Bakin-n-Bacon

Charcutepalooza,

or, "The Year of Meat"

Charcutepalooza is the brainchild of The Yummy Mummy and Mrs. Wheelbarrow. It's a play-along festival celebrating all manner of cured meats (I might even sneak in some vegetables...). Dozens of bloggers are participating, and this exciting challenge has already created a lot of buzz.

However, this is not only a celebration of meat in all its glory, it's also about knowing where our meat comes from, how the animals are treated, and using resources in a responsible, thoughtful manner.

I hope you will follow me through this journey. Pictured at the top of this post is pork belly covered with a cure to turn it into pancetta. This, as with most of the recipes, is from Brian Polcyn and Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie. I'll be posting my "official" Charcutepalooza posts on the 15th of each month beginning in February, although I'm sure to have "unofficial" posts in between. These will be in addition to my frequent cooking and baking posts.

Happy Curing!

Happy Birthday to Ellen Degeneres...

...and to me. Yes, I share a birthday with Ellen Degeneres (and my cousin Lisa S - Happy Birthday!). Oh, and General Douglas MacArthur. An odd group, we Aquarians (or are we Capricorns now?).

Anyway, a lot of people feel sorry for me because I "have to" bake my own birthday cake. My close friends know that I look forward to it each year. It allows me an opportunity to splurge on ingredients make exactly what I want.

This year my  henna tattoo inspired the design and ingredients in my pantry inspired the flavors. I wanted to use some hazelnuts that were languishing in the freezer, and I also had a hankerin' for orange cake. I don't know why; I just did. Finally, chocolate must be involved. That's a given. Oh, and booze, too.

So I took my favorite cake recipe, added orange zest and subtracted a bit of sugar. Why would I, of all people, remove sugar? So I could add liquor and sugar! I brushed Grand Marnier syrup on the layers.

The filling was a hazelnut praline buttercream. I remember now why I hadn't used all those hazelnuts earlier: they are a pain to skin. First you have to blanch the nuts in boiling water. Then you (allegedly) get the skins off by rubbing the hazelnuts in a kitchen towel. This never works for me and I end up rubbing each hazelnut individually to remove the skin. It took me well over an hour to do 12 ounces. I think fraternities would be well served to replace their potentially dangerous and litigation-inducing hazing rituals with hazelnut skinning. Having to skin pounds of hazelnuts would prove beyond a doubt who was dedicated enough to join their ranks. (And if the pledges are buff, by all means let them do it shirtless, at my house - and I'll take the hazelnuts, please.)

Aaannyway, once I was done skinning the hazelnuts I toasted them, chopped them and poured boiling hot caramel over them (I must really hate hazelnuts to do all of those awful things to them). When the hazelnut praline was cool, I broke it into pieces and pulverized it in the food processor until it resembled coarse flour. It seems like a lot of work to get sweet hazelnut dust, but hey, my birthday is only once a year, right?

I stirred this hazelnut praline powder into a batch of buttercream icing. That's *real* buttercream for those who are keeping score: eggs and sugar heated to 160 degrees, whipped into a frenzy, then drowned in butter. Boo yah! And, yes, I remembered the booze - I threw in a few tablespoons of Frangelico.

After that I moved on to the chocolate frosting. It is from Cook's Illustrated, their foolproof chocolate frosting. Normally I really like this frosting but there was no joy in Mudville with this batch. I can't blame it on the recipe, though. I like to chill my cake before icing it because it is easier to frost (i.e., sturdier). However, this frosting set up very fast on the cold cake and it changed color due to the temperature difference. When I went over it for the second layer to even it all out, parts of it remained darker. My coworkers kindly thought I was going for a marbled effect but I wasn't.

This cake taught me a couple of lessons. First, I should quit trying to make square cakes. They are too difficult to frost when you don't make them very often. I did a decent job on the bottom, round layer. It looked pretty good! Then I added the misshapen square top and it wasn't so good anymore.

The second lesson is that I should never, ever, try to draw cake decoartions freehand. I'm just not adept at illustrating. I'm decent at copying and tracing, though, so I should have made a pattern for the design.

Even though it didn't look as great as I wanted, it did taste good. The texture was just what I wanted and the flavors complemented each other. Now on to planning next year's cake...

 

Orange you glad I didn't make the same old pasta?

This is pairing I hadn't had before - pasta with citrus. Spaghetti all'aroma di arancia (spaghetti scented with orange) to be exact. It's from Saveur magazine, Jan/Feb 2010.

