Candied Bacon (or crack)

If you need a new make-ahead salty cocktail snack, this is it. It's salty and sweet and crunchy and bursting with flavor. It's completely addictive and totally delicious.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup nuts (I like spicy smokehouse almonds)

1/4 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp chipotle powder

1/2 tsp oregano

1 tbsp maple syrup

1/2 lb bacon

Directions:

Blend first six ingredients in a food processor. Add maple syrup until it's almost in a sandy paste. Season to taste with more sugar or chipotle as you like.

Zucchini Carbonara

I got out to Southampton Friday night and we didn't feel like going to the grocery store, but needed dinner. If you have eggs, bacon, parm, and onion (and pasta), you can make it. I went out to the garden and grabbed some zucchini and parsley to lighten it up a little. It was so easy and really tasty, and the zucchini gives it a bit of a summery bent - and it's a good way to use up zucchini if you have a lot.

Serves 4

Ingredients:

5 strips of bacon, chopped into 1/4 inch pieces

2 small zucchini, cut into match sticks

1 large leek (or onion) thinly sliced

1 clove garlic, minced

1/3 cup parm or pecorini

2 eggs

small handful of parsley, chopped

salt and pepper

Pasta

Bacon Explosion 2014

So the Bacon Explosion has become a Super Bowl staple in our house, and each year we've updated it a bit (seen here and here). This year, I think we really outdid ourselves. Jamie got me a sausage maker, so we actually made our own sausage for it (totally unnecessary, you can use regular sausage, but it was great). We also smoked it for a few minutes which gave a great smoky flavor. Yum! For our sausage, we used a mix of pork shoulder, green apple, leek, garlic, chipotle, jarlsburg cheese, and a little maple syrup. It's a real crowd pleaser.

Ingredients:

2 packages regular bacon

1 package thick cut bacon

3 lb sausage

1/4 cup spice rub (I use a mix of brown sugar, chipotle, oregano, cumin, thyme, salt, and pepper, usually)

1/4 cup diced Jarlsburg or other melty cheese

big handful of grape tomatoes, cut up

big handful arugula

1/2 onion, diced, and 2 clove garlic, minced, sauted (saute the onion until soft then add the garlic for 1 minute)

BBQ sauce

toothpicks

If you're smoking it, 2 tbsp hickory chips soaked in water for a few minutes

Directions:

Create a square bacon weave, about 6 pieces by 6 pieces, on a large piece of tinfoil on a baking sheet.

Bacon-Jam Empanadas

Amazing. How could I not try this recipe? Bacon jam is an incredible condiment, and these tasty, flaky little empanadas make an impressive breakfast, or a light lunch with some salad. They're salt and smoky and sweet and totally irresistible. Austen gave me this cookbook for Christmas. Isn't the cover so cute? I can't wait to try more recipes, but this one is definitely a keeper!

Ingredients:
For Jam
1 lb applewood-smoked bacon
1 medium Vidalia onion, sliced
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup strong brewed coffee
2 tbsp Coca Cola
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 tbsp Bourbon

Bacon Caramel Popcorn with cashews, almonds, and chipotle

Yum! This stuff is like crack. I made it the other day and decided it would be a great Christmas present for a few lucky friends. Now that I have given them away, I can post about it! This is such a treat for a movie night, or for putting in a pretty Ball jar and giving as a present. The salt, chipotle, bacon, and caramel go together amazingly well, and you might find yourself mining for the caramelized bacon - it's unreal. If you don't have tea, you can skip that step. (Also, this recipe is from here.) I think this would also be amazing on vanilla ice cream. I may have to test it out with the last jar (I can't bring myself to part with it.)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup popcorn kernels

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

¾ lb thick bacon, chopped

1/4 cup unsalted raw cashews

¼ cup almonds

1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt or coarse sea salt

1/4 teaspoon chipotle pepper

1/4 cup heavy whipping cream

1 Rooibos tea bag

Nonstick vegetable oil spray

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/4 cup water

2 tablespoons light corn syrup

Directions:

Preheat oven to 300°F. Heat popcorn and oil in covered heavy large pot over medium-high heat until kernels begin to pop. Shake pot until popping stops and pour the popcorn into very large bowl. 

Roasted Acorn Squash, Purple Cauliflower, and Strip Steak

Last weekend Jamie and I stopped at Babinksi's farm stand in Bridgehampton to grab some veggies for dinner. I saw the most beautiful cauliflower I've ever seen. It was bright purple. I want my mom or sister to paint a picture of it for me! Along with the beautiful cauliflower, I got an acorn squash - such a great, homey fall side. I steamed the cauliflower and tossed it with oil and salt - be careful not to over steam! You want it tender but still with a bit of a crunch. Mushy cauliflower is the worst. I roasted the acorn squash (with bacon) and grilled the steak. This was a great fall dinner.

Cauliflower
Ingredients:
1 head cauliflower
1-2 tbsp canola or vegetable oil
salt

Directions:

Bacon explosion round two

We made a bacon explosion last year but Jamie is really experimenting this year (I like to think it's my influence) and he's added a bunch of ingredients. In addition to the 2+ pounds of sausage (half sweet fennel and half parsley cheese from faicco's) and bacon,






he's added sauteed onions, chopped garlic, and fresh mozzarella. He made a basket weave of the bacon, cooked about 10 strips until crispy, mixed and flattened the sausage on a sheet of wax paper and topping it w the onions, garlic, cheese, and crispy bacon.






