As a blogger living in the Pacific Northwest, I’ve arrived.  You cannot be a blogger worth her salt and not make mention of morel mushrooms. It simply isn’t permitted. If you were living in Alba, Italy it would be imperative to wax lyrical about the wonders of truffles. In London you’d have to find a way to do a bang-up write-up of bangers and mash.  My friend in South Korea tells me eating small, live octopus is de rigeur for the truly initiated.  Here in the Northwestern part of the United States, it’s morels.

Fried up, chopped up, loved up or served up just about any way you can imagine, morels are the defining marker of a true (forgive the use of the following word) foodie.  They possess several characteristics that make them tres chic to us rain-addled fleece-covered Washingtonians waddling along slug-stomping in our Wellingtons.  First off, they are elusive and seasonal.  Secondly, they grow wild. Third, you typically have to hike to locate them. Fourth, they taste suspiciously of the terroir from which they hail.  And fifth, when you slice them into two hemispheres, each side looks suspiciously like a kayak. Pacific Northwesterners cannot get enough of kayaks.

I jest, I jest, but truly, I do love morels, and I can’t wait every year, for their season to roll around.  Even if you do have to hunt them in mukluks rather than Manolos.  I picked up a healthy handful at the farmer’s market the other day to serve as an appetizer. With morels, simplicity is key to letting the fertile flavor of the mushroom shine.  That’s why I didn’t want to overcomplicate this dish with frills like excessive sauce or even a starch to lap it up. The morels themselves can act as a firm base to balance the rest of the flavors of the appetizer, and yet still steal the show.  In this instance, I pan-fried them and served each half with a sous vide quail egg, a smattering of Parmigiano Reggiano, some homemade cubed bacon, and a touch of thyme.  It has to be my favorite way to eat morels.  If you do this, be prepared to join the clean plate club in about three seconds flat.

A great dish is more often than not comprised of three elements. This is no exception.  You have a healthy yet creamy vegetable in the asparagus puree. Mix in a staple starch but do it with a seasonal, unique base a la sunchokes. Finish the whole thing with a perfect protein (homemade bacon fits the bill, no?) and you have a plate fit for a prince, king and queen.  If you have your own little prince or princess at home you’ll probably agree that a meal that suits the tastes of a manly king, dainty queen and persnickety prince/princess is not exactly easy to come by. This one succeeds in full purple regalia. 

Sunchokes are underground tubers that form the base of our starch. They are underground in more ways than one, if you catch my drift. You won’t typically see them at the supermarket, instead you’ll have to journey to the farmer’s market.  They grow underground and are otherwise known as Jerusalem artichokes, a name that is completely nonsensical. This name came about because English speakers had a hard time pronouncing girasole, which means sunflower in Italian, and is how Italians refer to these electrifying tubers.  They are full of zingy flavor, so dumplings from them are perhaps a stretch of the imagination, but an elegant one at that. 

It is springtime and for many of us across the Northern Hemisphere that means the return of asparagus in all its splendor (morning after not withstanding).  I can think of no better way to appreciate the muskiness of asparagus than to pair it with smoky bacon and rich heavy cream.  I did just that with this puree, which gets smoky flavor from the bacon matchsticks that get fried first then removed to a towel-lined plate.  The bacon fat acts as the base in which everything else gets cooked, thereby rooting the soup in its rich, outstanding essence.  The cream and bacon matchsticks are icing on the cake as far as I’m concerned, but the good, buttercream kind, not the nasty fondant crap. 

I’ll share with you the recipe for the asparagus puree. The sunchoke gnocchi is more of a cook by feel rather than by rote kind of a thing, but if you’re desperate for that recipe as well, I can probably give you some estimation if you shoot over a comment or an email. 

Asparagus Puree

• 1 bunch asparagus, tips reserved for another use
• 4 oz bacon cut into matchsticks
• 1 large spring onion, roughly chopped
• Garlic powder to taste. 
• 1 tbsp chopped fresh Savory
• ½ tbsb chopped fresh Thyme
• 1 c chicken stock
• 1 c heavy cream
• Salt and pepper to taste

Fry the bacon matchsticks in a 12” nonstick skillet.  Remove to a towel-lined plate and reserve. 

