The Champagne of Blogs » Meat Stunts

Porky the Pork Pig in a Bacon Blanket

Dave Selden — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 04:51:39 +0000

All these beer reviews lately, you’d think this blog was about … beer. Au contraire, my friends (French for “nuh uh”). If you’ll point your attention to the navigation over there on the right side of this page, you’ll note a mysterious, delicious category called “Meat Stunts.” That’s where you’ll find instructions for home made bacon, the legend of the curiously named “La Caja China,” and our last Superbowl centerpiece, “Snack Stadium XXXL.”

After last year’s surge in post-game web traffic, I knew we had to do something spectacular this year. This time, inspiration came in the form of a slab of shelf-stable Broadbent pepper bacon I acquired from bacn.com (now owned by baconfreak.com). The predictable thing to do would have been to chunk it up into lardons (French for thick-ass pieces of bacon) or simply slice it thick for superdelishtstic BLT’s. But the meat stuntman in me wanted to stuff it with something.

So of course I went to the best stuffing of all: more pork. I picked up a whole pork loin from Gartner’s, along with some pork sausage-stuffed pork tenderloins. If you’re counting, that’s four types of pork product so far.

I had a plan going in, but it was just a bit of stray cholesterol until I actually opened up the slab. I had no idea how much room there was in there! I got so excited I forgot to take photos of the assembly process, so instead I’ll let you digest the photo below, and describe what’s going on after the break.

Back? Not what you were expecting, was it? Heh. So the body’s the pork loin, sliced at one end to form a mouth. Inside the “mouth” are two garlic cloves acting as incisors, and the traditional apple. A couple more garlic cloves form the eyeballs, and two apple slices form the sow’s ears. The legs are those sausage-stuffed tenderloins I mentioned, with garlic toes (Mmm, garlic toes). Now, I wanted this thing to actually be tasty, and I was a bit concerned about overwhelming samplers with a lot of grease. This creation was going to be wrapped in bacon for a few hours, after all. So before I tucked her in, I sprinkled her back and legs with fresh rosemary “bristles” and lots of chopped up garlic “garlic.” Beneath the sow, I cut some drainage slits in the bottom of the bacon blanket.

I set the oven to 350, and tried not to open it every 15 minutes to see how my monster was developing. The house smelled … so delicious it was actually almost sickening. Imagine a foggy morning so thick you have to turn your headlights on. Now imagine that fog in your nose, and the whole thing smells like bacon, rosemary and garlic. It was difficult to concentrate. But four hours later, I pulled the pig and … wow. I wish you could have tried it. It was delicious, and those that could get past its eerily lifelike appearance were able to taste all four meats in one bite. Best of all, no one got sick, despite the Russian Roulette-like meat game we played. Four chances to get trichinosis, but all cylinders came up empty.

Soooo-ey!

Bacon Week 2: Swiss Chard with Bacon Lardons

Dave Selden — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 03:47:51 +0000

Sometimes you want a baguette, and sometimes you want sliced bread. But in the bread family, at least, most American supermarkets give you that choice: sliced or unsliced. Not so with bacon. “You’ll buy sliced bacon, and you’ll like it, bub. Because we know how thick you want it.”

I beg to differ, and thanks to the fine folks at Broadbent Hams, you don’t have to take it anymore, either. Bacn.com offers many of their fine bacons in slab format, so you can cut it how you want it. I like my bacon sliced thick for breakfast slices, but for cooking, it’s especially nice to have bacon cut to order. The French call thick chunks of bacon for cooking “lardons” and they’re a nice addition to any cook’s cupboard. I say cupboard, because Broadbent’s bacon is shelf-stable, at least until you open the package. Sliced into 1/4″ cubes, the outside gets nice and crispy, while the interior stays somewhat soft, providing two nice textures in one morsel.

