A little while ago the folks at The Siren Group invited me to an event featuring a new product called Skillet Bacon Spread. Given my love for bacon I was intrigued but unable to attend, so the folks at The Siren Group were kind enough to send some of the product [...]]]>

A little while ago the folks at The Siren Group invited me to an event featuring a new product called Skillet Bacon Spread. Given my love for bacon I was intrigued but unable to attend, so the folks at The Siren Group were kind enough to send some of the product over to me to try.

The product was created by Chef Josh Henderson from Seattle and features Niman Ranch bacon that has been rendered down and mixed with onion, spices, brown sugar and some balsamic. According to the press release it works well in grilled cheese, mixed into mashed potatoes, on top of a burgers and many other uses.

While the above uses all sounded great I wanted to try something a bit different. The jar arrived at my office on precisely the same day that I was explaining to some new employees how much I love bacon. Oddly enough, prior to this discussion they hadn’t pegged me as a bacon girl. I was shocked. As if on cue the bacon spread was delivered and all was right in the world again.

The first thing I realized with this spread is that it doesn’t so much work on its own. I grabbed a spoonful and the whole thing was interesting but definitely needed a vehicle to carry it. While there is that bacony taste I found that I got more of a sweet, smoky taste from it. I don’t think this would work on toast but is probably butter in applications where you want a hint or kick of bacon or smoke.

The other day found myself with a loaf of bread and some cream cheese in my fridge. That’s when I got the brilliant idea to make bacon cream cheese. I softened some of the cream cheese on the counter and then mixed in 1 part bacon spread to 3 parts cream cheese. I have to admit, this stuff was kind of addictive. I already love flavoured cream cheese. Some of my favourites are olive, chive, veggie, lox… and the list goes on and on. The bacon spread added the right amount of porky goodness and smokiness. After the cream cheese success I could see the bacon spread being added to an onion dip. Doesn’t that sound fab?

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Now don’t get me wrong, I love a farmers’ market as much as the next girl (or guy). But does anyone else find this whole eating locally and seasonally thing a bit stressful?

So let’s say you skip the market for a week or two or even three.  Then you show [...]]]>

Now don’t get me wrong, I love a farmers’ market as much as the next girl (or guy). But does anyone else find this whole eating locally and seasonally thing a bit stressful?

So let’s say you skip the market for a week or two or even three.  Then you show up at the market and discover this new (to you) fruit, vegetable, whatever. You buy some at the farmer’s urging and take it home and fall in love.  The following week that you go back to the market and said produce is nowhere in sight.  And it won’t be … for at least a year.  The season has ended and now you’re SOL.

This always happens to me!  Or I won’t realize that the season has started for something that I enjoy and then it’s too late.  This year already I have been burned by fiddleheads coming and going and I was later to rhubarb season than I had hoped to be.  I was totally on top of this year’s somewhat disappointing strawberry season though.  I’m now committed to going to the market weekly to ensure that I don’t miss a week of corn, peaches, plums, tomatoes and other goodies.  This is what it’s come to!  I need my seasonal produce.

My discovery this week was garlic scapes.  I always read about garlic scapes but had never thought to buy them.  One stall at the market was selling them for 10 for $1 and that was enticing enough for me to give it a try.  Garlic scapes are the stalks of hardneck garlic.  Farmers cut them off as the garlic grows to keep the plant’s energy focused on making more awesome garlic.

I knew right away that I would make a pesto.  I had planned on making basil pesto the week before but got sidetracked and never got around to it.  I found a ton of recipes for garlic scape-only pesto but I wanted to use up some of the basil from my balcony garden so I did some more digging.  Apparently it’s quite normal to do the garlic scape/pesto variety.

The combination is definitely a winner.  The garlic scapes add a nice garlic flavour with a hint of grassiness.  The basil ties in the traditional pesto flavours without being too herby.  I used almonds instead of pine nuts and was totally happy with the way that worked out.  My only issue was getting the consistency down right.  The pesto was on the thick side no matter how much oil I added.  At a certain point I stopped adding oil because it seemed excessive.  This is definitely a hit!  I’ve been eating it with pasta and chicken for a great summer salad.  I also plan on using the pesto as a spread in a breakfast sandwich with eggs, cheese and bacon.

For the recipe visit Serious Eats.

My quest to “make things with chorizo” continues.  The most recent Charcutepalooza Challenge was all about making sausage meat and I went the chorizo route. As mentioned in that post, I made chorizo tacos but of course have another pound or two of chorizo to use up so I’ve been [...]]]>

My quest to “make things with chorizo” continues.  The most recent Charcutepalooza Challenge was all about making sausage meat and I went the chorizo route. As mentioned in that post, I made chorizo tacos but of course have another pound or two of chorizo to use up so I’ve been on the hunt for other chorizo-related recipes.