Add the asparagus & onion to the skillet and fry for two minutes, stirring frequently.  Add the garlic powder (I use garlic powder that I smoke and make myself), savory, thyme and chicken stock, lid the frying pan, and simmer for 5 minutes or until the asparagus is tender. 

Add the cream, salt and pepper, heat just to the boiling point, and puree, either with a wand or in your blender or food processor.  Adjust seasonings and enjoy.

Disclaimer: this post will mention sous vide cooking, I know, I know, again.  It will have value for anyone, though, since good garlic powder is something all of us should have in our kitchen arsenal.

The lovely pulverized goodness that inspired this post came to be as a result of mucking and fuddling about with my newish favorite kitchen gadget- the Sous Vide Supreme.  Now that it’s been out for a few months there are plenty of converts and just as many naysayers on their respective bandwagons. All I can say is that it has revolutionized the way I cook, but no more than, say, my food processor or stand mixer. Funny how you don’t hear a bunch of divisive derision on either of those culinary staples. It’s not like by adding in the sous vide machine someone’s taking away your frying pan, blow torch, or dutch oven, it’s just another notch on the belt, people.  Ok, enough of my rant.  On to the garlic powder.

One thing I’ve learned from sous vide that I am now considering with various other cooking methods as well is that different foods are ideally cooked at different temperatures.  You would certainly cook a steak in the sous vide bath at 134°, though if you throw in some onions or garlic to give it extra flavor they won’t cook properly at such a low temperature.  In order to work around this quandary, you have to come up with a way to get the flavor you want without expecting the sous vide bath to do the cooking.  Same goes for lots of other flavor-enhancing ingredients in the sous vide such as wines, vinegars, ginger, some herbs, et cetera.  Often a chef will pre-cook an ingredient, or merely add it via sauce after the meat is done cooking on its own in the sous vide bath.  I really wanted to experiment with post and pre flavor additions in sous vide, however, to see if the slow and low approach lent any depth or detracted in some way.  This is how I came up with the idea of making garlic powder (aka pre-cooked garlic) to add at will to my sous vide concoctions.  I found a great post on the matter on Pablo Escolar’s blog and I decided to shake things up a bit by adding smoke. 

I was smoking some bacon and artichokes that day anyway, (bacon, always a success, artichokes, not so much) so I figured no harm done by throwing the garlic in the smoker and cooking it that way.  After two hours at 200° in the Weber Smoky Mountain, my garlic had taken on a burnt sienna hue and smelled like savory ambrosia.  I also really liked how I could truthfully state I was smoking cloves, but without the nasty smell and lung-hacking most clove-smoking high-schoolers experience.  Talk about umami- the fifth taste was all up in this piece that day.  That’s when the waiting game started.  Regardless whether you decide to make garlic powder by smoking or roasting the garlic first, unless you own a dehydrator you then need to air dry your garlic to the point that you can successfully pulverize it and it turns to powder, not paste.  I air dried my garlic for three weeks before I ground it in the mortar and pestle followed by the blender for good measure.  I didn’t mind much, though, because whenever I wanted to use some I just spirited away a clove or two from amongst the drying bulbs. 

I’ve been experimenting with the finished product for a week now and I couldn’t be happier with the result. The only thing I wish I had done differently is make more of it.  You might heed that if you try it.  For the trouble you go to, you may as well yield a greater quantity than half a cup, which is what I got from five heads of garlic.  In retrospect I probably would do twenty at a time- that way you would only need to repeat the process maybe twice a year.  It is absolutely perfect sealed into the sous vide bag with a grass-fed filet, a touch of fine salt and nothing more.  I considered pre-mixing some salt with the powder, but I kind of like to individually administer both because different foods require different amounts of both garlic and salt.  The smoke really lends a kick to the flavor, by the way.  Any notions I had of it softening the taste of the garlic are gone.  Instead, it intensifies it, much like smoke intensifies pork belly when making bacon whereas pancetta (which is the same thing sans smoke) has a more subtle flavor.

I’m three days into the United Way Hunger Challenge and I have $59.83 left to spend.  Good thing too, since tonight is Jonas’ birthday, and I have to at least make it somewhat special, which led me down an entirely different train of thought.  We agreed to do this challenge despite having several events (like a birthday) this week that would be tricky to work around.  I recall feeling a bit miffed at the beginning of the week, thinking “couldn’t it have been a different week?” and oscillating over whether to actually go through with it. 

