Perfecting the BLT

Remember Platonic forms from college?

Plato talked about how the things we see in the world are really only mimicking the true Form (yeah, apparently we do capitalize that word in this context). These Forms are the blueprint of perfection. Perfection exists in theory and we recreate it imperfectly in the physical world.

I know, I sound like a crazy person. I am probably totally misusing Platonic philosophy... I think about true forms of food a lot. For example, in Platonic philosophy there is a true Form of the tomato. When I eat a really good looking, delicious tomato in August I think to myself, "This is pretty close to that Platonic ideal."

Really, I do think this. I know the honors program in undergraduate was a bad thing for me...

I think Max the cat is very close to the perfect feline Form.

I think a lot of food people think like this though, striving for the perfect dish or ingredient. I know that perfection is relative, but whatever! Allow me my musings.

Derek and I have a group of friends who have been pursuing some ideal food Forms together. By this I mean we have met a couple of times trying to perfect classic dishes. By classic, I mean those things you can get in any American diner.

Earlier this summer we collectively made hamburgers. We ground our own meat, made our own ketchup, buns, etc. They would have made Plato smile from whatever cave he sits in (hahaha, philosophy humor).

Those are some good looking hamburger buns, what they have bacon in them? Those are some GREAT looking buns...

This week we tackled the BLT. The acronym indicates bacon, lettuce, and tomato are the primary ingredient of this sandwich. We actually varied from this a little bit, so I am not sure it is a true close to perfect BLT, but we did make a close to perfect sandwich.

I cannot really post a single recipe up for our BLT spectacular. Each ingredient has its own little story. I think I will just put up pictures of the festivities. Sorry if the pictures are a little yellow. It was kind of dark in there.

The Crew

David

Aaron

Derek (also known as my true love)

Jono

and me of course.

The Beer and the Lettuce

This is red leaf lettuce and that beer is from Fullsteam, a one year old Durham brewery that Derek and I are obsessed with. To be fair Jono provided lots of other beer and Aaron brought wine.

The Bread

Actually, Derek and I made Pizza Bianca. Sliced in half this is a delicious sandwich bread.

Maybe we also lightly pan fried the inside in bacon fat.

The Bacon

David made this! I feel like such a bacon proselytizer.

Fried on low heat until just starting to crisp, not too crispy though.

The Tomatoes

I actually have no idea what kind of tthese are. They came in our CSA, so the red kind...

Condiments and Sides

Aaron and David made Aioli

Aaron's ratatouille

David's Green Bean Salad

Yes, those are roasted Hatch Green Chiles in the foreground.

Perfection

Do not judge me for my glass of wine and glass of beer. That is totally normal. Do you ever notice how many of my food photos have some sort of alcoholic beverage slightly in the frame? Oh dear...

Thanks guys!

Memorial Day Weekend Potato Salad

I never like potato salad.

It was this thick, amorphous substance people bought at the grocery store to serve at barbecue dinners, picnics, and potlucks. It usually involved either over cooked or under cooked potatoes, tons of mayonnaise, and very little flavor. Plus, everyone had a story about getting sick from warm potato salad. I thought, why bother?

Then, I started traveling a lot for work and eating at a variety of restaurants. I finally tried good, homemade potato salad. The kind where you can taste the potatoes, but the dressing just makes the whole thing better. Also, it had bacon. I had to recreate this.

After a couple of attempts I think we got it. Original recipe alert!

Guanciale Potato Salad

Makes enough for 8-10 servings as a side (we make it for parties)

12 medium to small red potatoes (in a pinch any waxy potato would do), scrubbed well

1/8 cup diced guanciale (cured-pork jowl) or bacon or pancetta, optional (if you swing that way)

1/2 cup light sour cream

1/4 cup real mayonnaise

2 tablespoons fresh chives, minced

1 teaspoon oregano, minced

1 1/2 tablespoon Dijon mustard

2 teaspoons red wine vinegar

1/2 red onion, finely diced

sea salt

black pepper (freshly grated is preferred)

1. In a large pot, cover the potatoes with cold water. Salt the water and potatoes generously and bring the water to a boil. Boil potatoes for about 30 minutes or until when poked with a knife the knife enter easily, but with a little resistance. Basically, they will be too hard to mash, but cooked all of the way through.

