The Maltese Bacon

Bugs, Clay, Horse and Truffle - What Have You Eaten?

 

grasshopper taco photo courtesy of stgermh via a Creative Commons License

Here's a fun game. Andrew Sullivan from Very Good Taste came up with  foodie's equivalent of  ‘100 Books You Should Have Read’. The list is wacky including populist American centric classics like root beer floats and Big Mac meals,  world classics like aloo gobhi and borscht,  upscale items like caviar and Kobe beef and nutty stuff like roadkill and whole insects.

It is geared towards people who will eat anything and is just 'controversial' enough to get people talking about what should and should not be on the list, which is the point (he includes kaolin, which is eaten by people who eat clay-like substances for nutrition and can also be found in some anti-diarrheal medicines.... not pepto bismol though.) I passed, scoring a 73. There is nothing I would not eat on the list, given special circumstances.

Play the game, tell me your score in the comments (or play the game in the comments if it lets you) and any notable things you may or may not have checked off. If you are curious how he came up with the list, read his addendum here. My test results are after the jump.

Bunnies, Magic and Matzoh

This week, my friend Brian Patchett, will be guest blogging about a party that he threw, which was one of the most delightful events that I have had the pleasure of participating in. Can't describe exactly what it was that transpired that night. It was a performance, it was theater, it was dinner. Whatever it was, it was all-inclusive fun, full of surprises. I'll just let him explain it in his own words:

For the last few years I've been dreaming about creating a new holiday, to take place on the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter. It would poach the best elements from my favorite holidays, with an emphasis on Halloween and Passover. The idea is that No Lords Day is the one day of the year when there are No Lords watching, and you can do whatever you want with impunity.

This year I decided to finally do it. I sent out the invitations, devised the ceremony, made some artwork, and commissioned some performances. Naturally, I asked Mme. Bacon to brainstorm some ideas for the meal. We settled on an African theme as our point of departure.

Miss B. spent Friday before the party shopping, and I came over to her place that night to check in. I was far too deferential to be of any real help; but even so I was trusted with, amongst other things, the saffron. We enjoyed making fun of the small onions for the tagine, which the recipe asked to be "so tender you can crush them with your tongue." When all five pounds of lamb were in the pot, M. Bacon recorded some backing vocals for the dance-pop song I had written for the next evening: "No Lords Day (Way Back In Gideon's Time)."

On party day, I went down to Maltese Bacon Kitchen Headquarters to help bring the stews to my apartment in northern Brooklyn. I admit being slightly panicked by what I saw. With two hours to go until party
time, nothing had been packed, certain dishes had yet to be assembled, and the Maltese Bacon was warbling about some phantom cucumber salad for which there was no call, no evidence and no time. I believe she had gone slightly delirious in her own attempt to not totally freak out, and had come around the other side to a sleepy panic-coma. When we arrived back at my place, we were aided by the early arrival of my friend Alexis, who helped that cucumber salad materialize out of nothingness.

With all seventeen guests packed in my cramped apartment, we got seated for the ceremony. The table was packed with wine, dates, nuts and olives from Emily's Pork Store in Williamsburg. I gave a small introduction No Lords Day, and then performed the song:

I then began the ritual story of Gideon -- a prince in ancient times who serves his people well, but then goes bad, and gets greedy. This part of the story was interpreted in dance:

At the end of the dance, the Black Egg was held aloft. Whoever ends up with the Black Egg at the end of the holiday will have Gideon come to their home and HIDE one object until next No Lords Day. I talked about the three things that Gideon likes to hide most: eggs, matzoh, and bibles. I then told the story of Gideon's punitive imprisonment inside a giant chocolate rabbit. This too was interpreted in dance:

I read a biblical-style poem that I wrote, after which my friend Tom gave a joyful performance that was wildly applauded, and involved real magic. Definitely a highlight of the evening:

Finally, I connected Gideon's narrative to the holiday itself. Every year on No Lords Day, Gideon escapes from his chocolate prison, to grab and hide things with his grabby, grabby hands. And ever year the Great Hare (the Champion of the Amalekites, whom Gideon oppressed) must hunt Gideon down, bop him on the head, and send him back. This was hilariously interpreted in dance by Katie and Melina:

The ceremony ended with the "Splitting of the Hare," in which a giant
chocolate rabbit was split open, symbolically releasing Gideon from
his prison, and formally "beginning" No Lords Day. This was performed
with a scary knife by my friend Cara.

At this point, I would classify the tone of the party as "just slightly totally out of control" -- several people nearly lit my room on fire trying to melt the bunny into the fondue pot. Eventually a queue was formed and food was served. DELICIOUS! The Moroccan lamb tagine with apricots and tongue-crushable onion was a hit, as was the "South African Malay chicken curry amalgamation" and the cucumber salad. Everyone ate like a host wants to see, and there were the most insubstantial of leftovers.

