Homemade Bacon Jam with Apple Cider

It’s pork and apple season around the Whiskey Forge. The mornings are cold again and I’m glad to have laid in supplies of cured meats along with various ciders and apple brandies to help take the chill off these brisk days and dark nights.

Frying the bacon; brown but not too crip

Of course, it’s never quite not pork season here and when the meat in question is bacon, seasons don’t play into the menu as much as they might with, say, a crown roast or garden tomatoes; we eat the stuff sparingly, but all through the year. When recipes for jam based on bacon started pinging on my radar last year, I decided to tweak them and give a go to my own version. Coffee seems an integral flavoring to many recipes, but it’s not a taste I wanted in my jam. Tinkering with cider, cider vinegar, and maple syrup instead helped give this sweet meaty jam a deep and complex flavor.

Spread it on toast? Yes, if you like. I mix mine into baked mac n cheese, fold it into cream of celeriac soup, streak it trough layers of a potato gratin, add it to cooked spinach with more garlic, and put dollops in folded-over puff pastry with a bit of cheese to bake cheaty little hand pies.

What would you do with it?

Bacon Jam 

2 pounds smoked, dry-cured bacon
3 large yellow onions
8-10 cloves of garlic
1/3 c/80ml grade B maple syrup
2/3 c/160ml cider vinegar
2/3 c/160ml light brown sugar
1 c/250ml apple cider
1 tsp black pepper 

Done cooking; ready for the processor

Cut bacon into lardoons or small strips. Place them in a Dutch oven or other large, heavy-bottomed pan, then cook on very low heat, stirring now and then, until the bacon is browned but not too crisp.

While the bacon is gently frying, peel, quarter, and slice the onions thinly. Peel and mince the garlic. Combine them in a bowl and set it aside.

When the bacon is cooked, remove it from the Dutch oven with slotted spoon and set it aside in a bowl. Pour off all but 3 tablespoons of the hot bacon fat, leaving in as much of the browed bits as possible that cling to the bottom of the pan.

At this point, throw away this fat if you want — but that would be foolish. Save it for making  cornbread, bacon fat mayonnaise, sautéing vegetables, flavoring succotash, etc.

Turn the prepared onions and garlic into the bacon fat in the pan and cook over a low flame until they start to brown. Deglaze the pan with a splash of water or cider if necessary. Add the remaining ingredients, including the cooked bacon, and bring to a boil. Boil about two minutes, then reduce the heat to low and cook, stirring now and then, until the entire mass is sticky, dark brown and the meaty bits of bacon look almost shellacked (about 2.5 hours).

Towards the end of the cooking, stir often; it likes to stick to the pan.

Cool this mixture off the heat for about five minutes, then pulse in a food processor 3-4 times to yield a rough puree.

Done. Put in it a jar, keep it in the fridge.

~ Makes about 3.5 cups

Goes well with:

• Zingerman's Guide to Better Bacon (and a hand-dandy bacon glossary)
• Maynard Davies' Manual of a Traditional Bacon Curer. Maynard has several bacon books. My review of his latest and most detailed is here, ideal for those who want to cure pork bellies.  Includes links to his other bacon books.
• A broad, steaming bowl of Speckklöße — bacon dumplings for a wicked hangover (or just a simple, homey dinner).

Getting a Grip on Smoke: an Idea from Chip Flanagan

Chip Flanagan is on my mind today. Flanagan is executive chef at Ralph's on the Park, a mid-city restaurant directly across the street from City Park in New Orleans. Catching a breeze on the upper story's wraparound porch after a meal is a thoroughly civilized — and mighty enjoyable — way to keep cool on sultry Summer evenings. Helps to have some whiskey in hand (which the bartenders downstairs will happily supply).

But it's the not drinks, the view, or the architecture that's got me thinking of Ralph's; it's what Flanagan has been doing with smoke that's got me mulling options for our new place in San Diego.

Smoked pork belly at Ralph's

Back in December, we bought a 1914 Craftsman house. The sellers had hidden the pad for the original garage out back under a layer of new mulch next to loquat and lilly pilly trees. It was well disguised and we took nearly a week to discover the deception.

The options, as I see them, are two; (1) keep it or (2) get rid of it. The area gets a lot of sun. If we rip it up, I can plant avocado or citrus trees in the 180 square feet. If we keep it...what to do?

And then I remembered Chip Flanagan: I could turn the pad into the foundation for an outdoor kitchen, starting with a smoker. From little more than an old proofing box and a couple of hot plates, the chef has rigged a respectable smoker that he showed me when I was visiting. At the time, a few pork bellies hung within, each slowly acquiring a mahogany mantel. Not long afterwards, I greedily tucked into some of that unctuous, soft, sticky swine.

