Salad Smackdown: BLT Salad!

When the heat of summer hits and tomato season finally rolls around, one of my favorite summer salads-for-dinner is a big ol' panzanella. Starting with a triumvirate of stale bread, juicy tomatoes—especially those squishy super ripe ones that have been sitting on the counter a little long—and leafy green lettuce, then tossed with any other garden veg you have (cucumber, beans, you name it) and dressing, it's dinner in a bowl! Here contributor Jim Dixon of Real Good Food adds his two cents-worth.

BLT Salad

I ate the first tomatoes from my garden this week, and I've got another week before a lot more will be ripe. But it's officially tomato season in Portland (almost always toward the end of August). Here's one way to add even more tomato-y goodness to your plate. (If you're not growing any, look for the dry-farmed Early Girls at New Seasons; they taste like home-grown tomatoes.)

To make this more than just a tomato salad with bacon, start by toasting the bread in bacon fat. Cook about a quarter pound of good bacon until it's crispy. Set the bacon aside and add a couple of handfuls of cubed bread to the bacon fat. If there's not enough to really coat the bread, add some extra virgin olive oil. Toast the bread on the stovetop or in the oven until it's lightly browned.

Chop a few tomatoes into bite-sized pieces, shred some iceberg lettuce—unfairly maligned but perfect for this; you could use romaine if you can't get past your iceberg prejudice—and crumble the bacon. Stir together about a quarter cup of good mayo, 2 tablespoons each of Katz Gravenstein apple cider vinegar [regular cider vinegar works, too] and extra virgin olive oil, and 3 tablespoons buttermilk. [I added a tablespoon of Dijon mustard just 'cause] Combine everything and toss well with flor de sal and freshly ground black pepper. BLT in a bowl!

See more Salad Smackdown recipes for easy salads with big, bold flavors.

Dinner Desperation Turns into Dinner Delight

In a rare occurence, I knew what we were going to have for dinner. I was going to make one of our go-to favorite dinners, pasta alla carbonara, with some of Dave's freshly made bacon. It's simple matter of boiling water (duh!) frying bacon, stirring up some eggs and a little parmesan, then mixing it all together with whatever pasta was on hand.

And that's where dinner took a sudden left-hand turn.

There was no pasta. I looked around for someone, or something, to blame. Had our son sneaked in a midnight snack with the last box of penne? Had one of the dogs dragged off a package and buried it under the couch cushions? Maybe the cat…but then I remembered I'd made a mental note to write "pasta" on the grocery list but was momentarily, and apparently permanently, distracted by who-knows-what (A glass of wine? A clump of dog hair? A shiny object?) on my way to write it down.

A quick trip to the store crossed my mind, but the grumbling of the family's stomachs made it clear that sooner was going to be preferable to later. So I punted. I turned off the pot of pasta water, grabbed half an onion, chopped it quickly then did a speedy sauté in a sauce pan, added rice, then started ladeling in stock until the rice was just past crunchy.

The idea was to roughly replicate a dish we used to make with rice that called for cooking the rice with onion and stock, then stirring in eggs when the rice was nearly cooked to make a soft, fluffy mass reminiscent of cheesy grits or risotto or…well, dinner.

After stirring in the garlic and bacon, adding the eggs and stirring some more, what came out might not have been our beloved carbonara, but something different and actually worth playing around with some more. Maybe some spring peas, or blanched asparagus pieces? A sprinkling of garden herbs? I'll keep you posted.

Risotto alla Carbonara

1/2 lb. bacon, sliced in 1/4" strips
1 Tbsp. garlic
1/4 c. white wine or dry vermouth
2 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
1/2 c. parmesan, finely grated, plus more for sprinkling at the table
1/2 onion, chopped fine
3 Tbsp. olive oil, or a combination of butter and oil
2 c. arborio or other short-grained white rice
5 c. chicken stock

Fry bacon strips in frying pan until fat is rendered but the bacon is still tender. Add garlic and wine and bring to a brief boil. Remove from heat.

In a small mixing bowl, combine eggs, egg whites and parmesan. Set aside.