2. Meanwhile, in a heavy skillet fry the diced guanciale (or whatever) over medium heat until it is crispy. Remove the meat to a paper towel to drain. Reserve 2 tablespoons of pork fat if you can. This sounds gross, but it is a really good idea. Trust me. Allow the fat and guanciale to cool to room temperature.

To make the dressing:

3. Combine the mayo, sour cream, and cooled guanciale fat in a small bowl and whisk until they are mixed.

Add the oregano, chives, mustard, and vinegar. Now add the cooled guanciale and red onion. Taste the dressing and season it with salt and pepper to taste. Be generous! The potatoes need salt to make them tasty. This is also the time when you should add more of any of the ingredients. If you really like mustard, add more etc. The world is your oyster. The potato is your blank canvas.

4. After the potatoes are cooked, drain out the water and let the potatoes cool a little. Now chop them into bite sized chunks and put them in a big bowl.

5. Add the seasoned dressing to the potatoes and mix gently until all of the potato chunks are covered.

This should keep for a couple of days, but ours never lasts that long.

This recipe is not diet friendly. It is a bit of a pain to make. I promise you, if you bring this to a party you will be a hero. People ask us about this dish months later.

Guanciale

Welcome back to Sarah and Derek's Charcuterie Experiments!

We make bacon, which is cooked and stored in the fridge... so it feels safe. Who needs safety? Not Derek and I. Nope. We need adventure, new things, variety.

The farmer convinced us to buy a pork jowl when they did not have any belly in stock. He told us all we need to do is cover it in salt and let it cure in the refrigerator. Then we need to hang it up for three weeks. Yes. Hang it up, outside of the refrigerator. RAW PORK. Hanging. At room temperature. Fortunately, this is a really cheap cut of meat.

We did some research. Guanciale is an Italian cured meat, similar to pancetta. It is unsmoked and made from the pig's jowl or cheek. It is traditionally used in Italian pasta sauces and spaghetti carbonara.

It is delicious.

Guanciale

from Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn

1. Obtain pork jowl or cheek. We got ours from these great folks at our farmers market, but most butchers should have them. Every pig has two, but they are not a popular cut so some butchers probably will not carry them. Check your local butcher or carniceria.

2. Remove any pieces of skin, tough tissue, or glands you can see.

3. Make dry cure. Combine 70 grams (1/2 cup) kosher salt*, 70 grams (1/3 cup) sugar, 2 mashed cloves of garlic, 15 black peppercorns (cracked with something heavy), and 1 large bunch thyme.

4. Rub cure all over jowl, make sure to cover the whole jowl. Place this in a large plastic bag. Put this bag in the refrigerator for 1 week. Turn the jowl everyday to redistribute the liquid that will collect. This process draws moisture out of the meat so it does not get gross during the drying process.

4. After a week in the refrigerator, take the jowl out and rinse as much of the cure off as you can. Then pat the jowl dry. Make sure you get it really dry.

5. Then poke a hole in a corner of the jowl and run some butchers twine through the hole. Then hang this up in a cool place with plenty of air circulation. The temperature should not get above 70 degrees Celsius. Our reading suggests the jowl should be gently caressed by the winds of Tuscany. We settled for a ceiling fan.

Now if you were really organized you would weigh the meat before hanging it and then you could know it was done when it weighed 30% less. We did not weigh ours. We just waited for three weeks until it felt firm to touch.

6. Watch the jowl. It may grow some mold. Apparently, white mold is okay and black mold is bad. When it is done scrap off any molds that look nasty (black mold would indicate the meat has spoiled). Then eat it...

So pretty...

This meat makes me hungry.

P.S. Best knife ever.

It should not need to be cooked before consumption, it has been "cooked" in the salt. We definitely crisped it for some applications. I would also recommend checking out Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn's book. It is really well-written and has many more details about the recipe.

Coming soon guanciale recipes...

Breakfast Philosophy

Every weekend Derek and I make breakfast, usually this involves eggs, toast, and bacon. When we are feeling really special we make breakfast burritos with tater tots and green chiles.

