Bacon Super Post Part 4: Bacon Takedown!

I'm pretty sure I would go to a tent revival if it was advertised by a picture of a sword-swinging, bikini-clad super-chick riding a war pig. As it happened, it wasn't a tent revival but a bacon cooking contest. Not just a bacon contest, a bacon contest at a beer garden in Brooklyn. Describe a better Sunday afternoon, I dare you.

This whole thing is run by Matt Timms, local super-genius who is also the brains behind the Chili Takedown and the Mac N Cheese Takedown, both worthy sister events to the Bacon Takedown. This guy throws one hell of a party.

There was actually a line happening here, with the bacon dishes along the wall to the left and the eaters slowly winding around the room. As much of a line as you can muster among 300 people who're drinking giant German beers.

There were 30 dishes up for grabs, some of them more interesting than others. A few people served home-cured bacon as their entry, but most people used store bought bacon in some sort of recipe. My pictures are shitty, I was trying to hurry down the line while holding a plate with a growing pile of delicacies. It was much, much more important that I not spill anything than that I get good pictures. So I don't have photos of every dish, but there's enough here to get the idea.

This is the dish I voted for, bacon tomato soup. It was a bright, tasty soup with just enough bacon flavor. He served it in small cups with a crouton, a piece of bacon and a bit of scallion in the bottom. I enjoyed most of the dishes that day, but this one stood out. My argument was that it's even harder to re-define a classic than to find a new fusion that works, a principle that I'm still willing to ride on. While many of the other contestants went out of their way to mix bacon with something unexpected, the bacon-tomato soup seemed natural.

Clearly I wasn't the only person who thought so - the tomato soup was second-runner up amongst the judges.

This was the dish that got the vote of my Takedown companion, the lovely Amber. A cheesy-bacon drop biscuit, the Notorious P.I.G. was a respectable vote, and one she was pretty emphatic about. It would have been great with my cup of soup, if I had that kind of patience. Note the awesome Pig-As-Biggie Smalls drawing under the biscuits, a recreation of a famous photo of one of rap's all-time greats. These hipsters are hilarious.

There was also a Bappleberry muffin, bite sized things that were a combination of bacon, apple and cranberry. I didn't get a picture of them. They were okay, but my issue with them was similar to my issue with these: all that bread overwhelming the tasty bacon.

This was probably my personal second place, and the winner of the judge's contest, 'Electric Bacon'. If you click on the picture you can read the guy's sign, a full explanation of the process he went through to make the bacon. First of all, he was one of very few people who cured their own, a move I appreciate. Second, not only did he salt-cure and then smoke the bacon, he added a little maple to round out the salt, dried the meat in a low oven overnight and THEN added a szechuan butter that gave the whole thing a spicy kick. A for effort, and for taste, but with table after table of flavor combinations that I'm not likely to think of myself, I was left a little wanting with just one small slice to eat. I can see how he won the judge's contest though - focus on the centerpiece of the day, up the ante, dispense with frivolity. Good for Electric Bacon dude.

This was one of two bacon-tamale entries that day. I wasn't very impressed with either of them. A tamale is a complicated thing, it's about the dough to an large extent, and these were kind of lifeless. I grew up next door to a master tamale chef though, I haven't bumped into very many people who can top Arnaldo's mom. Adding a little bacon to it doesn't make up for limp masa.

This was a very moist cake with honey, peanut butter and bacon and was absolutely freakin' delicious. I think this one was my personal second-place, sweet and soft with a perfect combination of flavors. The bride and groom bacon people were a nice touch, as was the big pasta pot he apparently cooked the cake in. I still can't figure out how he put the whole thing together in that pot, but a lot of people are smarter than me. He must be one of them.

There were a few other deserts, including a forgettable brownie made with bacon oil, a bacon cupcake that was cuter than it was inventive, and a bacon, apple & caramel cookie that sounds a lot better than it was. It was a good cookie, but there wasn't near enough bacon flavor, and with a name like bacon, apple & caramel cookie, you're really expecting a mind-blower.