In large saucepan melt oil and butter over medium heat. Add onion and sauté till it is translucent. Add rice and sauté briefly, 1-2 min. Add stock one ladel-full at a time, stirring regularly, until rice is al dente, just past the crunchy stage. Remove from heat and add bacon mixture, stirring thoroughly, then the egg mixture. Adjust salt to taste and serve.

Makin' Bacon? Easy Peasy!

People who deny the facts of evolution completely puzzle me. Even putting aside the fossil record, DNA evidence and untold hours of programming on public television (Have you pledged yet?) do these people ever look around them? Stuff is changing all the time, for heaven's sake.

Cured and ready to smoke.

And I'm not even talking about the famous example of the beaks of Darwin's finches on the Galapagos Islands, where "an immigrant first settled on one of the islands [and] it would undoubtedly be exposed to different conditions in the different islands (where) it would have to compete with a different set of organisms. ... Then, natural selection would probably favor different varieties in the different islands."

You don't have to look any further than this blog, which in geologic time has only existed for a millionth of a nanosecond, but it has evolved from a simple food blog with restaurant reviews, farmers’ market reports and recipes to a forum for discussion of issues about our food system, from the fields to our plates. And the recipes have changed, too, as I've learned more and tweaked them to fit the way we're eating now.

In the smoker.

Take Dave's bacon recipe. On the recommendation of a friend, I bought him Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing, considered the primer for those interested in learning about cured meat. In the five years since he cured and smoked his first pork belly, he's adjusted it to his own tastes, to the point where we have a hard time stooping to store-bought because even the most highly-touted examples simply don't measure up.

So if you're at all interested, it's incredibly easy. The only special equipment required is curing salt, large zip-lock plastic bags, a charcoal grill or smoker and a thermometer, then a week for the curing. Seriously, that's it.

Done.

And, of course, Dave's notes, which are here in his own words:

"The bacon recipe is based on the Michael Ruhlman recipe, with a couple of changes. I use half as much kosher salt as the recipe calls for—a quarter cup makes it way too salty. I use Diamond Crystal kosher salt (I understand that Morton’s is a bit different). I use a little more garlic than called for—8 to 10 cloves, maybe. I don’t think I’ve ever made it with the optional thyme. I have made it with the optional juniper berries once or twice, but most of the time not. I usually make 12 or 13 pounds at a time, so I double the recipe as I’ve altered it. I usually have two pieces of belly, each rubbed and placed into the big plastic bags in the fridge on a Saturday or Sunday for smoking the next weekend. I turn them once a day. I put it in my Weber Smokey Mountain smoker, on the grates over a water pan, at a low temperature—I try to keep it about 200-225 degrees—over Kingsford with four or five chunks of soaked maple or cherry wood (not too much or the bacon’ll be too smoky and bitter). I smoke it until it’s about 145 degrees internally, usually about three or four hours."

As this changes—and evolves—I'll keep you posted!

Taking the Cure: Home-Smoked Bacon

There are very few things that draw me like a moth to a flame like the smell of smoked meat. I've been known to wander around the neighborhood, my nose in the air, tracking the smell of cooking meat as it wafts on the breeze until I locate the source of the intoxicating aroma. Even my dogs start looking at me askance as we cross streets willy-nilly, though their puzzlement is likely a fraction of the muttering from other pedestrians I'd occasionally (and even literally) run into.

Fresh pork belly.

Bacon was high on the list of favorite smoked meats, and I'd sampled all kinds from Trader Joe's to Gartner's, and quizzed friends on their favorite sources. Then Dave found a smoker on Craigslist and got a yen to try making it himself, with, yes, lots of encouragement from me. That first batch, one slab weighing five pounds, was a smashing success, earning accolades from family and friends alike. Which, of course, encouraged him to make more, increasing the amount each time.

The experience of working with the smoker, and the resulting briskets, ribs (flat and rolled) and smoked albacore has begun pulling him away from briquets and into the realm of wood. He's now got sources for cherry, apple, hickory, oak and maple, with bags of same stashed alongside the smoker in the garage.

Cured belly ready for the smoker.