A flare up in the smoker

Yeah. That's what I want.

Smoked meat is the birthright of every Kansas City native and ever since I was a kid growing up in that town, I've wanted a smoker of my own. When we lived in places a smoker was either impractical or illegal, visions of home-smoked hams, sausages, bacon, chickens, and more have kept me up at night — but the obsession over smoked meats didn't abate. Now that I own the ground under my feet, it's time to decide not whether to build one, but what kind to build. Flanagan's steel box is a compelling design — it's simply a bakery proofing cabinet with the electrics removed and it's on wheels already, so it's mobile(ish). Flanagan uses old skillets with wood chips heated on portable hot plates and for the smoke. The thing would have to have vents to control the flow of air. Add a few cross bars for hanging meats, maybe a wire shelf for smoking cheeses or salt, and we're on to something.

That's it.

With such a simple box, the chef makes great stuff for the restaurant. There's the smoked belly, of course, but also cauliflower, which he uses in soups, salads, and custards. Right now, he's got an oak-smoked pork chop on the menu and he also sometimes cold-smokes tuna with hickory.

Tonight, I'm picking up a little bullet-shaped smoker from a guy who's never used it. That will hold me until I figure out whether I take the Flanagan route or take the plunge and build something more substantial.

But mark this: come Monday, we'll have smoked chicken gumbo for the first time in many years.

Ralph's on the Park
900 City Park Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70119
(504) 488-1000
www.ralphsonthepark.com

Bookshelf: Zingerman's Guide to Better Bacon (and a Bacon Glossary)

Ari Weinzweig’s book on the topic holds few revelations for those well-versed in the literature of bacon — but, really now, I keep shelves of treatises on pork and have dabbled in home curing for decades, and even I admit that the very concept of a literature of bacon teeters on the cusp of a hipster enthusiasm matched only by the zeal of neophyte cocktologists. A literature of bacon? A porcine canon?

Well, yes.

Set aside for the moment the modern mania for bacon and the question of when our taste for the stuff may begin to flag (though Weinzweig hasn’t: Zingerman's Guide to Better Bacon also comes in a limited-release cloth printing and a leather-bound version for insatiable bacon completists). The book explains, in plain and sometimes effusive language, why we ought to gush so much over well-made bacon. Not just any bacon: truly good stuff, truly made well.

Readers accustomed to mass-market bacon may wonder what all the modern fuss about pork bellies is about. I mean, it’s good, but is it that good? In short, yes. With all due deference to Socrates’ aphorism about the unexamined life, I put it to you that neither is the unexamined BLT worth eating.

For those who aren’t quite convinced of that, Zingerman’s Guide is perhaps the best introduction to bacon and the men and women who make some of what Weinzweig considers the best around. I have tasted many of these bacons, and can affirm: the people who make them know their stuff. Their firm and flavorful cured bellies put to shame grocery store claimants to the name “bacon.”

What modern bacon zealot doesn’t know of Allan Benton, for instance? He’s here, in typical humility, along with his secret for making world-glass bacon (“Well, Ari, the secret is that there is no secret. This is just the way bacon was made years ago.”). So are profiles of many of today’s working artisans; Bill Robertson from Kentucky, Virginia’s Sam Edwards, Tanya Nueske from Wisconsin, and Felix Schlosser of Arkansas who makes a wet-cured bacon flavored with long pepper, a spice once favored by Roman cooks who paid as much as three times the price of black pepper for the exotic spice.

Weinzweig goes into some detail not just on American bacons, exploring the wet- and dry-cure divide, but looks at other traditions as well, including British, Irish, and Italian species of the stuff. The book wraps up with over 40 recipes using bacon (rather than, say, making your own). Dishes include bacon fat mayonnaise (so arresting an idea it’s featured in the book’s subtitle), cheddar bacon scones, pimento cheese, grits & bits waffles, oyster and bacon pilau, and chocolate and bacon fat gravy.

And what guide doesn’t include a degree of hand-holding? This one includes a handy gloss to deciphering bacon terms you’re likely to come across if, like me, you spend an inordinate amount of time pursuing the literature of bacon. From Ari Weinzweig’s Zingermans Guide to Better Bacon, here’s a

BACON GLOSSARY

Bacon: Over here in the U.S., cured and usually, though not always
smoked pork belly.

British Bacon: Today, this generally refers to the back and not the
belly, cured in a brine solution but not smoked.

Canadian Peameal Bacon: Pork loin cured in a wet brine solution
and then rolled in cornmeal. The real thing is sold raw and
never smoked.

Dry Cure (a.k.a. Country Cure): Raw pork rubbed and then set into
a dry solution of salt, sugar and spices (instead of a brine) to
cure the pork before it's smoked.

