25 November 2011

Pecan + Orange = Fancy Ass Chicken

Blood oranges are the delightfully brighter, bitter member of the orange family, as you may remember from the last time I talked about them. The oranges require low temperatures at night in order to develop the deep maroon color and juice that gives the blood orange its name. Blissfully, this means you can find blood oranges from the late Fall through early Summer (they get harder to find in May and June and seem to be all over the place in April).

Raw chicken is gross looking enough, much less raw chicken in an egg bath. So no pictures of that. The idea of this blog is to make you hungry and get you cooking, so I won’t make you suffer through the few minutes of chicken (breast) on chicken (egg) contact. You’re welcome.
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10 November 2011

Seeing Red With Beets & Blood Oranges

Craving a pseudo-summer treat? Meet this salad. Part summer, part winter, all tasty. As any salad will tell you, delicious can be make-it or break-it with the right or wrong dressing. In lieu of a classic dressing I used the simple juice of a blood orange.Blood oranges are the most bad-ass of all citrus. Beyond the vampiric-sounding name, they often pack more mouth-puckering tart to rival any lemon. Also, if you fancy Dexter, the cable serial-killer and my friend Becky’s TV husband, then you already know that the blood orange is featured in prominent glory in the opening sequence (again, due to its bad-ass citrus nature). Blood orange season begins in November (hooray California!) and extends all the way to May, so it’s a darkly, uh, cold-blooded? growing season.

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01 November 2011

Bacon Dessert Alert

Bacon dessert alert! I’m thinking more and more about this cookbook nonsense and realizing that if I’m going to do it I need to pull the damn trigger. I also took a trip to the south last month, surrounded by generations of classic cooks who treat the church and/or family cookbook on par with the Sunday sermon. So, time to create some bacon centered dishes. And what better way than to stay true to my roots? First up: Peach Cobbler. The cobbler itself is based on my Granny’s recipe (great-granny if you must know) but adjusted so the sweet of the cobbler and savory of the bacon pair beautifully.

Um, a word of caution, this one is not remotely healthy as it’s made of butter and bacon. But it is really really tasty, so there’s that…
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19 October 2011

Denver Tries to Sleep With Alton Brown

So Alton Brown is kind of like one of The Beatles with a spatula. Or Justin Beiber in an apron. Seriously.

And here’s why: Alton Brown makes housewives go crazy. He’s the culinary equivalent of a rock star.

Brown stopped by The Tattered Cover, the only bookstore in Denver that matters really, last Thursday night as part of his book-tour for Good Eats 3: The Later Years. And I’m surprised the ladies in attendance weren’t whipping their bras off and throwing panties up on stage. Because the phrase “hall pass” was busted out by three different audience members during the hour long Q&A.

The second (as in immediately following first) question of the night was not a question really, but one gal’s profession of undying adoration: “You’re my hall pass. My husband is totally okay with it.” And then she had to explain to Brown what a hall-pass was (click here for the urban dictionary take if you’re also confused). And then Alton Brown was really nice about it but also snarky and I would hope super creeped out, as well he should be, because it was pretty creepy that she was about four-feet away from him. And also she was pretty creepy. And Brown pretty much ignored that side of the room for the rest of the night. And no one could really blame him. And that was before two other ladies worked the words “hall pass” into their questions over the course of the hour…

Button it up Denver. You don’t want everyone thinking you’re that easy, do you? [Also, note about the creepy lady, it wasn’t that she was just a huge fan. Huge fans are totally fine; everyone geeks out over something. No. I got the feeling this lady kind of wanted to wear Alton Brown’s skin as a coat kind of thing.]
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09 October 2011

Insert Zucchini Joke Here

Now that is a zucchini. It’s massive, I know. You can make jokes about how it compares to the BF’s, um, arm, which is pretty much all I did when I pulled it from the garden. Typically I like to pluck the zucchini when they are small as I tend to think they taste better and have fewer seeds. But this behemoth, well, one day it was small and the next day—BAM!

So what to do with a monster like this? Stuff it and top it with bacon, naturally.

