pancetta cups and hollandaise

Last week I took a class on making stocks and sauces. Since I needed an excuse to try my hand at Hollandaise, and Jack was inspired by not martha's bacon cups, we decided to make a decadent Sunday brunch incorporating both.

Jack made the pancetta cups by placing two slices of pancetta around the bottom of the cups on a muffin pan, then placing another muffin pan on top to hold them in place. He flipped the contraption over so it sat like a normal muffin pan, then cooked them in a 350ºF oven for about 10 minutes. He then took them out of the oven, carefully removed the top pan, and put the one pan with the cups on it back in the oven, bottoms up, to crisp up...about 5 more minutes. Then, he took the cups off their molds, placed them into muffin pan cups, added one egg to each, and baked them for about 10 minutes, until the egg whites were opaque, but the yolk was still slightly runny.


Meanwhile I was making my hollandaise using the following recipe and procedure:

6 egg yolks
1 Tbsp. water
12 oz. Butter-melted
2-3 tsp. Lemon Juice-fresh squeezed
1/2 tsp. Salt
1/4 tsp. white pepper

Fill a saucepan with 2" of water and bring to a boil. In a mixing bowl (stainless steel is best), stir together egg yolks and water and place over simmering water. Whisk continually until the become pale and ribbon-thick (The consistency of pancake batter). Remove from heat and slowly whisk in the melted butter. Add lemon juice and seasoning.

The Hollandaise turned out well. It was easier than I thought. I get intimidated by sauces, especially these classic ones. But it turned out smooth, silky and delicious. That recipe, though, makes way too much for just 2 people. I knew i should have halfed it, but it was my first hollandaise, and I was afraid that I might be messing with some sort of classical sauce science mojo, so I just followed it as written.

Making the hollandaise gave me such a warm fuzzy feeling, because I've just finished reading Julia Child's book My Life in France for the Kitchn's bookclub. The book is very inspiring, and I am looking forward to following Julia's lead and learn some more classic techniques.

The Bobs are Winners!

For our office post holiday party (the actual holidays are always too busy to plan a party), we had a dip contest. I loved this idea, but I have made very few dips. I didn't know where to start. Googling "dips" led to numerous results, but most were your usual artichoke, taco, nacho and such dips. Which are all good. But this was a contest! I needed something that stood out...something different, but still crowd-pleasing.

I put a plea out to all my non-work friends for any ideas they had. I got some good ideas that I will probably try in the future. But there was one that stood out. It was a suggestion from a friend in Denver, who had had this dip at a restaurant there called the Irish Snug. It's a warm blue cheese dip with garlic and bacon. To me, that sounded like a sure winner.

Dip contest entrants were encouraged to give their dip a fun name. I went with "The Bobs," a reference to Office Space. There were 6 other dips, and it was a fun contest. In the end, it came to a tie between "The Bobs" and "Harry Cheese", which was cream cheese mixed with Harry & David's Pepper & Onion Relish, which, despite the over-easy nature of it, is a really yummy dip. But the tie breaking vote went to the Bobs! Yay!!


Here is the recipe (which I doubled):

The Bobs
(Warm Blue Cheese Dip with Garlic and Bacon)

Yields: 14 servings

7 slices bacon
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup half-and-half
4 ounces blue cheese, crumbled
2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives


1. Place bacon in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium high heat until evenly brown. Remove bacon from skillet, drain on paper towels and crumble.
2. Place garlic in hot bacon grease. Cook and stir until soft, about 1 minute. Remove from heat.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Place cream cheese and half-and-half in a medium bowl. Beat with an electric mixer until blended. Stir in bacon, garlic, blue cheese and chives. Transfer mixture to a medium baking dish.
4. Bake covered in the preheated oven 30 minutes, or until lightly browned.

bacon kettle corn

I said it! BACON. KETTLE. CORN. oh yes. yes indeedy. You see, over the weekend I had some fresh kettle corn from some dude in a parking lot. I always forget how great that stuff is! Not as sweet and sticky as caramel corn..it's crisp and has a bit of salt to it and just enough sweet...gosh darn addicting is what it is.

"I need to figure out how to make this glorious snack," says I. So I consulted the handy booklet that was included with my Whirley Pop and sure enough there was a recipe for "sweet glaze popcorn" which sounded right on.

A little later, I was checking out some links I had saved in regards to different and fun ways to use my bacon. Bacon caramels and pork candy are truly inspired recipes, and I will probably try them both someday. The one that really got me thinking, however, was this bacon popcorn. Sounds good as is, but with those sweet bacon recipes on my mind, along with my urge to make kettle corn, the idea to make bacon kettle corn came naturally.


