lollipops, again

2009-09-08T12:48:00.000-07:00

As you may or may not recall, I did purchase, sample, and review these lollipops over a year ago. However, awhile back (longer than I'd like to admit, actually), I received a very friendly email from a guy at Lollyphile offering to send me a free box so that I'd review it. I told him I already had, and sent him a link, but he said they were new and improved and he wanted to send me some***. So of course, I said yes, though I have to admit, I was kinda skeptical.

But actually, they DO taste better! There's definitely a more pronounced maple flavor - kind of a maple-y burnt sugar taste. The bacon tastes bacon-ier as well. Definitely a huge improvement over the weird cotton candy flavor they had before. They're actually kinda good now.

Still, my old gripe persists - these are really, really sweet. I'm not a big sweet tooth in the first place, though I do enjoy a good lollipop here and there, but these are intense.

Also, while I appreciate that this is probably because they're made with natural ingredients, they did not hold up to Chicago summer temperatures so well. They were pretty melty when they arrived, and became sort of a gooey mess within 2 days. Though looking at the site now, they seem to have reinvented them all over again - so who knows. Huh. I wonder if they sent me those just to get rid of old stock and spread some goodwill. Um. Well. I hope the new new ones are continuing the trend of improvement!

*** I gotta say, the offers for free stuff still really surprise me. I still find it hard to believe that anyone thinks its worthwhile to give me free stuff just so I'll say something about it. But it's awfully nice. But never you fear, dear reader! My praise cannot be bought with free products, and I will always tell you if I've received something for free or been otherwise asked to mention it, and I refuse to post something that I think is of inferior quality - unless, of course, it's to tell you that it's of inferior quality. But I occasionally get emails from people that are basically like "Hey! I sell something vaguely bacon related at an outrageously inflated price! Wanna advertise for me on your blog, despite the fact that you know nothing about me or my product and would have to pay that outrageous price to learn more?" Uh, no. Sorry. Does that work on anyone?

Tia Linda's Scrambled Eggs

2009-09-05T13:28:00.000-07:00

You want product promo? Here's a product promo. I was strolling through my local grocery this morning and happened by a free sample of Tia Linda's Grilled Salsa. Holy crap y'all. It is delicious.

Definitely not made in New York City.

Upon arriving home I discovered that my assumption that I had chips was incorrect. So I had to come up with another way to get that incredible substance into my belly. I considered a spoon, but that seemed unworthy of its greatness. So I decided to make some eggs.

I don't always put bacon in my scrambled eggs, but I thought the salty porky flavor would compliment the smokiness of the salsa beautifully, and you know what? I was totally right. Aside from the pig, I added half a chopped onion, a handful of sliced bell pepper (more product promo - Trader Joe's sells bags of frozen sliced bell pepper. It's one of the more convenient inventions ever, maybe.) and a diced jalapeno from my garden, just to give it a little kick. I sauteed all that together over medium-low heat for a few minutes, until the bacon was darkened and the vegetables were softened but not overdone, then I cracked two eggs in the bowl and commenced struggling with the lid of the jar. Why in the hell am I having such a hard time with jar lids lately? I banged on it with a knife a few times and thankfully, it came right off. I glooped some into the pan and stirred it, breaking up the yolks and initiating the flavor meld, then let it sit for a minute or so while I made toast. I contemplated adding cheese, but decided it would cover up the other flavors too much, so I settled for sprinkling a little on some of my toast (another reason why toaster ovens are so fantastic).

Voila!

Now, if you are seeking to recreate this at home and you don't live near my grocery store, you're going to run into a big problem, namely, the lack of Tia Linda's salsa. I suspect it doesn't get particularly wide distribution, but the label does include an email address - linda@tialinda.net - so you might try emailing and seeing if you can mail order it? Otherwise, explore your local possibilities. You want a salsa, not a pico de gallo (though that'd probably be tasty too, really) - something with a good smoky flavor. But try emailing Tia Linda. I totally want to give this person more business, because goddamn, it's a good salsa. I've been seeking a good jar of salsa for ages - I've tried Rick Bayliss' Frontera Brand - they're great at the actual restaurant - and numerous options from Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, etc, but none of them gets it right. They verge from uninspired and vaguely preservative tasting to bland and uninteresting to straight up yuck.

Man, I think I need to go back to the store and get some chips.