As a confirmed meatatarian, I’m usually not a big fan of vegetables, but with the addition of bacon, I become exponentially more interested. Wife Sarah’s perfected the art of cooking greens (swiss chard in this example). Here’s her recipe:

Cook 1/4 pound of cubed bacon on medium-low heat in a dutch oven (we LOVE our Le Creuset), cooking until it’s brown on the outside. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.
Pour off all but enough bacon grease to coat the bottom of the pan.
Saute the greens in the bacon grease for a few minutes, until the leaves wilt, about 5 minutes.
Add about 3 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar (to taste) and stir.
Add in a teaspoon or two of brown sugar (to taste) and stir to combine.
Put the bacon bits back in and stir some more. If you like really crispy bacon, add it after simmering the greens on their own for awhile.
Simmer, covered, until stems soften. About 20-25 minutes of simmering results in a texture we generally like, but some people prefer a softer stem still.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Greens go especially well with barbecue ribs, pulled pork or fried chicken (shown above), but they’re a nice complement to almost any southern-inspired and/or porky meal. Warm, homemade biscuits optional, but highly recommended.

Bacon Week 2: Bacon-Maple Lollipops

Dave Selden — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 03:56:08 +0000

Editor’s Note: There sure is a lot of bacon-related stuff out there. Every day, it seems, I find something new. And yet, there are only so many days in a Bacon Week. “Seven,” you’re thinking. Nope. Going to go with nine this year. It’s just too little time, and I have a few more things I need to share with the world (and my slow-learning co-workers). Bacon Week 2 ends Monday evening.

After the bacon-flavored sunflower seeds and last year’s bacon mint debaucle, I thought it was time to bring something tasty to work. The mad scientists over at Lollyphile began with just a couple of flavors: absinthe and … you guessed it. Bacon. Maple-bacon, to be exact. Made with real Vermont maple syrup and an un-named organic bacon. Real ingredients, assembled with care. I felt sure this would be the reputation redemption I was looking for. Unfortunately, the treats got a little too much heat after being left in my car, malforming the lollipops quite a bit. Sorry, guys.

Scott: First of all, it was incredibly sticky and difficult to open, and once you got it open, it wasn’t attached to the stick very well, so it came off after a few licks. Secondly, though mine had a liberal amount of bacon bits sprinkled through the maple-flavored candy, they didn’t actually add any flavor at all, unless you got one out and bit into it, and even then, it was overwhelmed by the maple. The maple candy wasn’t bad at all, but since I was expecting more bacon flavor, I was disappointed.

Rodrigo: I think the experience would’ve probably started off better if the lollipop didn’t stick all over my hands. Nonetheless, the super sweet maple flavor is definitely prominent at first… not too much bacon at all. As the lollipop dissolves, rather sticks all over your teeth, I started to feel a subtle bacon flavor here and there. The savory-sweet balance happened maybe about at the half way point—which was still sort of pleasant. After that, bacon bits were being released in high quantity, and the whole thing just kind of got a little gross. The end point just seriously tastes like old bacon from the fridge with a dollop of maple syrup. The overall experience: it was a rollercoaster of weirdness in my mouth!

Libby: My first reaction, after I managed after 5 minutes get the sucker open, was that it tasted like a sweet potato. The maple flavor was good, although mine seemed to only sport small shreds of bacon which didn’t give it much bacon flavor. That said, listening to cohorts who had larger pieces of bacon in theirs that behaved “like shards of glass”, I was thankful. Overall, it tasted like maple. And perhaps it was due to the heat treatment it received in Dave’s car, but: it behaved more like a hard caramel than a sucker, and I had to manually reattach it to the stick before I even sampled it. While innocuous, when compared to the Bacon Lip Balm, it failed to prove to me that bacon is a worthwhile sucker flavor, as it didn’t seem to have any bacon flavor.