The Black Egg was passed around -- sometimes obviously, sometimes clandestinely. I was shocked when it appeared on my plate, as if by magic. I slipped it into my friend Samantha's coat pocket when she wasn't looking. After she had left the apartment, she RETURNED after finding the Black Egg . She was under no circumstances going to be the victim of Gideon's perverted machinations.

With the tables cleared, I brought out the chocolate hare fondue, which Hilary had melted safely on the stove. At this point, people were in my room drawing all over the novelty Santa Claus that Cara brought:

After dessert the floor was cleared for dancing, which is how I like to end any evening. And the next morning, I found the Black Egg in my jacket.

-- Brian P.
Guest Blogger

For more awesomely fun pictures of the First Ever No Lords Day, go here.

RECIPE FOR NO LORDS DAY

No Lords Day is a non-proprietary holiday. You are encouraged to hold
your own, with the awesomest people you know, on the day between Good
Friday and Easter.

PHASE ONE: Ceremony
These mandatory elements can be performed in any order you choose. If
you'd like to look at a sample script for a "possible" No Lords Day,
please contact me. Improvisation is encouraged.

1) Tell the story of Gideon, his grabby grabby hands, and the prison shaped like a giant chocolate rabbit

2) Explain that Gideon escapes from his prison each year on No Lords Day, and covets and hides things (especially eggs, matzoh, and bibles).

3) Explain how Gideon is returned to his prison each year by the Hare, who bops him on the head (optionally, with a mallet).

4) Introduce the Black Egg (the "Jerub Ball" -- that's a bible joke, because I am a nerd) to the table. Remind everyone that whoever ends up with the Black Egg at the end of the night will receive a visit from Gideon, who will hide one of their possessions for a full year.

5) Compulsive wine-drinking, snackable appetizers

6) Pepper with dances, songs, sing-alongs, magic, poetry, storytelling, etc., to your liking.

7) End the ceremony with the Splitting of the Hare. The Hare can be melted into a fondue (you should spring for quality chocolate if you do this) or eating out of hand as a dessert. You may use supplemental or replacement desserts.

PHASE TWO: Meal
1) Tons of awesome food, in any genre
2) More wine-drinking

PHASE THREE: Dancing
1) Danceable wine-drinking
2) Digestive dancing

Note From M. Bacon: The chicken curry amalgamation was a riff on South African Malay curry and the Moroccan amb tagine was from Claudia Roden's wonderful Arabesque.

A Good Sunday: Lard, Plantain Cakes and Rugelach

So, my friend Brian went to the grocery store in Williamsburg last Saturday and sends me this e-mail shortly afterward:

Hello --

I just went crazy with groceries. Wanna come over for dinner today or
breakfast tomorrow?

I have

DESAYUNO TIPICO DOMINICANO:

eggs
dominican salami
dominican frying cheese
1 plantano
1 maduro
corn tortillas
black beans
short-grained white rice
spanish onions
limes
smoked herring
2 sm red potatoes

OTHER:
2 sm beets
2 shallots
dandelion greens
pretty dry rosemary
bok choy
crimini mushrooms
weird little baby sweet peppers
nothing to drink

I love this because I am a big sucker for lists. Not making my own, mind you, but reading other people's. We arrange to meet for noontime breakfast the next day. I have eaten many sweet plantains and tostones in my life (mostly at Los Pollitos) but had never prepared them. I know it doesn’t sound complicated, but the green, the yellow and the black plantain have always befuddled my little brain. Well, of course it’s not hard to grasp. They are all the same plantain just in varying degrees of ripeness, just like regular bananas, except that plantains have a lower sugar content than bananas, making them great for cooking in different ways.

Brian was in charge of the cheese, eggs, salami and merguez sausage. He fried the cheese in lard. Delicious! There wasn’t any kind of lard film on the cheese, so you wouldn’t really know from whence it had come, and therefore able to enjoy it in good conscience.

I was in charge of the plantains. I boiled the plantains, mixed them up with some onions, garlic, small sweet peppers and butter. Katie, Brian’s sister, had fun forming them into cakes. Then I pan fried them and stuck a fried egg on top, like a plantain eggs benedict. Having both the sweet yellow plantain and the green plantain in the patty made it only slightly sweet, a good, starchy foil for the savory of all the other things on our plate.

After we ate, we decided to take a walk, before we fell into food induced REM. We walked around the Hasidic neighborhood of Williamsburg. Brian picked up a bag of very good rugelach at a bakery. We snooped around a deli that had an extensive pickle bar and wandered around a toy store that sold small plastic figurines of Hasidic children. There also was a confederate soldier kid’s costume for sale – disturbing and totally weird.