Today's batch of bacon—briquets providing the primary heat source, with chunks of dry apple wood soaked in water providing the smoke—was the biggest yet. Two full bellies weighing just shy of twenty pounds total, cured for a week in the fridge (details here) then smoked for a little over three hours. Which resulted in around 16 1/2 lbs. of finished bacon. Once they cool down, we'll slice them into one-pound chunks, then throw them in zip-lock freezer bags, except for a bit we may need for a completely homemade BLT or perhaps some carbonara.

Seriously, if you've been thinking about making your own bacon and you can get your hands on a smoker (I repeat: Craigslist), this is so easy to do and, as long as you follow the directions for the curing, a complete cakewalk. Your family and friends will thank you!

A Tart at Heart

You could say the internet has been a boon to our marriage. And no, I'm not talking about getting drugs from Canada or watching videos of people getting way too familiar with the cameras on their laptops. (As I told our son when he got old enough…like when he was five…to disable any blocking mechanism we might install on the computer, "there are some pictures you just don't want to have in your head.")

What I'm trying to get at is that, at our house, we're information junkies. As a former journalist, Dave is never happier than when he's diving into the deep end of a pool of information on his latest fascination. Because of that he gets a ton of feeds about subjects he's interested in, from bread (Portland-based The Fresh Loaf is a big fave) to beer to cars to barbecue to cooking videos. Then he gets busy in the kitchen. 


Like last weekend. He'd spent most of Saturday making his sourdough bread, and because he absolutely hates throwing out any leftover starter he made sourdough biscuits for breakfast Sunday morning. On a Cooks Illustrated video he'd seen Chris Kimball and one of his lady friends (who seem to do most of the actual cooking, at least from what I've seen) making an onion tart. So with some of the homemade bacon he'd smoked the week before, that became dinner.

And, really, who needs more than that to make a happy marriage?

Bacon Onion Tart

Adapted from Cook's Illustrated.

For the crust:
1 1/4 c. flour
1 Tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 stick chilled butter or margarine, cubed
Ice water

For the filling:
4 oz bacon in 1/4-inch bits.
1 1/2 lbs. yellow or white onions (6 c. when sliced), sliced crosswise 1/4 inch thick)
1 sprig of thyme or 1/2 tsp. dried
Salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup half and half or whole milk
Pepper

To make the crust: Preheat oven to 375°. Spray oil on bottom and sides of quiche or tart pan. Put flour, sugar, salt in processor and pulse twice. Add cubed butter and do about 15 pulses until it looks fine. Add 2 Tbsp. ice water and process. If you can squish it and it holds together, stop. If there are too many flour bits add 1 tsp. water and process again for 5 seconds. Drop walnut-sized chunks into pan and spread evenly, pushing the dough up the sides. You can put plastic wrap on it and spread with hands to get it nice and even. Pinch dough off edges of pan to make sharp edges. Put pan with dough on plate and put into freezer for 30 minutes. Remove from freezer. Spray tinfoil with oil and gently press into pan. Cook's Illustrated advises you fill it with "pie weights"; I put a sheet of heavy-duty aluminum foil over the dough and pressed it into place and it worked just fine. Bake for 30 minutes.

To make the filling: While the crust bakes, cook bacon on medium heat until a little crisp. Save 2 Tbsp. bacon fat; put bacon on paper towel-lined plate to degrease. Put 2 Tbsp. bacon fat into nonstick pan. Get the bacon fat "a little hot." Put onions into bacon fat. Add sprig of thyme and a little salt. Cover and cook 10 minutes on medium heat. You want onions soft, not brown. Remove cover and stir, replace cover and put on low for another 20 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool a little bit.

Check crust. If it's still soft and moist, keep in oven. If not, remove tinfoil or weights and put back in oven 5-10 minutes until golden brown.

Put eggs in mixing bowl. Add half and half and 1/4 tsp. pepper. Whisk together. Add onions and bacon and stir until incorporated. Put into tart. Smooth and make sure onions are uniform throughout. Put into oven and bake 20-25 minutes. Should be cooked through and be firm when jiggled. Cool 10 minutes. Remove from pan.

Pancakes 101

Good cooks become good cooks over time, developing recipes through trial and error, experimenting with ingredients and methods until they finally find the mix that works for them. Contributor Jim Dixon of Real Good Food has done just that with pancakes, and this week he shares two of his favorite recipes with us.

