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Bacon Goes Big

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You know how all you across-the-pond folks always brag about how thick and delicious British bacon is and love to deride our streaky American bacon as weak, flimsy, and not worth it? Well, I’m putting you all on notice.

I recently sat down at the bar at The General Greene, one of the many farm-to-table, haute barnyard chic restaurants that has opened in Brooklyn over the last few years. I wanted a little snack to go with my $9 handcrafted cocktail, so we ordered a side of candied bacon. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much—maybe a bowl of crumbled, caramelized bits that would be gone in 60 seconds.

Um, no. Candied bacon here is basically an entire meal. It’s your standard smoky, salty, American-style bacon (with an added sweet touch), but instead of slicing it into thin, fryable strips, they just serve you the whole damn belly, and you eat it with a knife and fork. Seeing a big, streaky hunk of pig belly served like that is cool because it kinda shows you how they get those tiny slices of bacon out of a big slab of pork. I think I even said out loud “oh, so that’s where bacon comes from.”

OK, so it’s basically like eating five slices of bacon in one bite. So maybe don’t order the whole thing for yourself, or more than once a year. But I gotta give credit to anyone who can still surprise me with bacon.

More: The Best of New Brooklyn Cuisine

More Bacon: Recipes, raves and other bacon bits in Endless Bacon.

(Photo: The General Greene)

in Bacon / Endless Bacon / Pig / Restaurants / Trends 0 comments
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Homemade Pasta, Take Two

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Right off the bat, I have to give you ESers credit for suggesting the Pioneer Woman’s pasta recipe. I used it for my second go at making pasta and it blew the recipe from the pasta machine box out of the water. It’s funny how only a few tiny little differences can make such a sea change in the final product. I guess you bakers out there already knew that, huh? I don’t know if it was the flour-to-egg ratio, the beating the eggs by hand (which was fun!) or something else that put this one over the top, but it finally got me that fresh fettuccine I was looking for.

Still, as tasty as fresh pasta is, it’s still just pasta, and if you ask me it needs some added oomph. I was tempted to add some truffle oil or basil or something weirder right into the dough, but I wanted to first see how the basic recipe worked, so I resisted the urge this time. (Yep, I’m proud of myself and yep, I’m open to suggestions for the future.)

So the flava experimenting was left for the pasta add-ons. Looking around my kitchen, I saw the usual suspects: bacon and pine nuts. Two ingredients I’ve blabbed on about for years, yet had somehow never completely been brought together. Until now.

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in Bacon / Endless Bacon / Pig / Recipe 1 comments
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Top 10 All-Time ES Recipes

Ever wonder which recipes your ES co-readers are ogling most? Well here’s the rundown. From our humble beginnings throwing all our leftovers into a sushi roll to our more refined recipes for putting an egg on everything, here are the Top 10 all-time most-read recipes from the Endless Simmer archives. Click the pics to check ’em out.

10. Hot Dog Sushi

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9. Feta and Roasted Pepper Egg Sandwich

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8. Bacon-Wrapped Date ‘Cannolis’ with Pine Nuts

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7.  Homemade Ketchup

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6. Marshmallow Nachos

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Next: Top 5 All-Time ES Recipes

in Bacon / Eggs / Lists / Pig / Recipe / Sandwich 2 comments

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Infinito Sobbollire: Anticipating Rome

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Ladies and gents, I’m in dire need of a vacation and, as luck would have it, that’s just what I’ll be doing at the end of this month.  My last two trips to Europe, which took me to Hamburg and London, certainly left me with a few good food memories, but that’s going to pale in comparison after Mrs. TVFF and I head to Rome.  She’s been there a few times (and studied for a summer during college), but it’s my first trip.  We’ll be looking at tons of artwork, visiting important churches and ancient ruins and gorging ourselves on every type of food we can put our hands on.

