Asian Barbecued Chicken Noodle Soup

I made this soup a couple days ago when some friends came over to discuss some food ideas. The pic is a little blurry because I got grease on my lens a few nights prior after making those pizzas in the former post. I did not realize this until taking the soup pics. Oh well.

For this soup I made a stock from chicken leg/thigh quarters, ginger, garlic, onion, carrot, lime leaves and eventually the carcass of a whole chicken which I smoked on the BGE after rubbing heavily with kimchi paste. The meat from that chicken was eventually shredded into this soup and the crispy skin was used as a garnish. So the soup is pretty much that stock, thinly sliced jalapenos, scallions, some flat rice noodles, shredded chicken and a fried egg topped with perilla leaves and chicken skin. Originally i was going to swirl the raw egg into the hot broth like egg-drop soup but my company suggested just putting it fried on top. I know I put fried eggs all over everything but it's good so.. why not?

This was eaten with chopsticks and slurping. Lots of textures going on here so it was pretty fun to eat.

A couple of 'rainy- day' pizzas!

Soooo.... the other day I was talking to Aubrey and I suggested that maybe I should take a day off from cooking and we should just chill out and order pizza. It was raining outside and for a couple of seconds I was just not feeling an 'all-day'cooking'project'. Somewhere in the middle of trying to justify that I decided that I wanted to make it instead. I decided to make 2 pizzas.

1. Pepperoni, Jalapeno, egg yoke, 3 cheese.

2. Charred- Tomatillo , Achiote Barbecued Chicken, Queso Fresco, Cilantro.

The pic above shows the first pizza of the night. I fired up the green egg to make the sauce for the second pizza and decided to use to char the onions for both sauces. The sauce on the red pizza was pretty much a combo of San Marzano tomatoes, Charred yellow onion, Garlic, Vinegar, Sugar and oregano. All this stuff was simmered for about 1 hour and then went into the Vita-Prep. It then went back to the stove-top for some further reduction.

The dough for these pizzas had been slowly doing it's thing in my fridge since about 10am. It was a basic pizza dough with only minor augmentation.

Flour, yeast, Sriracha, sugar, olive oil, water, salt. I don't measure ingredients for pizza dough anymore. It's all about the way it feels. Even yeast is added to water by the pinch. I admit that I often get different results by throwing measurement aside but I enjoy observing such events.

I removed this dough from the fridge about 1 hour before rolling it out. I like to par bake my dough on a stone for about 2 minutes before pulling it out and then adding the toppings. This firms the crust up slightly and makes it much easier to slide the composed pizza onto the oven without spilling toppings all over your stone.

To assemble this pizza I smeared a reasonable amount of sauce over the whole thing, Then added shredded Mozz, Asiago and Parm. Atop that I placed thin slices of very large pepperoni and some jalapeno slices which I pickled earlier in the day with a warm mixture of lime juice and salt. Then I spotted the whole pizza with egg yokes before firing it.

In retrospect, I would have pulled this thing out of the oven 2 minutes before it was done and added those yokes. This way they would have been bleeding all over the place when I cut the pie. Still, they were awesome. A sprinkle of Truffle-Salt on each one made them a moment of bliss each time one was encountered on a slice.

For the Chicken/Tomatillo pizza my Green Egg was a big player. I started with a direct, high-heat fire to put a nice char on the tomatillos and onions. After those were done they came off the grill and went right into the Vita Prep where they were liquefied and then reduced on the stove-top while other ingredients such as lime, sugar, salt and garlic were added to taste.

The chicken was marinated for about 2 hours in a mixture of raw garlic, achiote-paste and beer. I salted it heavily and added some dried citrus zest before putting it on the BGE for about 3 hours at 225 degrees. I decided to turn the leftover marinade into a baste for the chicken so I simmered it for about 20 minutes on the stove-top and added sugar and lime juice to it for balance and "glazability".

