Bacon - - Page 29

by Russell Warnick

I Want a Date

A few weeks back I happened to be looking through September’s issue of Food and Wine Magazine, as I was searching for inspiration for a fall themed dinner. I came across this great recipe for chorizo-filled dates wrapped in bacon — I had to try it.

I’ve wanted to make this recipe for some time now but have not really had a reason to (like one needs a reason to wrap anything in bacon.) However, a friend of mine invited me to a presidential debate party last Friday and all the guests were required to a bring a bottle or food. I was at a loss on what I could make until I saw this; it was great. Prunes and dates are both drupes (thanks wiki) so I figured it was a perfect tribute, McCain was going to get eaten alive by Obama so it seemed fitting that I make these.

I didn’t follow the recipe exactly as indicated in F&W because this was a gay debate party and all dishes had to be free of fats.

Recipe post jump

by BS

Feed Us Back: Comments of the Week

Is bacon the food world equivalent of the four-letter word? Read on for details…

– Have you taken the Omnivore Hundred yet? Among ES readers, Camille appears to be in the lead with an astonishing 88 percent.

– On the herbivore front, Alex is taken with gansie’s pine nut salad: I am usually thrilled to find them lurking in my salad. This could have something to do with my not really liking salad and really liking nuts…I’m just bopping along, eating my salad like a good vegetarian, and then WHOA! THERE’S A PINE NUT! AWESOME! It’s like when you crush up a pill and put it in delicious juice for a kid to drink so they won’t know it’s there, except opposite. Maybe I should start crushing up my lettuce and hide it in my pine nuts instead of hiding my pine nuts under my lettuce.

– But Mean Today is unimpressed with Padma Lakshmi’s salad course:

in Bacon / Contests 7 comments

by gansie

Real Men Do Eat Quiche*

Editors Note: Bad Editor! ES friend Aaron sent this post a wicked long time ago. But, I’ve been lazy on downloading the pic to go with it. Here’s what he made for our breakfast-for-dinner Project Runway party. And note his squash confusion too!

This weekend I celebrated my 22nd birthday and went to Rehoboth Beach with my boyfriend. We had a yummy brunch at Blue Moon where I ordered the Individual Breakfast Tart.

It made my mouth feel so good, I immediately thought I must have done something wrong and be punished.

I have this great group of friends that gets together weekly to watch Project Runway and share food.

So for this week’s breakfast themed Project Runway Dinner, I knew what I had to do: make the tart!

I enlisted the help of my housemate, Kashuo.

We went to the grocery and ran into Liza, who helped me find the parchment paper.

I could not for the life of me find zucchinis, even though I walked right past them a bunch of times, but they were labeled green squashes. And I thought that might be something different. But they’re really not. I was like: damn, those green squashes look so much like zucchinis!

I asked a young man stocking shelves wearing his supermarket employee uniform if he could help me find pastry shells. He looked at me like I had asked for a thesis, a pint of blood, his Social Security number, and his first-adopted son!

Turns out a tart and a quiche are basically the same thing.

Click through for the recipe

in Bacon / Breakfast / Cheese / Endless Bacon / Recipe / Veggie 3 comments

by BS

Will the Real Sarah Palin Recipe Please Stand Up?

Earlier this week, Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin was forced to deny a vicious family rumor by admitting another, slightly less vicious rumor. But we here at ES could care less how many babies and/or grandbabies the guv did or didn’t have; we’re more concerned with a much more dangerous rumor. So let’s clear the air Mama Palin, what exactly are you putting in those hockey mom lunch boxes?

By now, everyone with half an Internet connection is aware that Sarah Palin hunts moose, spears catfish, and can strangle a polar bear with her own hands. But for some reason (possible Cindy McCain’s cookie fiasco), the McCain-Palin campaign has yet to release a single Sarah Palin recipe! And now the hungry hungry internets are filling up with creative recipes that claim to be from Sarah Palin, but there’s no way to know for sure. So it’s up to you readers: Which purported Sarah Palin recipe is the real deal?

– Sarah’s Reindeer Cupcake recipe has been making the rounds on the web quicker than Barack Obama can drown a newborn baby in a bizarre Muslim rite overseen by his crazy Christian pastor. According to the recipe, SP takes 1 pound of fresh ground caribou meat, mixes it up with flour, salt, sugar & egg to a doughy consistency and bakes at 375 for 45 minutes or 25 minutes if you like ’em rare. Then they’re topped with crunchy sprinkles: “Cut the antler and hooves into chunks and then put in blender and grind until it looks like ground walnuts…Coat each cupcake with the frosting and then decorate with the crunchy sprinkles…Serves 12.”

– Over at Yahoo Answers, one writer is claiming that Palin is more partial to the Northern delicacy of Fried Polar Bear Liver, seasoned with onions and buffalo chips. This one veers more than a little over the deep end, but hey, it could be the new foie gras.

– On the slightly more believable front, Cakespace is running with “Sarah Palin’s Alaskan Crab Wrap,” which I must declare sounds delicious, but then again, so do most things that combine crab and bacon. But ripe, diced brie? Could this red-blooded conservative really be a lover of such a lefty, Francophile, elitist ingredient? Now I don’t know what to believe.

– Meanwhile, everyone is all up on the reports that Sarah loves the Moose Burgers. Moose meat is illegal to sell so, it’s assumed, she kills and prepares her own moose. Supposedly. But we have yet to see a convincing burger recipe from Gov. Palin. Ireport has one recipe that calls for Walla Walla onions and fat from 3 Alaskan legislators or 1 Washington insider. But seriously, Sarah, if this moose burger thing is real, I wanna see some photos. You know the burger porn drill. Slice in half and get me a shot of it all red and runny with the cheese dripping over the top. Mmm….moose meat.