These were bacon mini-burgers, served up by a hot chick in an apron with a 50's updo. Besides offering every concievable June Cleaver fantasy, her burgers were very good. They were moist, with bits of bacon mixed into the hamburger meat. Quite good, but not original enough for the competition. There was a similar bacon-sloppy joe mix served on small bits of crusty bread that was also very good, but also not the kind of thing that leaves you wondering how anyone could be smart/stoned enough to think of it.

This is one of two bacon ice cream offerings, both were excellent. I've learned a lot about what is and isn't acceptable in ice cream from this town. The first time I had an olive oil gelatto was a mind expanding event. A few years ago I would have made awful noises at the prospect of eating ice cream with avocado in it, but not now. Thank god for growing out of your pre-concieved notions.

And last but not least, it's a terrible picture but this little cup won the grand prize, the Audience award - Bacon Bourbon ice cream. A deserving winner, plus the guy who made it was about the nicest person you could imagine. He did himself a few favors by handing out cups of his ice cream to people waiting in line - hit 'em early, when they're still anticipating. Not to say that his dish didn't deserve to win on it's own, but a little strategy never hurts.

Below is the recipe for his ice cream, lifted from the blog Not Eating Out in NY.

Mike O’Neill’s Bacon Bourbon Ice Cream

1/2 lb bacon, sliced 1/4″ thick
1 cup brown sugar plus more to coat bacon
3 tablespoons butter
2 3/4 cups half and half
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 egg yolks
1/4 cup “good” Bourbon (Mike used Knob Creek)

Lay the bacon strips on a baking sheet lined with tin foil. Sprinkle enough brown sugar to cover each strip. Bake for 5-7 minutes at 350 degrees until the sugar starts to melt, about 5-7 minutes. Flip bacon slices and drag through the fat/sugar. Sprinkle with more brown sugar and bake for another 7-10 minutes until crisp. Place bacon on a wire rack until cool and chill completely in refrigerator.

In a heavy-bottomed pan, melt the butter over low heat. Add 1 1/2 cups of the half-and-half, 1 cup brown sugar and salt and just bring to a boil. Whisk egg yolks in a separate bowl and add a spoonful of the hot half-and-half mixture while whisking to temper. Repeat process a few more times. Add the egg yolk mixture to the half-and-half mixture in the pot and stir thoroughly. Add the Bourbon, and continue cooking until mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, stirring constantly. Strain into 1 1/4 cups of cold half-and-half. Whisk thoroughly, cover and chill in the refrigerator at least 6-8 hours (or overnight).

Chop the bacon strips into small pieces. Churn into ice cream following your ice cream maker’s direction, and add the bacon in the last minute of churning. Transfer ice cream to an airtight container and freeze a few hours before serving.

God it was good. I left drunk, full of bacon delicacies and quite happy. Thank you Matt Timms, Bacon Takedown super-genius.

Bacon Super Post Part 3: Gas Station Bacon

Bacon is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy -

Benjamin Franklin

never said that


But I digress.

Things to love about the South:

1. For the most part, you know where they stand. They tell you with their T-shirts.
2. The weather is great, if you can avoid August.
3. They have restaurants like Biscuit World, Whataburger and Waffle House EVERYWHERE.
4. A steadfast devotion to pork that is awe-inspiring, from bacon to barbecue.

Example:

I'm driving through Virginia on a balmy March day, belly full of biscuits and sausage gravy, when we pull off the highway at a truck stop. We got lucky, finding a cluttered little independent spot that is still holding it's ground, and still offering local delicacies that the manager of the antiseptic BP up the road could never get his regional boss to sign off on. Then I spotted it, on a table that was being picked over by a keg of a man in a shirt that said 'I Hunt And I Vote': Felt's Genuine Southampton Country Cured Bacon, a solid slab of salted pork belly, skin on, wrapped in a yard of butcher paper and stuffed in a canvas bag.

Might as well have already had my name on it.

