Bacon, Guanciale

Quite a nice Valentine's Day!

Where to begin? I guess it could start with a tweet on Twitter (#charcutepalooza). I tweeted that the bacon I had just made was the best I'd ever had. Mrs. Wheelbarrow congratulated me on converting. And I said that I had been converted last year, but now I was proselytizing. Indeed, I am here to sing the praises of curing your own bacon, and guanciale. They are totally worth all the sitting around I did, living my own life, while they did their own magical thing with salt and time, transforming into amazing cured products that turn everything they touch into tasty, tasty gold. That little number above? That was our appetizer on Monday night. Nice, right?


What made my bacon the best I'd ever had was the high-quality pork belly I had purchased at Fleisher's Meats. It's all about the ingredients. Everything will taste better and be better for you when it's all about the ingredients. Look at this pork belly.

Suggestively fleshy.

And the after shot. I usually use this Saveur recipe, but this time omitted the seasoning in favor of just a bit of cracked pepper. I'm so glad I did. It was so simple and the flavor of the meat itself just shined.

Isn't that how bacon should look?

Other than just having slices fried up for dinner or breakfast or whenever I could get a free minute, I enjoyed this special snack I made for Valentine's day:


 I cooked some oysters right on the stovetop cast-iron grill alongside a few slices of bacon. You know they are done when they open their shells. (They go a lot quicker on an outdoor grill, but mine's asleep until spring.) Then, you can grab them with a oven-mitted hand and rip off the flat shell. Put them on a plate, top them with some bacon and a touch of chopped preserved lemons, chopped chives and cheers! Drink some champagne.

Oysters and bacon.

Part Two: Guanciale

Hog jowl.

What is it about these winter-lit shots of raw meat that are so seamy? Is it the butcher paper? The crinkly plastic wrap? I don't know but these are like pin-ups. So. Ahem.

I loved the Babbo recipe, and of course referred to Wrightfood, too. (Confession: I haven't bought my copy of Charcuterie yet. So far, I'm the only person sitting at the Barnes & Noble Thomas the Train play table watching my toddler play trains while reading a book on meat curing. That may change soon, though. Either I will get the book, or more people will be reading up on guanciale while playing trains. My favorite train? Salty!)

Threading meat was a novelty.

You know, I had no idea how much I'd love guanciale. And I had no idea how different it was from bacon. I sort of thought: yeah, well, it's just more bacon, right? And that would be: wrong. After it's initial salt soak in the fridge, I hung it in the basement with a little cloth covering it. (I got an okay from guru Bob del Grosso on this; my basement is very dusty.) After two and a half weeks it felt and looked right, but it didn't lose the 30% weight. So, being that today was post day I decided to chance it and pull it.

Look at that pristine white fat! I sauteed some up to make this bastardized version of an amatriciana sauce. A few slices fried up turns glassy first, and they a little browned on the edges. A taste reveals such sweetness (again, that Fleisher's meat) and nuttiness! This is what we ate tonight for dinner. Not bad for a stay at home mom whose two and a half year old is on a nap strike.

Chopped guanciale sauteed until golden. Add one medium onion, diced, saute until soft. Add one jar of sauce (homemade, canned, from my garden) slowly, until all is incorporated. Add a few chopped celery leaves (no parsley in the house, celery leaves from summer, frozen). Toss in pasta of your choice (organic wheat rigatoni), serve with pecorino shavings. Now, wolf it down and chase your toddler who is choking the cat and try to get him to sleep!

Purple Podded Pea Soup

Writing purple podded pea soup was irresistible, but this post is really about my garden and these peas I dried. Right now my little garden is under two feet of snow with a thick crust of ice on top. So, when I take things out from the pantry or freezer it's really like a postcard from summer, and a glimpse into next summer.

It doesn't necessarily have to be from my own garden to get me verklempt. I pulled a quart of huge, red tomatoes from the freezer that were from my friend Dana's garden and used them to make some incredible chili. The red of these great big heirlooms was a shock to my winter-glazed eyes. What's so cool is that it was Dana's first garden in many years. She was a little worried that it wouldn't work out, but it not only supplied her family with food, she had to unload some on me! Bless her soul.

He called them Thai fish chilis...

How about these amazing peppers from pals John and Jen? They're been gardening in the New Paltz Community Gardens for years now, I believe. John makes some outrageous hot sauces, so he goes heavy on the peppers. I never grow peppers, but I think this year I will. Look at how incredible these are! I strung them up in the kitchen and after about five months they are dry and ready to pop into meals. Like chili.

When I bought the purple podded peas seeds from the Hudson Valley Seed Library, I wasn't quite sure what I had gotten. I thought I would be able to eat them off the vine. Technically I could, but they were a bit tough. A tweet answered from those nice folks at the library told me what I suspected: they were peas for drying. What happens with legumes that you dry? Very simply: they dried on the vine, I shelled them, stored them in a mason jar, and took them out recently to make some pea soup. They did not look like split peas at all. The look like pea seeds, which they are. My yield from a little row of peas was one and a half cups. I tossed them in a pot, added eight cups of water, some chunks of ham, and let it cook for quite a few hours. It tasted just like pea soup, even though it doesn't quite look like pea soup.

It's nice to have a helper for shelling dried peas.