Well midway through the challenge I look back at my three-day-ago self with disdain.  There are people who have to scrape together for kids birthdays, spouses anniversaries, holidays and the like on the budget I was given for a week only they have to do it 365 days a year.  What kind of little princess bitch am I that I mumble and moan feeling sorry for my family when we only have to do this for five days? And we are doing it voluntarily at that? And I’m writing about it and documenting it for my blog, which is an even further luxury?  The bright side is that in three short days I’ve learned to be a humbler person, and to appreciate my lot in life.  In fact, if everyone like me were to live on slightly more moderate means there would surely be more to go around, but that’s a different matter entirely. 

Because I’ve come to this realization, a few other key points struck a chord with me.  Namely that in a way this challenge is an unfair game that’s a bit gauche in some respects.  It’s kind of like how un-PC it really is to play cowboys and Indians considering our nation’s history with Native Americans.  Is it really fair for us armchair enthusiasts to look at something like a limited food budget as a fun game to play for a week, throwing in personal challenges like “let’s make it organic,” and “I won’t support chains”? The fact is, I have nearly $60 left and I have 2.5 days to go, so I know I can do it.  The truth of the fact is that while I’ve managed to source many organic ingredients, I’ve deliberately chosen them based on their value, and for a week, sure it’s ok to eat carrots, onions and potatoes, but to do that every single day of every single week of every single year would really suck.  What if you notice a pastry in the window of a coffee shop that practically screams your name, but day after day you know you can’t go in and get it because it would mean forgoing dinner for your family that night?  Forget the pastry, on a budget like this you can’t even so much as afford a coffee at most retailers in Seattle! 

Another big factor that plays into how I can fairly easily conform to this challenge is time.  I certainly don’t come from an affluent family, but I have a baby at home and while he is young, we’ve decided that my day job can take the back burner to his rearing.  This affords me the luxury of time.  Yes, my bacon is cheaper than any you can buy in a store because I make it myself, but I spend hours curing pork belly then smoking it to produce said bacon. Many folks don’t have that kind of time.  Or an extra wine fridge in which to cure the pork belly.  Or a smoker in which to smoke it.  Sure, half my vegetables and all of my herbs come from my outdoor garden and indoor plant windows, but that again takes time, a green(ish) thumb, and space in which to garden.  Is it really fair of me to preach that I can easily feed my family on $90 a week and so everyone else should too when I know for a fact that most people on the planet don’t have the impetus or desire to roll out and cut their own pasta thus making it cheaper in raw materials, but more expensive when it comes to labor and knowledge? 

That being said, I’m going to stop with the item calculations.  Suffice it to say I’m sticking to the budget, eliminating luxuries like side salads, and focusing on one-dish wonders, namely this gnocchi.  It was delicious for all intents and purposes, and really couldn’t be easier.  I cooked my potatoes in the sous vide machine so they would retain their light texture, mixed with flour, parmigiano reggianno and salt.  I then rolled the potato mixture into tubes, cut into individual pieces of gnocchi, and boiled in salted water until risen, et voila.  I tossed together a makeshift sauce of cream, peas and bacon and there you go, all under budget, pretty enough for a birthday dish, and extremely satisfying.  The satisfaction was made even richer with the realization that our fortunate family has all the things that should really matter on a birthday in spades; namely the pleasure of togetherness, good food, a humble abode, and a sense of security. 

This entire exercise brings to mind the “teach a man to fish…” adage.  I have enough experience with food to recognize a good deal in shallots, chevre, or cannellini beans when I see one, and I know how to combine that screaming deal with pantry staples in order to make a cheap and tasty dinner.  It would be worthwhile to lead market walkthroughs for food stamp folk (yes, Seattle farmer’s markets take food stamps) pointing out great bulk buys that are money-saving measures in the end.  Discuss how to use both the beets and their greens, for instance.  This concept could be refined further by leading basic cooking classes to teach simple flavor combinations and hopefully inspire a love for quality food.  I appreciate the United Way for putting forth this challenge.  It’s opened my eyes to the idea that I can make a difference in the milieu I understand most: the world of food.