My pancake touchstone is the recipe in my 1943 Joy of Cooking. A couple of eggs, milk, salt and flour, the batter leavened with double acting baking powder. When our boys were young I made it with buttermilk, Nancy’s yogurt and a blend of white and whole wheat flour. We ate them with jam and yogurt mostly, sometimes fake maple syrup. My approach has evolved a bit over the past couple of decades.

Pancakes

For basic pancakes you need three mixing bowls. In one combine about a cup and half of whole wheat flour (or mixture of unbleached white, white whole wheat, etc.) with a teaspoon each of baking powder and salt. Blend well.

Use the other two bowls to separate two eggs. In the bowl with the yolks, blend in about a cup of buttermilk (or milk and yogurt mixed, or just milk). Set the whites aside for a minute.

Make a depression in the flour mix in the dry bowl, pour in the milk blend, and mix gently until combined. It should be fairly thick, but not that it won’t pour, so add a little more milk if necessary, but don’t mix any more than you need to.

Use a manual eggbeater to beat the whites to soft peaks, then gently fold them in to the batter.

Your griddle or skillet should be heated already (low heat, preferably cast iron). Drop spoonfuls of batter onto the griddle; keep them small and the cakes will be easier to manage. Don’t crowd them, either.

Ignore them for about 3-4 minutes, then look to see if the edges are drying out and small bubbles are forming on the top. When the bubbles on top begin to open, gently slide a thin metal spatula under the edge of the first cake. Lift it a bit to make sure it’s brown, then loosen the edges before flipping it over. Flip the rest, cook for another 3-4 minutes, then remove to a warm plate for eating.

After I started getting the incredible corn meal produced by Carol and Anthony Boutard at their Ayers Creek Farm, I made corn cakes by substituting the corn for some of the flour. These are also delicious, especially with the addition of some chopped cooked bacon, or, even better, candied bacon.

But after making some fritters from cooked winter squash and polenta, and liking how the squash blended with the corn, I thought the same combination might work with pancakes. It does.

Winter Squash Corncakes with Bacon

In one bowl, combine the dry ingredients: 1 cup good cornmeal (Ayers Creek, Anson Mills or similar whole grain ground corn), 1/2 cup whole wheat flour, 1 teaspoon each baking soda and salt. Add about a half cup of chopped, cooked bacon.

Separate two eggs. To the yolks, add a cup of cooked winter squash, and a cup of milk (or buttermilk or yogurt or a mix). Blend well, then combine with the dry ingredients. Add more milk if the batter is too thick to pour. Beat the whites to soft peaks and fold in.

Cook as described above. I like to eat these with maple syrup and creme fraiche.

Top photo: For a great topper, check out this recipe for Braised Apples, Maple Syrup and Bourbon.

The Best Bacon Ever

I'd been working on getting Dave to smoke some pork belly for at least a year. It's not that he didn't want to, or was just being intransigent about taking his wife's suggestion. After all, he has a full-time job that supports his family, and any free time has been subsumed by a passion for developing his own sourdough starter, using it to make some fine breads, English muffins and biscuits.

Ready to cure in the fridge.

And that's not to mention the cocktail research, which these days is focused on the subject of bourbons and bitters. But after buying him a couple of books on home charcuterie and sending links to online articles on the subject, I could see his interest shifting to a more active state. Then came the day that he announced he'd ordered five pounds of pork belly from New Seasons and needed to go on a hunt for curing salt.

If we were the types to plan ahead, there are myriad online retailers who carry this special combination of table salt and sodium nitrite or nitrate, dyed pink to distinguish it from other salts since it's apparently quite lethal. But because we subscribe to the last-minute school of life, a little research led us to The Meadow, Mark Bitterman's shrine to NaCl. Fortunately it's also close by, so we could run over and get back while the sourdough Dave was working on that day (I didn't say he gave up his infatuation) finished rising.

A sample of the finished product.

