Gilding the Lily - Bacon'd Waffles with Candied Walnuts and Grandma's Syrup

For those of you not familiar with the saying, "Gilding the Lily" it means taking something already beautiful and coating it with gold, taking it over the top as it were.  Why would someone take something as graceful, curvaceous and sensual as the ethereal lily and take it over the top with a coating of gold?  Some would say you wouldn't, it's just not necessary, it's crazy-talk!!!  Others (such as myself) would say, "Because you can!" And so I made it happen.....

So I present to you:

Bacon'd Waffles with Candied Bacon Walnuts and Grandma's Karo Syrup

For the waffles:
1/4 lb bacon, cut crosswise into matchstick sized pieces (aka lardons)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbl oil
1 egg
1 cup milk
pinch Kosher salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 Tbl sugar
1 cup AP flour 

For the candied walnuts (all ingredients approximate):
leftover bacon grease 
1/2 cup rough-chopped walnuts
2-3 Tbl brown sugar
tiny pinch kosher salt

For Grandma's Karo Syrup:
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 cup light Karo syrup
1/2 cup water
2 tsp good vanilla extract

Begin by making the syrup:

Combine all the ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat.  Cook until everything melts together and gets all happy-like.  If any foam develops on the top you can just skim it off and discard it (the foam, not the syrup you fool!).  Reduce heat to low and keep warm.  

For the waffles:

Start by cooking the bacon over medium heat just until browned and crispy, don't overcook.  When done remove the bacon pieces from the pan with a slotted spoon and cool on a paper towel lined plate.  Reserve the remaining bacon fat for the candied walnuts but allow the fat to cool slightly.  In my case I used home-made bacon (yeah, I know, I'm a ROCK STAR) so had to supplement a little with a stash of bacon grease I keep in my fridge for just such an occasion.  

Combine the waffle wet ingredients; vanilla, egg, oil and milk and whisk until well combined.  In a separate bowl combine the dry ingredients; kosher salt, baking powder, sugar and flour and mix well.  Dump the wet into the dry and whisk just until everything is well incorporated, then add the bacon and stir a couple more times to disperse the bacony goodness throughout the batter.  I made mine into waffles but I don't see why this wouldn't make awesome pancakes.  In fact, this is a basic pancake batter with some vanilla extract added.  Cook according to your standard pancake process or waffle process.  

While the waffles are cooking.....

Add the chopped walnuts to the warm bacon fat with the brown sugar.  Cook until bubbly and happy.  Let's be honest here, I don't bake.  I'm not a baker, never claimed to be, not my forte.  What I'm trying to get at here is I don't know what temperature I cooked the walnuts to to make them candied.  From some past candy-making experience I know that as the sugar gets to the right temp that I was looking for the bubbles start to get a little bigger and hang around for just a little longer, stirring almost constantly because I didn't want the walnuts to burn.  The only thing in this world thats more bitter than a burned walnut is a woman scorned.  Scratch that, a burned walnut is worse.  When everything was where I wanted it I dumped it onto a silpat lined cookie sheet to cool.  

When everything is cooked, combine and revel the AWESOME-NICITY THAT IS YOU!!!  

PS - watch out for the syrup, it's wicked hot.... 

PPS - the syrup recipe really is from my grandma.  She's a country girl raised in West-by-God-Virginia and this is what she ate growing up on the farm.

Real Hillbillies Don't Do No Wine Tastin' - We Do Comparitive Tastings of Dried "Meat" Sticks

SlimJim – Overly dry but still significantly greasy, not quite sure how they were able to reach that culinary pinnacle.  Not a lot of flavor on the front end but good peppery aftertaste.  Needs more spice and overall moistnicity (I just made that word up, it’s pretty cool [sung in the voice of Vaness Bayer singing in the voice of Mylie Cyrus on SNL]).  If any more grease or fat is added to this product BP will have to include it on its Deep Horizon honey-do list.  This one gets a rating of Blech.

7-11 Snack Stick – The greasiest and still too dry, this thing tastes like it's equal parts salt and grease, and I don't mean that in a complimentary way.  In fact it coated my lips and mouth so much that I had to drink nearly a pint of water to dilute it.  Good fermented tang flavor but also needs more spice flavor.  Now I know where all the oil from the Valdez was sent to.  This thing should come with a government warning that throwing it away would be the equivalent of an environmental disaster.  I give it a Double-Blech. 