Plantain Cakes
1 green plantain
1 yellow plantain
1 clove of garlic
½ small onion
½ red bell pepper or equivalent other sweet peppers
butter
olive oil
salt/pepper
½ chopped jalapeño (no seeds)

Chop one green and one yellow plantain into 2 inch pieces with skin on. Peel off skin. Boil the green plantain for 5 minutes, then drop in the yellow plantain into the water. Boil for 15 minutes more. While this is boiling, sauté the red pepper, jalapeño, garlic and half a small onion in butter until onions just turn translucent. Strain the plantains and mash with a potato masher. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add garlic/onion/butter mixture and mix well. Shape the plantains into the size of discs with diameter of 3-4 inches and height of ¾ inch (more or less.) It should look vaguely like a hamburger patty. Pan fry the cakes in olive oil on medium heat, until they brown on each side. Serve with a sunny side egg on top.

...

The post-holiday come down…Can a girl get some quiet? Yes, thank you very much. Oh, wait but it’s really quiet. Too quiet? Mmmm. Okay, maybe a bit, but it is much needed. I myself have been hiding from outings since the New Year started (which translates to restaurants). All the fish at the farmer’s market was nearly sold out on Saturday. The over-fed hoards were tired of red meat!

Been trying to read 5 books. Not really working. I've got ADD right now, 20 pages into one book and I'll find another. Do I want to learn Spanish first? Or read about Hitler’s ascent? Then there's the Elizabeth’s Gilbert’s search for God, love and spaghetti, which I got for Christmas. I finally finished "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" last night, which was so great. Junot is a veritable poet, although I think his book “Drown” had more emotional resonance because it was more dead-pan, less pop. I loved all the references to Lord of the Rings and all, but it did make the voice less serious.

Yes, December nearly did me in. The sheer amount of consumption - cookies, meat, wine, whiskey. We Americans are disgusting! And New Yorkers are probably the worst of them all. But, the capper to last month was the all encompassing Christmas dinner which cousin Tammy planned. Vanee, Caroline and I were her sous chefs. We drove to my uncle’s house in the Maryland country late in the morning. Before we got started we took a little hike around his house, which borders one of the fingers of Chesapeake Bay. When my aunt wanted to talk about having a wedding for one of us singletons in the garden, we tried to deflect the attention and hide. Then we got started in the kitchen. The dinner was for 16 people and it went very smoothly. The moms were impressed that we were so quiet in the kitchen. No bickering or screaming. A new generation!

Stuff eaten: oysters, chicken liver crostini, bacon wrapped cipollini onions, butternut squash soup with sunchokes, rib roast, rock fish with salsa verde, cauliflower au gratin, sautéed cavolo nero, roasted Brussels sprouts and parsnips. My favorite was an inspired grilled romaine appetizer with pomegranate dressing.

Then for dessert we had a cheese plate (including an out of this world St. Agur blue with local honey), a buche, berries, and cookies. A Sauternes was busted out. We debated whether or not my uncle could ever find a fraternity to justify the giant margarita machine (THE MARGARATOR) that his sister in law had given him or whether he should get a more modest sized one. Then we made the long drive home, but no matter…there was 10 years of gossip that different coasts had backlogged.

Okrafest Continues...

Okra is so plentiful and pretty right now. There are the wild looking purple okra of the farmer's markets. And then there is the produce vendor by the Q train that sells okra for $1 per pound! I feel like a positive thief when I buy it from them. So, here I have to offer you another okra recipe. This time, free of politics and rivalries. I've gone indie on this one.

Okra with Zaatar
1 pound okra (washed, dried with paper towel and tops chopped off. I sliced them into disks on the diagonal but you can keep them whole)
1 1/2 tablespoons zaatar
1/4 teaspoon aleppo pepper or red pepper flakes
2 cloves garlic
4 tablespoons pine nuts
1 small onion minced
1/2 teaspoon cumin
2 sliced sundried tomatoes
3 tablespoons olive oil
salt

1. Heat up oil at medium high. Add onion and garlic. When onion is starting to brown, add sundried tomato and pine nuts. Stir. 1 minute later, add okra. Stir. Sprinkle with zaatar,cumin red pepper and salt to taste. Serve with rice.

And Clams Make Three

One of my favorite things to do on the grill is a chorizo and clam dish, a riff on cataplana, a Portuguese stew. My friend Dan taught me this, which he learned when he was an oyster shucker for Chris Schlesinger's boisterous barbecue/seafood restaurant The East Coast Grill in Boston. When Dan worked there, the restaurant would close on July 4 and the staff would have a blow out barbecue at Chris’ house by the shore, with two whole pigs and this clam and chorizo dish.