International Bacon Day

2009-09-03T12:50:00.000-07:00

... is coming up this week. I meant to post about it earlier and forgot - I got an email from Alexa with a link to her International Bacon Day blog. She's keeping track of worldwide festivities and has plenty of recipes, activity ideas, and general enthusiasm. Check her out.

I also received an email from Lindsay, who I suspect is probably an employee of a certain brand of bacon because the product gets mentioned an awful lot in the email. Lindsay thought I might want to embed some videos of Food Network chef Aaron McCargo Jr making some bacon dishes with the aforementioned brand. I'm not jocking anyone's product unless I've tried it and embedded videos irritate me BUT because Lindsay took the time to write me, I did watch the videos and the food is pretty impressive.

He's got one for Bacon, Egg and Cheese Cups and one for Bacon Stuffed French Toast. I've never really understood how stuffed french toast works, actually, so I gotta admit, the video was useful. The Bacon Cups looked incredible. And the videos are mercifully short and to the point, aside from the copious product placement. Might give it a gander - you could even prepare them for your International Bacon Day breakfast.

Bacon Arugula Pasta

2009-08-28T18:51:00.001-07:00

If you find yourself at home on a Friday night working on a dissertation chapter that seems to be going absolutely nowhere while your friends are out in the city enjoying their summer, you might consider taking a break to make yourself a simple, refreshing dinner, one that won't put a strain on a stomach already overtaxed with copious amounts of caffeine. It's quite simple - all you need is some pasta, bacon, arugula, red wine vinegar, lemon and, in the absence of shallots, garlic and onion. (As you may have guessed, this recipe was inspired by the asparagus with bacon vinaigrette I made awhile ago)

Make water in pot, add salt and set on the stove on high heat.

Meanwhile, chop 4 slices of bacon (this is dinner, after all.) and set it in a pan on low heat. As it starts to cook and grease the pan, finely chop 1/4 of an onion you find in the fridge, and 2 cloves of garlic (if you have a shallot or two, do that instead). Add them to the pan, keeping the heat fairly low.

Your water should be boiling by now, so add some pasta to it.

Once the garlic and onion are softened, add a few handfuls of arugula (also known as ROCKET! which is a nice thing to remember when you're thinking about how this meal will help you get this gdamn chapter written). Drizzle some red wine vinegar over it and stir until the arugula is wilted but not mush. Hopefully your pasta has now cooked, so drain it and plop it in the pan with the rest so they can get friendly. Slice a 1/4 wedge off your lemon and squeeze the juice over the whole mess, then transfer it to a plate and enjoy.

Now light yourself a cigarette and get back to work.

Bacon, pesto and roasted red pepper pasta sauce

2009-08-14T13:03:00.000-07:00

I harvested a mass of basil from my garden plot the other day, thinking it'd be a nice, simple summer meal over some pasta. Well, here's the thing - I've been out of town for awhile, and my basil plants have grown rather massive. Pesto is delicious if it's made with tender young leaves, but when it's prepared with sun-parched leaves that are nearly palm sized, it becomes the culinary equivalent of a hunchbacked chain-smoking old lady rather than the nubile young maiden one knows and loves. It should be noted, I suppose, that I neglected to add the pine nuts (I really ought to know better by now, but they always seem so gratuitous to me), and my food processor isn't so nimble these days, so the pesto wasn't as smoothly blended as one might like. Also, I only had a one inch cube of parmesan, so I supplemented the cheese with some handfuls of Kraft's pizzeria blend, which also has has asiago, provolone, mozarella. I think that was a nice touch though. My first move in rejuvenating the hag was to slosh in some roasted red peppers, which indeed made a world of difference. Finally, in a burst of genius, as the pasta was cooking I chopped up and fried a few strips of bacon. The improvement was tremendous - the smoky flavors of the bacon mingle beautifully with the sweetness of the pepper and the garlic in the pesto. I decidedly underestimated the amount of bacon that would be appropriate - I used two strips, but really, one ought to use at least 4. I have amended the recipe below to reflect these findings.

Set some salted water boiling.

In a food processor, combine:

1 cup basil leaves*

1/3 cup parmesan

3 cloves garlic

1/4 jar roasted red peppers

a drizzle of olive oil

some salt

Blend into oblivion.

When the water boils, add pasta of your choice.

Chop and fry 4+ slices bacon.