The above pic is how the chicken looked as it was resting, just after being removed from the BGE. While the meat was juicy, the real flavor was in the skin. For a shredded chicken pizza I really didn't think the skin had a place on the crust and this made me sad.. So i decided to peel the skin off, place it on a Silpat and crisp it in it's own fat in my oven until it could be crumbled on to the finished product in place of parm or some other aged hard cheese.

I hereby admit to eating most of this skin before it had a chance to reach the pizza.

The final pic: One ugly pizza.

Between the steam fogging my lens and the absolute look of clutter on this cutting board, this pizza was perhaps, the best thing we ate that night. It's ugly as hell but the flavor profiles which were represented within it were awesome.

In the future i may try to turn this concept into some kind of Mexican calzone-type thing. Something deep fried and almost in "Stick" form. I will of course refine and revise until those words ring true. Until then..

Order a pizza and just chill.

Trying to catch summer on a big green lure...

There is plenty of time during the year for fancy refined food. It was a long winter and right now all I want is to have all the windows and doors open. The cross-breeze blowing through my casa carrying the scent of apple-wood smoke along with it. I have been very busy with work and some big changes to both my job and living situation but still I find time between acts to pull together some summer comfort foods.

Below are some pics and details of stuff we have had over the last couple of weeks around here. These things happened on different days of course but were all very fun and tasty!

This was a prime rib-eye which I split with Aubrey over a bottle of Nagual Del Judith. This is a very special wine made by Maynard Keenan of the Caduceus wine company. Apart from having a deep personal meaning to the maker, this wine is not only delicious but somewhat groundbreaking in that these vineyards are in Arizona of all places. This was my first bottle of wine by this maker but I am sure it will not be my last. We will get more into that later.

A little grilled bread and red chard were served along with this steak. Simple, and perfect.

Carnivore? Yea this was another warm evening last week. Grilled green onions, Country style pork ribs, giant sausages and skirt steak.
Bold, meaty goodness.

Burger?

Above: Bacon, avocado, cilantro, sharp provolone, burger with fried egg and Sriracha.

Above: Slow smoked chicken halves with mustard slather and lime-zest-buffalo-sauce glaze. These were later charred under the broiler before serving with grilled zucchini.

Not sure if it's obvious that when I shop super-locally, It's much easier to get meat and poultry than it is to get high quality seasonal veggies. It's true that I have to go out of my way in most cases to find good produce within walking distance of my home but it is out there and I promise to start buying more of it.

I really am quite carnivorous though... Especially when it comes to red wine.

Ribs, Ramps and Taters!

A day off you say?

• 6 hour spare ribs on the Big Green Egg
• Roasted, then twice-fried red potato salad with grilled ramps, bacon, hard boiled egg and blue cheese
• Grilled ramp soup
  

These ribs get dry rubbed with one of my secret spice blends before a 6 hour session at 225 Degrees on the BGE. Normally I baste them with a spray bottle of apple juice but I forgot to pick some up yesterday. Instead I made a mixture of beer, sugar and a little bit of soy sauce which was diluted with water and sprayed onto the ribs every hour or so.

A thinned out version of my barbecue sauce is basted on during the last 45 minutes of cooking. These ribs were so glazed that they did not need any additional sauce when they were eaten.

This is a nice cross section showing the smoke line as well as the very juicy interior of the meat.

For my ramp soup, I cleaned up about a pound of ramps. Cut the leaves off and grilled the white part of the onion. Then I simmered these grilled stalks in some very rich chicken stock that I made a couple of days ago. Eventually I ran this through the Vita-Prep until it was smooth and then finished it with cream and the raw ramp leaves. Once they were nicely wilted I adjusted seasoning and served the soup with crusty bread.

The soup had a beautiful, light, garlicly taste which really only comes from ramps.

I love ramps.

I intend to pickle a ton of them before the season is over. I also intend to make a large batch of ramp kimchi which I think will be very nice during off season!

Deep Fried Pork Rilettes Sammy?

Lengthy marination, pickling and deep frying all played key roles in this Sunday's culinary-triple-stack of yumminess!