Fatback: The strip of fat from the top of the hog's back, above the
loin. Used extensively in old-style American cooking, it really has
no meat on it whatsoever. In the South you'll still see places selling fried fatback. Typically used to make lard and cracklins.

Flitch: The old English word for a side of bacon.

Green: The British term for cured but unsmoked bacon.

Guanciale: Italian-style pork jowl, dry-cured and unsmoked.


Irish Bacon: Same as British bacon, but often used for boiling.

Lardo: Italian-style pork back fat, dry-cured in slabs for months.
Sliced and eaten raw.

Long Back or Long Middle: Used in England to describe bacon sold
as loin with belly still attached.

Pancetta: Dry-cured but unsmoked Italian-style bacon made from
pork belly.

Rashers: Slices of bacon, to a Brit.

Streak o' Lean: Like fatback, but with (at most) a small strip of meat
in it. Michael Stern, writing in Roadfood, says, "streak o' lean pro-
vides maximum piggy flavor. If you never can get enough bacon,
it's the breakfast meat for you." Sometimes smoked, sometimes
 not. Also like fatback, streak o' lean can be floured and deep-fried to make a crisp little bacony snack.

Streaky Bacon: What British people ask for when they want American-style belly bacon.


Wet Cure: Bacon that spends a good bit of time in a saltwater brine,
most often, though not always, with sugar and spices.

Wide: The wide side of the pork loin as it's used for bacon—it's
from further up the top loin, toward the shoulder.


Ari Weinzweig (2009)
Zingerman's Guide to Better Bacon: Stories of Pork Bellies, Hush Puppies, Rock n Roll Music and Bacon Fat Mayonnaise.
240 pages (hardback)
Zingerman’s Press
ISBN: 0-964-89564-1
$29.99

Goes well with:

• That leather-bound printing can be found here.
• Hit the sauce a little too hard last night? Try some bacon dumplings for a wicked hangover. 
• Weinzweig gushes about this guy and so have I: Maynard Davies has three — count 'em, three — bacon books in print. I covered his autobiographical Secrets of a Bacon Curer and Adventures of a Bacon Curer here, but if you're looking to actually cure your own bacon, be certain to check out his Manual of a Traditional Bacon Curer.

Bacon Dumplings for a Wicked Hangover

Though I make Speckklöße only, at best, once a year, I lust after them each and every week. Speckwhat? Think of them as bacon dumplings. Think of them, also, as restorative after a night of debauchery and something you can make almost on autopilot. Hot, cheap, smoky, lightly greasy, carb-heavy with bacon’s ineffable umami loveliness, and better than aspirin when that bottle you hit last night smacks you right back. I could eat a dozen. Which is about how many this recipe makes.

Dumpling eaters. Don't make yours so big.

In Germany, Klöße and Knödl are names for poached dumplings made from potatoes, semolina, yesterday’s bread, flour, breadcrumbs, even crumbled dry pretzels. These dry ingredients are softened with stock, milk, or other liquids and are generally bound with eggs and flavored with fruits, nuts, or various proteins such as fish, cracklings, or — in this case — bacon.

Sidestepping the intricacies both of territorial nomenclature and of nearly infinite dumpling species, we’ll call these simply “Klöße.” That weird character, that ß, represents a sound we often make in English, but for which we don’t have a single character. It’s called an eszett and is pronounced like a double-s, so you’ll see these sometimes as Kloss (singular) or Klosse (plural). Speck is smoked bacon so Speck-Klöße are simply bacon dumplings.

Like all the German foods I ate growing up, I learned to make these in the American Midwest where German, Swiss, and Austrian bakeries, Konditoreien, sausage shops, and butchers were commonplace and the Germanic (or, as we called it, “Dutchy”) influence on home cooking was pervasive. The older I get, the less I eat the German foods of my youth. But as I work through our bacon inventory, I’ve been building a craving for a bowl of Speckklöße.

Today, I capitulated.

Speckklöße

The recipe calls for simmering the dumplings. Seriously: simmer. If you boil these, they are likely just to fall apart in the pot. Edible, but in the same way a fistful of dough is.

3” square of slab bacon, diced into tiny cubes (about 8 slices if using pre-sliced)
1 medium loaf of crusty bread
1 cup/250ml hot milk
2 eggs, beaten
Salt and pepper
q.s. rich chicken stock

Cut the loaf into slices (crust or no crust: your call, but save the cumbs) and pour the hot milk over them in a large bowl. Cover the bowl with a clean kitchen towel or a cutting board (careful that it doesn't tip the bowl) to keep in the heat and moisture. Fry the bacon pieces in a medium pan. When the bacon is browned, pour it, grease and all, over the soaking bread in the bowl. When the mixture cools, add the eggs, salt, and pepper. Mix gently but thoroughly.