It’s funny…I plan on walking something like ten miles a day while I’m there, yet I completely expect to gain 5+ pounds. What, exactly, am I looking forward to most?  I’ve got a shortlist of dishes that have my mouth watering already.
5. Gelato – Yeah, I know you’re probably thinking that this should be a bit higher on the list.  And it would be, except for the fact that (a) I’m going to be there at the end of February and it’s not exactly frozen-desert season and (b)  I work about a block away from what I think is the best gelato this side of the Atlantic, so it won’t likely be the kind of revelation it typically is for Americans raised on bland ice cream.  Still, eating a cup of pistachio while walking through the Campo de’ Fiori will be pretty sweet.

Check out the rest…and help me find the best spots…after the jump.

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in Cheese / Eggs / Food Travel / Pig 4 comments
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Plantains Three Ways

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Fruit is pretty great and all, but how much better is it when deep-fried? Am I right?

Well, I know I am. Having grown up on Nuyorican restaurants, I’ve been a pretty rabid plantain fan for a long time. But one longtime frustration was that I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to recreate these delicious little fritters at home. But, after much experimentation and web browsing, I’m happy to report I’ve started to get the hang of it. The secret turns out to be the same secret as every other delicious restaurant food: you’ve got to throw all delusions of semi-healthiness to the wind. Oil, baby. Lots of it. Like seriously, gallons. Cooking plantains in a tablespoon or two of oil always resulted in bland, starchy discs with not-quite-right texture, but once I worked up the courage to really douse them in oil, I’ve been able to make both sweet, rich plantains from super-ripe bananas, as well as crispy, more hearty ones from green bananas.

You don’t necessarily need a deep-fryer, but you need to cut those plantains thin, fill your saucepan up with a whole lot of the golden stuff, get it nice and bubbly, then let ’em fry for just a few minutes.

That dilemma solved, obviously I was ready to start getting a little wacky. As much as I love eating plain crispy plantains with the simple garlic sauce they serve at Puerto Rican places, I wondered if they couldn’t stand for a little spicing up at home, so I took three different attempts at crafting a more creative plantain. No, this is not a lame, haute cusine “three-way” dish, but merely three different ways they can be prepared…

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in Bacon / Endless Bacon / Featured / Pig / Recipe 7 comments
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Bi Bim Bapping

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It all started in childhood with Nature’s Best Market in Downers Grove, IL. My mom would take me to that tiny family-run Greek grocery store and even then, I knew we were some place special. The produce section took up half the store and I encountered many fruits and vegetables for the first time in my young life. It was after trips there that I first savored the juice of lychee, crunched on jicama and sampled fresh-made tomatillo salsa. After the produce section, we navigated our way to the deli counter, where the man behind the counter sliced us off a block of fresh feta cheese. The whole goats hanging from the ceiling intimidated me, but the olive salad was worth the trip all by itself. On the way home, we would stop at a chain grocery store for peanut butter and paper towels., canned tuna and pasta sauce. Even to my young self, it was anticlimactic in comparison to the jam-packed riches we had just left behind.

Since that day, I have always sought out tiny ethnic grocery stores for my produce needs. My dream is to someday only go to Giant for toilet paper. Which is why when I visited Korean Korner last week, I knew I was in love. The produce is varied, the aisles wide enough for a cart to slide easily down, and the meat section is vast. If I knew what to do with a whole fish, I probably would have bought one of those in addition to some goat meat, beef and seasoned pork.

The pork had me most excited because it was one of two necessary-but-hard-to-find ingredients in bi bim bap, the other being kimchi. For those of you unaware, kimchi is a Korean standby — a pickled, spiced cabbage concoction. It is served as a side dish but is essential to the Korean dining experience. Once you acquire these two ingredients, bi bim bap is very easy to make. The only other ingredient that can be tricky to find at the regular grocery is bean sprouts, but I am sure that WF (I refuse to call that paycheck black hole by its full name) carries them. After you get that, the rest is all about seasoning and presentation.

Easy Bi Bim Bap (Serves 4):

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in Eggs / Pig / Recipe 3 comments
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