Remember, Sarah: this can all stop if you just tell the truth and give us one, certifiably real recipe. But for now, we’ll let you readers determine the truth:

[Poll id=”22″]

Photos: Alaska Seafood, via So Good, Guylaine2007, longhorndave, Ian Ransley, Vigour

in Bacon / Fish / Food Travel / Politics / Red Meat 10 comments

by BS

Feed Us Back: Comments of the Week

– Our college eating suggestions brought out a great idea from Yvo: Easy Mac also came out way, way after I was in college. I can’t say from experience, but, ahem, I hear you can make it without a microwave by, um, running the hot water in the sink as hot as it’ll go for a few minutes, then using that. I would not advise trying this.

I would DEFINITELY advise someone trying this, just so we can know if it works.

– Meanwhile, JakeSG’s tico report got everyone hungry

Pinch o Minch: That all looks amazing. I’d be a tad skeptical of dessert that looks like soap, though.

Britannia disagreed: The jello looks like a piece of bacon, even more appetizing!

– But it was 80’s latest artsy photo that laid down the challenge…

in Bacon / Cheese 5 comments

by BS

Who Cooked It Better? National Goat Cheese Month

First of all, many apologies for slacking on the Who Cooked It Better front. I was off eating in the Holy Land for awhile (much more on that to come), and was then distracted by Olympic foods, and I let our weekly feature fall by the wayside. Well, August is National Goat Cheese Month, as I’m sure you all knew. So what better time to celebrate one of the best ingredients there is?

Unfortunately, goat cheese tends to get an un-versatile rap. Sure, we all know by now that it goes great with fig jam, can be mixed in with pasta, or baked in a tart with onions. But as the most malleable type of cheese, we sometimes forget that goat cheese can do anything! Seriously people, name something I wouldn’t put goat cheese on/in – I challenge you.

So in honor of National Goat Cheese Month, I scoured the Internet for the most creative uses of goat cheese – recipes that really push the boundaries. Now it’s up to you all to pick the best of the best.

The goat cheese salad on the top left is from Chriesi at Almond Corner. Now, I know what you’re thinking: goat cheese in a salad is hardly original. But wait ’til you hear the total mockery AC makes of salad. It’s goat cheese, wrapped in prosciutto, fried, and then served in a salad. Full details and more pictures over at Almond Corner.

Next up is a video recipe from Chris at realmeals.tv, who adopts a similar wrapped-in-pig motif but ditches the green stuff. Chris first covers his goat cheese in bread crumbs that are cut with — be still my heart — pine nuts, then rolls the whole thing up in bacon and deep fries it. He looses a point for calling the dish bacon goat cheese nuggets (nuggets is on my bottom five least appetizing menu words list), but other than that, these babies are pretty close to heaven. Full recipe and video instructions at realmeals.tv.

Plenty of people have discovered the art of stuffing chicken with goat cheese, but I’ve got to hand it to the Beantown Baker for having the guts to stuff it in fish. Her goat cheese stuffed salmon steaks are on the bottom left, and while I never would have thought of this, how could it go wrong? Goat cheese strikes again. Recipe at Beantown Baker.

Lastly, here’s one for you veggie goat cheese lovers. Joe at foodie nyc offers up this fresh and original appetizer. Joe juices some fennel fronds (woooah, wha?!?), then whips it up with lemon juice and extra virgin to create the sauce the goat cheese is wading in. The goat cheese is then topped with fried leeks for an extra onion-y bite. Directions: “Simply slice off a bit of your goat cheese, bath it gently in the fennel juice vinaigrette, and smear it onto a cracker or piece of toasted crostini.” The “simply” part is a lie, but way to go, Joe. Full instructions at foodie nyc.

Your votes, por favor.

[poll id=”20″]

in Bacon / Cheese / Fish / Veggie 2 comments

by BS

Hey, Where’s My Free Bread Basket?

We all know there is no such thing as a free lunch. But back in the day, you used to get something for nothing, at least a slice of bread and butter, when dropping dollars to dine out. Now, not so much.

As I’ve complained before, Mexican joints are calling chips and salsa pico de gallo and charging for them; some fancy pants restaurants don’t even include tap water as an option; and the traditional free bread basket is harder to find than ever. (I don’t care if it is a garlic-rosemary brioche twist – if it’s bread, I don’t want to pay for it.)

Since these pre-meal freebies are becoming fewer and further between, I put together this list of New York’s best restaurants, as ranked by the free food they offer.

Holla back and let me know what I missed. You too, DC folks and others. Wherever I travel, I gotta know where the free is.

– Blue Ribbon Bakery

Skip the appetizer list at this chic West Village eatery ($8.50 for olives?), because you won’t even want a first course once you get a whiff of the fragrant, overflowing bread basket. The rotating assortment of freshly baked options ranges from the basic (rye, sourdough, challah) to specialty breads stuffed with bites of walnut, olive, and yes, even bacon. The baskets’ contents change from table to table, but if you’ve got a favorite, the servers are usually happy to hook you up.

– Junior’s

The bread basket is just the beginning at this over-the-top Brooklyn diner, where each meal begins with an entire table full of snacks. There are two A-1 bread offerings: caraway-studded onion rolls and soft and buttery cornbread, and each table also gets a sampling of crunchy dill pickles and a taste of the restaurant’s extra-vinegary coleslaw. Topping off this quirky smorgasbord is a gratis bowl of bright purple beets. The only problem is saving enough room for an overstuffed sandwich and a heaping slice of the legendary cheesecake.

in Bacon / Rants & Raves 7 comments