Which Came First the Bacon or the Egg?

"There's something going around" is what I heard just before I had a day off from work. I felt tethered to my bed - downing Emergen-C packets, ginger-lemon tea, and echinacea pills.
No appetite to spoil, I watched YouTube videos on pigs and their diets. Thanks, PodChef; yours were the ones I enjoyed the most.  
Call it what you must . . . delirium, starvation, or bloody genius. While I was watching pigs chow down on their last suppers (finishing diets) I kept thinking about how they didn't seem to have it so bad. I love apples and hazelnuts, and most recently, I have developed a taste for hay. You are what you eat …

Valentine's Day was approaching and I knew I wanted to make a stand out dessert with bacon. As I recovered from the ‘something’ that was ‘going around’, I got hold of an idea and I couldn’t put it down: A dessert composed of everything that a pig would have been fed as a finishing diet.

The Concept: Start to Finishing Diet 



The Menu Tonight: 

Soft Scrambled Eggs with Creme Fraîche, Grilled ‘My House Baget’, Espresso Cured Pancetta, Fine Herbs


Apple Gelee, Hazelnut Cream, Brown Sugar, Candied "Hay Honey, Bacon!" Chips

Knowing that I would be going the sweet rather then the savory route with my bacon I decided to use honey instead of maple syrup and of course I couldn't resist - fresh hay. Everything you love about a new barn is captured in hay. Sweet barnyard-y goodness - I call this "Hay Honey, Bacon!"

The Pancetta got the espresso because I was sitting in a cafe in Seattle borrowing some internet just before I returned home to cure and I couldn't help it. That specific coffee house did its own roasting and it was too aromatic to pass up. 

Recipe for success:

4 Eggs
1T Butter
1T Creme Fraîche
Dijon to taste

Set up a double boiler on your stove top. Whisk the eggs until frothy in a bowl off the heat. Place them over a double boiler and use a spatula to drag the eggs around (think figure eights, circles, and canoe paddling). It will take awhile, but curdles will start to form and cook. If you like large curds then don't stir as much; if you like smaller curds then have at it. While the eggs are still a bit liquid, incorporate your room temperature butter. Turn the heat off to make sure there is no color to the eggs or that they are overcooked. At this point, I fold in my house-made Creme Fraîche and season with a good amount of salt and white pepper, keeping in mind pancetta is also salty. Creamy decadent scrambled eggs are the goal here.

Note: if you've never made Creme Fraîche, you should. It involves either buying a culture packet to add to creme or simply buying Creme Fraîche from the grocery store. Take half of a cup of already made Creme Fraîche and whisk in 1 quart of heavy cream. Leave it out at around 120 degrees or so for around 15 hours you're looking for the cream to turn from liquid to the original Creme Fraîche consistency, then refrigerate.

There is no NEED to make your own bread like there's no NEED to make your own bacon. That being said, it's something fun and challenging, and like bacon, once we stop crafting our own, we run the risk of placing that responsibility into the hands of commercial producers. Just saying . . .

‘My House Baget’ is just that: based on the french baget recipe out of the book Crust and Crumb by Peter Reinhart, a great and supportive text that has been guiding me. The only difference is that ‘My House Baget’ contains a Pacific Northwest Wild Yeast Starter that I acquired from a friend. Julie and I are the proud parents of this starter: we feed it, keep it warm and then tuck it into the refrigerator at night.

At anytime in the process you may slice your beautifully fully cured espresso pancetta as well as grill YOUR 'My House Baget '. 

I stuck to the basic recipe out of Charcuterie the only difference in my pancetta was adding about 1 T of ground espresso per pound of belly meat.  

Finally chop yourself some fines herbs (parsley, tarragon, chervil, and chive) to add that crisp fresh note to the dish and you’re done.

The Dessert:



4 Apples (I like Granny Smiths)
2 Vitamin C Pills
Gelatin sheets 

1/2 C Granulated Sugar
1/2 C Brown Sugar 

5T Hazelnut Butter (you can find this at the store) 
1 C Cream 

Juice your apples (skin on) with 2 crushed vitamin C pills. (The vitamin C pills keep the juice from oxidizing.) Soak 1 sheet of gelatin for every 1 cup of apple liquid, your amount of liquid will vary depending on the size and juiciness of your apples. Bloom (soak) your gelatin in cool water until it's pliable but still in one piece. Remove it from the water and squeeze the gelatin to remove the residual water. Warm your apple juice on the stove. It's important to NOT boil the juice. You risk discoloration as well as harming the gelatin. Dissolve the bloomed gelatin sheets into the warmed apple juice. Dispense into the container you wish to serve in - martini glass, Mason jar, shot glass, plate whatever . . . and refrigerate for 3-4 hours until set.