On a recent visit to Rick Bayless’ Xoco in Chicago I noticed a torta on the menu with chorizo, poblanos, cheese and tomatillo salsa that sounded pretty delish. I instead opted for a different and also delicious taco but I didn’t forget about the chorizo one.

Of course my fave Mexican chef, Rick Bayless, has a recipe for Chorizo subs/tortas in Everyday Mexican. This was one of those recipes that had me at hello. A sandwich filled with black beans, chorizo, cheese and avocado? Sign me up!

I was a bit nervous that this sandwich might be on the dry side but it wasn’t at all. The chorizo/bean mixture is a bit on the sloppy side which gave everything the right amount of moisture. To add some extra kick to my tortilla I used some of my leftover Roasted Tomatillo Salsa from my tacos which really worked well with everything here. In terms of cheese I ended up using a fresh cheese that I had made. I was initially going to use it as paneer but got sidetracked so I used it in my torta! It worked just fine.

This is the kind of sandwich that you eat in your house rather than packing it in your lunch (unless you’re like me and package all components of your sandwich separately and assemble at work right before eating). I found it totally messy in a very delicious way. The flavours all work really well together. I love how the beans and chorizo combine to make this meaty, beany paste. The creaminess of the avocado does a nice job of cutting through some of the saltiness o the cheese. And since I’m a fan of heat, the El Yucateco hot sauce and my tomatillo salsa added a great kick.

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A few months ago I bought the Food Grinder attachment for my KitchenAid Stand Mixer. Ever since I bought it, the grinder has been sitting in its box tucked away into the corner. I bought it because I have visions of making my own sausages. Since we haven’t reached that [...]]]>

A few months ago I bought the Food Grinder attachment for my KitchenAid Stand Mixer. Ever since I bought it, the grinder has been sitting in its box tucked away into the corner. I bought it because I have visions of making my own sausages. Since we haven’t reached that moment in Charcutepalooza the grinder hadn’t been used.

The other day I had a craving for burgers. Shortly thereafter I saw a tweet from The Only On King where they mentioned that they would be serving a burger that night made with part bacon and part brisket. That’s when I got the brilliant idea to replicate this burger by grinding my own meat.

I already had some of my homemade bacon in my freezer so I went out and got me a small piece of brisket with a good deal of fat on it for grinding. The actual grinding process was really easy. I put the individual parts in the freezer so that they would be cold. When the time came I quickly assembled the contraption and ran everything through the grinder twice. Clean up was even super easy. I ended up using a ratio of 1:2 ratio of bacon to beef.

Perhaps my favourite thing about grinding my own meat is knowing how many animals went into the making of my burger. Since I made my bacon from a full piece of belly I know that there was only 1 pig involved. And since the piece of brisket was also whole, we’re talking one cow. When I think about ground beef too long I get freaked out knowing that one burger could potentially contain hundreds or thousands of cows. Totally gross!

This was a pretty darned good burger if I do say so myself. Imagine a really fresh burger with the smokey goodness of bacon infused throughout. Because the brisket had a good deal of fat and of course because of the fat in the bacon, my burger was not dry at all.

Now that I know that grinding my own meat is so easy, I think I’ll be doing a lot more of it. I like being able to control the types of meat in my ground beef and also knowing just how fresh it is. I can’t wait to experiment grinding my own chicken and turkey.

Oh how I love Charcutepalooza! While I didn’t have to challenge myself with last month’s theme (as posted here) this month’s challenge definitely made me bring it. This month was all about brining. The Apprentice Challenge (which I skipped) involved brining a whole chicken or pork chop. I decided [...]]]>

Oh how I love Charcutepalooza! While I didn’t have to challenge myself with last month’s theme (as posted here) this month’s challenge definitely made me bring it. This month was all about brining. The Apprentice Challenge (which I skipped) involved brining a whole chicken or pork chop. I decided to go right to the Charcuterie Challenge which was all about making corned beef.

Yes, making corned beef… from scratch.  Who does that?

Oddly enough I don’t think I’ve ever in my life thought about making corned beef from scratch before last month. I enjoy me some corned beef as much as the next gal, but making it was so not on my radar. I was totally thrilled to see that was the challenge for Charcutepalooza. Oddly enough Darryl of Buster Rhino’s and  Communal Fire had recently been posting all sorts of photos of his homemade corned beef and I had a serious case of the “I wants” and had decided that I would make my own at some point. Who knew that it would be so soon!

The crazy thing about making corned beef is that it is ridiculously easy. If you’ve ever marinated some meat and boiled something you have the skill set required to make yourself some awesome corned beef. As usual we used Michael Ruhlman’s book Charcuterie as our guide.