Basically, I cut some thick slices of the bacon into small bites, fried them until they were crispy, and poured the resulting grease into the popcorn popper. Then I added a little veg oil to supplement it (about 6 or 7 tablespoons of oil all-together...drippings and other oil combined), some regular sugar (4 tablespoons), brown sugar (approx. 3 tablespoons) and unpopped popcorn (2/3 cup). I also put the bacon pieces in there, and whirled it until it all popped. Easy!


Wowsers! this was some crispy, salty/sweet goodness!

pork fat salad!

For dinner tonight I took my cue from the first course served to us at the Michael Ruhlman demo at Viking. A simple salad, really, which came together quickly and tasted awesome. A bed of “baby arugula blend” which actually contained mostly baby spinach (that’s how they getcha!), topped with Gorgonzola cheese, lardons made with my bacon and shallots sauteed in said lardon drippings, dressed with a bit of olive oil, red wine vinegar and fresh black pepper. See? It told you it was simple. Did I mention it was delicious? ‘Cuz it was!


The lardons were the highlight. I cut bite sized pieces of the bacon, about 1”x1/2”x1/2”, soaked them in warm water while I prepped everything else and changed into my jammies and opened some wine (in other words, about 20 minutes), then fried them up until they were crispy and golden on the outside and nice and chewy/tender on the inside.


I drained off some of the resulting grease, keeping a couple teaspoons worth in the pan. I cooked some thinly sliced shallots in these drippings until they were caramelized, then it was just a matter of putting everything together. Yay! I had it with some warm crusty wheat bread and an inexpensive (but tasty) cab. Everything went swell together.

bacon makin'; the finale

I was so excited about today. You see, today was the day that my bacon finished curing, and I was able to finish it up and taste the results. You guys, I totally made bacon! Crazy! Here's how it went down:


We pulled the cured pork belly out of the fridge and rinsed it off really good.


Then, Jack thought it would be a good idea to cut a little off and fry it up to see how salty it was. It was pretty salty, so we soaked the slab in about 7 or 8 changes of water.


Jack rigged up a gas grill with some aluminum pans filled with soaked hickory and mesquite wood chips.


Only one side of the grill's burners were lit, and the bacon was placed on the cool side. It was left in there to smoke (with some tending to the chips and checking the heat) for about 3 hours.

Here is the final product:





We sliced some and fried it. It was still pretty salty, so we soaked the slices in water for about half an hour before cooking up another batch. that helped greatly, and we had some delicious bacon!



Before attempting any more Charcuterie, we'll take another stab at mastering basic bacon. I think we made the rookie mistake of over salting it. It's that fear of raw meat, you know? It's not a big mistake, as it can be fixed by soaking or blanching. I can't wait to make lardons with it.

Scallops with leftover corn soup & cottage cheese ice cream

Welp, Jack was right! That corn soup made a fan-tabulous sauce for some seared scallops. He also seared some shark, because it looked good. The scallops were the stars, though. Creamy, sweet leftover corn soup, salty, crispy bacon and the scallops made for some serious good eats. Yay for re-working leftovers!!



For dessert, I made some cottage cheese ice cream. I saw the idea on Su Good Eats' blog, via Slashfood. I thought it was brilliant! I had a recipe for ricotta ice cream somewhere, but cottage cheese is so much cheaper and healthier, so I rushed right out and got some.


I used 2% low fat cottage cheese, and didn't bother searching for a no-salt variety. I only added about a teaspoon of oil, rather than Su's tablespoon and a half, because she was using 1% cottage cheese. I also happened to have Absolut Vanill vodka, so I used that as my vodka addition. The result was very very rich and creamy! I put some fresh pears on mine. I think it would have been almost too rich without some kind of fruit. Amazing for something low fat! This will make a perfect base for the strawberry & balsamic vinegar ice cream I've been wanting to make.

Corn soup for the end of summer

Last week, Jack sent me a scan of a recipe he found in a magazine. It was an end of summer soup created by Wolfgang puck. It sounded really yummy, so we made it for dinner last night. The weather has been cool and fall-like, so soup sounded nice...but it still had the summery taste of sweet corn, because we're not quite ready to let go yet. We enjoyed this with unfiltered wheat beer, hot rolls and open windows.

I put my notes in bold type...

