So my friend John passed the Florida Bar and we decided to have a party for him. Some weeks prior we had discussed the possibility of making a Bacon Explosion. This seemed like the perfect occasion. So a couple weeks back he came over and helped create this abomination unto the Lord of Dieting.
We followed the recipe fairly exactly, but with some minor modifications. Here you can see the bacon woven into the bacon-mat. We placed it on a rack and stuck it into the oven to par-cook at about 400 for 10 minutes. Enough that it shrunk a bit and hopefully would be dry and crunchy when the whole thing was done. On the right is the mat fresh out of the oven.
Next the sausage was spread on and the BBQ sauce applied. We used a mild Italian sausage. I don't know why the recipe uses Italian sausage. Seems a weird flavor choice... Wouldn't maple work better? Or some fresh chorizo? Oh well. Next time.
The Passion of the Newly Admitted Lawyer
Here it is all rolled up. You can feel your arteries hardening just looking at it. It's like the Medusa. But with bacon snakes.
It sliced nicely, giving little pinwheels of saucy-sausagey-bacony goodness. Overall, it was fun do, but I doubt I'll do it again. Nothing earth-shatteringly amazing about it. That said, the bacon-mat is awesome and I'll definitely be using it for something else in the future. Roasts? Meatloaf? A smoked ham? The possibilities are numerous.
Inspired by a post over at Tinkering With Dinner I found myself in the mood to make some bao, steamed buns filled with various tasty things. I was all set to make the dough when I remembered that I had a packet of pre-mixed bao flour in the cabinet, which guaranteed me I would have "a delicious steamed buns". Score! I also had some Lap Chong (Chinese Sausages) and Lap Yuk (Chinese Bacon). Double Score!
Meanwhile I made the fillings. The bag had a general recipe with no units, so again, shoot from the hip. Two bowls. Chop two sausages, into one bowl. About 4 inches of the bacon, minced, into another bowl. Minced clove of garlic each. The last of my CSA green onions. Couple tablespoons frozen peas. 1/4 cup Boca "Meat" crumbles my vegetarian sister-in-law had left in the freezer per bowl. One chopped up hard boiled egg, split between them. Bit of salt, bit of sugar. Few glugs of oyster sauce in each (the bag said "oyster oil", so I'm guessing this is what they meant...) Stir till it looks ok. It's more of a Vietnamese style bao than Chinese but whatever.
The instructions said to fire up my "autoclave", which I was not sure you could realistically cook in, so I used my bamboo steamer instead. (Funny story: for years I honestly thought an autoclave was some kind of laser scalpel. That's why Meredith is the scientist.) I put the bao on lettuce and cabbage leaves and steamed 10 minutes lid on, 10 off. A couple Ts of vinegar to the water kept them nice and white.
The corn was grilled, along with some Poblano Sausages, bell peppers, poblanos, and spring onions. Topped with cherry tomatoes and cilantro. Corn was served with some roasted garlic compound butter. Served in some leftover whole wheat pitas. Good but not great, the spring onions were still a bit gritty. :(
We had a big Japanese dinner when the sisters were in town. Unfortunately no really good photos but here's the spread. On the left are some amazing quick pickles, using CSA cucumber and neon red cabbage. They are great sides, and only take a couple hours! On the top is some of the last of our bok choi, steamed and dressed with garlic oil and soy sauce. Bottom is a large plate of rice with kokumotsu. It's a collection of other grains and seeds used to spice up plain ol' rice. Here we used 10 koku, which has, duh, 10 various grains and seeds. You can get packets of it at Lucky Mart. To cook you just throw it in the rice cooker along with the rice.You can save the marinade and use again a few times. I'm going to try snapper sometime soon I think.Black Cod/Salmon Kasuzuke
4 (6 oz.) slices of fish fillet (Choose from: Black Cod, Salmon, Snapper, or Chilean Sea Bass)
Marinade:
- 1/2 cup Kasuzuke (Sake Kasu, a by-product of the Sake making process)
- 2 Tablespoon sake
- 3 Tablespoon mirin, sweet cooking rice wine
- 1/4 cup of water
- 3 Tablespoon brown sugar
- 2 Tablespoon miso (optional)
Preparation:
Salt fish, refrigerate overnight, and wipe dry. Prepare marinade, add water as needed to make a paste. Coat fish with marinade, cover, refrigerate 3 days (or may be frozen at this point). Scrape off marinade & broil both sides until nicely browned (approximately 4-5 minutes each side). Save marinade to use again.
