Tag: bacon

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pasta bolognese

I’d never made pasta bolognese. We weren’t sure if we’d ever even eaten a true pasta bolognese. The closest we’d ever gotten was marinara sauce with ground beef, which as we found out in our recipe research, is not even close to a pasta bolognese.

This recipe is from the Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook and was cross-referenced with a Mario Batali recipe so we’ve got on pretty good authority we’re approaching authentic with this one. We had to make a few minor modifications (bacon in place of pancetta), but good golly pasta bolognese is good! Meaty comfort in a stock pot, real pasta bolognese kicks Ragu‘s ass.

Pasta Bolognese, adapted from the Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook
4 oz bacon, diced
1 onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
salt
1 lb ground beef
1/2 lb ground pork
1 cup dry white wine
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs thyme
2 cups chicken or beef stock
1 1/2 cups milk
3 T tomato paste
1/4 cup cream
pepper
parsley and parmesan for serving

In a large saucepan or dutch oven over medium heat, add the bacon. Once the bacon has released some of its fat, add the vegetables. Saute the vegetables until they have softened and add the garlic. Remove the vegetables and bacon from the pan and set aside.

Brown the beef and pork in the same pan. Cook 10 – 15 minutes, until the meat is browned. Add the wine, herbs and vegetables to the meat. Adjust the heat to maintain a simmer and let the liquid evaporate.

Once most of the liquid has evaporated, deglaze with the stock and milk. Add the tomato paste. Simmer until the sauce is thickened, 30 minutes to an hour. Season with salt and pepper.

Before serving, add the cream and simmer for a few minutes.

Serve over pasta garnished with parmesan and parsley.

-Emily

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in the name of all things pancetta

Goodness me, we’ve reached a whole new level of pork devotion and oh it is glorious. During the past month, we’ve been busy—busy curing our own pork! Inspired by our friend Jessi and in collaboration with our supper club (food nerdom complete), we made pancetta. Pancetta is basically the Italian version of unsmoked bacon—pork belly that has been seasoned, rolled into a log and hung for a few weeks to cure. It’s typically cut into thin slices or small cubes then sautéed and added to pasta or vegetable dishes.

Because it takes about three weeks total to prepare, pancetta is certainly a commitment—of both time and closet space. But it is worth it, especially if you have a few friends to split the resulting 8 pounds of pancetta with.

Home-cured pancetta is complex. It is herby and slightly sweet, porky but also a little beefy. We were surprised by how many different flavors the pork belly acquired during the three-week curing process.

We followed the recipe from Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. You can also find a step by step guide of the recipe complete with videos from Chow. Because their instructions are so thorough, I am going to skip the detail and just go with a photo overview of the process.

First you rub the slab of pork belly with herbs (rosemary, thyme, juniper berries), pepper, sugar and salt.

Make sure you really massage those seasonings into the belly.

Then wrap the pork belly in large plastic bags and put it in your fridge under a heavy pot or pan. Refrigerate it for a week, flipping it once a day.

After a week of refrigeration, take the pork belly out and wash of the seasonings. Pat it dry and sprinkle a bunch of cracked peppercorns on the inside. Roll it up nice and tight and truss those puppies.

Hang in a cool, dark place with some air circulation (and out of puppy’s reach) for two weeks. Ours replaced our jackets in the hall closet. Oh it just made us smile when we opened the door to grab our shoes and saw two gigantic logs of pork hanging there.

After two weeks, cut the pancetta down and slice off any little bits of mold. Slice into one-inch thick slices and share with your best foodie friends!

So far we’ve made spaghetti alla carbonara and pasta with vodka sauce. I’m thinking pancetta wrapped asparagus next. Any other ideas for me?

-Emily

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devils on horseback, datiles, or bacon-wrapped dates

Starting off the new year right … with more pork! I’ve had this appetizer in several iterations over the years and it never disappoints. I’m actually surprised I haven’t sung its praises before. The first time I had this dish was at a tapas restaurant in Washington, D.C. I was a vegetarian at the time, but was convinced by some good friends to try the datiles regardless. They couldn’t have been more right—those datiles were date-bacon-donuts sent from heaven. That was the beginning of the end for my vegetarianism. More recently, our friends Matt and Alexa brought their version of those datiles so fondly etched into my memory to a dinner party, this time calling them devils on horseback. Basically, this mind-blowing, vegetarian-converting appetizer is a date stuffed with goat cheese wrapped in bacon, and then baked or fried to crispy perfection. They are insanely easy to make and everyone at the next party you go to will want to be your best friend.