• Hoisin marinated grouper. Oyster Mushrooms. Soy butter.
  

• Sandwich: Pork rilettes, pressed, sliced, breaded, fried. Pickled carrot and radish. Cucumber, cilantro-lime mayo. Mint, Basil, cilantro. Toasted bread with paprika butter.

• "Sesame Chicken"
  

The above photo is the grouper. Small pieces of this fish were marinated overnight in hoisin. This had a mild curing affect on the fish but did not dry it out. The fish was pan seared in the same pan as the oyster mushrooms. A dash of soy sauce a ladle of rich, reduced chicken stock were then added to the pan. This had a slight braising affect on both the mushrooms and the fish. Once the stock reduced to almost nothing (about 1 minute) I added dash of soy sauce and a large pad of butter to the pan. The butter rounded out the sharp flavors of the hoisin and soy and just sort of brought the whole thing together. This was a small 3 bite starter.

These sammys were inspired by Vietnamese style sandwiches and after eating them I decided that I could have dropped the other 2 courses from this dinner and just made bigger sammys. They were really good. I want one right now actually.

Aubrey was playing with her camera last night.
:)

Click on any of these pics to see larger versions!

It seems like every time I make this chicken dish the glaze is different. This time it was May Ploy sweet chili sauce, garlic, ginger, chicken stock, hoisin, soy, fish sauce, lime juice, sriracha and sugar. Overall it was bright and spicy. To balance that I like to drizzle the finished plate with good honey before garnishing with carrot and scallion.

The Chicken And The Egg

This was a fun, inexpensive Sunday dinner. These are half chickens which were partially grilled and smoked on the Big Green Egg, then finished under the broiler. These guys were marinated for 48 hours in a fiery paste that I made in the Vita-Prep. It was garlic, ginger, sambal, tom-yum paste and water... A long marination like that, followed by some time in a smoky GREEN EGG resulted in extremely flavorful meat. The red sauce you see on the plate was pretty much a mixture of garlic, sriracha, fish sauce, lime juice, water and sugar. (also made in the vita-prep). The chicken is rested on a bed of grilled green onions and topped with a runny egg yoke. The egg yoke happens to be topped with sweet fish roe which was lightly cured in soy sauce.
Cilantro and scallion garnish the whole bird.

Smoky, Spicy, Tangy, Salty, Sweet, Creamy, Charred, Juicy, Aromatic.

mmm....

QUACK!!!


Perhaps you have heard of Martin Picard. If not I would ask you to look him up and check out his book and restaurant... both of which go by the name 'Au Pied de Cochon'.

This man is a dirty, sexy glutton.
The lamb shanks I made last night were based on his "Shank Confit" recipe. Basically these local, organic lamb shanks are cooked sous-vide in duck fat for 6 hours before being deep fried to crispy perfection. The deep frying part was a slight detour from Picard's original recipe. He reheats the shanks in an oven while basting with the sauce. I decided to dust them with flour and deep fry them.. Then apply sauce to them on the plate. The tomato-based sauce was made from lamb stock, tomatoes and the lamb-jelly which accumulated in the sous-vide bags during the confir process. Overall the tomato sauce was rich with lamb flavor and reduced down until tangy and dark red.

The confit/fried shank went down atop some warm lentils which were dressed with olive oil and sherry vinegar. After the tomato sauce was applied to the shank, a heavy drizzle of garlic cream sauce was also added. To finish: a small pile of marinated tomato tops the whole dish off.
With the exception of my 'deep frying' I think this dish was executed exactly as it would be at Picard's restaurant and it was very tasty. I will certainly do something like this again... Something about the cream sauce playing with the tomato sauce was just so damn good. It went very nicely with the 1995 Bordeaux we drank with it.