Bacon Week 2: Bacon-Flavored Sunflower Seeds

Dave Selden — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:58:50 +0000

The guys over at Bacon Salt have a simple premise that guides their company’s product development team: “Everything Should Taste Like Bacon.” To a large extent, I agree with that statement. Most foods DO taste better with actual bacon as an ingredient. I’ve had maple-flavored ice cream sprinkled with still-warm bacon bits. Most excellent. Burgers with bacon are incredible. Duh.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I agree with the Bacon Salt guys, at least as long as we’re talking about things tasting better with bacon, as long as actual bacon is used to generate that flavor. It’s when people start trying to create that signature bacon flavor WITHOUT using bacon that problems occur. This is the case with BIGS Bacon-Salt Flavored Sunflower Seeds, as you can see from my unwitting co-workers’ reactions, below.

Bacon Week 2: The BBBBBLT

Dave Selden — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 05:28:08 +0000

“Because it’s there.” That’s the answer George Mallory gave when asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest. That’s why I knew I had to try the BBBBLT when inspiration struck. Once it occurred to me, I knew I had to make it. And once I made it, I had to eat it. Because it was there.

Let me break it down for you.

Starting from top left, clockwise:

Bacon Beer Bread. Based on this recipe for beer bread, but substituting Hickory Bacon Salt for the salt … salt. I used Hempler’s bacon, chopped into little bits, distributed throughout the dough, about three slices worth. This counts for two of the B’s: Bacon Bread.
Bacon Skillet Jam. Sarah got me some from a famous Seattle food cart, and it’s a nice sweet tangy bacony spread. Makes all sandwiches better.
Baconnaise. From the people that brought you Bacon Salt, it’s bacon-flavored (still vegetarian) mayonnaise. It’s got the tang of Miracle Whip, with the aftertaste of bacon salt.
Lettuce. From the garden. That’s the “L.”
Tomato. Ditto. That’s your “T.”
And last but not least, actual bacon bacon. Again, went with Hempler’s bacon. They make a nice meaty bacon, uncured, and very similar to British-style bacon. It’s sweetish, subtle, and not too salty. And very easy to overcook, so keep an eye on it. And thus, for the cardiologists counting along at home, your fifth and final “B.”

I sliced myself two thick slices of bacon bread, and set phasers to “assemble.”

On the left side, I slathered the bread with Baconnaise. Cool color. On the right, Bacon Jam. Weird color. I didn’t test this theory, but I suspect if you attempted to push the pieces of bread together at this stage, it would be like trying to mate two polarly-opposed magnets together, or like mating polar bears and penguins.

Almost done. My hands were shaking as I applied the lettuce to the mayo side, then topped it with tomatoes, as I’m sure Mallory’s were as he gripped that last rock on the way to the top. His were probably shaking from the cold, though. Mine were shaking from excitement. The right side got the actual bacon. Bon Appetit, if you’re reading this, I will license this photo.

Now. Time to meld these two halve together, forming something undoubtedly greater than the sum of its parts, like if South Dakota and North Dakota reunited. And booked the original Guns and Roses for the reunification celebration. Something like that.

It was like eating a bacon tornado. If you recall the scene in Twister, where some debris flies by, swept up in the tornado’s vortex? More debris, followed by a boat, followed by a cow?

That’s what this tasted like. The first hit was the sweetness of the beer bread, punctuated by odd bits of bacon. Once that had passed my palate, a brief crunch of lettuce was followed quickly by a sharp, but sweet Baconnaise tang. More bread, then WHAM! BAM! Bacon Jam! A rich, almost fruity foundation that merged slowly into acidic garden-fresh tomato, quickly followed by Actual Bacon™ texture. It was wild.

I climbed that mountain of a bacon sandwich. Because it was there.

Bacon Week 2: Mini BLTs

Dave Selden — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 04:37:56 +0000

I love brewing. And I love eating. But it’s a certain kind of food that goes well with both activities, usually something from the Dorito’s segment of the food pyramid. And while I love orange hands and flavors inspired by the famous Rancho Coolo, I often want something more substantial. Something entree-like, but which doesn’t require silverware. World, I give you … mini BLTs. You’re welcome.