Shape into small round dumplings about 1.5”/4cm in diameter. If they seem too wet, add some of the reserved breadcrumbs or even a small bit of flour. If they’re too dry, add a bit of stock. Then simmer the dumplings gently in rich chicken stock (I flavor my stock with roasted garlic and cumin) until they float and are cooked through (about 10-15 minutes).

Serve hot in shallow bowls with some of the stock.

Notes

About the bacon: Use the very best you can find. I like slab bacon, but pre-sliced is fine. Allan Benton’s stuff is amazing, but if you’ve got a local shop making or selling high-quality smoked pork belly, by all means shop there. And do check out Maynard Davies' Manual of a Traditional Bacon Curer.

About the bread: It’s easier to get good cupcakes in San Diego than good bread. Fortunately, we have Bread & Cie, a bakery that consistently puts out the sorts of high-quality breads I knew in the Midwest, on the East coast, and in Europe. Go for something with some character, a tight crumb, and a crisp crust. By all means, use flavored breads if you want to experiment; just keep in mind the effect that things like olives, rosemary, or jalapenos may have on the final dish.

For that matter, you can play with the poaching liquid. I find the idea repugnant, but you could — if you possess the perversity to do such things — swap out the bacon with country ham and poach these in coffee as a red-eye dumpling concoction. But beef stock, fumé, and vegetable stocks are all fine. Water, too, in a pinch, if it’s salted. Deep-fried in fat takes it an entirely different, though no less delicious, direction. Want to sauté some onion and include it in the dumplings? In. Got cracklings from rendering your own goose fat? In. Knock yourself out.

The version above is the no-frills classic I prefer at home, but there’s no reason not to take the basic idea and run with it.

Lord knows the Germans have.

Elise Hannemann's Liverwurst

Even though one of my Irish grandfathers' families hails from Cork, a city known for its appreciation of offal, and the other from County Mayo, my wurstlust is traceable to another side of the family entirely.

As a child, if I were particularly antsy, my mother would rebuke me with an exasperated "Sitzt du!" and I would know to sit and immediately unfuss myself. Asked what I wanted for my birthday dinners, I declared the tedious "rouladen" more often than she probably liked to hear, and in my grade school, I was one of the only children — certainly the only freckled one — who toted Braunschweiger and mustard sandwiches for lunch. To this day, if you startle me, you're as likely to get a German expletive as an English one.

The unavoidable conclusion is that somewhere in the woodpile lurks a beer-drinking, sauerbraten-making, spätzle-simmering subject of the Kaiser. Suspicion falls squarely on my great grandmother whose maiden name, depending on which relative you asked, was either Schultz or von Hasenberg. As a small child, I once asked why some of our cousins had German names. She konked me on the head with the back of her hand and chided me. "We are not," she insisted, "German. We are Prussian." Years later, I think it may have been a joke...but, then, Lily von Hasenberg (if that was her real name) was not known for levity, so who knows?

That Braunschweiger above is a spreadable pork liver sausage, a subcategory of the wider liverwurst clan, and one likely to be found at family gatherings at my great-grandmother's massive lawn parties in the 1970's. To be honest, the kids generally eschewed it; those who didn't like it really didn't like its mineral bite. To me, though, it was one of the perks of no-class summer diversions. Broadly, Braunschweiger — known as BS to some of its admirers — is ground pork liver mixed with finely ground bacon, stuffed in hog bungs, simmered, then smoked. Because lately I've been both on a liverwurst kick and struck with bouts of insomnia, I've been digging up recipes that elucidate the whole category of liver sausages — and make sense of my childhood snacking.

On a hunt for Braunschweiger recipes in particular, I came across one in my library for "Leberwurst" from Elise Hannemann's 1904 Kochbuch. The book is dedicated to Hannemann's patron, Ihrer Majestat der Kaiserin ["your Majesty the Empress" (i.e., Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, wife of Kaiser Wilhelm II)] and is a revealing look at middle class German cookery in the years before World War I. Although Hannemann does not call this particular sausage "Brauschweiger," the bacon and optional smoking would make recognizable to American Midwesterners as exactly that.

Klicken Sie hier

My somewhat free translation is below. Following that is my transcription of the original — as always, feel free to correct my translations. The original recipe's Fett- oder Krausedärme refer to slightly different natural hog casings. Those sold as 2.5-3-inch "bungs" (no snickering) in the US are just fine for a finely ground and simmered sausage like this. Wurstkräuter are simply herbs and spices for seasoning wurst. Although Hannemann doesn't specify, white pepper, marjoram, nutmeg, allspice, and even cloves would not be out of place. Start with a 3/8" plate, then grind twice more with a 1/8" plate.