I believe that there is such a thing as the ideal breakfast, this may sound really glib. But every Saturday we try to achieve perfection. It all starts with bacon, homemade, salty pork belly.

The bacon has to cook on low heat for about 5 to 8 minutes. You can't rush good bacon. While the bacon is cooking we brew the coffee. I could talk a long time about coffee, but I here I will just say it should be strong, freshly roasted, and tasty. While the coffee is brewing and the bacon is going we slice the bread and toast it. We are super nerds and pretty much only eat homemade bread. Bread must be covered with real butter.

After the bacon is done we start the eggs. Derek and I prefer our eggs fried in some of the remaining bacon fat, with the white cooked and the yolks still runny. Then the runny yolks make a kind of sauce. Each slice of toast has an egg on top of it, with the bacon on the side. This should be served with hot sauce to top.

After this we sit down, drink our coffee. We read the paper and decide how we are going to spend the day. It is sort of meditative, relaxing. I enjoy our routine. I enjoy our food nerdy homemade breakfast. Sometime soon, I am going to talk about bread. How's that for a teaser?

Vegetarians Avert Your Eyes...

Really, this might be the post to skip if you don't eat meat. In fact, I think you should just read my post about Arugula Pecan Pesto. Scroll down quickly too.

We love bacon in this house. Every Saturday morning we religiously make bacon and eggs with toast, my week would not be complete without this meal. At some point in my obsessions with food, I always try to recreate my favored item from scratch (this can be disastrous and has resulted in many failed candy experiments). Recently, we have made our own bacon with great success! I will document the whole process below.

Warning! The gross out factor is a little high here...

Homemade Bacon

modified from Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn

1. Obtain a pork belly. This was not difficult for us in Chapel Hill, pork belly is for sale at our farmers market in Carrboro or at our local butcher.

2. This is the gross step. Remove skin from pork belly, if it is present. I made Derek do this. You could wait to do this later, but the skin grossed me out. *

Note bag of skin in photo

There is no easy way to remove the skin. It is gross and time consuming, but I promise it will be worth it. The answer is to buy pork belly with no skin. It is available like this, but we did not know to ask.

Derek removing skin.

3. Make dry cure. Ingredients: 1/2 cup Kosher salt, 1/4 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon pink curing salt.

Pink curing salt is obtained from specialty stores, it is also known as nitrite salt and it prevents the botulism, makes the meat a nice color, changes the flavor, etc. It is also toxic in large quantities. Life lesson = use for curing, not for the table.

4. Add about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of the salt to a tray of some kind with a couple of tablespoons crushed black peppercorns and about 1/4 cup of dark brown sugar. Stir.

5. Wash and pat the belly dry. Coat in salt mixture, shake of excess. Place the belly in a plastic bag and get as much air out as you can.

Yummy dry cure

6. Put the pork in the fridge and let it cure sitting flat for about 7 days, flipping it every other day to redistribute the juices.

7. After 7 days if the thickest part of the belly feels firm it is cured. If it is still feeling squishy keep it refrigerated for another day or two.

8. Rinse the belly thoroughly and pat dry with paper towels. Curing liquid should be discarded.

9. Preheat oven to 200 degrees (Fahrenheit).

10. In a roasting pan, roast belly until it reaches an internal temperature of 150 degrees (F), this will take a couple of hours, maybe longer. This will now smell delicious and look like bacon. You could also remove the skin here while it is hot (and probably easier to remove). I was not willing to wait this long, because it weirded me out to have pig nipples curing in my fridge (yup, I said nipples).

11. Allow bacon to cool to room temperature, when it is cool, wrap, refrigerate and enjoy at your leisure. It will keep for about a week like this, but you can freeze it to make it last longer. Remember when you cook homemade bacon, it is really best cooked at low temperatures for a longer time period. It will still get crispy, but it needs longer and lower...

Homemade bacon on Saturday morning

*Derek asked me, "So you are willing to eat meat, but you don't want to think about it belonging to an animal?"

I replied "I know it belonged to a pig, I just don't want to see nipples hanging out in my fridge. It is weird."