However, growing these peas, as I noted, didn't yield much. My rationale for growing them again is this: legumes are wonderful for your soil, they are what's called nitrogen-fixing plants, and naturally provide nitrogen for your garden (for more in depth but simple information on this process follow this link). So, if I get a pot of soup out of it, all the better. It's also a beautiful plant and easy to grow. Remember that when you plant peas or beans you will want to look into inoculant for your soil to get the best results. The inoculant (a naturally occurring bacteria) helps the plants to fix the nitrogen. I bought a small bag at my local gardening store and sprinkled it in the soil before planting.

Purple podded peas!

If you want to get serious about growing dried legumes, you're going to need a lot of room to plant quite a few plants. I'm not sure that I have enough room for that. Already I am working on how I'm going to plant everything I want to grow this year. I built three new beds last year! And already I know I'll run out of room. It's not just that I want to grow more, but I want quantity. I'm trying to keep in mind that the last two summers were probably the worst ones we've had in years. Two years ago it rained incessantly. Last year it didn't rain at all. However, my spirits are never dashed; I am completely optimistic about this year.

The walk to the compost pile is arduous.

What are you dreaming about with regards to gardening? Do you have seeds already started? Or are you still dreaming in the snow, like me? Have you been gardening for years, or are you just starting?

Mr. and Mrs. Elderberry need wetter quarters.

I'm dreaming about more fruit plants, moving my elderberries to a new home by the pond, creating a new composting system, building more growing space. Although, I've been gardening my whole life, and my current garden is now five years old, I always, always feel like a novice. I just keep on learning!

Super Rice Bowl

This is about as close as I get to a post on super bowl anything.

I love sushi, but I don't have it often. And when I do, I have a vegetarian option. What I really crave, aside from the silky beautifulness of high-quality raw fish, is rice and seaweed and ginger and soy. When I get a fix of that, I tend to not miss the fish anymore. And I try to not get all in-your-face political over here, but if people don't stop eating fish, we will not have any more. Period.

So. I recently was given a brand new rice cooker, which I was like wha? Whatever will I do with that? After a great discussion on my Facebook page about it, I gave it a go. And I like it. I mean, I didn't think rice could get any easier, but it did. And easier clean up too. I'll make a few cups of rice in the beginning of the week. I'll heat up a cup of rice for lunch, and add to that a half of a perfectly ripe avocado, seaweed, pickled ginger and a few shakes of soy sauce. You can put anything on it of course: some edamame, an egg, greens, pickles, vegetables chopped in matchsticks, sesame seeds.

The pickled ginger from The Ginger People is addicting, for the record. Steve asked me why I didn't make some of my own, and it's really because I love this stuff so much. I bought a case of it. And the seaweed is Yama Moto Yama seaweed snack chips. I snip them with my kitchen scissors right onto my rice.

I'm sure I'm being very basic here with the add-ons. If you have a great idea, let me know in the comments, would you? This way of eating has been a great way to avoid the lure of grilled cheese sandwiches, so I don't want to tire of it!

Duck Prosciutto Bread

In my experimentation with the duck prosciutto, I think this is my favorite thus far. Back in the day (that's about eight years ago) I used to live in NYC, Brooklyn to be exact, and I used to get some really exemplary prosciutto bread. Maybe it was Joe's Busy Corner in Williamsburg, or perhaps it was Caputo's in Carroll Gardens, I really don't remember. But it was chewy bread, with a good crust, studded with prosciutto and cracked black pepper. (You know things are good when they're studded!) Meaty, spicy, salty and chewy bread. That's what makes a girl happy. So, when seeing the duck prosciutto in the fridge the other day, it dawned upon me that I could make prosciutto bread. I can get nice prosciutto, but if I'm laying out the cash for it, I'm having it sliced in see-through slips with nothing else (sounds dirty, doesn't it?). But the duck prosciutto? It's perfect for cubing and stuffing it into dough.

For bread,  I usually use the guidelines for the basic dough in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I make it and leave it in the fridge in a large food-grade plastic container, and when I'm ready I can throw together a quick loaf of bread. In this case, today's bread began with a look out the window to see more snow pouring down ceaselessly. An ice storm is due tomorrow. If this meaty bread doesn't cure my winter time ennui, I don't know what will. Maybe those three boxes of wine I have down in the basement. Yes, boxes. Don't knock it!

One loaf I rolled out and sprinkled cubes of prosciutto over it, adding fresh ground black pepper. Then I rolled it back up and pinched the ends. The other one was more focaccia-style. The rolled one steamed the meat, and made the inside all nice and duck-fatty. The focaccia one made the duck get all crispy crackly on the top. I really think the best way to approach would be to start with a new batch of bread, so that when incorporating the flour, you can add the prosciutto, so that the meat and dough cling to each other. But this is certainly not a bad place to start.

Duck (Prosciutto) Soup

What I love about things like cured meats and homemade stock, is that when you have those things on hand, simple things become elevated. It doesn't take much to make a five minute soup that is stellar. And I'm not the only one. I had just taken these photos and was eating my soup and reading when I came upon this post by Peter at cookblog who eloquently discusses the merits of having wonderful things like cured meats on hand.

All I did was heat up some chicken stock, throw in some frozen spinach (organic--once the bag is open you can grab a handful and toss it in, not like those big blocks you often find), a handful of frozen scallions (from the garden) and once in a bowl I topped it with a few slices of duck prosciutto. I didn't need to add any salt or flavoring because the duck took care of that. It just takes a few minutes for something amazing once you have a few items on hand.