Liverwurst

Very Good. In winter, it will last three weeks.

500 g liver
400 g of cooked bacon
1 whole egg
Sausage herbs
Dried truffles or fresh anchovies
Salt
Pepper

Run the liver and bacon through a grinder three times, then thoroughly mix in the herbs, salt, pepper, finely sliced truffles or chopped anchovies. Stuff this mixture loosely into hog bungs and let cook slowly for a half an hour* in boiling water. Then remove them immediately place in cold water.

The sausage for slicing and is especially good if they are smoked two days. 

*Note that some modern authorities suggest cooking liverwurst until its internal temperature is 165°F. 

Transcript of the above image:

Leberwurst.

Sehr Gut. Im Winter 3 Wochen haltbar.

500 g Leber
400 g gekochter Speck
1 ganzes Ei
Wurstkräuter
Getrocknete Trüffeln oder frische Sardellen
Salz
Pfeffer.

Die Leber und der Speck werden dreimal durch die Fleishhackmaschine genommen, mit den Krautern, Salz, Pfeffer, kleingeschnittenen Trüffeln oder gehackten Sardellen gut vermischt, lose in Fett- oder Krausedärme gestopft und ½ Stunde langsam in kochendem Wasser ziehen gelassen; dann werden sie herausgenommen und sosort in kaltes Wasser gelegt.

Die Wurst wird zum Ausschnitt verwandt und ist besonders gut, wenn sie zwei Tage gerauchert wird.
  
Goes well with:

• I am a Meat Wagon —When I say "wurstlust," it's not a joke. I crave sausages and cured meats; my last stop out of New Orleans was at Butcher where I scored two types of bacon we can't get in San Diego . I even tempt the TSA in a story about getting stopped smuggling andouille after a trip to LaPlace, Louisiana. 

Rumaki and Rum

Sometime around the middle of the 1920's 

I seem to remember my first 

bacon-wrapped snack, 

served to accompany bathtub gin martinis. 

Good bathtub gin was not without its merits,

but it needed food to keep one in shape 

for the second or third drink, 

so snacks became more hearty. 

James Beard

James Beard's American Cookery (1972)

There's a story my mother tells. It was the mid-'60's. The setting was a swank cocktail party with hip hors d'oeuvres. My father was destroying round after round of a particular tasty bacon-wrapped specimen. At one point, another round came by. The host asked "Would you like another chicken liver, Joe?" Well, that was the end of that. My father was not to be tempted by liver.

Click to embiggen

My father had been eating rumaki, a snack popularized by "Trader" Vic Bergeron and others who opened tiki bars across the country in the middle of the last century.  Several versions of the snack exist, but each is essentially a short piece of bacon wrapped around a bite-sized filling, then the whole thing broiled. Whole water chestnuts are the most common filling, but one also finds the aforementioned chicken livers or chunks of pineapple. I make them with water chestnuts because I enjoy the contrast of their crispness and hot smoky bacon. But on occasion I've been known to cut livers into small pieces and tuck a piece in with the water chestnuts.

It's also made from things I tend to have around the house, so it can be put together in pretty short order, especially if someone else breaks out the rum and tackles the tiki drink making. Adapted from James Beard's James Beard's American Cookery, here's my take on

Rumaki

One 20 oz can of water chestnuts
1 lb/500g thick-cut bacon, sliced in thirds
½ cup soy sauce
¼ cup vegetable oil
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
1 Tbl fresh ginger, grated
1 Tbl brown sugar
1 tsp Aleppo pepper

Drain the water chestnuts, rinse, drain, and pat dry. Wrap each in a short bacon slice. Secure with a toothpick. Set in a large shallow dish and repeat until either all the water chestnuts or all the bacon is gone (but it should even out).

Position an oven rack under the broiler and preheat the oven o 350°F/180°C. Whisk together the remaining ingredients in a bowl, pour it over the pork bundles, and let marinate while the oven warms. Remove the rumaki to a broiler pan with a drain pan (or some other shallow pan to catch drippings) and cook until the bacon is crisped at the edges and well-browned. The final cooking time depends on the thickness of the bacon's cut, but start checking around 10 minutes.

Discard the marinade. Serve the rumaki while it's still barely sizzling.

If you were doing a chicken liver version (closer to Beard's original), just trim and cut into halves about a pound of livers and marinate them in the above mix about half an hour (they get overly salty if left in too long), then slice a half dozen whole water chestnuts into small coin shapes. Tuck a slice onto each liver, wrap in bacon, and proceed as above.

I Blew the Ass out of My Jeans This Week

A little extra weight

Would never

Look no nicer

On nobody else

But you.

~ Violent Femmes

It is a lie that nothing tastes as good as thin feels, but consider this: I blew the ass out of my jeans this week.