Whisk the hazelnut butter into the cream and sweeten your deal with some brown sugar, I encourage everyone to taste your mixture adjusting the hazelnut, sugar, cream components to your liking. You are looking to whip the hazelnut cream just until you can drag the whisk up and see the trail of lightly whipped cream left behind in the bowl. 

Make some simple syrup. The easiest way is to combine 1 part sugar and 1 part water by weight. At this point you may steep more hay into this mixture. Slice a couple of thin pieces of 'Hay Honey, Bacon!' Heat the simple syrup and essentially blanch the bacon in the simple syrup for about 3 minutes at the simmer. Strain off the bacon and then bake it at 350 degrees; weighted down by another pan until crispy. 

In the same oven, bake some brown sugar on a non stick or silt mat pan 350 degrees for 8 minutes. 

To assemble remove your set apple gel from the refrigerator quenelle or dolep your hazelnut cream on top. Then crack the set (semi-cooled) brown sugar and the baked bacon chip into pieces and garnish.

I LOVED THE BACON CHALLENGE FROM START TO FINISH(ING)!

Yoga in the morning duck ham in the evening. . . .

Julie and I were "threading the needle" in yoga this morning and all I
could think about was, "How do I set up a blog and what do I want to eat
with duck prosciutto tonight?" Well, twenty six postures and a coconut
water later - it hit me. No doubt, one of my most favorite classic
pairings is duck with celeriac! We had driven across Washington earlier
this summer, escaping from the city, to stay at Cave B, a hotel built on
a winery where we each had a friend we knew working there. Her friend
hooked us up with a sweet suite and my friend hooked us up with a
tasting menu - O the soup! Celeriac soup to be exact, with crispy duck
confit. So I had my inspiration but how could I change this classic into
my own? The roux thickens. . .

Then I remembered a smoked pasta dough recipe in the new "Ideas in Food"
book that I've been meaning to try out - this was the flavor profile I
was lacking: smoke. . .


The Menu Tonight:
Smoked Pappardelle Pasta Celeriac Cream Sauce with Crisped Duck Prosciutto

The next step was the blog. Being the daughter of a librarian and an
academic college drop-out the library is where I go (like many other
cheap 23 year olds) to seek answers to life problems. Let's just put it
this way: you're reading this, so perhaps you might be inspired to visit
your local library.

I'm always excited for any opportunity to cure to my heart's content.
I'm especially perplexed by duck prosciutto because the first one I ever
made was out of Heston Blumenthal's book, NAME THE BOOK HERE, calling
for only 50g of sel gris - salt is amazing huh? I threw in some
coriander, thyme, and laurel bay leaf into mine for the "What the hay?"
factor. Hay . . . that might not be a bad idea for next time - yummm -
maybe pork loinzino? Anyway. . .

These ducks are Magret from Artisan Sonoma in California.

Perhaps not the greatest showmanship of my knife skills but alas, waste
not want not and  it IS super tasty!

Recipes for success:

Your favorite pasta dough recipe. Here's a basic if you don't have one
yet:
4C flour
6 whole eggs
1tsp. salt
1T Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Cold smoke the flour for approximately 2 hours, stirring every half
hour. Mix the dry ingredients in a pile. Mix the wet ingredients in a
bowl. Make a hole in the center of your dry ingredient pile and pour
your wet ingredients into it so it looks like an egg filled volcano.
Slowly take your pointer finger and begin to stir the egg around
clockwise incorporating the flour into the egg - this is called the well method. Once a
dough forms knead until it is a cohesive mass and feels like play dough then keep it covered while you make the sauce.

4 large celeriac roots
Cream to cover
Salt t.t
1T butter

Peel and slice the celeriac into even sizes. Throw everything into a pot
and simmer until the celeriac is tender and tasty. (If you're like me,
you'll eat a couple before the next step.) Strain off liquid and put
celeriac into the blender. Pour enough of the cooking liquid over the
celeriac so that it will spin freely in the blender Reminder: this is
your sauce. It's okay for it to be runny and creamy but you don't want
to lose that celeriac taste to the heavy cream taste.

Duck Prosciutto to taste

Crisp up as much duck prosciutto as you can handle in a pan over a low
flame.

Roll out your pasta. Cook in a generous amount of boiling salted water
until it's the texture you like in your pasta. I like mine with a little
bite to it.
Dress the pasta with the celeriac sauce. Top with crisp duck prosciutto
and take a picture to show me!

I love all of these things with all my big cured heart!