bacon pone

I made this bacon bread once before, but I think it looks a lot prettier this time. I used an enamelled pan, for one thing. My cast iron skillet did a great job on the onions initially, but the iron made the onions turn green by the next day. Very weird looking. Secondly, you simply don't need as much liquid as the recipe calls for. I think I reduced it by about half a cup- I left out the water and used sugar rather than molasses. Over all, it was a big improvement. Third-party taste test says it's a winner.

I do stick with my reccomendation for salad as an accompaniment. That's arugula and roasted squash, with some kind of hard cheese that had no label on it. It's pretty nutty, like a parmesan or asiago, and a little smelly, but that could just be my fridge.

Green Beans

Green beans are really only appealing when they are cooked in one of 2 ways: either barely blanched enough to make them go bright green and then shocked in cold water to stop the cooking, or really, REALLY cooked. This is one option for the latter. Interesting cultural side note: hillbillies in Floyd County, Virginia, and hillbillies in Shandong Province, China, cook their green beans in exactly the same way. Here's how they do it-

Get a mess of green beans, an onion, and a good sized bit of bacon. Cut up the bacon and onions, put them in a pot with the beans and enough water to about half-cover the lot. Bring the pot to a boil. Cover it, reduce it to a simmer and add a few pinches of salt. If you want, you can put in a little bit of pepper. Stir it every once in a while, but mostly just leave the pot to simmer until the beans have nearly dried out, and you can almost hear them sizzling on the bottom of the pot. Take them off the heat, leave them to cool for a minute then stir them once to get the flavors well mixed and to take up any brown bits from the pan.

Practical notes: Use really good bacon. I used 2 slices of TJ's to about a pound of beans. Also, taste for salt after about half an hour, they take a good bit. It encourages Maillard reactions. They should take around an hour to cook.

Beans cooked this long develop nutty, roasty flavors that go really well with the smoky and meaty flavor of the bacon, but they retain their characteristic 'beany' taste as well. Also, long cooking makes them very tender, which is enhanced by the bacon fat. They are quite buttery, a satisfying thing to eat in the winter.

If you live in Floyd, you can eat them with biscuits, or rolls, cornbread, mashed potatoes, homemade pickles, and pork chops or chicken if you are at all reasonably prosperous. If you live in Shandong,  you can eat them with rolls, possibly  boiled potatoes, homemade pickles, and pork chops if you can afford it. But if you haven't got any of those things on hand, don't let that stop you from eating green beans. Really, there isn't anything they don't go with. I get creeped out by cooking raw meat in my own apartment, (the packaging is nasty) so I ate mine with a cup of tea and some gingerbread.

Special Dethklok episode

I made a gingerbread house. Most of youse have already seen it. But I am really pretty geeked about the thing, or maybe it's just sugar overload. I hadn't planned on eating it, but the gingerbread is actually so scrumptious that I think it won't last until Christmas. Thanks again to Susan, for hosting a Most Excellent get-together, and the rest of the ladies present, Alaina and Jess and Natalie, for conviviality and silly-ass shit. For the record, whichever recipe made the light-colored, rather soft gingerbread is my favorite, and I want to know what it was. I can hear the roof of my spooky little cookie shack caving in as I type, but who cares? I can't eat it whole.

I took lots of pictures when I got home, and they're up on my flickr photostream, along with a bunch of other things, including a couple extra pictures of Thanksgiving.

If anybody else out there is considering hosting a similar event, my advice is twofold: 1) Dollar Tree, 2) Bacon.

Bacon is Indeed the Answer

I was in a very serious funk of uninspired-by-food, and then this recipe appeared in the paper. I went right out and bought cornmeal and bacon. Here's my version:

Bacon Bread!

1 large red onion- I think it was about a pound
3 (or 4) slices of trader joe's applewood smoked bacon
pinch of salt

1 cup cornmeal
1 cup AP flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

1 cup greek yogurt
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons molasses
2 eggs

Pre-heat the oven to 350. Use a heavy, oven-safe skillet about 9" across. Fry the bacon until it's crispy, and remove from the pan. Slice the onion no more than 1/4 inch thick. Fry the onions in the bacon fat until the are very soft and have lost about 90% of their volume. A pinch of salt in the pan helps with this, besides keeping the onions from being one dimensionally sweet from the caramelization. When the onions are about done, Chop up the bacon. Mix all the dry ingredients and the bacon bits in a large bowl, put all the wet ingredients in a small bowl and whisk them together, then pour the wet into the dry and stir to combine. It doesn't need a lot of mixing. Pour the batter over the onions in the pan, and bake for about 35-40 minutes. Let the bread cool for 5 or 10 minutes and invert onto a plate.

My thoughts: NOM NOM!

Other than that, I got the batter a bit too moist. This is probably because I both under-measured the flour a trifle, and because I subbed molasses for the sugar in the original recipe. Next time (and there will be one, never fear!) I'll make the batter a little more stiff. This may cut my cooking time down some. I am starting to think, though, that my oven thermostat is a little cool. Every time I try a new recipe, the cooking time is way longer than recommended. Lastly, be aware that this bread has the same atomic weight as plutonium. Eat it with lots of fresh greens dressed with a splash of good vinegar.

Egg Buns!!!

I've been thinking about this for months. Brioche rolls with an egg baked inside, plus bacon cheese & chives. The concept is good, but my egg installation technique is a little faulty. I think I need to use a slightly less delicate dough, to offset the added moisture of the egg in the roll. Also, as you can see from the picture,the amount of roll to egg and cheese is pretty disproportionate.