Bacon-Wrapped Dates Stuffed with Goat Cheese
1 lb medjool dates, pits removed
1 lb bacon
8 oz chevre goat cheese

Using a sharp knife, slice the date to the pit and remove taking care to not cut through the date. Stuff the date with a small spoonful of goat cheese. I recommend stuffing the dates with slightly less goat cheese—some of mine oozed out while cooking and burned. No point in wasting cheese!

Wrap the date with one half bacon slice, securing with a toothpick. The prep can be done several hours or even the day before you plan to serve the dish, another appetizer plus!

Preheat an oven to 400 degrees. Bake the dates for 20 – 25 minutes, until the bacon is browned and crispy. Serve warm. I guarantee they won’t have time to get cold.

-Emily

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pasta with roasted tomato sauce and bacon

In the past few weeks, I’ve made three variations on this recipe. The first was great but time-consuming, the second was delicious and will become my fallback recipe, and the third was our ultra-budget version that turned out better than expected. Here is how it all went down …

A few weekends ago, I was reading cookbooks and drinking coffee while Jordan slept in and Willow took up too much space in the bed. (It’s hard to kick something this cute out from under your covers, trust us).

I stumbled across a variation on Pasta Amatriciana—pasta with braised bacon and roasted tomato sauce—in the Zuni Cafe Cookbook. When Jordan woke up, I shared just the recipe title and he was sold. I set out to make this magical pasta. The recipe calls for slab bacon, which you then braise with a variety of vegetables and spices. Well, slab bacon is really hard to find, even at a fine market like Whole Foods. In a stroke of genius, I tied the cut bacon together so it re-formed a slab. Sadly, this does not work. My braised bacon was so bland; all of the smokey, salty flavor had leached into the broth and left the bacon beyond dull. There are few things sadder than flavorless bacon.

Fortunately, Jordan saved the dish by bringing home the back-up bacon. We sautéed that bacon and added it into the roasted tomato sauce, plus some of the braised bacon for texture. It worked well, but was slightly disappointing. The time-energy input did not match the deliciousness output.

The second time I made this recipe, I skipped right to adding sautéed bacon to the roasted tomato sauce. It is so good and so easy.

The last time I made this recipe, we had no bacon at all. We did however have some rendered bacon fat in our fridge. I sautéed the onions for the sauce in that bacon fat, and  like magic, delicious bacon flavor infused the whole sauce. It was unexpected and amazing and so inexpensive. The next time you cook bacon, pour the fat into a small bowl. Fill with the bowl some water to separate the fat from the burnt bits.  Refrigerate this mixture until the fat forms a solid mass on top of the water and carefully scoop the fat off the top. Sauté away, adding delicious bacon essence to whatever you cook!

Pasta with Roasted Tomato Sauce and Bacon, adapted from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook
1 16 oz jar of whole tomatoes
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, sliced
2 T sugar
2 T olive oil or bacon fat
salt, pepper, chili flake
1/4 lb bacon, cut into lardon
1 lb pasta (we used ziti and penne).

*A is a beautiful photo of a technique that I don’t recommend you subject your bacon to.

Heat an oven to 475 degrees. Strain the tomatoes of their juice and reserve that juice. In an oven safe dish, add the strained tomatoes and a drizzle of olive oil. Roast the tomatoes for 20 – 30 minutes, until browned.

In a saute pan, saute the bacon until just cooked through. Remove from the pan and set aside. Pour off the excess fat, leaving a tablespoon or two. Sauté the onion in the bacon fat until translucent. Add the garlic and sauté two minutes more. Add the roasted tomatoes and reserved juice. Add sugar, salt, pepper and a pinch of chili flakes. Cook for 20 minutes and test for seasoning.

Meanwhile, put a pot of salted water to boil. Cook the pasta until al dente. When the pasta is nearly done, add the bacon back into the sauce. Toss the sauce with the cooked pasta and serve with a sprinkle of parmesan.

-Emily

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pork on pork action

Oh yeah.  Even though it was Mother’s Day, Emily and I couldn’t help it.  Things got naughty and juicy.  You know what I’m talking about: bacon wrapped pork loin.  A dish so simple and so porky that you’ll lose all track of time basking in its glory.  Seriously though, this is such an easy dish and it’s definitely a crowd pleaser; in other words, it’s perfect for entertaining.