Cook some bacon. In this case, I’m using a slab of thick-sliced, uncured Niman Ranch center cut, Applewood smoked bacon. It’s salty, but not too salty, and easy to cook up to the perfect BLT state: a few minutes past “wiggly,” but not quite rigid. This particular bacon has a deep, smoky flavor to it, which goes well with the other components of the trio without being overpowering.

I also tried a few sandwiches with the no-cook convenience of Archie McPhee’s strawberry-flavored gummi bacon, but it was a bit too chewy for my taste. The sweetness of the strawberry was quite nice, though; a bit like a PLT.

While you’re waiting for Mister Pig to render, it’s a good time to do your other prep. A mini BLT needs small bread. I thought about cutting up a larger sliced loaf, but feared the loss of crust on all four sides could lead to structural problems once the mayonnaise got to softening the bread. Instead, I reached for a baguette, choosing to slice it on the bias (French for “diagonal”) to make the slices a bit longer, since I intended to leave the bacon untrimmed.

Slicing tomatoes is part of any BLT assembly process, but slicing lettuce isn’t. The combination of larger than average lettuce leaves and smaller than usual sandwiches requires it in this case. I sliced it to be just under the width of the mini bread slices.

After prep’s done, and the bacon complete, you’re ready to assemble. Put mayonnaise on both slices of bread; it’s the glue that will hold the sandwiches together and enable one-handed eating. Bacon is next, followed by lettuce and tomato. Lettuce provides a moisture barrier between the juicy tomato and crisp bacon, and texture diversity is very important in a properly-made sandwich.

In just a few minutes, you’ve got a bevvy of BLTs ready for the brewers. A toothpick helps keep everything in place while the mayo sets up. But the main question is, “can this BLT be eaten single-handed?” See you in Sweden, bitches! I’m gettin’ a Nobel!

Bacon Week 2: Bacon Gumballs

Dave Selden — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 05:44:00 +0000

After bacon mints, we hoped we’d seen the end of novelty-inspired, bacon-flavored confections. Boy were we wrong. Seems like the gang at Archie McPhee’s been working overtime to fill out the rest of the bacon candy store. Unfortunately, it seems they’re spending more time coming up with candy ideas than they are on candy flavor refinement, as evidenced by these first time tasters’ reactions:

Bacon Week 2: It Begins

Dave Selden — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 05:03:45 +0000

You know what time it is? That’s right, it’s bacon time. I can tell, because I’m wearing a bacon watch. I showered this morning with bacon soap. I just mixed some pork belly with salt and brown sugar, in pursuit of some more homemade bacon.

But I have a larger agenda for this year’s Bacon Week (some people will tell you bacon needs just one day of celebration, but they’re wrong). This year, I’d like to address something that’s bothered me for some time. Bacon as a food item has so much energy behind it. There are Facebook groups dedicated to it. Blogs. Books. T-shirts. No other food has inspired such devotion, or such great number of tchotchkes. As someone at the largest bacon tchotchke retailer once told me, when asked why bacon is so inspiring, “It’s a multisensory food. It’s got smell, texture, sound and taste rolled up into one.”

And yet, bacon in most of our lives remains commodity. My neighborhood grocer carries just a few kinds, all variants on corporate bacon, anonymous, industrially-raised pigs, processed and packaged with low price as the primary goal. Meanwhile, the store carries more than 20 different types of honey, but you don’t see blogs being written about bee secretion. Wendy’s, maker of the infamous “Baconator,” uses pre-cooked, microwave-warmed bacon for its signature sandwich. Bacos™ are vegan. Let me repeat that for you. Bacos™ are VEGAN.

Something is wrong, and my goal this week is two-fold: celebrate our favorite food, but also to expose the brighter side of pork, the small batch producer who cares as much (or more) for his animals and flavor as he does his bottom line. I’d like to call your attention to altruistic bacon. It exists, it’s tasty, and it’s worth seeking out. I hope you’ll stay tuned.