When we moved to San Diego in 2006, I had a tan line and weighed 86 kilos. Five years later, the tan is gone and I tip the scales at 104 kilos. For those more accustomed to pounds and ounces, that rounds out to around two and a half new ounces each week for the last 5 years.

Cringed when I saw this printed in the local paper

The result? 230 pounds of Rowley.

Whether you think in grams or pounds, there’s no denying: I’ve grown obese.

As an adult, I’ve never been particularly concerned about my actual weight. For better or worse, I’ve always been able to define my own space in a crowd. Standing 6’ tall with size 12 shoes and broad shoulders, I can pull off 210 muscled pounds and feel confident enough to peel off a shirt while working in the yard. But let that muscle atrophy and the fat balloon? It’s no wonder my pants couldn’t take the strain.

Since childhood, I’ve wavered between husky, thick, muscled, and, occasionally, flat-out fat. My father, on seeing me for the first time in a year, recently remarked, “Looks like you’re not missing any meals.” It’s true. I’d tapered off going to the gym in 2009 and, sometime in the last year, just stopped altogether. I did not, however, stop eating like someone who worked out regularly.

In addition, work has kept me increasingly tethered to computers — and chairs. With the onset of a sedentary life, the tan faded. My waistline inched up. That San Diego is extremely casual and few meetings call for suits or ties let me easily overlook the fact that several of my suit jackets no longer close and my old shirts won’t button at the neck.

Drinking hasn’t helped. Unless it’s for work, I don’t drink alcohol during workdays. But the fact is, I write about and for distilleries and their products. Sampling spirits and cocktails at distilleries and bars is what I do. Even on an off night at home, my preference for tiki drinks — pumped with fruit juices and syrups of passion fruit, ginger, cinnamon, vanilla, almonds, pomegranates, and more exotic tastes — means that I consume an enormous quantity of calories in cocktails alone. Lately, I've reverted to my old habit of after-dinner whiskey. Just whiskey.



I am tired of being fat; of snoring at night because the flesh of my neck now interferes with normal breathing; of getting winded after running up stairs; of rotating through the same four pants because only they fit; of catching despondent looks from my family who clearly worry about my health and whether I’m going to be around in five years, much less 20 or 30.

So. Spring cleaning, physical and mental.

With a deep and resigned sigh, I cleared the fridge of most of the syrups, poured them down the drain, and dropped the bottles into the recycling bin. No more homemade raspberry, black pepper, marshmallow, or chocolate syrups. Threw out my beautiful golden schmaltz and the blessed bacon fat. Tossed the homemade ice creams and 86’d the frozen coffee cake.

Because the intense California sun can cause irreparable skin damage, I got a skin cancer screening this morning (all clear) and renewed my membership at 24 Hour Fitness. Tuned up my bike. Shaved off my beard (although skinny guys can have — and look great in — beards, it’s far too common for us fat bastards to hide our spreading jowls behind fur).

There are very few things that give me such unbridled pleasure as good food in good company and I dread — absolutely dread — the cooking I’ll be doing in 2011. But I do want to be around to see the end of the year. And of 2012. And of every year after for as long as I can.

Say hello if you see me at the gym. But please don’t laugh if I blow the ass out of my shorts; I’m working on it.

Bookshelf: Manual of a Traditional Bacon Curer

What makes a good bacon curer is not rocket science,

but common sense.
The whole idea is not only to make bacon
but good bacon.

~ Maynard Davies

Such is the thrall in which bacon holds modern Americans that a young woman approached me and my stack of curing manuals at the coffee shop and, barely taking her eyes off them, asked “Can I come home with you?”

The passions which bacon ignites are understandable. Bacon should be wonderful. It should ignite passions. So often, it's the idea of bacon that fires us rather than actual bacon. Which is not how it used to be. In his 1833 Cottage Economy, William Cobbett lauded the stuff: “it has twice as much strength in it of any other thing of the same weight.” It’s only recently that truly excellent cured and smoked sowbelly has been broadly available as Americans rediscover the flavors and textures that we’ve been missing for all too long.

Most of what has passed for bacon during my lifetime has been pallid, tepid stuff. Oh, it was ok. And occasionally examples from small smokehouses were great. But the majority was so pumped with water and polyphosphates that it shrank to half its size on frying and threw off a strange white residue that brought to mind the gummy white residuum that accumulates in the corners of some peoples’ mouths when they’ve forgotten to drink their water.

Nasty.

Enter master curer Maynard Davies. I don’t go much for role models, but if I did, Davies—Britain’s reigning bacon pornographer—would be king of them all. Retired now from the trade, he’s a bit of a cult hero in the UK, a darling of Slow Food types for his continuing promotion of traditional British charcuterie. Given Americans’ lust for bacon and a growing locavore sentiment, it’s surprising he’s not better known here. His new book, Manual of a Traditional Bacon Curer, might be just the thing to bring him to wider and well-deserved American attention.