Combine in bowl and eat.

Bacon poll, bacon world, bacon lip balm, and my friend's awesome blog

2009-08-11T14:32:00.001-07:00

My friend Charlie alerted me to a poll being conducted by Huffington Post about various bacon stuff. They've assembled a slideshow of a series of things made of bacon and ask you to vote on whether it's a good idea or no.

I have to say, a lot of it seems not only silly, but also rather wasteful. I mean, it's obviously temporary - you can drape a bunch of raw bacon on a lamp shade and gleefully declare that you have a bacon lampshade, but I suspect it only lasts long enough to take a photo, because who wants a rancid meat lamp? Stuff like that generally strikes me as kind of ridiculous, unlike bacon martinis or bacon cupcakes, which are probably delicious. Charlie thought that Bacon World would probably be neat to see in real life. I guess artists do kind of get a pass on wasting food if it's for a higher cause.

I was most excited, actually, by the bacon lip balm. That could be pretty awesome. I bet I'd get a lot more kisses with that on my mouth.

In other news, not strictly related to bacon but still kind of neat - my friend Ben recently discovered that he can acquire mussels at $2 a pound, and has embarked on a mission to make 50 different kinds of mussels. He's blogging about it, and if you're into mussels, you should definitely follow his progress - the man knows food. I dunno how much bacon will figure into the picture (he is certainly a big fan of the pork), but there's already one recipe up that involves pancetta, so who knows. Meanwhile, you should definitely tell him about your favorite mussels recipes.

the inventor of bacon and eggs

2009-07-06T07:24:00.000-07:00

Martin informs me that Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! mentioned bacon this week. Roxanne was asked which intellectual came up with bacon and eggs. Peter also explains how they were "invented". It can be found here, under Panel Round Two. It starts at about 2:15. I won't ruin it for you - you have to find out for yourself.

Bacon and spaghetti

2009-07-05T04:27:00.000-07:00

Really, few things in the world are so tasty as bacon and onion fried together. It's one of those elementary dualities, like chocolate and vanilla, bread and butter, Bert and Ernie. It's great on potatoes, pierogi, fried rice, and, if you're living on the cheap - spaghetti.

All you really need is some chopped bacon and chopped onion, fried together. If you're using Irish rashers, you also need some butter in the pan - American bacon provides enough fat of its own. For an extra treat, roll the drained noodles in the pan to collect additional goodness.

If you wanna be _really_ lazy, there's an even simpler option, namely, Dolmio's pre-made sauces. I am generally opposed to pre-made pasta sauces, because they're usually flavorless pap laden with preservatives. What's the point? Just buy a can of tomatoes and spice it up.

Dolmio's smoked bacon and tomato sauce is not so different from my own bacon arabiatta, but it has a more pronounced smoky flavor. And it's more saucy (heh heh), and sometimes you want something properly liquid, you know?

So yes, I approve of Dolmio sauces. At under 2 euro a pop, as well, they're a fantastic deal. My only real beef is that they claim it's 2 servings worth, which is just silly. It's dinner for one. Their other sauces, by the way, are also quite good - but this one was the best.

Pork and Potatoes

2009-06-15T10:25:00.001-07:00

If you should find yourself in Dublin, living on the super cheap in an apartment with a bare kitchen, let me recommend the following dinner, which has the distinct bonus of not requiring any spices other than salt:

Several potatoes, boiled with salt

Several pork sausages, fried

1 rasher, fried

1 tomato, sliced and salted

Irish pork is so tasty.

Bacon at the Publican

2009-06-05T07:47:00.000-07:00

My friend Harold and I hit The Publican for brunch last weekend. The Publican is a fabulous Chicago restaurant that prides itself on its seafood, pork and beer. If you want to eat pig, look no further. I never knew how delicious pig's ears are until I came there.

Brunch at the Publican is a genial affair. The menu is sort of organized around small plates - there are entree sized dishes, but who can resist throwing on a side or two? Certainly not me and Harold - we ordered a somewhat embarrassing amount of food (I say embarrassing because my boyfriend just ran into the guy who waited on us when we had dinner there, and he apparently remembers us mostly for the astonishing quantity of things we managed to not only order, but also consume. I am slowly developing a reputation...). Of course, there was no way to NOT order the side of Publican bacon. And what a thing of beauty it is:

This is no thin crispy slice of breakfast meat. This is a slab of pig, crisped on the outside, chewy and gooey and marvelous on the inside, perfectly blended flavors of smoked and salty and meaty and delicious. Harold actually moaned with pleasure when he took his first bite. Loudly. It was kind of scandalous.