Duck Eggs

This was actually our first course for the evening. Duck eggs 2 ways on the same plate. The tomato sauce you see in these pics is the same sauce I used with the lamb. It was only slightly modified by adding some red chili flake to it. One of the eggs was cooked 'Purgatory style' in the sauce itself. The other was par-boiled, breaded with rye breadcrumbs and deep fried. The center of both eggs was still runny and delicious once broken. Underneath the eggs and sauce was a simple potato latke which was also fried to crispy perfection.

I decided to include some photo-evidence of how this food is actually enjoyed. Messy, cluttered counter top and all. Notice the can of PBR sitting next to the glass of $160 wine. Both went very well with the food...

I spend my whole work week preparing food... Is it weird that this is how I spend my only day off?

What I would rather be doing...

This was another one of those nights.

Some friends stop by with some serious, premium-quality ingredients and a whole lot of beer.

They know I cannot resist the ingredients. I will drink, they will drink, and I will stand in the kitchen for 6 hours strait pumping out one dish after another until we are all fat and retarded.

Here is a brief photo tour of the food I threw down last night.

This is a simple seared scallop with a warm bacon/lemon dressing. The scallop is being lifted off of a pool of bacon fat by a platform of crispy bacon. Then it's topped with more bacon, lemon zest and parsley. This was basically a starter.

FOOD PORN PASTA

Perhaps you saw Eric Ripert make this pasta dish on Bourdain's "FOOD PORN" special recently. I basically tried to re-create this dish. Actually I did... I just didn't have quite as much Osetra Caviar... But we did have SOME.. and we did have uni... So this is how it went.

I started by pushing the urchin through a fine mesh strainer along with a stick of room-temp butter.

Scraping this mixture off the bottom of the strainer, I lumped it together into a bowl and put it in the fridge to cool down just a little. Meanwhile I heated a couple of tablespoons of water in a sauce pan until it was boiling. I turned the heat down and a few tablespoons at a time, whisked in the uni/butter mixture until I had a smooth emulsified sauce.

This was tossed with some noodles and parm. Seasoned with salt and pepper and plated. A portion of Osetra was placed on top of each pasta nest and the dish was done. It was not quite as saucy as Ripert's version but we called this the "economy version"... even though we agreed that this small portion could easily go for $30 in a restaurant.

Clams n' Pork

These were a couple of different kinds of clams. I know there were littlenecks but I do not remember the name of the larger brown/yellow shelled clams we had here. I did eat one of them raw and it was salty, fresh and delicious.

This was a fatty, naughty dish made from a ton of Genoa salami and sausage which were rendered until crispy and then tossed with clams which were cooked in garlic, butter and beer. This was a simple, flavorful bounty to be picked at and mopped up with a lot of crusty bread.

Much beer was consumed during the eating of this course.

Very Fresh Mackerel

We had a single whole mackerel with which I was not sure what to do at first. It was a pretty small fish and I was feeding 8 people so I decided to do a little 1-bite amuse kind of thing with it. I just portioned it into pieces like the one seen above and cooked them skin side down in grape seed oil until they were very crispy. I then added butter to the pan and basted only a little over the 'still raw' topside until it was just barely cooked. I plated these crispy little bites crispy-side up on top of a lemon and then sprinkled the entire plate with Szechuan peppercorns.

It was just one lemony bite of sexy, rare, crispy fish.

Tandoori Paste Braised Chicken

Here we have some chicken which was rubbed with tandoori paste and allowed to marinate for several hours. I then pan seared the individual pieces until the skin was crispy and the paste was charred onto the outside. I allowed this to simmer in a broth of more tandoori paste, San Marzano tomatoes and water for a couple of hours and then finished it with some cream. Simple, but good flavor combo for sure. This was yet another dish that went well with bread.

EAT THESE EYEBALLS
(we did anyway)

These guys were stuffed with garlic, ginger, lemon and lime leaves, rubbed with Tom Yum Paste and set into this very hot pan... Then thrown under the broiler and ignored until they were done.
When they came out, their little fins were standing strait up as if to say "Over here!!!.. We are done!!!... Pop our eyeballs out and eat them!!!"

