You Had Me at Duck Bacon
So my new place in Brooklyn is a stone’s throw from Park Slope, the yummy mummy capital of the world, and the epicenter of vegan cupcakes, organic everything, $12 coffees, etc…the obvious first order of business was whether to join the Park Slope Food Co-op. There’s plenty of info around the internets about how awesome and awful this place is, so I’ll just summarize. Pros: Quality yuppie food at prices lower than Whole Paycheck; Cons: Soviet-style work policy.
After sitting through an indoctrination orientation session, I browsed through the store. While I was somewhat taken with the organic asparagus from Argentina and no-peel Kiwi berries, it wasn’t until I hit the meat section that I knew I was joining. Bison steaks, grass-fed filet mignon, salami, salami, salami, and OMG, WTF is duck bacon?
Not that I’m ever looking for an alternative to bacon-bacon, but still, duck fat is so in, and come on, it has bacon in it’s name. Plus, it’s from New Jersey. Clearly, this was my first food co-op impulse buy.
You only have to cook duck bacon for 30 seconds a side, and the package directions seriously yell at you about not overcooking it. For some reason, I decided to freeze mine, as if there was any possibility I would not be using it within two days. Not having a microwave yet, this presented defrosting problems, which is why my cooked db (below) is in hacked-off little pieces instead of lovely bacon-inspired thin strips.
The verdict: damn tasty. Unlike fraudulent perpetrators such as turkey and tofu bacon, this stuff more or less captures the crispy-but-fatty goodness that is bacon, while presenting a unique, rich flavor of its own.
Perplexingly, my Joy of Cooking doesn’t tell me what to do with duck bacon, so I just added it to a quesadilla, with monterrey jack and tomatoes (worked well), and also threw a few pieces in a bowl of from-the-box butternut squash soup (not as successful, kinda got lost in there).
Future ideas: I think it would work well as a flavoring for collard greens or chard, while there could def be some kind of Egg McDuckBacon creation, and of course, I foresee a dBLT in my near future.
on November 12th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Wow. Not just duck bacon - D’Artagnan duck bacon.
I just picked up “Think Like a Chef” by Tom Colicchio, and he gives a shout out to D’Artagnan for anyone looking to purchase duck fat without the rest of the duck.
And, on a somewhat related note, my wife and I stopped by Poste for a light post-theater dinner yesterday. We split a duck reuben that was AMAZING. The duck meat was rich and salty at the same time, and it’s hard to argue with the classic reuben construction. I think a DbLT would definitely hit a lot of those same notes.
And if I’ve learned anything from Gansie, it’s the need to try the duck bacon with avocado. Maybe in a Cobb salad or on top of a ground bison burger?
on November 12th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
good call. DbLAT it is.
on December 21st, 2007 at 11:28 am
[…] in attempts to semi-invent something semi-fancy. Remembering I had some awesome leftovers like duck bacon in the freezer, I put together this quickfire […]