As many of you know, I’m participating in the United Way Hunger Action challenge this week.  What does this mean? Well, since I have a family of three, in Washington State we would qualify for $18 per day in food stamps.  The goal of the challenge is to try and live on that amount for five full days, so my weekly budget is $90.  Throw in the fact that Wednesday is my husband’s birthday and I’m trying to make it special for him, which usually equates to an off-the-hook feast, and I’ve got quite the challenge.  I also plan to stick to my usual habit of buying mostly organic ingredients if at all possible; let’s see if it can be done.  You may think I’m lucky in that I can count three people yet Bentley is merely a toddler.  Not so, because he knocks back three gallons of milk a week, and at $5.00 a gallon (for organic) that drops my budget down to $75 right off the bat, not to mention the fact that he eats bananas like a monkey on crack- thank god they’re cheap! 

This challenge has forced me to reexamine my shopping habits.  A typical day in the life of Salty Seattle consists of a nice long morning run around Seward Park with Bentley in a jogging stroller or at the gym if it’s crap weather,  followed by a trip to either Pike Place Market or Whole Foods (a necessary evil, I know).  Then we bring home the spoils of our shopping escapades and whip them into something elaborate and often excessive for family and usually several friends.  I often buy goods based on freshness, beauty, rarity, local origin, and organic status.  I do not often buy based on economics.  I also repeat this routine nearly every day of the week, which is a problem in that I don’t tend to plan meals that last a few days so I spend more each day.  First things first, I had to eliminate dinner parties this week.  Thank goodness we’re having the big birthday bash for Jonas on Saturday, as that wouldn’t have worked within the budget at all.  I go a bit crazy without lots of people around, but at $18 a day I have to watch how many mouths I can feed- whew, this is different. 

Luckily I don’t typically spend a lot on breakfast or lunch.  Bentley and I have cereal or oatmeal, then we snack throughout the day on leftovers from the night before or ingredients we’re prepping for dinner.  This week we’ve been keeping to oatmeal with brown sugar, prunes or bananas and pecans, and the cost for the family each day for that is $1.57.  That’s another $7.85 gone for the week, bringing us down to $67.15.  My Monday mission was to make something that would sustain us into Tuesday as well, and lo and behold, it provided lunch on Wednesday too.  I chose pasta e fagioli- Italian pasta and been soup.  It’s fricking fantastic, and not very expensive if you use dried beans, make your own bacon, and make your own pasta too.  I used only three ounces of homemade bacon, which equates to 75 cents, since my pork belly is $4.00 a pound.  I also grow my own herbs in the garden, so I factored in a miniscule amount for seeds and watering, but basically spent less than a quarter on parsley, oregano and bay leaves.  I also make my own salt, so the cost is nominal there.  Onions, celery and garlic are cheap, as are flour and breadcrumbs (leftover from homemade bread) from which I made the pasta.  Anchovies were a little expensive, but I only used three filets, so amortized the cost.  I found a screaming deal on organic 28 oz cans of tomatoes for only 99 cents at Grocery Outlet; in fact they are starting to stock quite a few organics- I will likely continue to use them as a resource. 

When the soup was all said and done I spent 7.32 assembling it, bringing my weekly budget down again to $59.83.  I feel pretty good about this because it fed the three of us for 2.5 days, but was mostly organic, very balanced from a food group perspective, and quite delicious.  Lesson One learned- make in bulk!  I did have to spruce up the soup with side vegetables for health and color, so I used carrot ribbons one day, and homegrown mache lettuce from the garden another. 

It’s now Wednesday, which is Jonas’ birthday.  The plan is potato gnocchi because it’s elegant yet spuds are cheap, even organic ones!  I’m going to splurge big time and make his favorite dessert of chocolate mousse, but I buy my chocolate in bulk 11lb blocks for $65 (since I tend to go through a ton making gelato) and I only need to use 6 oz, so it really equates to only $2.22 in chocolate, though it tastes so much more expensive J I will give a final weekly report in the next blog post, and in the meantime if you’d like to learn more, please visit the United Way website to hear about theYes We Can! Project.  Basically, they are trying to raise $10,000 to help fund a project where they rent out space at a local cannery.  With this cannery space, they are able to preserve food (veggies and other good things) that normally would go bad and distribute them to food banks.  It’s a great project that will help tons of families, will save food, and will help people eat healthier!