But seriously. While you may complain that this isn't really the bacon you're used to, and not what you expected, and bla bla bla -listen. This isn't the bacon you're used to. This is bacon as it SHOULD be.

bacon-wrapped dates

2009-05-28T13:47:00.000-07:00

My boyfriend and I splurged on a dinner at Mercat a la Planxa, an amazing Chicago tapas restaurant, last night. When we asked our server for her recommendations from the menu, she raved about the Datiles con Almendras - bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with almonds. So we had to give them a try.

So first off, the presentation was gorgeous. The picture obviously doesn't fully do it justice (I took it rather furtively - photographing my food at restaurants makes me feel like a total herb), but the dish materializes in front of you as a lovely glass goblet filled with greens, with the charred delights skewered on toothpicks perching delicately on top. Upon being set on the table, they're then topped off with a cheese sauce of some kind, which makes them look less like crispy critters.

The flavor is, quite simply, fantastic. I don't even like dates, or I thought I didn't, but their sweetness blended beautifully with the smoky bacon flavor, and the almonds were a wonderful nutty complement. The cheese sauce was surprisingly subtle, adding a slight saltiness (the bacon actually wasn't that salty). Texture-wise, too, it was a wonderful combination, the silky creaminess of the cheese sauce, the crumbly bacon, and juicy dates and then the smooth almond kernel. Finished off with a few mouthfuls of crunchy greens, it's just beautiful, and a much lighter dish than you'd expect from the ingredients.

Absolutely delicious - maybe I'll even give dates a try in some other dish. If you happen to find yourself at Mercat a la Planxa, definitely give them a try*.

*While we're at it, let me also make it clear that you should do your damndest to find yourself there - I give the restaurant overall a glowing endorsement. The food was great, the cocktails were great, the wine was great, the service was fantastic, the dining room is lovely and has gorgeous views of Chicago, and while we went hog-wild (as per usual, sigh), it is entirely possible to dine there without blowing inordinate amounts of money.

Other dishes I recommend - the charcuterie sample was delicious, and a really nice way to start the meal. The Arroz con Morels was absolutely divine. A Morel risotto that was like paradise in your mouth, topped with an asparagus salad in lemon oil, with a fresh green crunch that was an incredible complement to the buttery richness of the morels. Also, the sea bass - Baramundi con Apio-Nabo - not for the fish itself, though it was quite tasty, but for the slices of celery root that came with it, which were soaked in a vinaigrette and nearly brought tears of joy to my eyes. Also, the ice cream/sorbet desserts were lovely - the Meyer lemon-vanilla and berry-basil were as delicious as expected, but we were pleasantly surprised by the sweet pea-lavender and rosemary-olive oil ice creams, which were marvelous.

I think this might even make it onto my Top 10 Chicago Restaurants list...

in bacon we trust

2009-05-19T12:58:00.000-07:00

My friend Tara sent me this:

Is it an offer or just general advice?

It sort of speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Bacon Chips Index

2009-05-14T14:24:00.000-07:00

I've reviewed bacon chips on this blog before, but I really had no idea just how many bacon flavored chips/snacks were out there until I saw this.

Baconcyclopedia

2009-05-14T12:44:00.000-07:00

Gwen of MyBadPad.com sent me a link to her Baconcyclopedia. Wow. It really might be the ultimate bacon reference. I'm totally blown away. Seriously. Wow.

Breakfast Greatness

2009-04-25T14:21:00.000-07:00

A long time ago I posted about being a fan of grits and bacon. It's still one of my go-to breakfasts, great for mornings when you have a little extra time, ie, can do something more exciting than cereal or a banana, or cereal with a banana, but not so much time that you can make pancakes. If, however, you have a spare half hour and want to really treat yourself, then, my friends, there's a version 2.0 that you have GOT to try. You start with your grits and bacon, but then, rather than eating it, you involve senor huevo, and oh man, it is awesome. Basically, you take the grits and bacon, pour em' into a baking dish, then make some dents in it, crack an egg into each dent, and bake.