Corn and Bacon Soup with Jalapeño Crema

10 medium ears of corn, shucked
3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 oz. lean bacon, finely diced (1/2 cup)
1 celery rib, finely diced
1/2 cup onion, finely diced
1/2 cup yellow bell pepper, finely diced
3 cups whole milk
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
Kosher salt
Pinch Cayenne pepper
1/4 cup sour cream
1 jalapeño, seeded and minced
2 tbsp chopped cilantro, plus cilantro leaves, for garnish
1/2 tsp fresh lemon juice
Freshly ground white pepper

Set box grater in wide, shallow bowl, coarsely grate 6 ears corn to make 2 cups grated corn instead of grating the corn, we but the kernels into the food processor. Cut kernels from remaining 4 ears to make 2 cups of kernels. In large saucepan, heat 1 tbsp live oil. Add bacon, celery, onion, yellow pepper; cover and cook over low heat, stirring a few times until softened, about 10 minutes. Add grated corn, milk, 1 cup heavy cream; bring to boil we used fat free half and half instead of the cream, a substitution we have made in several applications with success. It didn't work out so well for this soup, however, as it kind of separated. We fixed it by adding a little bit of real cream, and blending all of the soup up with a stick blender. Reduce heat to moderately low and simmer, stirring often, until soup is thickened, about 20 minutes. Season with salt and cayenne pepper, keep warm.

In large skillet, heat remaining 2 tbsp olive oil until shimmering. Add corn kernels to skillet; cook over moderately high heat, stirring a few times, until lightly browned, about 7 minutes. Season with salt. Stir cooked corn kernels into soup; keep warm.

To create jalapeño crema, whip remaining 1/2 cup of heavy cream to soft peaks in blender, about 20 seconds I forgot to pick up sour cream at the store, so we just whipped more cream and added more lemon juice. Add sour cream, jalapeño, chopped cilantro, lemon juice, and blend until thick. Season with salt and white pepper. Ladle soup into bowls, top with spoonfuls of jalapeño crema and cilantro leaves; serve at once. Serves 6.



I think we'll be making this again. Next time with perhaps more bacon, and more cayenne. Jack thought it might be better suited as a sauce. Perhaps with seared scallops and a jalapeño oil instead of crema. Yum!

carbonara!

Last night I made Pasta Carbonara Florentine, a recipe from Cooking Light. Here's the recipe (I didn't follow it to the tee...see my notes after the recipe):

Pasta Carbonara Florentine
Ingredients
Cooking spray
1/2 teaspoon salt, divided
1 (6-ounce) package bagged prewashed baby spinach
6 slices center-cut bacon, chopped
1 cup finely chopped onion
2 tablespoons dry white wine
8 ounces uncooked spaghetti
1/2 cup (2 ounces) grated fresh Parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 large egg
1 large egg white
3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Preparation
Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add 1/4 teaspoon salt and spinach; cook 1 minute or until spinach wilts, stirring constantly. Remove spinach from pan; place in a bowl.

Add bacon to pan; cook 3 minutes or until crisp, stirring frequently. Remove bacon from pan, reserving 2 teaspoons drippings in pan; set bacon aside. Add onion to drippings in pan; cook 2 minutes or until tender, stirring frequently. Add wine; cook 1 minute or until liquid is reduced by half. Remove from heat; keep warm.

Cook pasta according to package directions, omitting salt and fat. Drain well, reserving 1 tablespoon cooking liquid. Immediately add pasta and the reserved cooking liquid to onion mixture in skillet. Add spinach and bacon; stir well to combine. Place skillet over low heat.

Combine remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt, cheese, pepper, egg, and egg white, stirring with a whisk. Add to pasta mixture, tossing well to coat. Cook 1 minute. Remove from heat. Sprinkle with parsley. Serve immediately.

Things I did a little differently:
-I sauteed the spinach in garlic and olive oil instead of cooking spray
-I used more than one cup of onion...probably almost 2 cups...I just used the whole onion. I also added 3 cloves of chopped garlic when I cooked the onion. I didn't measure the wine, but since there was more onion, I used a little more wine, too.
-I used more pasta, too. a whole pkg. of whole wheat fettucine.
-I added an extra egg white to make sure the extra pasta/onions got all nice and coated. I may or may not have added more cheese, too...so much for "cooking light"... :)

The verdict? Yummy! Silky and subtle and great with the Feudo Arancio Grillo Sicillia (also the wine I used in the sauce...I'm not a huge white wine drinker but this one will make more appearances this summer, for sure). Next time I'll add a bit more bacon and spinach, I think, but other than that, a good, simple meal.