So I sprinkled them with black vinegar and Sriracha and we all just stood around them pulling off pieces of the skin and meat for consumption...

The eyeball I got had a crunchy center. Not sure if I liked it. But that was a small disappointment given the glorious nature of the rest of this evening.

Let's do it again next week shall we?

Pastrami Reuben!

Pastrami Reuben with imported Swiss, Sharp Provolone, Sauerkraut and Horseradish Thousand Island.

I like to broil this open-faced until the cheese is bubbling and then add the Sauerkraut and press the two halves together for about 10 minutes between sheet pans before cutting and eating. It's hard to explain why... It's just so yummy that way.

Short Ribs 2 Ways, 2 Nights.

I recently picked up some super-large, thick cut beef short ribs from my local butcher. I knew when he was putting them on the scale that I had ordered too much but there is never a time when I can't be inspired to cook these things so I decided to split them up over 2 evenings for dinner.

This first pic is just meat and taters. I did my usual "reverse braise" for these ribs. They cooked, unseared in red wine, with mirepoix, tomatoes, anchovy paste, tomato paste, garlic and thyme for about 6 hours at 225 degrees. I typically start my braises on the stove top and put them in a low oven for the majority of the cook time. I find that oven braising is the most balanced and delicate way to get the job done.
After the meat is VERY tender and the rib bones slip effortlessly off of them, I place them in a terrine and cover them with some of the braising liquid. I let this cool in the fridge until the meat is cold all the way through. While the short ribs are cooling I strain and reduce the braising liquid. I let it cool in the fridge as well so that all of the fat in it can be easily skimmed off the top. This makes a clean, non-greasy kind of sauce that is super flavorful and thickened only by reduction.
When I am ready to serve this, I pull the cold, firm chunks of short rib from their terrine and sear the crap out of them on all 6 sides in a HOT cast iron skillet. By the time they are seared on all sides, they are warmed through, beautifully dark and crispy on the outside and tender enough to eat with a spoon. (Not that I would serve them with a spoon)... Some truffle and Pecorino mashed potatoes on the side, and I finished this plate with a generous drizzle of the reduction sauce.

(and in case you were wondering... that's a picture of Burt Reynolds on the wall in the background. A sense of humor is required to appreciate that one)

These are short rib raviolis! Easy and very tasty. I did a traditional braise for these ribs that was done almost exactly like I described above, except I seared the meat at the beginning rather than the end. I was going to shred this to make a filling for the ravs so I was not concerned with getting a nice sear on the outside just before serving. My filling was basically, shredded short rib meat, a little of the braising liquid, some satueed, chopped mushroom and a little parsnip which I allowed to cook along with the meat and then passed through a food mill. I mixed all this with a bunch of parm, fresh thyme and parsley and 1 egg. After this mixture cooled, I made raviolis out of it, and fished them in brown butter. A little arugula and grape tomato went down on the plate, then the ravs.. then the extra brown butter. The butter wilted the arugula and really tied the dish together.

Not unlike a rug.. which really ties a room together...

If ya know what I mean.

Chimichurri!

Last night's dinner was a little nod to chimichurri. It's such a simple and diverse sauce that I find works well to compliment a number of different proteins. Here we have a trio of skirt steak, lobster and squid steak.

I made the chimichurri earlier in the day so that I could use some of it as a marinade for both the beef and the squid. I just put 2 bunches of parsley into my food processor along with some garlic, shallots, basil, olive oil, lemon juice, 30 year balsamic vinegar (just a tiny bit) and red chili flake. I pulsed this until it reached the consistency you see here and seasoned it to taste with salt. Some times I make a much more oily version of this sauce but I was running low on olive oil last night so it was a little thicker.

The steak was grilled.
The squid was pan seared in cast iron and then deglazed with white wine.
The lobster was par-boiled from a live state and then satueed in butter.

We ate this with some garlic bread... also good for mopping up some of the extra sauce that we didn't use. It was all very tasty and it was kind of nice to have the variety of proteins all tied together by the same condiment.