Working at the Workers Bar in Astoria

Bruce — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:20:38 +0000

The evening was closer to “It’s time to go” than “we just got here” when Eryn leaned into to me and said “I figured it out…. The goal of this place is to keep you from leaving.” Granted, that’s probably true for any bar that wants to turn a profit, but what sets Mary Todd’s Workers Bar & Grill in Astoria apart is, they do a damn good job of doing it.

Situated under the bridge on Marine Drive, the decor is classic dive bar, pictures of various vintages celebrating the hard work and people that made Astoria, as well as plenty of photos of the regulars having a great time.

So what exactly lured us here? You didn’t have to talk to too many people in town to find out about the giant serving of prime rib available for a very reasonable price (I think it was $15). Dave ordered an equally large chicken fried steak that checked in around $10 (cardiologist not included).

Since this is a beer-related blog, I suppose I should mention the beer selection… (moving on)

Back in the day when I frequented the 35’er in Old Town Pasadena, I would occasionally enjoy a girly, summer drink, a raspberry lemonade consisting of Stoli Raspberry, a splash of sweet and sour and 7-up. At Mary Todd’s I think I discovered my girly summer drink’s older sister who joined a biker gang and rode up and down the west coast for 20 years before settling in Astoria, and her name is the Yucca. The Yucca is fresh squeezed lemon, some simple syrup and vodka, lots of vodka, served in a canning jar filled with ice, sealed with a lid and then shaken profusely inside a towel for maximum frozen drink effect. It’s delicious and refreshing and a monster the next morning.

So, what really sets the Workers Bar apart from so many other dive bars? The people, starting with Mary Todd herself who came by our table, introduced herself and shared a couple minutes with us talking about her life and her bar. It’s a great story and she’s a great host. Also, she’s been known to dance on top of the tables from time to time. I think everyone gets swept up into the cordiality of the place, by the end of the night, we’ve abandoned our table, we’re meeting other people, people are buying rounds and shots for us, dancing, etc.

Dave nicely summed up the bar “good people, hard lives, hearty meals, drink accordingly.

A quick shout out to the Cannery Pier Hotel as well. In addition to the incredible accommodations, the hotel wants you to be safe when enjoying Astoria’s libations. They have a vintage Buick that will take you anywhere in town and, even better, will come pick you up when you’re done. In fact, if you get a ride from a DD like we did, they ask that you call the hotel because the driver won’t go home until all the people he’s taken out somewhere are returned to the hotel. Bravo CPH!

Fatty Melt

Dave Selden — Tue, 19 May 2009 20:58:51 +0000

Oh, my poor gut. The things I subject it to: Hamdogs, Turduckens, and Food Stadiums, oh my.

Today I reached a new low after sampling Portland’s newest food fad, the Fatty Melt, aka the “YouCANHasCheeseburger.” Quite simply, it’s your basic 100% Black Angus cheeseburger, complete with lettuce, tomato, onions, ketchup and mustard. Only, instead of buns, substitute two grilled cheese sandwiches. One for the top bun, one for the bottom. I don’t even want to think about how many calories that is.

The sandwich is available downtown at BrunchBox for the value- and calorie-heavy price of just $5. Breaking it down to its individual components, you’re looking at two one-dollar grilled cheese sandwiches straddling a three-dollar burger (take that, Carl’s Jr.). That’s enough to feed a very small family amply, or to put one “knowledge worker” on the fast train to Type II Diabetes.

Of course, the calories only count if they are actually tasty. And in this case, they are. The crispness of the fried Texas Toast complements the crunch of the lettuce nicely, and the oozy cheese in each of the sandwiches meet the softened cheese atop the chewy beef patty in the tastiest triumvirate since the Dahm Triplets. It’s easy for food spectacles (or “Meat Stunts,” as we like to call them) to eschew good taste in pursuit of extremity, but this is one tasty sandwich, and I really don’t feel that gross. Not nearly as gross as I felt after I took on the Baconator.