I’m on a bit of a pasta kick these days that involves putting the egg on the inside.  A few months back I made a duck egg raviolo appetizer that complemented the fresh white Alba truffle I shaved over it perfectly.  Now that the Alba truffle season is passed and my inner foodie snob will not allow me to substitute domestics or French blacks, I’m forced to pair my eggs with such exotic ingredients as bacon (really going out on an adventurous limb here, I know).  Now when you think bacon, egg and pasta, what comes to mind? You got it, carbonara- the Emilia-Romagna or Lazio- originated comfort food quite popular amongst noi Americani because we sure do love our bacon.  But I can never make it that simple.  No, there always has to be a culinary twist, and in this case I decided to make the eggs quail, the pasta giant ravioli called raviolone, and cook the eggs inside the pasta instead of cracked over the top upon tossing. 

A quail egg is the perfect size to work with to fill a raviolo.  It gently bursts from its mottled shell into the waiting mote of ricotta in a faultless decisive moment.   Cooked al dente in its raviolone package, the yolk oozes forth like a particularly lively poached egg.  After this lengthy Pollyanna intro, you would think everything in my kitchen was coming up sugar and spice and everything nice.  You would be wrong.  You see, I have an 18 month old boy named Bentley Danger.  Why oh why did I give him the middle name Danger? People live up to their names, and in his case it couldn’t be truer.  What is it they say about little boys? Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails? Well we haven’t gotten there yet, but we will.  He’s smart as a whip but so mischievous and curious I can’t fathom what the terrible twos have in store. 

While I was elbow deep rolling out pasta sheets on the island in my kitchen, Bentley decided to open the floor-height wine refrigerator.  The locking mechanism broke last week and Jonas and I have been scratching our heads on how to somehow baby proof the fridge while not adult proofing it at the same time, since we do require ready access.  Bentley is completely aware of this development, and I’ve had to blockade the fridge numerous times in the last week.  Somehow intuitively knowing that I would be engrossed in my pasta mass and therefore unable to retaliate, he managed to lift a bottle out of the fridge (starting early, I know).  The really bad part? He proceeded to drop it whereupon it shattered upon contact with the floor.  I jumped to action and lifted him away from any danger, coating him in a mixture of duck egg and semolina in the process.  I put him in his crib and went back to survey the scene. The really really bad part? It wasn’t just any bottle- it was an ’01 Barbaresco worth a pretty penny in economic value, but even more sentimentally speaking, as we picked it up in Italy during our wedding festivities a few years ago.  I guess you can’t fault the boy for good taste, right?  In any case, all is well now, Jonas managed to repair the lock, and I decided that after smelling all that good wine during the cleanup I needed to open a bottle to finish my pasta and drown my sorrows. 

Back to the pasta.  You could use pancetta or guanciale if you have them on hand, but since I have a big batch of bacon I made over the holidays to go through, I used that.  I like the smoky flavor it imparts, plus homemade ingredients make for lovingly prepared dinners.  It’s also really nice to have slab bacon as you can cut it into thick little cubes that retain some of their mass and provide a nice texture to the final bite.  I’ve got a new pork belly curing right now and may decide to go the pancetta route with it instead of bacon, though my smoker would be disappointed in me since she hasn’t been fired up for a few weeks. 

A super fun and easy way to make ravioli is to roll out long, rectangular sheets, plop multiple dollops along them, cover with another sheet, pinch closed and cut in the shape you most desire.  I opt for the old-school method of pasta making and roll my sheets by hand.  This can get tedious after the fifth or sixth sheet- which is where the wine comes in.  It’s no coincidence that Italy makes both the best pasta and the best wine in the world, now is it?

I like to roll my sheets two at a time, keeping the dough covered with a tea towel to prevent drying.  I then form the raviolone covering the first sheet with the filling then topping with the second sheet and cutting.  After I’ve done that batch I’ll roll out two more sheets, this way each sheet doesn’t become dry, cracked and hard to work with. 