The only problem we ran into was finding a bag that would fit the five-pound slab, since it needed to cure in the fridge for a week. Now, we could have cut it in half and slipped it into two one-gallon bags, but that would have reduced the impressive feat of slapping the whole monster on the grill. So not being able to find the 2-gallon bag called for in the recipe, we used a large size oven bag sold for turkeys.

Other than that it was rubbing the slab with the salt mixture, putting it in the fridge in the duct tape-sealed bag and turning it daily for a week. Smoking took about three hours, and then we cooled it, whacked it up into one pound chunks and put it int the freezer. A sample we fried up on the spot indicated a deeply but not overly smoky belly that one volunteer said was some of the best he's ever had. I'd say it was definitely worth waiting for.

Home-Cured Bacon

Adapted from Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing

• Order five pounds of fresh pork belly from your grocery store, the pork guy at your farmers market, or from a local butcher shop.


• Buy a box of 2-gallon zip-top bags if you don’t have a container big enough to hold the belly or use oven bags meant for turkey.

Mix the following together in a small bowl:
2 oz. (1/4 c. Morton or Diamond Crystal coarse kosher) salt
2 tsp. pink curing salt #1
4 Tbsp. coarsely ground black pepper
4 bay leaves, crumbled
1 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 c. brown sugar, honey or maple syrup
5 cloves garlic, smashed with the flat side of a chef’s knife
2 Tbsp. juniper berries, lightly crushed (optional)
5 to 10 sprigs fresh thyme (optional)




Put the pork belly in the zip-top bag or in an oven bag. Rub the salt and spice mixture all over the belly. Close the bag (if using the oven bag Dave recommends black duct tape for the aesthetics) and stick it in the refrigerator for seven days (get your hands in there and give the spices another good rubbing around midway through). After seven days, take it out of the fridge, rinse off all the seasonings under cold water and pat it dry.

For cooking in the oven:
Put it on a sheet tray and put it in the oven (put it on a rack on a sheet tray if you have one) and turn the oven on to 200°. (if you want to preheat the oven, that’s fine, too). Leave it in the oven for 90 minutes (or, if you want to measure the internal temperature, until it reaches 150 degrees F.). Let it cool, cut it into usable chunks (we did approx. 1-lb. chunks) and refrigerate or freeze it until you’re ready to cook it.

For cooking in a smoker:
Build a fire from charcoal or hickory chunks. When the temperature inside the smoker reaches 125-150°, put the pork belly on the top rack. Maintain the 125-150° temperature inside the smoker for approximately 3-3 1/2 hrs. or until the internal temperature of the belly reaches 150°. Remove and cool. Slice into usable chunks and refrigerate or freeze.

The Things I Don't Know

I wish there was someone else to blame, I really do. Three-year-olds get to point their fingers with impunity as do prominent politicians (remember Sen. Larry Craig?) and corporate executives (Enron, Lehman Brothers, etc., etc.).

So I guess I'll just have to plead ignorance, hang my head in embarrassment and shame and admit that all these years I've been tossing out corn cobs after scraping off the golden sweetness of their kernels. Little did I know that you can take those sheared cobs, submerge them in water, simmer for a half hour or so and…voila!…you'll have the most wonderful stock for risottos, soups and sauces.

I can only plead for mercy and promise, cross my heart (and in my best Scarlett accent), never to let another cob go unused again.

Corn Risotto with Bacon and Basil

3 slices thick-cut bacon, sliced in 1/4" strips
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp. butter or margarine
1/2 yellow onion
2 cloves garlic
2 c. arborio rice
1 c. dry white or rosé wine
2 c. corn kernels
5 c. corn stock
1/3 c. basil, chopped fine
1/2 c. parmesan, plus more for sprinkling
Salt, to taste

In 2 1/2-3 qt. heavy-bottomed sauce pan, cook bacon until its fat is rendered but it is not yet crispy. Add oil and butter and melt. Add onion and garlic and sauté over medium heat till translucent. Add rice and stir for about 30 seconds till grains are hot and coated with oil. Add corn and combine. Add wine and stir till absorbed, adjusting heat so rice doesn't stick. Stirring frequently, add stock one ladle-full at a time, allowing rice to absorb it before adding more. When rice is tender but still slightly al dente, stir in basil and cheese and adjust salt to taste.