To be specific. For a (admittedly rather large) portion for 1, I used:

2 cups water

1/2 cup grits

a few pinches of salt

3 strips bacon

2 eggs

salt, pepper

To prepare:

Preheat oven to 350.

Put two cups water in small pot on high heat. Chop the bacon and fry it on low heat. When the water starts boiling, add salt and grits. Stir, turn heat to medium low, and simmer until the grits are done to your liking (generally around 5 minutes?). Your bacon oughta be done by then too. Dump both - together with all the bacon grease! - into a baking dish and stir thoroughly. Then use a spoon to make a sort of divot in the grits and gently crack an egg into it. Sprinkle salt and pepper on top. Slide it into the oven and bake approx 15 minutes. One could also, perhaps, go really wild and throw some cheese on there too. Oh behave!

Douse with hot sauce and enjoy.

Pacific Foods White Bean and Bacon Soup from a Can

2009-04-18T16:14:00.000-07:00

I had a bit of oral surgery last weekend (kids - don't bite your nails and chew on pencils. Or rip packages open with your teeth. Because apparently all that "trauma" can wear your teeth away under your gums, where you'll never suspect until one day, boom, nothing left, and then you need a bone graft, and that involves cutting your gums open and stitching them back on, and it's not much fun), so I was eating lots and lots of soup. Rather stupidly, I planned ahead by buying canned soup instead of making a batch of my own and freezing it. I say stupidly, because in the process, I learned that canned soup is pretty gross. All those preservatives leave a distinct trace in the flavor, and the consistency tends to be rather glue-like. But of all the soups I ate, one stood out as distinctly better than the rest - Pacific Foods brand organic Savory White Bean with Smoked Bacon.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the color scheme on the can.

(If you're wondering, some of the others were Amy's Thai Coconut Soup, which I expected to be a somewhat bland Tom Kha Kai, and essentially was, but that was a lot worse than I expected, Wolfgang Puck's Organic Old Fashioned Potato - especially glue like, and unpleasantly slimy, and Campbell's Hearty Beef Barley - their beef broth tastes like murder. That's the only way I can describe it. And I love meat.)

I knew fairly quickly that this soup was different, because when I was heating it up, it actually smelled good. Mostly like bacon, but with some good hearty vegetable notes as well. Also, the consistency was less slimy than the other soups I'd tried, which gave me hope.

Apologies for the horrible lighting, but I was on a lot of painkillers, so cut me a break.

As for the taste - well, it does have a hint of artificial, preservative-y flavor. Not nearly as aggressive as the other canned soups on the market, but it's definitely there. However, the vegetables actually look like a person chopped them instead of a machine. Probably it was just a more clever machine, but still, it's gratifying to eat vegetables that actually look and taste like vegetables. The beans and carrots were firm, not overcooked, and much more flavorful than expected. I was disappointed, however, by the lack of actual pieces of bacon in the soup. This also made me somewhat suspicious, because despite the conspicuous absence of our beloved food, there was a distinct flavor of smoky pork in the broth. It was nice - not overwhelming, and a nice compliment to the beans.

While it wasn't bad, especially as far as canned foods go, more than anything else, it made me want to try my hand at making my own.

Bacon Thermal Lance

2009-04-17T07:52:00.000-07:00

This is so awesome.

"To make an airtight, less-flammable outer casing, I wrapped this fuel core with uncooked prosciutto before attaching one end of it to an oxygen hose. You can't imagine the feeling of triumph when I first saw the telltale signs of burning iron: sparks bursting from the metal, and then a rush of flame out of the other side as I witnessed perhaps the first-ever example of bacon-cut steel. And the lance kept on burning for about a minute."

iPhone Bacon

2009-03-24T14:14:00.000-07:00

There is now a bacon application for iPhones.

Not only does it allow you to experience virtual bacon sizzling on your phone (if only it could somehow produce the smell!) but it will also, apparently, tell you about nearby restaurants that serve bacon, and also features an RSS feed that will tell you the latest bacon-related internet news (I wonder if this site is included. I kind of doubt it, alas.). All that bacon, straight to your iPhone or iPod touch for only $1.99!

EDIT:

I stand corrected. I just received an email, subject line "Oh yes, we do read your site".

Do not f*ck with these people. THEY SEE ALL.

EDIT:

Also, they are very nice, friendly people who treated me to a free copy of the program. Review coming soon - I'm still test-driving it.