I could blather on all day about this pasta, in fact I’d venture to say it’s among the top three I’ve ever created in my lifetime, but why wax verbose about a taste when what you really should be doing is eating it?  Without further ado I’ll heavily nudge you to consider this recipe, it’s the stuff of food legend.  One day my great-great grandchildren will be making this offering up a toast to me perched on their mantle in my moth-eaten Etro dress and antiquated purple Louboutin heels.  You see, I wish to be stuffed, placed on the mantle, and dressed for dinner at least twice a week so my progeny can get an idea of the personality of crazy old great-grandma Linda.  Don’t let that image taint your perspective on the pasta- try it. You’ll like it.  Maybe even so much you’ll want to be stuffed too, and perched with a lacquered plate of the stuff in your hand for all eternity. 

Quail Egg Ravioli aka Inverted Carbonara

Serves 5 (assuming 3 per person and one extra in case you mess up)

For the pasta:

• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 sprigs thyme leaves, chopped
• ¼ c white wine
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 lb whole milk ricotta
• 1 c grated parmigiano reggiano
• Your favorite semolina-based pasta dough recipe to make 8 sheets 25” long by 5.5” wide
• 16 quail eggs
• 1 egg white whisked with 1 tbsp cold water for egg wash

For the sauce:

• Four pieces of bacon, diced
• 1 tsp Meyer lemon zest
• 2 tbsp Meyer lemon juice
• ½ c white wine
• 2 c heavy cream
• 2 tbsp butter cut into four pieces
• 1 bunch of asparagus cut into 1” pieces and very lightly steamed
• 1 bag organic frozen peas

1.  To make the filling, sautee the garlic and thyme in the butter for 30 seconds, just long enough for them to release their flavor.  Add the white wine, and reduce by half over medium heat.  Remove from heat, add the salt and pepper, and mix with the parmigiano and the ricotta in a medium bowl.  Refrigerate until needed to keep firm. 
2. Working with two sheets at a time, place four dollops about 1.5 tbsp each of ricotta mixture in equal distances along one sheet of pasta.  Make a depression in each dollop large enough to contain one quail egg, though it’s ok if a bit of white spills over as it will help with cohesion.  Crack four quail eggs into each depression.  Wash the edges and between the dollops/eggs with egg white.  Carefully set the second equally-shaped pasta sheet over the first, and pinch together on the edges and between the quail egg dollops.  Cut each sheet into four circles using a 5” cookie cutter or glass.  Place each raviolo on a floured baking sheet and continue process with remaining sheets until you have 16 ravioli.  Let them air dry for an hour or up to three while you’re making the sauce.
3. For the sauce, fry the bacon in a large skillet until fat has rendered and it’s crisp.  Remove the bacon to a paper towel-lined plate, but keep as much grease in the pan as possible.  Add the zest, juice and white wine to the pan.  Reduce the wine by half over medium low heat.  Add the cream and bring almost to the point of simmer, stirring constantly.  Add the butter one piece at a time, stirring to fully incorporate.  Adjust seasonings with salt and pepper, and keep warm over very low heat.  Add the peas and asparagus 5 minutes before you plan to drizzle the sauce over the ravioli. 
4. To cook the ravioli set a stockpot over high heat.  Add salt and a touch of olive oil.  When it boils, add three ravioli at a time and cook for four minutes.  Remove with a slotted spoon and repeat with remaining ravioli.  Serve drizzled with sauce and with passed parmigiano for the table. 

Note: these pasta cook three at a time, and it’s best not to let them get cold, so you can either serve people in increments with everyone getting a first round, second round then third round, or you can serve one person at a time.  You can keep them in a low oven to keep warm if you like, but your quail egg yolk may harden too much this way.  Also, four minutes is an average of what my 5 tasters preferred; much like poached eggs, some preferred them less cooked, some more.  I would say you could range between 3 minutes 30 seconds and 4 minutes 30 seconds fairly safely, but you will want to set an accurate timer regardless so you may gauge your taste preferences accordingly.

 

How many reinventions can the classic BLT sandwich undergo? This version, while not your typical rendition, certainly packs a punch in the department of deliciousness.  My new favorite thing is blind gelato tastings; it’s amazing the flavors people think they’re eating, and when you break down and tell them the actual taste, the look on their faces tends to be photo-worthy.   With the BLT redux I did everything I could to make it obvious what we were eating.  The hardest part was the bread.  I finally settled upon shortbread cookies cut into squares and dipped in chocolate around the edges so as to resemble crust.  The color of each flavor turned out remarkably akin to their natural-state counterparts, yes, the frozen BLT is something to behold. 