Chinese Frog Legs

Last night I took a cue from the classic Hunan-American Chinese dish "Sesame Chicken" in order to turn some frog legs into a sweet-and-spicy, deep fried snacky!



The process started with an overnight marinade in some grated garlic and hot chili oil. The next evening, I added a little soy sauce to the marinade for salt and extra moisture and then heavily dusted the legs in a mixture of corn starch and flour. I deep fried these legs twice to get them extra crispy and then tossed them in a glaze made from:

Soy sauce
May Ploy Sweet Chili Sauce
Hoisin
Sriracha
Garlic
Ginger

This sauce got reduced on the stove top... down to about 2/3 of it's original volume. I thought about adding honey to the sauce but to keep the sweetness of the honey more in the foreground of this spicy salty glaze, I just drizzled it onto the legs after glazing.

Sesame seed and scallion garnish.

Nice.

You know what would be awesome?

If I stopped using the word "Awesome" so much on this blog. How would that be? Yea...

Dinner With Friends

Venison loin

Red Wine / Pomegranate reduction

Coppola

Parm/Potato Pancake

Sous-vide Fennel

Smoked Sea salt

Fennel Pollen

I owe the awesomeness of tonight's dinner to the Hiler family, who were kind enough to donate these delicious venison loin cuts to my freezer recently. So thank you Tom, Claudette and Elizabeth for a super yummy dinner!

I would also like to thank Susan Furst for the fennel pollen and smoked salt used on this plate. These ingredients inspired the direction I decided to go with this venison.

You people rock.

8$ Paid

Cold Day. Hot Soup.

This is a shark-fin/noodle soup with various garnishes. There is actually a problem these days with the over-fishing of sharks for their fins. On that basis this may be the last time for a long time that I use this ingredient, despite the fact that it was my first time.

You see that kind of greenish-pepper floating in the bowl to the left?
That one was not meant to be eaten.

PHOTOS HERE BY HELGE!!!

5 DOLLARS

Sriracha-sous-vide chicken thigh... wok fried with choy sum and white beech mushrooms.

Served 2. Cost: 5 bucks.

... So I went to Costco today and picked up a package of 32 bone-in chicken thighs for $11. Earlier in the day, Helge and I went to a Vietnamese grocery store where I picked up some choy sum, mushrooms and various other items for a very low price.. I decided to play around with my food-saver for dinner this evening and the results were awesome.

I thought it might be cool to do an Asian sous vide chicken thigh and then wok fry it into crispy goodness as I have done in the past by reversing the order of braising and searing.

The process went like this...

I grated some fresh garlic and ginger... Just a tiny bit. Then I mixed it with Sriracha hot sauce and rubbed it all over these chicken thighs. I vacuum-sealed them in a food saver bag and cooked them at 170F degrees for about 1.5.hours. I did this by bringing a pot of water up to a near simmer and then placing this bag inside the water just before putting the whole pot in an oven set to 170F degrees. While I would love to have a thermal circulator, I cannot currently afford it so I'm making things work with what I have.

Here is how the chicken looked after I cut it out of the bags. It was so tender that the bones actually poked through the top layer of skin due to the pressure of the sealed bag. I let them dry out in my fridge for about 20 minutes while I stir fried the other veggies with various hot sauces, soy, garlic, ginger and bean paste.

The juice you see under the chicken is what came out of the bag when I cut it open. Just the natural juices from the chicken, fat and the "marinade". I reduced this down on the stove top and poured it over the chicken as I was plating.

After the veg and mushrooms were wok fried, I cleaned my wok, got it nice and hot and put about 1 cup of grapeseed oil into it. With that, I fried the hell out of the sous vide chicken thighs until their skin was crispy and dark.

Plating this was easy... Choy sum went down with a garnish of sesame seeds. Chicken on top of that.. followed by mushrooms and fresh wild chives.