People’s Choice – Least greasy of the three traditional dried sticks.  This is the first one I tried and seemed flavorless at first, however, after trying the other sticks and drinking enough water to turn my brown eyes blue the flavor is growing on me, kinda like jock itch but tastier.  Though this is not the teriyaki flavored stick I’m getting a significant teriyaki undertone.  An inspection of the ingredients list reveals the culprit; turns out that dehydrated soy sauce is the second ingredient behind beef.  This one shall be henceforth rated as Half-Blech. 

Jack’s Links – This product had the meatiest flavor and was the most well-rounded in the flavor department.  There was a good after taste of garlic but could have used more heat from pepper.  Definitely not a low-fat product but moist without tasting overly greasy.  This is my top pick…and while it’s the smallest of the bunch a bonus is that is comes with a matching stick of “pasteurized processed cheddar cheese food,” whatever that is.  If you have the chance to purchase their triple-play option with double the meat, double the “pasteurized processed cheddar cheese food” and a couple pretzel sticks go for it.  Cheap eats even though it does thicken your blood to the equivalent of 10W-40.  Semi-palatable but I think I need to have my arteries roto-rootered as I’m feeling quite sluggish.

Take-a-way #1 - I have a feeling I'm going to be regretting my decision to eat all this crap in the very near future.

Take-a-way #2 - I feel dirty...like, "Did a search for something normal and found pictures of people doing weird and abnormal things to animals dirty"  But I digress...

Take-a-way #3 - As my dad used to tell me (often and normally mumbling under his breath), "If you want something done right, you just gotta do it your god-damn self!"  So I think I'm gonna try a batch of my own and see how it turns out.  Gotta do a little orderin' of products... hopefully more info soon!

Pasta Carbonara = Happy Belly

So my wife is out having a nice dinner with her friends and left me to my own devices.  After getting the rug-rats in bed and reading up a little bit on the next meaty project my stomach started a'grumblin'.  Not just a little bit...more like in a Little Shop of Horrors "Feed me Seymour" kinda way.  

At this point I realized all I'd eaten for dinner was a handful of chocolate chips and a spoonful of peanut butter.  Not the healthiest of choices I realize but I was hungry...don't hate.  Thinking what would be quick, easy and tasty I realized I had all the makings of one of my favorite meals in the fridge and no wife around to browbeat me about cholesterol and sodium.  Yeah me!  Skipping over to the fridge I pulled out two eggs, about two cups of cooked pasta, some rendered bacon fat, a chunk of parmigiano-reggiano and some bacon odds and ends I'd been saving.  

As my pan heated up I nuked the pasta with a splash of water to heat it up and soften it and ground the bacon odds and ends in the food processor to crumbles.  After the pan was hot I tossed in a couple teaspoons of bacon fat to get the party started and cooked up the bacon crumbles.  When everyone was golden brown and delicioso I added the pasta and tossed it about until everything was hot and coated in bacon love.  Now the trick with this dish is you don't want scrambled eggs, the eggs should just barely cook from the heat of the pasta and bacon and their creaminess becomes the sauce.  

So off the heat I added the eggs, a handful of the cheese that I grated wicked fine on the Microplane and a very generous grinding of black pepper.  In fact, the pepper should be a predominant flavor in the dish.  After a little stirring I was ready to throw down!  This dish hits all the happy places, it's unctuous, spicy, salty and tasty tasty.  And don't forget the other horsemen of the apocalypse, quick and easy.  Sorry about the crappy picture, the kitchen has bad lighting and my stomach was impatient.  

  

They say that this dish, pasta carbonara, was named after the resemblance of the ground pepper to the carbon mined in the hills around where this dish was created.  Most of these historical stories of the Old Country are 98% BS but it's still a fun story nonetheless.   

Alternatives would be some nice pancetta or guanciale if you've got some around but for the sake of Pete, don't use Kraft "Parmesan", that stuff is crap.

Señor Party in My Mouth a.k.a. Honey Cured Bacon Crusted with Chile and Pepper

Here's part two to one of my other experiments, Honey-Cured Chile and Pepper Crusted Bacon, the start of which can be seen over at this post: Trying Something New Today.  The short story is that I had some friends who wanted a whole mess'a bacon and I had an extra belly just begging to be made into something special.  I started by honey curing a belly using Rytek Kutas' seminal book on charcuterie, Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing which can be purchased for less than $20 from Amazon.com.  Rytek's recipe calls for a basic cure but swaps out the standard sugar for 2 cups of honey so that's exactly what I did.