Also, maybe you missed me? Perhaps you noticed I was gone? I was not eaten by a whale nor kidnapped by squirrels—though those rumors are far superior explanations for my absence from the internets. I was eaten by work and family though and in the past two months have moved my mom to Georgia and then back to Colorado (whirlwind, woot!) and also hosted a professional development conference for artists (double woot!). Now I am back to my keyboard and back in my kitchen and ready to reclaim my soul through cooking (Xena-warrior-princess-woot!).

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13 September 2011

From Hawaii With Love

Hawaii (or Hawai’i) is a paradise I’ve not yet visited. But, four (FOUR! Holy shit, really?!) years ago, one of my best friends and former roommates moved to the island of Kauai. Paradise. There she met the man-candy of her dreams and is now fixing to get hitched next summer. Which means? In June I’ll finally leave the mainland for paradise! Yessssss!

On a whirlwind state-side tour, she and her fiance­é graced us with their presence (perfect pun for a woman nicknamed “Grace) and he, a wonderful chef  with an underground restaurant project, made us some tasty dinner-shaped foods. The menu: Blanched asparagus, pork chops with a peach salsa, and corn fritters. Corn fritters mean fried corn-biscuit-type-tasty. Yessssssssss.
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28 August 2011

Attack Of The Alien Grapes (Run For Your Lives, It’s Pie!)

The gooseberry looks like an alien grape and tastes like a sour one. Not that I’m complaining or trash-talking it. Just sayin’, plus it’s fun to say alien grape. Say it three times fast: Alien grape, alien grape, alien grape. See? Fun!

In my non-bacon life I have a job (like an adult!) and work in a small office of less than 20 folks. The beauty of an intimate office is you can celebrate non-existent holidays, random Wednesdays, and everyone’s birthday and start-date anniversary. And so we have a birthday committee, which I am most definitely on. I know. Totally weird that I would love excuses to throw mini-parties during the workday. And who just had a birthday? Mr. El Jeffe himself, the boss man. And the boss man’s favorite dessert? Gooseberry pie.

Tracking down the elusive gooseberries was more of an adventure than expected. While gooseberries will and do grow in Colorado, they seem to only be found in the southern part of the state and their harvesting season is July. But being an intrepid millenial, I used the powerful tubes of the Internets to source fresh gooseberries from the great state of Oregon. The gooseberry pie experiment of 2011 had begun…
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16 August 2011

Does Meat on a Stick Taste Better?

If you put pretty much anything on a stick that infinitely increases its awesome, yes? And even if the answer is no, summer time = grilling time, so putting food on a stick and that stick onto the grill can’t be a recipe for total disaster…

I’m not always creative in the kitchen. There. I said it. I work in events and client relations so I talk to people and facilitate and make decisions all day. All that is just code for I’m fricking tired when I get home. But some chopped veggies, chopped meats, a nice marinade, these things while simple and fast also make me feel like I’ve succeeded as an adult. (I have made dinner, like an adult, gone to the bank, like an adult, success!)
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13 August 2011

Texas Lasagna Isn’t Lasagna At All

I’ve discovered one of those culinary mysteries of the universe. The most common I think would be the seemingly age-old discussion of why hot dogs and hot dog buns do not come in the same sized packages. But this newest enigma might be part of the new corn conspiracies: Why can you buy flour tortillas in small packages but corn tortillas only come in packages of, like, a million?! Seriously! On the plus side, having 900,000 corn tortillas does mean one has to get creative with using them all up. We’ve been eating tacos, breakfast tacos, tostadas, migas, and homemade chips for weeks.

Today’s recipe is for Texas Lasagna, which, as the title of this post implies, isn’t really lasagna at all. With corn tortilla in place of wide noodles, lovingly layered with thin-sliced vegetables and house-made enchilada sauce, you might argue it’s like an enchilada casserole–but then, that would be the point.
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05 August 2011

Grillin’ It Is Akin to Killin’ It

Big changes have been afoot over here at Bacon HQ. You’ll be reading this recipe on the shiny new website on the shiny new web-server. Oooooh, aaaahhhh. And a lot of work was done on the house that I won’t bore you with (except to say that new homeowners get excited about weird shit y’all, like concrete and lighting fixtures and paving stones and new kitchen tables. Seriously. The BF kept turning the light on and off and then proudly asking, “Have you seen the new light fixture?” It was like watching man create fire but more endearingly adorable). So now it’s time to buckle down and bang out some recipes while I get comfortable with my new digs both online and off!
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