I started off the process by making my own pickling spice. I figured that if I was going to go through the trouble of making corned beef I wouldn’t bother with a supermarket, pre-packaged spice mix. Interestingly enough, I had almost all of the spices in my cupboard so it wasn’t such a pain to whip together.

To make corned beef you create a brine with your kosher salt, pink salt, pickling spice etc and allow the meat to soak for a few days. The planets were all aligned because my local Whole Foods (shout out to Whole Foods Market – Yorkville) happened to have brisket on sale for half price! Talk about excellent timing. So I had me a great, healthy piece of brisket for a decent price.

Like anything charcuterie-related the waiting game is the worst. I ended up having to let my meat soak for an extra day or so because I didn’t plan things out well enough but the extra time didn’t hurt my meat at all. After cooking the meat for the requisite 3 hours (give or take) my meat totally looked like corned beef. You can totally see the bright reddish-pink colour and the marbling of the fat.  I was a bit nervous when I took my meat out of the brine.  You see, I started my corned beef when I had 102F fever and the night before I left for my trip to Philly. This meant that my meat was left unattended in the fridge for 4 whole days. I thought my meat looked kind of gray when I took it out of the brine but it cooked up nice and pink… phew!

The taste of the meat was incredible. Sure I enjoyed corned beef before, but the quality of my homemade corned beef was beyond. The meat wasn’t dry or tough and the seasoning really permeated throughout the meat without being overpowering or tasting artificial. And did I mention just how easy it was to make?

For dinner the first night I did a bit of a boiled dinner by throwing some carrots, cabbage and potatoes in the cooking liquid. No photo of that because it didn’t look appetizing at all but trust me when I say that it tasted heavenly. I mean vegetables cooked in salty meat water? What’s NOT to love.

The next day I made corned beef sandwiches. But these were no ordinary corned beef sandwiches. I made the bread (a roasted-garlic and caraway seed bread) from scratch and I used my homemade mustard. Trust me when I say that I felt very rustic with my completely homemade meal. I was on some serious pioneer styles.

A few days later the corned beef was still going strong so I decided to do a little “breakfast for dinner” and made some corned beef hash. I decided to use this as an opportunity to clean out my fridge so this wonderful hash features potatoes AND sweet potatoes plus peppers and onions. I was going to poach the egg but I got lazy. I enjoyed my hash but it could’ve used more meat. Breakfast for dinner is pretty much the best.

So making my own corned beef was a total success and now I pretty much want corned beef all he time. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for the next challenge…

Pulled pork is totally one of my fave foods.  I’m forever craving pulled pork sandwiches.  While I love the pulled pork at Buster Rhino’s I can’t get there often enough. I do need to head over and get a TON of it for my freezer. With few decent pulled pork [...]]]>

Pulled pork is totally one of my fave foods.  I’m forever craving pulled pork sandwiches.  While I love the pulled pork at Buster Rhino’s I can’t get there often enough. I do need to head over and get a TON of it for my freezer. With few decent pulled pork options in Toronto I sometimes make my own.

A few weeks ago my friend Shea of Hungry in Brooklyn did a great video post about Pulled Pork. She visited The Meat Hook in Brooklyn to acquire her pork shoulder and then went to Fette Sau to learn how to make pulled pork without a smoker. Check out the video.

Incidentally I was at my beloved Fiesta Farms and they had some great deals on pork shoulders. I bought one to store in my freezer for a rainy day. Well that rainy day came and I decided to make some pulled pork, Shea-style.

I’ll admit I was a bit skeptical about the inclusion of coffee but decided to go along with it. I used just regular coffee (whatever we had at home, probably a medium roast) instead of the espresso recommended in the video.  The secret to great pulled pork in the oven is to cook it at low heat for a long time.  The recipe below says 10 hours but I used half a shoulder and cooked it for between 5 and 6 hours and it was perfect.  I used a thermometer along the way to ensure that the meat had reached a “safe” temperature.

When the pork was ready it had this amazing crust on it from the coffee and the dry rub.  Pulling it apart was really easy once the meat had cooled down.  I used my fingers and definitely ate a few ounces as I went along.  The pork was delicious!  The coffee added a nice roasty, toasty, smokey flavour.  I used some of the pan drippings to keep the meat moist and topped my sandwiches with BBQ sauce and coleslaw.  This was beyond easy and is the perfect meal to feed a crowd (of pork lovers).  I served the pork on Wonder Bread buns (a necessity) with potato salad and cole slaw on the side.  The pork was also great days letter with scrambled eggs and baked beans.  I also contemplated using them as part of Eggs Benedict.  Next time.

Thanks Shea for a great post!