Weezy with my bacon bag once I got it safely North of the Mason-Dixon.

I asked the lady behind the counter a number of questions, starting with what I thought was the most obvious - is there really bacon in this bag? The look on her face told me that was apparently the dumbest available question, but she answered nicely anyway.

She then went on to tell me that she buys Felt's brand bacon all the time and suggested I boil it in a little water first to leach out some of the salt. I took this as a good sign, because it's the first thing I suggest to people when I give away a batch of my home cured belly. Second she suggested I add a little vegetable oil to the pan before I cook it. Deep frying my bacon in a second type of oil seemed like overkill, but she warned that I wouldn't be able to cut the slices very thin. The higher smoking point of the cooking oil vs. the bacon oil would cut down on the foggy kitchen that comes with the time it takes to cook thick slabs of this stuff. Sage advice, it turned out.

Old School Stylee, Skin On!

Cutting bacon takes concentration

And a serrated knife

This is professional grade stuff, not for burgers and not for the weak of heart. The first thing I did was put a few half-slices in boiling water, taking them out at different times to figure out the right salt level. It was good to eat, but too fatty to have much at one sitting.

It was too much to use as a side, so I tried it in a few dishes as a garnish, including a salad nicoise and a green bean dish with onions and mustard seeds. Both good, but the chunks of bacon fat were unpleasant in the middle of otherwise crunchy, green dishes. The meat was too salty, even boiled. The nicoise didn't need any more salt and it stole some of the thunder from the mustard in the green beans.

For the solution, I went to the man who introduced me to the term lardon, John Thorne. Sure enough, beginning of the book Serious Pig, a number of recipes for beans that pretty much all include the use of salt pork. His plans usually call for slow cooking the beans for hours in a hot hole in the ground while you go off into the woods and chop trees for a living, giving the pork fat plenty of time to melt down and become part of the dish. Eureka.

Thorne's bean fetish is based on how they do it in Maine, a place where people apparently argue about types of beans the way my friends do whiskeys. That's part of his slow cook bean hole thing - these recipes originated with loggers who would put the beans on in the morning to eat for dinner when they got back to camp. Suits me.

I was also reminded of why I like Thorne so much while re-reading the bean section. He goes into long sociological explorations around recipes, placing them in a context that makes the whole thing feel very personal. And goddamn he's a good writer.

The recipe we came up with, after much trial and error, is well within spitting distance of most other tolerably sweetened versions.
This, however, doesn't really tell the story. Here is a dish where the smallest changes can reflect much tasting...and thinking. Sometimes the perceived wisdom is correct, and sometimes, correct or not, the demands of your palate insist you override that wisdom. One abiding truth regarding Maine baked beans is that a taste for them separates those who eat them from the out-of-staters whose disdain for the dish is evidenced by their lack of interest in putting in the necessary work to get it right. If you want a sure formula, open a can.

Serious Pig, pgs 37-38

Ooh!

I'm quite the fan of baked beans, but I usually think of them as a place to put the rib scraps, so in my mind they're sweet and meaty, the way they're served at barbecue restaurants. What Thorne is talking about is a much different dish. He's making a BEAN dish, focused accents to the flavor of the bean rather than concocting a sugary sauce to cover it.

This is Thorne's recipe, I'll mention my few changes after. He writes these recipes so carefully, it's like he's dressing his last child for kindergarten. Seems like it would be rude to paraphrase.

Down East Baked Beans
(SERVES 4 TO 6)

1 pound (2 cups) Maine yellow-eye beans
(acceptable substitutes: Great Northern or white navy beans)
1/4 pound salt pork
1/2 cup dark, full-flavored molasses
2 tablespoons dark rum
1 teaspoon mustard powder
Salt and pepper to taste