I let the belly cure for 6 days and every day I flipped and re-distrubuted the honey-cure.  After the sixth day I rinsed the honey-cure from the belly and commanded thy belly rest.  Then using a process similar to pastrami  I spice crusted the belly.  For those unfamiliar with the process once a meat is cured in this way and allowed to dry a slightly sticky film forms all over the belly called a pellicle.  The sticky film is what the smoke sticks to and in the case of Señor Party in My Mouth I liberally sprinkled crushed chile flakes all over the meaty side of the belly to take advantage of the pellicle.  I then pressed onto that about 40 grams of black peppercorns that I had toasted and crushed to a medium-fine grind.

Here's what the belly looked like after the addition of the chile flake

Next is the belly after the crushed black pepper is pressed in and about to find it's way into the smoker.  Along with a couple basic cured bellies I'm smoking this deliciousnicity over hickory and applewood pellets using my A-MAZE-IN smoker.
 

11 hrs in the smoker and a couple days resting in the fridge and voila! 

I've got to tell you that this is one of the most awesome things that I've ever stuffed in my face-hole.  First you get the sweet from the honey, then the chile goes to work on your tongue with a sharp heat before the black pepper takes over with a little warmth and tickle in the back of your throat.  It was so delicious I'm going to be starting another belly in the next few days.  

My Smoker and review of the A-MAZE-IN smoke generator

I've now had the opportunity to try a few different items in my smoker and have had some pretty rockin' success and a couple total failures.  The most outstanding failure was my first smoking experience and to be honest I don't know where the failure occurred, there are so many mistakes to choose from.  First off I used the wrong product to start the fire, and while I used hardwoods from a trusted source I wasn't choosy as to what was getting burned, next I created waaay too much smoke and lastly I didn't wait for my product to rest before trying to eat it.  Lots of opportunities for improvement were noted and I've spent the past few months refining my technique.

To start I moved to a safe reputable fire source which was Kingsford coals started with a chimney starter (no chemicals).  Second I started using specific wood varieties and found that I really liked a blend of hickory and applewood then developed a schedule to provide a steady and predictable stream of smoke without going overboard.  I also learned the importance of letting your smoked product rest for a day or two before eating which is necessary for heavily smoked items such as bacon and kielbasa.  It lets the smoke mellow and permeate the product a bit more.   

While using hardwood chips gave me a great deal of control and many benefits, it was also a huge time suck.  I had to add a handful of wood-chips every 30-40 minutes to keep the smoke going and needed to replenish my coals at about the 6 hr mark.  This near constant tending was great as it allowed me a lot of time to socialize with friends and family and consume yummy fermented beverages but it also meant I was tethered to my backyard for most of the day.  

Here's a picture of my smoker which is set up for cold smoking.  By cold smoking I mean the heat source is isolated from the product being smoked so that you can smoke for a much longer time and not cook the product.  If you were using heat you'd cook the product while smoking which limits the amount of time you can apply smoke.  Too much heat and lots of time = jerky, not tasty vittels.  The more smoke you want the less you want heat.  I have a small pile of coals in the heat box on the right and as the smoke travels up the six-foot run to the smoker it cools to just a few degrees over ambient temperature before percolating forward and out an exhaust port up top.  The smoker is a re-purposed shipping crate that was transformed with the expertise and patient instruction of my Uncle Mike.  

While in and of itself the smoker was working great I didn't like the direct time investment.  Looking for an alternative led me to the A-MAZE-IN smoker.  I read many many many reviews and found all were exceedingly positive so I decided to bite the proverbial bullet and put my money where my mouth was.  Because I was looking for flexibility and a long smoking time I chose to purchase the ""NEW" A-MAZE-N-PELLET-SMOKER" which had the longest burn time and allowed me to choose between either sawdust or my preference, wood pellets (both of which can be purchased from A-MAZE-IN). When I purchased the smoker I also ordered 5 lbs of hickory pellets and 2 lbs of applewood pellets which I blended together.  I had considered purchasing the pellets from another company which would allow me to purchase locally, with more bulk rates and save on shipping but when I spoke to their sales rep I learned that the majority of their pellets were blends based on alder or oak while A-MAZE-IN used single variety only in their pellets.  What was on the label was what was in the bag.  That said A-MAZE-IN does have purposed blends available such as the Pitmaster's Select (which is a blend of hickory, cherry and maplewood), which I also ordered a couple pounds of.  