The inspiration for the frozen BLT is threefold.  I just finished curing and smoking my first-ever batch of homemade bacon, thanks to Michael Ruhlman.  When I think of him, I think of his BLT challenge, something I did not participate in mere months ago as I had still not come around to eating pork products at the time.  I’ve always viewed pork as the final frontier, having gone from a complete vegetarian to one who eats meat occasionally in the last few years.  Only recently did I get to the point where I included pork in the acceptable category, and when I embrace something, I like to do so wholeheartedly. 

I twittered about my homemade bacon, soliciting recommendations on the highest and best use for it, and the mastermind behind the beautiful blog Vegetable Matter suggested bacon gelato.  Leave it to a vegetarian to come up with a great use for meat!  One thing led to another and I soon found myself poring over David Lebovitz’ Perfect Scoop- the bible of frozen desserts.  He inspired me to go the maple bacon route, however I deviated quite a bit from his recipe, most notably using maple sugar as my sweetener which is soooo delightful I’m tempted to use it in all gelato hereto forth. 

My jumbled mind kept ruminating on all these thoughts and like a slot machine spinning its three wheels for a perfect jackpot, the BLT idea pinged to the forefront.  Initially I planned to make all three flavors into gelato, but I started pondering the quandary of the lettuce, and eventually decided because of the high water content, it would have to be a sorbet instead.  Since I went down that path, I started considering the weight of all my ingredients, and I think you’ll agree with me in considering bacon more appropriate for ice cream than gelato.  It is such a rich, deep flavor first off, so the creaminess of ice cream should hold up to it better.  It is also incredibly American, in that regard ice cream is apropos also.  The tomato has a gentleness that gelato is perfect for, and while cream might overwhelm it and bring it into the tomato soup realm, just water a la sorbet would be a touch too light for my sandwich style dessert. 

The hardest part for me is keeping my mouth shut during dinner when all I want to do is bust out dessert straightaway and gets everyone’s honest take on the wild new concoction of the week.  When the time finally came to serve it up, Jonas and I snuck away into the kitchen and plated away like mad elves.  I quickly brought out dessert, trying to have everyone taste at the same time so that no one could unduly influence another’s opinions with preconceptions.  The bacon was pretty easy to guess; I had cut my candied bacon strips into small chunks, but not so small that they were unrecognizable.  The tomato and lettuce proved completely unrecognizable.  People thought grass, pea, bean, even mint (!) for the lettuce, which I found highly interesting. 

I suggested that my guests start thinking about the plate as a whole, asking what the shortbread cookies resembled, urging them to go in the right direction.  It was not until I outright gave the “sandwich” clue that someone finally guessed the infamous BLT.  I personally was a little nonplussed with the lettuce flavor, but once it was revealed, everyone was shocked by how much they liked it given what it was.  I’m going to leave you with the recipe for the real standout of the evening, the bacon ice cream.  I mean, how wrong can it be to combine two of the greatest things on earth into one, right? Enjoy.

Bacon Maple Ice Cream a la Awesome

For the bacon

• 5 strips of thick cut maple (or sorghum in our case) bacon
• 2-3 tbsp maple sugar

For the ice cream custard:

• 3 tbsp butter
• 2/3 c maple sugar
• 1.5 c whole milk (preferably raw)
• 1.5 c heavy cream (add cream to milk and stir to combine)
• 5 duck egg yolks (or 6 if using chicken eggs)
• ½ tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp bourbon such as Maker’s Mark