It took me a year to get around to making this recipe - I had the photo from the magazine pinned to the cork board above my desk since last winter. Last week the corkboard fell off the wall and scattered my photos everywhere, prompting me to finally make this dish. I thought it sounded delicious but my husband was, um...skeptical. Nevertheless, I gave him two choices for lunch (take it, or leave it) so he acquiesced to trying the dish.

The orange peel is sliced and sauteed with butter (off to a good start, right?). The cream is flavored with chervil (which I didn't have so I used tarragon and pinch of marjoram as a I'm-not-driving-30-miles-in-5-degree-weather-to-find-chervil substitute). The recipe proceeds like carbonara, only with the addition of cream (since I am a carbonara purist I don't use cream): you toss the pasta with eggs, Parmesan and herb-infused cream, then add the orange peel to the finished dish.

One must make certain to remove all the pith from the oranges or they will be bitter. A sharp knife makes it easier. You can see in the photo below how I have begun to remove the white pith. I do this with a sharp knife, holding the peel with one hand and slicing away from me, parallel to the cutting board. It's tedious since there is a very fine line between getting off all the pith and slicing completely through the peel (which I did on a few occasions - note the small pieces.)

Once the pith is removed (funny how every time I say pith I feel like I have a speech impediment), the peel is very finely sliced into strips and sauteed in butter. This is one beef I had with this recipe. Saveur instructs you to saute the orange peel in the butter for 5 minutes. This is waaaay too long and ends with crunchy peels - not cool. I had to add a bit of water to soften them. Next time I'll briefly heat them with the butter just until they are soft.

The herbs and a pinch of salt are briefly simmered with the cream to infuse it with flavor. One step that you could leave out, although it does make for a more attractive presentation, is putting a few tablespoons of cream onto the plate prior to tossing the pasta with the eggs, cheese and reserved cream. It's a little fussy for me and I think the dish would be just fine without that extra step.

When we started to eat it the first few bites took a little getting used to. However, with each subsequent forkful, we really started to enjoy it. There were no leftovers.

Spaghetti all'aroma di arancia
(spaghetti scented with orange)
adapted from Saveur magazine
Serves 2-3

1  large orange (preferably organic)
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
8 ounces spaghetti
3/4 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoon chopped fresh chervil OR
1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon (1 tsp. is using dried tarragon) and 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley 
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan-Reggiano cheese plus additional for serving
2 large egg yolks
salt and ground black pepper

Heat water in large pot for making pasta. Warm serving plates and bowl for tossing pasta in low oven.

Using a sharp knife or vegetable peeler, peel zest from orange in long strips. Peel/scrape any white pith that remains on the zest. Cut into very thin strips.

In small skillet or saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Add zest and pinch of salt and cook over medium-low heat until zest is softened, 2-3 minutes. Watch carefully and stir frequently so it doesn't overcook.

Add pasta to boiling water and cook until al dente, 7-9 minutes or according to package directions. Bring cream to a simmer with herbs and pinch of salt in a medium saucepan. Do not let cream boil.

Drain pasta, transfer to warmed bowl and immediately toss with cream, cheese and egg yolks. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Transfer pasta to warmed plates; sprinkle with orange zest, extra cheese and parsley, if desired.

New Year, Old Food

I can't believe it's over two weeks into 2011! Time goes by too quickly (unless I'm at work).

I know a lot of you have made healthy eating New Year's resolutions. My lack of willpower prevents me from sticking with any resolutions so I gave up on them long ago, as I'm sure you can tell by this photo. It's dinner a few nights ago - chicken fried steak, egg and fried potatoes. If I keep this up I will have to have a team of cardiologists on speed dial! But boy oh boy was it tasty. I only make this about twice a year since the frying makes such a mess. I can never remember to get out the splatter screen until after I have already splattered the cooktop.

Until I read the article by Cook's Illustrated, I never knew how to make chicken fried steak. I imagined it was difficult. It isn't, although as I mentioned it is messy.

Basically you take cube steak (can anyone enlighten me as to what cut of meat that is? I know they put it through the "tenderizing maching" but is it chuck? round? woodchuck?), flour it, dip it in a thick batter of buttermilk, egg and baking soda, then dredge it again in the seasoned flour and fry it. The gravy, which I love but my husband does not, is butter, onion, milk, thyme and s&p thickened with flour. I could eat that gravy by the spoonful but then again I love onions and thyme.  

Here's to a healthy 2011!