I used the same recipe for the bread as I used back in February to make king cake, minus the spices & vanilla. Once the dough was made, I cut it up into 8 or 9 pieces, flattened out the portions and put them in small bowls so that when I put in the eggs, they wouldn't just run off. Then I sprinkled on some bacon, cheese, and chives, and pinched them closed. I had the oven pre-heated to 400, and the baking sheet heating in there with it. When I'd got about buns assembled, I carefully rolled them out of their bowls onto the hot cookie sheet and baked them for 19 minutes. Which was just about enough time to knead down the other half of the dough and assemble the second batch of rolls.


I was hoping that the dough would insulate the eggs and keep them from overcooking, but as it turns out, the bready part kind of took over. I couldn't get a whole egg to go in there properly, so in the second batch, I just put in the yolks and cheese with about a spoonful of white, but maybe if I used small eggs, the things would turn out a little better. Fortunately, the brioche is a nice tasty recipe, and the roll part was very good with jam.

So, why today? I blame it on IKEA and bad knees. I work all day on Sundays, and lately it seems like every time I do that, I end up wide awake at 4 o'clock in the morning with aching joints. Maybe I just need to buy new shoes, those concrete floors are mighty unyielding.

On the other hand, there is a world of difference between setting the alarm to go off before sunrise, and getting up at 4:15 just because you can. I got to see the crescent moon at five this morning, and had my egg bun for breakfast before 9. Of course, none of it would have happened if I hadn't rolled over and thought "Well, shoot, I forgot to go buy eggs at QFC while they're 99 cents a dozen...I could just go get them now...they are open 24 hours..."

Damn! That's tasty!

Ever seen that stuff at Denny's called "hot bacon dressing"? It's creepy shit. Don't eat it. But once upon a time, it was descended from this: Salad Lyonaise. Remember my Rule of Salad! If it ain't something you'd eat naked, don't put it in! Eat the naked ingredient, I mean. I don't care what you eat without your clothes on, really, it's none of my business.

For each serving-
1 or 2 pieces of good quality bacon. Or pancetta; I had bacon.
a tablespoon minced shallot, or other mild onion
a teaspoon of dijon mustard, either fine or whole grain.
a tablespoon of sherry vinegar.
a poached egg
a little pepper and maybe some olive oil
a handful of bitter mixed greens. I used some bag o somthin-or-other from TJ's, it's got frisee in it.

Have the greens ready in a mixing bowl. Put on a pan of water to simmer for the eggs. Don't forget to salt it a bit.

Cut the bacon up into 1/2 inch pieces and fry them until they're crispy. Bacon can be fattier than pancetta, in either case, once it's rendered out, pour off all but about a teaspoon of fat per serving, and then put the onions in to brown with the bacon. Add enough olive oil to get the onions well coated. Seriously, does it really need bacon fat as well as olive oil?! Oh yeah baby.

Keep the heat turned down low enough that the brown bits in the pan don't become black bits. When the onions are thoroughly done, put the eggs in to poach. In a little bowl, mix up the vinegar and mustard. As soon as the egg yolks have filmed over, get them off the heat and drain them a bit. Quickly throw the vinegar and mustard into the hot bacon pan. The liquid will get all the caramelization off the pan in about 10 seconds. Don't be afraid to throw in a bit more vinegar if you need to. Pour the hot dressing over the greens and toss them up, divide into servings and top each serving with a warm egg.

Everybody gets to add their own pepper, if they want it, then smash the egg into their salad. I licked my plate.

Bacon Peach Galette with Arugula and Other Stuff

This is based on Josh & Annette's giant gallette which they brought to the picnic back in august. Here's Josh's original recipe; I became re-enamored of bacon after buying some to go in my bean milk the other week.



My recipe:
3 small onions, julienned
3 large peaches, cut into slices
4 or 5 pieces of bacon, I used Nieman Ranch dry-cured
1 T mixed rosemary & thyme, minced
pinch of salt
a handful of arugula
about 4 oz. of some type of nutty semi-hard cheese, cut into thin slices. I used a stinky old piece of abondance and a few chips of sheep's-milk gouda. Muenster, pepper jack, ossau-iraty, or some types of mellow blue cheese would also be good picks, as would some good parmesan.

1 recipe of pastry for a 2 crust pie, I used this one, but of course, I used butter rather than shortening.

Have your crust made up before you start the filling. I made mine the night before, which I think I will not do again if I'm not trying to save time. Refrigeration makes the dough harder to deal with. Just my opinion.

A word about the peaches. I had some sort of disappointing ones. If you get some with bitter skins, peel 'em first!

Preheat the oven to 400.

Cook the bacon until it's crispy, then pour off all but about 2 T of fat. Chop the bacon roughly and reserve.

Caramelize the onions in the fat on medium-high heat. Stir sometimes to prevent burning. Browning is good, burning no. A pinch of salt helps, also Josh suggested a pinch of sugar of you want to jazz up the caramelization process. I got pretty good results without the sugar, I imagine it depends on the onions somewhat.

When the onions are mostly transparent with lots of gooey brown stuff, throw in the herbs, bacon and peaches. You don't really want to cook the peaches so much as just get them hot through. When everything is thoroughly hot, check for salt, and remove from heat.

Roll the dough out into a circle about 14 " across. It really helps to roll it on a big sheet of parchment, that gives you something to handle it by when you're trying to get it on and off the baking tray. Or, as I did, use a pastry cloth for rolling, then flop it onto a bit of tinfoil. Pour half the filling onto the crust, lay on a handful of arugula, most of the cheese, the other half the filling, a few more sprigs of arugula and the rest of the cheese. Loosely fold up the crust and slop on an eggwash if you want it to look like the picture.


My pie took a good half hour to cook. I think Josh's times are because he uses a convection oven which will speed things up a lot. I might turn the heat up to 425 or 450 to get it browner at the end.

If you can stand to, let it get cool before serving, so the filling doesn't all just ooze out.

mmmmmmm......