Crazy for Flavour, Bacon Salt in Europe

2009-03-17T09:48:00.000-07:00

I received a lovely email this morning from Stu, a bacon enthusiast who is working to bring bacon salt to Europe and the UK. So for those of you living in those oh-so-very deprived nations, craving some pork-free bacon flavor, here you go! Stu is also interested in bringing bacon salt to the Middle East, thinking that people there will appreciate a way to get around the ban on pork. I'm not sure I agree with him on that one. I definitely disagree with his opinion that Middle Eastern food tastes like **** to Westerners, because it happens to be one of my favorite cuisines. And I kind of wish he wouldn't promote and disseminate such harmful stereotypes, because Westerners are already awfully close-minded when it comes to trying foreign foods, and this makes it all the more difficult to find food that hasn't been dulled down to suit a Western palate. But anyways.

Also, check out the blog, Crazy 4 Flavour, which features a lot of bacon salt recipes. Personally, I think I'll be using actual bacon when I give them a try, but whatever floats your boat. The recipes are definitely incredibly delicious looking.

Toad in the Hole

2009-03-13T12:33:00.000-07:00

Ok, ok, so this isn't, strictly speaking, a bacon dish, but it did involve bacon in its creation, and it was seriously fantastic, so I figure why not.

It may seem like a basic concept, poke a hole in a piece of bread and fry an egg in it, but there is ARTISTRY involved. If you don't believe me, check out my first attempt:

This is more like if somebody had tried to extract the toad from its hole using dynamite.

So, the basics are obvious perhaps, but I'm going to give you the step-by-step process that produces a truly beautiful toad in a hole. At least, by my standards.

Step 1: Fry a couple slices of bacon in a pan until crispy. Set aside, leaving (of course!) the glorious fat in the pan.

Step 2: Make a hole in a slice of bread. You want it to be about 2 inches in diameter, I'd say - big enough for the toad to fit in. Otherwise, your yolk'll break and doomy doom will ensue (see exhibit A).

Step 3: Place bread in pan. Brown one side, allowing it to absorb some greasy goodness, then flip it.

Step 4: Crack egg into hole - carefully. Some of the white will spill over the top. It's ok. In fact, you can sort of spread the white over the bread a bit so as to help it cook faster.

Step 5: When the white that spilled over is fully cooked, and the egg generally appears mostly cooked, aside from the filmy layer on the top, grab a spatula, and, using a steady hand, remove the piece of bread from the pan. Then, holding it, carefully put it back in the pan, face down. You get it? Basically, you're flipping it. However, given the toad's fragile nature, it's actually more effective to remove it and flip the pan.

Step 5: Cook for maybe 30 seconds more - if that. What you're going for here is cooked whites, runny yolk. So you want it in there just long enough to cook that filmy top layer, but not longer.

Remove from pan. Arrange bacon on the sides in quasi-artistic fashion. I recommend sprinkling it with hot sauce at this point, but if you're gonna photograph it, do that first. It should look like this:

That's a fine looking toad.

And the inside of the yolk should look like this:

Intro bio assignments never looked this tasty.

A good strategy to approach the creature is to begin by dunking the bacon in the yolk, then picking the shortest side and attacking, later using the remnants of bread to mop off the plate.

Yum.

This is Why You're Fat

2009-03-03T14:45:00.001-08:00

It's not explicitly about bacon, but I suppose it's not surprising to see plenty of bacon inspired entries: This is Why You're Fat is a blog that features creative unhealthy foods. These generally take the form of either deep frying some stuff, or of combining a bunch of unhealthy things into a kind of unholy calorie behemoth. Most of it isn't all that appealing, but some of it does look kind of delicious. Bacon wrapped mozarella? Hamburger crust pizza? Deep fried black pudding? Yummo. But I gotta say, it annoys the hell out of me when people just throw together the most high calorie things they can and deep fry them just for the hell of it. Respect your food man, shit. Don't just throw the bacon on for some token calories. Love the bacon. Savour its fantastic flavors. Just because a lot of delicious things contain a lot of calories, it doesn't mean that a lot of calories are always delicious.

some links

2009-02-28T12:14:00.000-08:00

I know, I know, I've been terrible about updating. I didn't even post anything about Bacon Explosion, which is probably horrible remiss of me, except it seemed like damn near everybody had heard of it anyhow.