As you can see from my picture below the A-MAZE-IN is a maze of perforated steel.  Once loaded with pellets you just light it, blow out the flame and let it smolder.  While the website says that my choice of A-MAZE-IN took about 15 oz of pellets my experience was that it took a little closer to 16.25 oz which is close enough for me.  Unlike coals which can be lit using a chimney starter you absolutely have to use a propane-style torch to start the A-MAZE-IN.  It took me about 20 seconds of sustained contact for a good flame to get going which I let burn for a few seconds before gently blowing out.  I loaded the A-MAZE-IN into my smoker and away I went.  Literally, I was able to leave the house to run some errands which centered around the purchase of an interesting beer I'll introduce in a later post.  For those worry-warts out there my wife was home so if the smoker started to burn she'd take care of it, I hope.  Past experience told me that my smoker is fairly air-tight so I included a tiny fan inside the smoker at first to create a slight breeze. I removed the fan after an hour or so for a total burn time of 11 hrs, as promised by A-MAZE-IN.  If you want more smoke just light both ends.  If you only need 3 hrs of smoke only load one row.  The results are excellent and I won't go back to chips again.  You can add this smoker generator to just about anything from a large cardboard box to your Weber grill for hours of smoky goodness.   

This is the A-MAZE-IN just after being lit.  If you look carefully you can just see a bit of yellow flame on the front left of the maze

A short blurb on the company, A-MAZE-IN Products:  I called ahead to ask some questions and found the owner, Todd, to be friendly and very helpful with all of my questions.  His package deals are a great value and I highly recommend this product if you're going to be smoking.

Hard Cider Whole-Grain Mustard

There are so many quotes about quitting or non-quitting that they've all become overwrought and cliched, however, I begrudingly admit there is something to be said about not quitting.  Today I went back to a project that had eluded me on two prior attempts, guess you could say I'm a glutton for punishment, and made a third try at home-made mustard.  

My first mustard was a few years back and it was terrible, like, try just a little snakey-lick and make a disgusting face kinda gross.  It included Guiness and whole mustard seeds and got tossed in the bin post-haste.  Even the Guiness couldn't save it and I was sad to see the beer get tossed.  My second attempt was definitely good in the flavor department but the texture sucked.  I had used a recipe from a certain personality on a food-centric television channel that is well regarded for their science-based cooking show and added some hallertau hops for bitterness but the texture just didn't come together.  In fact, the stuff just wouldn't thicken so I used a roux to thicken it....blech! 

Having recently joined the local homebrew club, QUAFF (Quality Ale and Fermentation Fraternity), and in anticipation of some up-coming events I wanted to try my hand at mustard again.  I did a quick search of the ol' wide web of the world and found a trusted source with what looked to be a solid recipe.  Below is my interpretation of whole-grain recipe from Hank over at hunter angler gardener cook

Hard Cider Whole-Grain Mustard

Makes about 1 cup.

Prep Time: 12 hours

6 tablespoons brown mustard seeds
1/2 cup mustard powder (I used Coleman's)
3 tablespoons apple-cider vinegar
1/2 cup hard apple cider (homemade by my buddy Mike S.)
2 teaspoons salt 
1 tablespoon honey 

 

I took about 2/3 of the mustard seeds and ground them up chunky-like in my mortar and pestle because I feel I have more control over the final grind and can stop when I get to the right grind size.  Then I just mixed everything together well with a whisk and tossed it in the fridge to get all happy-like overnight.  

Here is the finished product dabbed on some eye-talian sausage, which I'm happy to say is a success.  (Not the best pairing but I can deal with it)  This stuff is no sissy mustard, it's some seriously high-test clear your nasal passages kinda pungent but in a good way.  

I'm going to try another batch in the near future with some hops again but I'm thinking success is nearly guaranteed in which case I'll be improving upon success rather than un-quitting, or not quitting, whatever... I'll also leave more whole mustard seeds and increasing the honey by about 50% give or take. 

Trying something new today

A lot of great stories can often by traced back to a single sentence. There's, "Here, hold my beer for a minute, I wanna try somethin'" and the ever popular, "Hey everyone, watch this!"  Hopefully this little experiment of mine will also end up as legend.  When I purchased my last batch of bellies I was told I had to buy the whole case which was 4 bellies totaling about 35 lbs.  It was quite a bit more than I felt my network could purchase but then got to thinking one of my friends had asked for a whole mess of bacon.  Kismet?  

So I gave these friends a call and offered to do them up a whole belly of their own.  Knowing that they were into spicy foods and wanting to try something a little different I offered to do them something special and they were agreeable to whatever my insane brain could come up with but it gave me an opportunity to try something I'd been wanting to do....so we're going to be making a honey cured chile and pepper crusted bacon.  Right now I've got the belly in the cure that was then rubbed down with two cups of honey.  I'm going to cure it for about 6 days before resting, crusting with chile and a little freshly ground pepper and finally smoking with hickory and applewood.  It looks great already (although the picture is a smidgen blurry)