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All I have to say is HOLY GEEZ!  This sandwich [...]]]> This week’s Barefoot Bloggers challenge comes courtesy of Karen of Shortbread. I was pretty indifferent when I saw the pick: Caesar Club Sandwich. I mean I love Caesar salads, but chicken? No bueno. And sandwiches can go either way.

All I have to say is HOLY GEEZ!  This sandwich is AMAZING.  Seriously.  I’m pretty sure I could eat these every week.

I bought a fresh ciabatta from ACE Bakery as the base for my sandwich which was a great idea.  The making of the sandwich wasn’t time consuming but I had SO many things to wash up after.  There wasn’t enough room in my kitchen for all the cutting boards, sheet pans and equipment that I used.  But that’s okay, the results were worth it.

I loved that this was a twist on a traditional club sandwich.  I loved the Caesar dressing.  I loved the pancetta.  I loved the parmesan. I loved the dressing!  I omitted the sun-dried tomatoes because I’m not the biggest fan of them to begin with and they were more expensive than I was willing to pay.  I didn’t miss them one bit.  The sandwich was kind of like the best Caesar salad you ever had on bread.

I don’t have any deep musings on this recipe other than to say that Ina Garten aka Barefoot Contessa made another hit.

CAESAR CLUB SANDWICH
Ingredients

* 2 split (1 whole) chicken breasts, bone in, skin on
* Good olive oil
* Kosher salt
* Freshly ground black pepper
* 4 ounces thinly sliced pancetta
* 1 large garlic clove, chopped
* 2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
* 1 1/2 teaspoons anchovy paste
* 1 teaspoons Dijon mustard
* 1 1/2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
* 1/2 cup good mayonnaise
* 1 large ciabatta bread
* 2 ounces baby arugula, washed and spun dry
* 12 sun-dried tomatoes, in oil
* 2 to 3 ounces Parmesan, shaved

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Place the chicken breasts on a sheet pan skin side up. Rub the chicken with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast for 35 to 40 minutes, until cooked through. Cool slightly, discard the skin and bones, and slice the meat thickly. Set aside.

Meanwhile, place the pancetta on another sheet pan in a single layer. Roast for 10 to 15 minutes, until crisp. Set aside to drain on paper towels.

Place the garlic and parsley in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade and process until minced. Add the anchovy paste, mustard, lemon juice, and mayonnaise and process again to make a smooth dressing. (Refrigerate the Caesar dressing if not using it immediately.)

Slice the ciabatta in half horizontally and separate the top from the bottom. Toast the bread in the oven, cut side up, for 5 to 7 minutes; cool slightly. Spread the cut sides of each piece with the Caesar dressing. Place half the arugula on the bottom piece of bread and then layer in order: the sun-dried tomatoes, shaved Parmesan, crispy pancetta, and sliced chicken. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and finish with another layer of arugula. Place the top slice of ciabatta on top and cut in thirds crosswise. Serve at room temperature.

(Recipe via Food Network)

This year it’s the New Orleans Saints vs. the Indianapolis [...]]]> Yes, it’s that time of year again!  Last year I did a post about what to serve at your Superbowl party which was a lot of fun for me.  This year I figured I would capture the magic one more time!

This year it’s the New Orleans Saints vs. the Indianapolis Colts in Miami.  A group of friends are throwing what is sure to be a GREAT party that is the inspiration for this post.  There are some great cities involved in the Superbowl this year so why not have your party themed around foods from the cities involved instead of just doing the usual chicken wings and guac?

MIAMI

Whenever I think Miami I sill hear this song by Will Smith… you know it, MIAMI! True story. Miami is filled with tons of good eats. Not only is there a ton of seafood but since the city is filled with people from all over the Caribbean and South and Central America meaning the food takes on those characteristics.
(Photo from RecipeTips.com)

Cuban Sandwiches

Tostones

Beef Empanadas

Key Lime Pie

Mojitos

NEW ORLEANS

New Orleans is a pretty awesome food city.  I’ve never been but it is without a doubt on my list of food vacations to do in the near future.  They have seafood galore, a penchant for sausages and they even eat deep-fried desserts!  Sounds like home.  Definitely consider putting a touch of NOLA on your Super Bowl party is a good idea.

(Photo via Gourmet Sleuth)

Mufuletta

Jambalaya

Gumbo

Beignets

Hurricane

INDIANAPOLIS

Okay, so foods from Indiana was a tricky one.  I asked a few people and no one good name a single food from Indiana.  I know they have corn and that’s about it.  And of course corn doesn’t really help since it’s not even corn season!  So I hit up the interwebs and came up with a few regional specialties.

(Photo via Bacon Salt Blog)

Pork Tenderloin Sandwiches

Sugar Cream Pie

Popcorn! (pop it and eat it!)