A strange thing about this blog is that whenever I neglect it, I suddenly start getting emails from people with links. As though the universe was like NOOOOOO! You have to persevere!!!!

SO!

The editors of what has got to be one of the more fantastic bacon projects out there, Bacon Haikus, sent me a link to their site. Haikus are pretty much always hilarious, except when they're precious and profound, and yeah, it's a great site. One of my favorite haikus, though it violates the laws of form:

The mystery meat

meets man's meat of record

Heart doctors weep out loud.

Moving right along, Aaron sends me a link to his bacon blog, iheartbaconsalt.

Heather writes to say that her book, Bacon, A Love Story will be available soon, and includes a link to her blog, Bacon Unwrapped, and to Bacon Nation, a virtual community whose members are united by their love for croquet.

So thanks to all for dropping me a line and sharing your wonderful bacon projects, not to mention, giving me something to post about. In the meantime, I do have some more bacon recipes to try out in the near future, so hopefully I'll be better about updating soon...

Just add bacon

2009-02-11T10:12:00.000-08:00

Baconlicio.us will add a big slab of bacon to any website.

Just insert it before the url of your intended site - http://bacolicio.us/http://kasiapontificates.blogspot.com for instance - and bam, the screen becomes a good 5 times for interesting.

(Thanks to Katie for the tip)

Bacon Bikini

2009-01-23T07:17:00.000-08:00

Daniel Adams from ingamenow (which, incidentally, if you're into sports, looks like a pretty cool site) sent me an email to let me know about the ultimate tailgate party snack, the bacon bikini.

Recipe not included, unfortunately, but perhaps you can figure it out? Me, I just dunno how you manage to both cook it and keep it pliable enough to shape to the contours of a woman's body. A ham bikini seems easier.

Anyways, these ladies is lookin' good, no doubt, but as a lady myself, and one who very much enjoys both bacon and tailgate parties, I gotta say, it's not a very practical outfit. Not because it's likely to be removed (with teeth) - that's a plus, really - but because it's one of those sexy women's outfits that makes moving around at all pretty much impossible. Maybe some girls don't mind being a still life centerpiece of bacony delight while football is on, but me, I actually wanna watch the game, and ima find it hard to sit still if anything exciting is going on.

Meanwhile though, there's a WHOLE bunch of pictures of these lovely ladies modeling the gear. Don't try to look at these while watching football, they require your full attention.

Bacon Wrapped Scallops

2009-01-10T23:08:00.001-08:00

For our friend Harold's birthday, my friends James and Kelly and I decided to cook him a wonderful dinner. And wonderful it was - we did the scallops as a first course, followed by a mushroom risotto, then a Chilean Sea Bass with a shallot cream sauce. All of it was superb, and the credit should go really to Kelly and James, who have been studying under the tv guidance of Alton Brown and know how to make things both delicious and elegant. The scallops, to my delight, were actually not all that difficult to make, and were fantastically tasty - the bacon is a gorgeous compliment to the delicate scallop flavor.

One needs:

Some large scallops

1 slice bacon per scallop

salt, pepper

lemon juice

Slice each strip of bacon in half lengthwise. Bake (at 350, I think?) for about 10 minutes in the oven, or until the bacon is mostly cooked but still pliable. Meanwhile, using paper towels and some heavy plates, drain as much water off the scallops as you can.

When the bacon is ready, wrap each scallop in the bisected bacon slice, first the meatier one, then the fattier one. Use a toothpick to secure. Salt and pepper the scallops, then put them in a hot frying pan with some oil. Sear them on one side until they're a lovely brown, then carefully turn them over - they stick to the pan a bit, so be sure to protect their structural integrity and delicately pull them up.

Finish cooking them on the other side - I wish I could be more detailed here, but really James was the one doing it, and he cooks by intuition. I'd say it was a couple minutes? But if you do it too long, the scallops will get rubbery. I seem to recall that he spooned some lemon juice over them at the very end.

In any case, they were seriously delicious.

Bacon Apple Pie

2008-12-20T15:47:00.001-08:00

Jane sent along another bit of bacon - a photo of Bacon Apple Pie from Flickr.

I can imagine it being pretty tasty, but you never know until you try, eh?