1 3-4 pound pork loin
8 strips of good bacon
Salt and Pepper

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.  Season your pork loin with salt and pepper and wrap with bacon.  I put the bacon on a flat surface and overlapped each piece by about a quarter of an inch.  Then I rolled the pork loin like a burrito.  Place it in a roasting pan for about an hour and start checking its internal temperature.  You’re looking for 145 degrees in the thickest part.  Ours took about 1.5 hours, but it was a little overcooked on the thinner side.

Before:

After:

Don’t forget to let the meat rest for 10-15 minutes before slicing into it!

Conclusions:
A wonderful, simple main course that tastes like it’s much more complicated than it really is.  As long as it’s not overcooked and the bacon gets nice and crispy, everyone will be happy.  Also, this dish can be adjusted very easily depending on the number of people you’re serving.  I wouldn’t go below two pounds for a small crowd (4-5 people), but you could double or triple this recipe if just a few pounds won’t satisfy that porky desire. Leftovers make great sandwiches too!

-Jordan

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baked potato soup

I like the idea of baked potatoes, but the dish in practice is really a let down. The first few cheesy, bacony, oniony bites are delicious and then it just tastes like dry diet food. Bummer.

Thankfully, Deb from Smitten Kitchen feels similarly. I followed her recipe for baked potato soup and it was awesome. This recipe combines all of the great flavors of a baked potato but skirts around all the boring parts. Perfect!

Baked Potato Soup

2 T butter
2 leeks, halved and sliced then rinsed of their grit
1 head garlic
5 cups vegetable or chicken stock
2 bay leaves
3 large russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1/3 cup sour cream
Salt, pepper
Bacon, green onions, cheddar cheese, sour cream for toppings

Halve the leeks and then thinly slice them. Rinse them of their grit. Cut the top 1/3 off the entire garlic head. Squeeze the cloves out of the top 1/3 and mince them. Peal the thin wispy layers off the bottom 2/3 of the garlic and set aside. Melt butter in a dutch oven over medium heat. Add the leeks and saute for 5 minutes, until softened. Add minced garlic and saute for a minute or two. Add the broth, bay leaves, and head of garlic. Cook over medium heat for 40 minutes or until the  garlic head is soft.

Add the cubed potatoes. Cook for another 20 minutes or until the potatoes are soft. Remove the garlic and bay leaves. Puree the soup for a minute or two with an immersion blender. I left some potato chunks, but you can puree it as smooth as you’d like. Add the sour cream and mix well. Season with salt and pepper. Top with your favorite baked potato toppings and enjoy!

-Emily

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quick mac and cheese

Since the weather has been so nice here in SF, Emily and I have spent much of our time outside with our dog Willow.  This was great all last weekend until it came time for dinner on Sunday.  We didn’t want to go out, but we didn’t feel like cooking up something worthy of a typical Sunday dinner;  mac and cheese felt like a perfect compromise.  Typically, mac and cheese is made with a béchamel sauce in which you add cheese to make a basic cheese sauce for your noodles.  This still seemed like too much work, but I wasn’t about to make that stuff that comes from a box with the little bunny on it that Emily likes.  Inspired by the pasta dish we had a couple weeks prior, I thought it would be nice to make the sauce with ricotta to thicken it rather than a béchamel.  I started by cooking some bacon that had been cut into lardons (I almost forgot to mention this was mac and cheese with bacon, of course).  After taking out the bacon and setting the fat aside, I slowly heated up about 0.5 – 0.75 cup of cream.  Now, my loyal reader, you must be thinking “But Jordan, what will you do with that glorious bacon fat?!”  Of course I’ve thought this through, and mixed the bacon fat with bread crumbs and parmesan cheese for a delicious, bacony, cheesy topping.  Back to the sauce: the cream is over a low flame and I’ve added about 0.5 cup of ricotta, 0.5 cup of grated fontina, and 0.25 cup of grated parmesan until melted together to a fairly thick sauce.  If the sauce is not sufficiently thick, add more of the cheeses to your taste.  Season with salt, pepper, and a very small sprinkling of nutmeg; it sounds weird, but it’s classic and tasty even though you don’t really taste the nutmeg, if that makes sense.  Add the sauce to about 0.5 lb of cooked pasta of your choice (Emily picked fusilli, which would not have been my choice, but she didn’t know that … until now).  Sprinkle on the topping and bake at 375 degrees until the top is crisp and looks like this:

Conclusions:  This version was much quicker and easier to make than traditional mac and cheese without sacrificing flavor.  On the downside, the ricotta prevents the sauce from becoming perfectly smooth and so you don’t get as much gooey, cheesy goodness either.  I’d make this again, but if I have the time I’ll go all out and do the béchamel.

-Jordan