He then rolled it up and wrapped it in the bacon weave.
We secured it with some toothpicks and covered it in a spice rub of brown sugar, chipotle pepper powder, onion powder, garlic powder, dried thyme, a little dried sage, chili powder, kosher salt, pepper, cumin, and a little turmeric.






(we have all these things - I you don't, brown sugar, cumin, and some sort of hot pepper powder is fine). Popped it in the oven at 265 and will slice and savor in a few hours during the super bowl!






- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

PLT

When I made the gnudi, it called for crispy pieces of prosciutto. These salty, crunchy slices made me realize they would be an excellent bacon substitute. For lunch today, I went to Faicco's, picked up a few slices of prosciutto, and made myself a PLT: prosciutto, lettuce, and tomato. My favorite part of a BLT is the crispy, salty bacon, and often the bacon doesn't have that crunch you're expecting. The PLT was great. I think it's also probably a lower fat option, but I'm not 100% sure. I also used pita because I didn't have any bread. (This is for 1 sandwich)

Ingredients:
2 slices prosciutto, cut in half horizontally
about 5 grape tomatoes, sliced
a handful of lettuce
mayonnaise
half a pita
salt

Directions:
Take the half pita and separate it into two pieces (as if it were 2 pieces of bread) and toast them.
Put a tsp of olive oil in a pan and add the prociutto. Cook until they are crispy and beginning to brown on both sides. Drain them on a paper towel. Spread as much mayonnaise as you like on the toasted pita slices, then top one slice with lettuce, then with the tomato slices. Here I like to sprinkle a little salt over the tomatoes. Then top it with the prosciutto and a little more lettuce and finally the other pita slice.

It's really easy, and the prosciutto cooks up faster than bacon. Feel free to use regular bread.

Meat Lover's Paradise

I've mentioned Faicco's before, but I don't believe I've given it my proper and usual laud. This "Italian Specialty Store" is right down the street from me and I'm in there about 5 times a week. It's not very big, but you can find almost anything you need for great, Italian fare. When you walk in, on your left is a wall lined with shelves of Strozzapretti and orecchiette and bucatini next to Rao's sauces and jarred peppers and olives and imported flours and olive oils. I always go in and get the Italian 00 flour--this makes homemade pasta light and fluffy and amazing, and works wonders on pizza dough.

To your immediate right is a counter filled with pre-made foods like chicken francaise and veal Parmesan. Following that is an enormous counter filled with all sorts of meats and sausages. Here you can find steak, osso bucco, braciole, thick sliced bacon, ground veal, ground beef, chicken, pork chops, veal scallopini... They also have several types of sausages including spicy Italian, sweet Italian, sweet Italian with fennel, parsley and cheese, and chicken sausage.

Straight ahead is the deli counter. Here you can get sandwiches (I recommend the Italian special, but split it with someone because it's enormous) and a large range of cured meats. I am particularly fond of the prosciutto di parma, the hot sopressata, and the hot capricolo (all of which are present in the Italian special sandwich). Their fresh mozzarella is delicious, especially lightly breaded, sauteed, and served with their marinara sauce.

If you're having people over for dinner and want great hors d'oeuvres that are easy and cheap, go to the back counter and ask for 5 slices of a couple kinds of meat--which will only cost you around $5--and just neatly spread them onto a plate.

Faicco's is at 260 Bleecker street, at Cornelia and next to Murray's cheese. They close at 6, so you've got to stock up on the weekends or, if you live nearby, run in before you head to work.

Clog those arteries

Last year in the food section of the Times they had a recipe for this bacon explosion. I looked at it and turned up my nose a little, thinking it was a heart attack on a plate. (Not that I don't love a greasy bacon cheese burger with a mountain of fries every once in a while, which is probably worse for me.) The basket weave of bacon looked pretty and interesting, but it was stuffed with sausage and more bacon. I'm still thinking of some other combination of stuffings for this beautiful lining.
At my boyfriend Jamie's super bowl party, he made this giant log of bacon and sausage--and it was delicious. It was sliced into inch-wide pieces, so it was really like a hamburger or large breakfast sausage helping with a little bacon. You slather it with barbecue sauce before you serve it--he used Stubbs. It was great. This just goes to show, don't judge a recipe by how fattening it is--just don't eat it daily.

Here's how you make it if you have some big hungry men to impress:

Pan fry some bacon until it's crispy and put it on paper towels to drain out some grease.

The make a basket weave of bacon. On top of the bacon, put loose sausage (out of its casing). Jamie used a combo of parsley cheese sausage and spicy Italian sausage (both from Faicco's). Then sprinkle a little spice rub over the sausage, pat it down, and crunch the cooked bacon in little bite sized pieces on top. Then drizzle a little BBQ sauce over it and roll it tightly.

Put it on a tin-foil lined baking sheet and cook it at 225 for an hour per every inch of thickness of your "pork log" as Jamie lovingly calls it. When you take it out, spread some bbq sauce on top and slice it as thick or as thin as you want.