Bacon and Banana Pepper flatbread pizza

2008-12-14T12:09:00.001-08:00

I'm currently visiting my folks in DC, and last night, we hit the Kennedy Center to see the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in action (conclusion: very modern. Maybe a little too modern.). We decided to grab dinner at the Kennedy Center cafeteria, which is probably the poshest cafeteria ever. And it was there that I first experienced bacon on pizza.

I'm not generally wild about flatbread pizza (Chicago deep dish all the way baby), but this was pretty effin' tasty. The combination of bacon and banana peppers was genius, and nicely offset with some parmesan (the menu claimed it was mozzarella, but I really don't think so). All in all, a tasty flavor experience, and one I intend to repeat and tinker with in my own kitchen sometime.

Bacon Cheese Roll

2008-12-12T21:55:00.000-08:00

This kind of blows my mind.

It's so simple, so elegant... and my god, I'll bet it tastes amazing.

(thanks to Jane for passing it on)

Chicken, Bacon, Wine

2008-12-09T10:38:00.000-08:00

I've long been into the idea of trying to make coque au vin sometime, but it requires... effort. So, that time has not yet come. But I did end up making this chicken dinner that was vaguely in the spirit of coque au vin, in the sense that it involved chicken, bacon, and wine. So it was about as similar to the original as, shall we say, Thumper is to Pepe le Pew. But hey, it was ridiculously simple to make, and very tasty. Especially for something that was basically thrown together from what I had around the kitchen.

It's not the prettiest dinner I've ever made, I know.

One needs:

5 strips bacon

Chicken - I had a bunch of tenderloins, but a breast or two would work too?

2 onions

1 cup red wine (I used the rest of the TJ's zin)

1 cup chicken broth

3 cloves garlic

thyme, oregano, rosemary, salt, pepper

In a large pan that'll hold a cup or two of liquid, fry the bacon. As it cooks, chop up the onion. When the bacon is almost done, pull it out, leaving the grease (of course), and throw in the onion and chicken. Brown the chicken on all sides. As it cooks, crush in the garlic, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Once it's well browned, crumble the bacon into it, and add the wine, chicken broth, and herbs - I added just a bit of rosemary, a shake of oregano, and a hefty shake of thyme. Cover and saute over medium-low heat for approximately 20 minutes, or until the chicken is wholly cooked and most of the liquid has reduced.

I completed it by cooking some egg noodles and throwing them in at the end, but potatoes could work too. Coque au vin it ain't, but it's pretty good anyhow.

Asparagus with Bacon Vinaigrette

2008-12-04T19:37:00.001-08:00

This was quite possibly the most fantastic dinner I have ever made for myself.

On the way home today I stopped off at the store and bought myself a 1.3 pound steak. Because I'm worth it. To do it justice, I decided to try something I've been intrigued by for awhile, namely, a bacon vinaigrette - I figured it'd be gorgeous on asparagus. How very right I was. Combined with a glass of Trader Joe's Reserve 2006 Sonoma County Zinfandel, it's nothing short of bliss. And took a mere 10 minutes to make!

One needs:

a big ol' steak

1/2 bunch of asparagus (I tried the frozen kind for the first time - not as good as fresh, to be sure, but really not bad!)

3 strips of bacon

1 shallot

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1 tablespoon water

garlic salt

lemon pepper

some olive oil

butter

Open the wine and pour yourself a glass.

Preheat the oven to 450. Chop the bacon up fine and fry it. Lay the asparagus out on a baking sheet and drizzle the newly acquired bacon grease over it, reserving the bacon. Stick the asparagus in the oven. As it roasts (approximately 8 minutes), chop the shallot, add it and a splash of olive oil to the bacon. Saute over low heat for a minute or so, then add the vinegar, water, salt and pepper, and stir.

Next, sprinkle salt and pepper over your steak. Melt some butter (and, for a real treat, a spoon or two of bacon grease) in a pan. Sear the steak on both sides, and lay it on a plate.

Pull the asparagus out of the oven, toss with the vinaigrette, add to your plate. Briefly set aside.

Cut a thick slice of good bread and use it to mop up the drippings in the steak pan as an appetizer.

Set your glass and plate down on the table. Give yourself a round of applause for preparing such a tremendous meal. Eat, savoring every wonderful bite. Cut another thick slice of bread and clean off your plate. Lean back, take a sip of wine, and light yourself a cigarette. Could life be any better?