The main ingredients for this dinner cost me around 5 dollars. The rest of these flavors came from my well stocked kitchen and pantry. Whatever the case... This was one of the most delicious things I have eaten in a while.

Coming Soon: Cooking Broke!

Let's see what kinds of tasty things we can come up with on a very tight budget!

Cause nothing says FEAST like a failing economy!

Seriously though... In a society where most people are used to paying someone else to make or manufacture the food they eat, there is no better time to start cooking for yourself. I admit that much of the food that I make at home can be very time consuming and the ingredients that I work with can be more expensive than most people want to spend on a single cooking experience. Despite having been directly affected by the shitty American economy, I will still continue to spend my money and most of my time on continuing to cook my ass off in an attempt to refine and expand my skills. If you read this blog, you may notice that the cost of my ingredients will become more of a motivational factor in the food that I am cooking at home. I won't be spending shitloads of money on a single meal. Rather, I will take advantage of technique, and various cooking methods in order to turn simple, inexpensive ingredients into wholesome, delicious, sexy food. Doing something like this is pretty easy if you actually know how to cook. But just it's also very important to know how and where to shop. If you are shopping at a major chain grocery store and trying to make good food on a budget, you're pretty much fucked. I get my ingredients from a number of different locations and they are all of good quality. Having knowledge of food makes it a lot easier to shop for it. I shop at Mexican markets and tiny local grocery stores. Being a professional in the cooking world and a passionate cook has rewarded me with a lot of short-cuts such as wholesale hook-ups and friends who work as providers of various kinds of meat and seafood.

That being said... When I say “Cooking on a budget”... What I mean is: Making the best of all my resources in order to continue to create sexy food in my home at all times, despite not having a lot of money to spend on it. I know that not everyone who reads this blog has the same resources that I do when it comes to ingredients or even time... And I know my friends who are professional cooks are all still going to approach food and the act of feeding themselves with respect and priority... But for those of you who may not be as SUPER-CHEFY as some of us like to be, and may or may not be feeling the crunch of our declining economic status, you can still EAT LIKE A KING if you just know where to get your ingredients and how to work with them.

If you are sitting at a computer reading this blog: There is no excuse for Ramen noodles or the dollar menu at some fast food shithole. Wake up and smell the $5 whole chicken!

Stay tuned. I will provide examples shortly.

BLT

When you have a slab of cured, smoked pork belly you have a number of options. You could make sexy lardons for a carbonara, or a warm salad dressing. You could render this in massive chunks for a clam chowder that would make most people wonder if it's really the clam that makes them love this stew... You can use this wherever fat is needed to bring flavor or texture to food... When I have bacon this good... I just want to celebrate bacon. It does not accent the dish.. it BECOMES the dish!

For me it's very simple. Good bacon can be eaten alone. With nothing but a glass of water or a beer. However, in an effort to sound somewhat sane and not VERY VERY FAT, I have chosen to make yet another BLT out of the Helge-Bowers-Bacon incident. In fact.. I may make several of these sammies... so stay tuned if you want to see more of this type of porn.

For this particular sammy, I cut the bacon about 1/2 an inch thick and grilled it until somewhat-crispy. Cured, Smoked Slabs, Grilled to perfection.

Fried, bleeding egg on top.

mmmmm.....

Makin Bacon!

Once again, Helge and I joined forces to create some awesome bacon!

He cures this at his place, and then I smoke it on my Green Egg over applewood. 

Here are some pics of the belly on my smoker, and then wrapped up for transport afterwards. 

I should mention that Helge gets this pork from a local source called 'Arnold's Farm'. This pork is top quality and locally produced in Illinois. These are happy pigs who live among other happy animals. These animals are so happy that they don't even mind that we are about to eat them! This makes them yummier than they would be if they had not lived such an awesome life. 

Think about that ... That basically means that if you are living a happy life.. and you are feelin good right now... there is a good chance that you are both tender and delicious. 

Reverse Short Rib?

Braised... Then seared... Orange peel. Olives... Awesome. More info soon.