Pick over and presoak the beans as directed. The next day, put the beans and what remains of their soaking liquid into a large pot, adding more water if necessary to ensure that the beans are covered. Bring this to a simmer and, after 15 minutes, check every 5 minutes until a sharp breath will split the skin of a bean. Then drain the beans and return the cooking liquid to the pot. Keep this at a low simmer while preparing the beans for baking. (Maine cooks traditionally discard both the soaking liquid and the parboiling liquid, adding fresh boiling water to the bean pot. We have come to believe that this serves no real purpose while wasting some good bean flavor.)
Preheat the oven to 225°F. Cut the salt pork into bite-sized pieces and pour boiling water over to cover well. Drain after several minutes, discarding the liquid. Mix the salt-pork pieces into the prepared beans and pour them together into a 2-quart bean pot. Stir in the molasses and rum. Dissolve the mustard powder in a bit of water and mix this in well. Add seasoning to taste - starting with about 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Pour over just enough of the simmering bean liquid to be visible through the beans. Cover the pot and put it in the oven. Bake the beans for 5 hours, tasting occasionally, noting texture and seasoning and adding more of the remaining bean liquid - or else water - as necessary. When the beans are soft and succulent, stir them well, uncover, and bake 1/2 hour more to thicken the liquid into sauce.
Serve with coleslaw and brown bread.

These are some serious beans. I love them, and they're not complicated to make. They sound fussy, with the five hour cooking time, but once they're baking they pretty much take care of themselves.

Beans being prepped

Gas station bacon 'trying out'

Bacon with the garlic and onions cooking down in the fat

The prepared beans soaking up a little bacon goodness before adding the water and putting them in the oven. Apparently I cooked apples for some reason the same night. That's not a surprise.

There are a few things I do different. I don't presoak or parboil the beans. I put them on to boil and start checking them every 15 minutes after 1 hour. They're usually ready to go by 2 hours.

The reason I do it this way is because Thorne's method imparts a little too much bean flavor for my taste. I like to catch the accents and keeping all of those starches overwhelms the spices.

I also add onions and garlic and go at least double with the rum and the bacon. And I've been known to replace the mustard with cinnamon every now and then.

I had made this dish a few times before I stumbled on the gas station bacon, but this salty, fatty slab of belly evolved my beans tenfold. The salt pork that he calls for is basically un-sliced bacon, so I had just the stuff I needed. This dish is right for it, because over 5 hours in the oven the fat melted completely and became part of the sauce, leaving little chunks of meat that were the perfect chewy compliment to the soft beans.

Yum. Makes me want a rainy day so I have an excuse to run the oven all day.

Bacon Super Post Part 2: Bacon Vinaigrette

Necessity is the mother of invention, that's the only explanation for how this little gem fell into my lap. Like the Bacon Explosion it was crafted to compliment, it seemed like something I've always eaten, a kitschy kind of thing you break out once a year, like your mom's fondue pot.

But in fact bacon salad dressing came about because I ran out of olive oil. The one thing I wasn't short on that night was bacon grease, and really, is there ever going to be a more appropriate time?

Bacon Vinaigrette

I didn't make much in the way of sides to go with the Bacon Explosion, some bread and a salad. It was a typical salad, lots of spinach and rough chopped veggies, but I didn't have any salad dressing to speak of. This usually isn't a problem, I love an improvised dressing, but without olive oil my options were limited.

In this case, limited to the delicious.

Ingredients

1 cup of bacon oil
3/4 cup of balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup of diced red onion
2 cloves of garlic, diced
2 tsp white pepper
2 tsp sugar

Put it all in a clean jar and shake until the oil emulsifies, or combines with the vinegar. Apply liberally to salad.

Dressings are easy to make, just shake all the shit up in a jar until it combines. Working with bacon grease is a little tricky though.

First, you don't need any salt, there's plenty in the oil. Second, the dressing is really only good for one use - it has to stay at room temperature and starts to lose it's appeal by the next day.

I went with strong, savory flavors and more vinegar than you would typically use in a dressing, to help balance out the heavy flavor of the grease.

My guests looked a little overwhelmed when I told them about the dressing, but I think my enthusiasm took the day. Everyone agreed, the bacon vinaigrette was better than they expected, and the perfect compliment to the explosion.