His previous books—Adventures of a Bacon Curer and Secrets of a Bacon Curer—were charming memoirs from a seasoned expert in curing meats, must-haves for aspiring bacon-makers with a bit of experience under their belts, but not how-to manuals. Davies is dyslexic and his earlier, less structured, narratives about life on his farm and the vagaries of cottage industry charcuterie meant one had to read between the lines a bit to glean valuable gems about curing meats.

Not this time. Manual of a Traditional Bacon Curer shows a firm editorial hand and explains his processes in clear, tight detail. It is truly a manual. Even an amateur could pick up this book and come away with a solid idea of what’s involved in curing pork and how to get started. The charm is still there. But his recipes are now laid out with precise ingredients and succinct directions. If there’s a brine, it’s not a “strong brine”—it’s 70% or 40% or whatever that particular recipe calls for. The color photographs are the best of any charcuterie or butchery book in my library.

The manual is meant for professional bacon curers and others who work with pork who might regularly break down entire pig carcasses, but the small batch sizes and easily scalable recipes mean that amateur and aspiring bacon curers will be able to tackle most of these recipes at home or in restaurant kitchens. A smoker, however, does help with the most interesting of the recipes.

Ingredients, techniques, and tools are covered as are facilities. Want to know how to lay out a curing house? That’s here. So is how to construct a proper smokehouse and how to maintain brine tanks. He includes notes on which pigs of what size to use and lays out—in full-color, step-by-step photos—how to divide their carcasses into useable parts. Be warned that the photos are deliciously graphic.

Recipes—about 150 of them—cover bacon (wet and dry cures), ham, an array of sausages, and other specialty items such as brawn, tongue, black puddings, and faggots (no snickering: they’re ancient British forcemeat balls roasted under a mantel of caul fat, akin to fancy-ass French crépinettes). Want haggis recipes? There are two. One, seemingly, is not enough.

Bacon varieties include: Ayrshire (with Demerara and black pepper); Derbyshire Favourite spiked with juniper berries; hard Romany bacon with mace, bay, and caraway; Penitentiary Dry Cured (a recipe learned from his younger days teaching American prisoners how to cure meats); London Spiced (allspice, coriander, muscovado sugar); and others, variously infused with the flavors of ginger, honey, raisins, coriander, cider, red wine, white pepper, red pepper, beer, treacle, and other ingredients that could delight American palates unfamiliar with traditional British recipes.

If you make sausage or cure your own meats—any kind, not just pork—don’t delay. Get a copy of Maynard’s book today.

It’s the one we’ve been waiting for.


Maynard Davies (2009)
Manual of a Traditional Bacon Curer
160 pages, hardback
Merlin Unwin Books
ISBN: 978 1 906122089
£25.00

Buy it directly from Amazon.co.uk here or US Amazon here.
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Bookshelf: Maynard Davies, Bacon Curer

The recipe had been given to me by an old Quaker lady in America many years ago and I was unsure whether it would go down well in modern Britain, but I decided to do it all the same. I did it exactly as she as written it down in her wonderful hand and the first production, believe me or not, was like eating with God…

~ Maynard Davies
Maynard: Secrets of a Bacon Curer

Even vegans know that bacon is the meat of the moment.

Options for indulging in cured pork belly range from a well-regarded bacon-of-the-month club to bacon-themed wrapping paper and bacon bandages to questionable bacon-scented candles, mints, and car air fresheners. Bacon and chocolate candies may be the vanguard of hip: you may decide for yourself whether they are good.

But when bacon toilet paper is yours for the low, low price of $9.95 per roll, we’ve lost sense that bacon should be delicious. It should be meaty. It should be graced with streakiness and so well cured that it doesn’t shrink and shrivel in the pan, but renders just enough fat to lend a light brown crisp. Ideally, it comes from heritage breeds, raised and slaughtered humanely. But even swine from a feed lot can yield respectable bacon if the curer is a master.

Bacon lovers everywhere rejoice. That master is Maynard Davies. And for the last six years, he’s been telling his story in books. Davies, who retired after selling his Shropshire farm and curing business to Rob and Fiona Cunningham, trained from a young boy as a sausage-maker and curer of bacon and hams in England. His products have been praised by culinary preservationists, Slow Food types, and the British media. That he’s not well-known in the US is just a shame.