It's a perfect dish for a barbecue because it's such a snap to make. You basically throw everything on the grill in spurts, put it all in a container still on the fire and add whatever beer or wine you happen to be drinking to bring home the spicy pork juices and the sea brine. Make sure to have some bread on hand, for sopping up the garlicky broth. I have adapted it by omitting the Old Bay seasoning and adding parsley and red pepper flakes.

I had not gotten a chance to make it this summer, so when my friend Alyce proposed a barbecue on her new roof in Red Hook, I grabbed some clams at the farmer’s market and some chorizo from the meat counter and ran. (or rather, charged on the B69 bus.) It had been a long time since I barbecued with her, maybe since our stay in Cape Cod several years ago when I caught a 28” striped bass with her and her dad and had the pleasure of eating the darn thing grilled with her mom’s spicy garlic sauce. I use the term ‘caught’ loosely since the boat dragged the line and I just reeled it in.

Anyway, this dish makes a great appetizer – a fun and messy way to start a meal. Alyce had the idea to make a whole page from Bon Appetit's August issue. So, we made this grilled radicchio and romaine salad with a sherry mustard dressing.

Then there was grilled squash and giant pork chops with tomatillo salsa.

After that, we took a nice long break from eating. We took a walk to the corner store. We loafed around on the roof, a lovely perch with a view of the Verrazano Bridge and small ships sailing up along the East River. We were stuffed but we proceeded to grill some peaches and topped it with raspberry sauce. Neither of us have eaten grilled peaches before. Whoa, they were good. The flesh transforms into a kind of fruit pudding.

Barbecued Clams and Chorizo

1 dozen clams
2 links of chorizo or spicy sausage
1/2 cup beer or white wine
2 cloves minced garlic
2 tablespoons butter
minced parsley for garnish
red pepper flakes
equipment for the grill: you will need an aluminum cake pan, cast iron or equivalent

1. Put the sausages on the grill. Melt the butterl in the cake pan on the grill. Add garlic. When the sausages are about halfway done, take them off the grill and slice. Add the sausages, beer/wine, red pepper flakes to the cake pan. Put the clams on the grill. When they are all just opening, carefully put them in the pan, without spilling too much of the clam juice out of the shell. Let them simmer for a couple minutes until they are all open. Top with parsley and eat immediately.

pork chop a la cherriesbalsamicpomegranatecabincalifornia

"Not everything needs full color." These words, spoken by Hung on Top Chef when he presented his all beige geoduck/black chicken dish, rang in my ear when I contemplated throwing some dead dill or parsley on the side of this dish to give it some color. Yeah. Fack it. I like just looking at the deep dark brown sauce, which resulted from the fact that cherries were the only things besides the pork that I had lying around (besides some sliced turkey. You really want to see me make turporkie, don't you.) Then, I remembered an old recipe from the Sheila Lukins and Julie Rosso book The New Basics Cookbook - a rockin' pork chop with blackcurrant preserves and white wine vinegar. (They just reissued their classic book The Silver Palate for it's 25th anniversary.) That dish was the first time I had made something and thought that the flavors were remotely "complex". It become my go-to dish for trying to impress (even if I was never really sure if the people I fed it to really liked it), and eventually I burnt out on it.

Good lesson learned though. Berries and vinegar - a natural combo. Hmmm. Let's do balsamic vinegar and pomegranate syrup for the souring agent. Are cherries a berry? I didn't use as much vinegar as Lukins/Rosso usually call for, because I wanted the pucker to be more subtle. What came out of this union was a hint of sweet and sour, with the richness of the pork juice pulling it together, and the stewed cherries an incredible delight to bite into, almost as good as getting the intermittent pieces of fruit in a Cherry Garcia ice cream, pre-lactose intolerance onset. Not bad for a Monday night. Oh, and I know Hung has branded himself as the villain of Top Chef, but I agree with the Houston Chron blog that he is not the jerk that he is says he is. I still like him even though he told Tom Colicchio and the Telemundo lady what and almost knifed Casey, with his manic overachieving sprinting. The guy knows how to handle geoduck. That's enough, for now.

Pork Chop with Cherries, Pomegranate and Balsamic Sauce

1 cup unpacked cherries
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons pomegranate syrup
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
1 tablespoon butter
2 pork chops

Melt butter in sauce pan. Throw in cherries. Saute for a minute. Add balsamic vinegar, pomegranate syrup, sugar, mustard, salt to taste. Let stew on low heat. In a separate pan, brown 2 pork chops for 2 minutes on each side. Sprinkle salt and pepper on both sides. Add sauce. Cover with lid, reduce heat to low (maybe one notch above the lowest) and leave it for 12-14 minutes (if the pork chop is about 1 inch thick). Eat. Follow with nightstand cherries.