1. To candy the bacon, preheat the oven to 400F (200C).
2. Lay the strips of bacon on a baking sheet lined with a silicone mat or aluminum foil, shiny side down.
3. Sprinkle maple sugar evenly over each strip of bacon.
4. Bake for 12-16 minutes, turning once halfway through baking to encourage even sugar distribution.  Set on a wire rack to cool.
5. Once crisp and cool, chop into bacon bits.
6. To make the ice cream custard, melt the butter in a heavy, medium-size saucepan. Stir in the maple sugar and 2/3 of the milk/cream mixture. Pour the remaining milk/cream into a bowl set in an ice bath and set a mesh strainer over the top.
7. In a separate bowl, stir together the egg yolks, then gradually add some of the warm sugar mixture to them, whisking the yolks constantly as you pour. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan.
8. Cook over low to moderate heat, constantly stirring and scraping the bottom with a heatproof spatula, until the custard thickens enough to coat the spatula.
9. Strain the custard into the milk/cream, stirring over the ice bath, until cool. Add vanilla and bourbon.
10. Refrigerate the mixture. Once thoroughly chilled, freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions or hand churn using an immersion blender between three freezes over the course of 4 hours, then freeze completely.

Add the bacon bits during the last moment of churning, or stir them in when you remove the ice cream from the machine.

Back in the ‘70’s the question du jour was “Do you fondue?”  If your answer to this simple question was not affirmative I’m told you would be virtually cast away to Gilligan’s Island to live out your days far, far away from Studio 54, Jean Michel Basquiat and all things polyester.  I’m hoping to start a new, globally-sweeping trend now that we’re nearing the bend of 2010 (hard to believe, isn’t it!) by busting out my raclette set and throwing a thoroughly modern type of shindig.  Maybe the catchy slogan will be “Got raclette?”  A thinly veiled attempt to make “Got milk” actually sound appealing.  Yeah, maybe not.  I’m starting to think that universal food trends only come about when you can think of a really good slogan to advertise them, and alas, raclette isn’t exactly the easiest word to throw into a play on words.  Well, let’s move on from my semantic quandary and get down to the meat of the evening (I am such a dork).

If anyone is wondering what I’m going on about and wouldn’t know raclette from Adam, let me explain. Raclette is a Swiss/French cheese and is also the name of the tabletop heated griddle/cooker used to melt said cheese.  You can officially call it a raclette party when you add various bits to the mix such as cornichons, boiled potatoes (I boil my potatoes in bacon grease for the added health benefit-ha ha) and an assortment of meats that you fry up on the griddle as you’re melting your cheese under the heating element. 

Our dear Italian friends Luca and Cristiana were coming to dinner with their new baby Noah so I was really excited to bust out the duck prosciutto I finished curing a few days ago.  I sliced it into paper-thin wafers, lined it up on the raclette platter and set about to adding more funky elements to the meal including the requisite cornichons and bacon-boiled potatoes.  Since my potatoes didn’t quite soak in the last of the bacon grease, I also slathered some gorgeous little baby carrots in the remaining fat and set them out to keep the pickles and prosciutto company.  I had been slow braising Italian sausage all day in a can of Fat Tire along with some onions, and just when the braise was getting good and syrupy I removed the sausages and sliced them into mini-wheels to improve my spread along with some hearty bread. 

If you are thinking that raclette is the healthiest sort of dinner party you could ever hope to have, you are right- all that rich, buttery umami oozing flavor into every bite- nevermind the cheese- and you’re in health heaven.  I hope you were able to ascertain that was written in my sarcastic font, but really, it’s just simple, hearty slow food perfect for a crisp autumn day.  That’s why the powers that be invented LA Fitness, so don’t come crying to me if your equator expands! 

Luca and Cristiana brought over a bottle of prosecco to commence the festivities and we got right to work firing up our dinner.  There is something about inviting guests to dine then making them do the work of cooking for themselves as they eat that is quite satisfying for everyone involved.  We quickly polished off the prosecco and moved on to a Barbaresco which went very nicely with the robust flavors of the duck prosciutto.  I found that heating my prosciutto ever so slightly then serving it on a baguette round with raclette oozing off the edges turned out to be the perfect flavor combination.  The prosciutto curled a bit near the fatty edges and pretty much melted on my tongue- all in all a charcuterie success.  There must have been a magician amongst the four of us adults, as somehow three bottles of wine were suddenly gone before we’d managed to think about dessert; a new baby will often bring out the raging inner wine-drinker in just about anyone.  There is no recipe to accompany this post- get creative and have fun if you decide to host a raclette fete of your own (did I just solve my catchy slogan dilemma?).  Be sure, however, to use high-quality, artisanal and organic when possible ingredients, because the flavors are all so simple and unique that you want each element to pop.