But it’s not entirely a mystery. See, Maynard—as he likes to be called—is dyslexic. His books are not polished. They read as if a charming and slightly dotty uncle, prone to aphorism and meandering tales, has sat down to relate highlights from his life and work. Which is exactly what he’s done in Maynard: Adventures of a Bacon Curer and Maynard: Secrets of a Bacon Curer. Maynard’s wife Ann has transcribed his tape recordings and pulled them together into a series of narratives that take Maynard from his earliest days as an apprentice through his stint curing bacon for an American prison to cured meats entrepreneur back in England.

Because of the narrative nature of the books, they aren’t exhaustive treatises on the minutiae of making bacon. They’re a collection of stories by a man who knows his craft inside and out and who cares deeply about making high quality, hand-crafted foods. But as he tells stories about making bacon for gypsies, about building a smokehouse, about raising livestock, or preparing a feast for his daughter’s wedding, a careful reader will glean valuable information about how to use equipment, how to wrangle smoke and fire, how and where to build a smokehouse, which parts of a pig are best for what recipes, and—regrettably—the scams bedeviling gullible country farmers.

His recipes are often unclear and beg questions, but if you know the least bit about curing meats, answers readily suggest themselves. Take, for instance, his presentation for dry salting according to one of his early mentors:

Theo’s Dry Salting Recipe
48lb fine salt
9lbs dark muscovado
9lbs demerara sugar
14oz saltpetre
3lbs sea salt

Spice Brine
40 gallons water
3lbs bay salt
56lb fine salt
1lb 1oz saltpeter
1 ½ oz sodium nitrite
8lbs dark sugar
½ oz coriander
½ oz pimento
1lb raisins
1lb currants

Method
Soak raisins and currants in cold water and leave overnight.

Put currants, raisins and all spices in a container and boil until cooked and dissolved.

Strain into a clean container, cool and then add to brine.

Wait, which water? The 40 gallons? Or a smaller measure? The dry cure goes on after a brining and draining, but you need to read the paragraphs around the recipe box to figure that out as well as how much to use. Because Mayard seems to know so much about bacon, I suspect that he may not have recognized the gaps in directions that leap out at those of us who haven’t spent our lives working salt and seasoning into pigs.

But don’t let that stop you: Maynard speaks with the voice of an artisan. The read is charming, informative, and easy. The information is there, just not in the format to which cookbook readers may be accustomed. Maynard’s aren’t the best recipe manuals among my sausage and meat books. But they are the most endearing I own.


Maynard Davies (2003)
Maynard: Adventures of a Bacon Curer
160 pages, hardback
Merlin Unwin Books
ISBN: 1873674643
£30.00

Maynard: Secrets of a Bacon Curer
176 pages, hardback
Merlin Unwin Books
ISBN: 1873674937
£9.99

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Two Loves Don't Equal a Happy Marriage

A few weeks back, I mentioned that, unlike other cocktail enthusiasts, I declined to contaminate my finest bourbons with bacon.

Odd, right? I mean, I dote on bacon. In fact, tonight's dinner will be BLT sandwiches since the local tomatoes are still good. Hell, I've even cured my own bacon. And bourbon? Don't get me started. It ain't just patriotism that keeps me stocked up with a robust inventory of that most American of commercial spirits. You'd think the two would go together like a hand and glove.

No.

On seeing Don Lee's video of making a Benton's old fashioned, Morpheus said "Man, that sounds delicious." So, in a moment of weakness, and in the spirit of experimentation and camraderie, I snagged a bottle of Four Roses yellow label Straight Bourbon and cooked off a batch of some of Allan Benton's sublime bacon. Following Lee's instructions, I made a batch of bacon-infused bourbon.

I feel like I've woken in a stranger's bed, one arm pinned beneath a smokey, booze-breathed hound sawing logs, and uncertain of how to extricate myself. Brother, I'm here to tell you, don't believe the hype of bacon-infused bourbon. The saddest part of this errant tale is that a perfectly good bottle of bourbon was ruined.

I admit that I liked the second sip more than the first. But as a thumbnail sketch of a choice between two evils, sip #1 and sip #2 do just fine.

However, all is not lost...the entire bottle of Four Roses was not graced with the porcine kiss: I decanted about six ounces before introducing the bacon fat. Had some straight, some over ice, some with a splash of water, and some, gloriously, in a proper old fashioned. For those who know 4R as a low-end bargain brand, the spirit seems to have undergone an upgrade in the last few years.

Now, it's true that I keep a lot of bourbon around. But there's always one or two bottles of what I consider the current "house" bourbon that balance drinkability and price for overall value. Over the years that's been Maker's Mark, Bulleit, and Eagle Rare. Four Roses, you have earned the place of honor. What a delicious whiskey. And at $19.99, it's worth snagging a bottle for cocktail experimentation.

Just keep it away from the swine.

The cheapest I've seen this whiskey is Hi-Times Wine Cellar.

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