Ari will be doing a booksigning and bacon tasting on November 12, 2009 at The Pasta Shop, 5655 College Ave, Oakland, California, 4:30-6:30 pm. Please head on over there if you’re in the area!

I was in the mood to cook something more elaborate this Saturday than has been my habit recently, and it was a cold, rainy, windy day, calling for serious comfort food, so this was an obvious choice. I picked up a jar of the Spicy Coffee Spice Rub (which is also available from Zingerman’s Mail Order), and some Benton’s bacon, from Zingerman’s Deli, and the rest of the ingredients from a locally-owned grocery store called Arbor Farms, which I really like because it specializes in organic ingredients and also in gluten free products.

The recipe was not difficult, in that it did not involve any tricky techniques or extra-careful cooking; it just had a lot of ingredients and several steps. First I did a lot of chopping, and here’s my assembly of the ingredients, except the chicken. For the hot pepper flakes I used my own, from some tiny round  hot peppers I grew last summer. The garlic I grew also, as well as the parsley, which is still thriving in my front yard – it will withstand the frost for a little while. The bread is gluten free, which Arbor Farms buys from a bakery in Toledo.

I did skip a step, in that I did not need to pre-cook any bacon; I already had a jar of bacon fat, of exclusively artisanal bacons from all my experiments, so I was confident I had some tasty fat already. I put the melted bacon fat in the bottom of a pyrex dish, and lined it with the bread, and meanwhile cooked up the onions/celery/apples/currants/lemon zest/hot pepper flakes/other spices.

Then I put the apples/onion mixture over the bread, and prepped the chicken, rubbed on more of the melted bacon fat, and the spicy coffee spice rub, and poured the lemon juice over. And last, laid the strips of Benton’s bacon on top.

It smelled wonderful as soon as it started cooking! We also had some veggies roasting in the oven in another pan, so I had to cook it a bit longer overall, probably more like 80 to 90 minutes instead of an hour. But I did pull the bacon off to the side after 45 minutes as recommended, and the chicken skin did get nice and crispy. Here’s how it looked when just out of the oven:

I pulled the chicken off and let it rest on a cuttingboard for 10 minutes, and meanwhile broke up the strips of bacon onto the “stuffing” and then served the stuffing onto plates. Added pieces of chicken (and some of the veggies we roasted on the side), and enjoyed a fabulous dinner. Was rich, spicy but not too hot, complex flavored and all-around good. I will make it again. It is not a dish to make when you’re pressed for time though. The full recipe is below, enjoy!

From page 200 of Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon by Ari Weinzweig:

Lex’s Roast Chicken with Bacon and Spicy Coffee Spice Rub

My friend Lex Alexander turned me on to this recipe about 10 years ago. It’s in Zingerman’s Guide to Good Eating and has become one of the staples of our catering work here at Zingerman’s. I loved it from day one because it’s such a nice way to make a mini-Thanksgiving dinner without having to spend two days cooking: the chicken juices drip down on the bread beneath it in the roasting dish, essentially creating a low-labor but high-flavor version of stuffing (which I love!). In working on this book it dawned on me that getting bacon involved in the dish would be a big win. So here it is, Lex’s chicken take two . . . this time with bacon.

I also decided to add a spice rub that Roadhouse chef and managing partner Alex Young did for Esquire magazine a few years ago. Zingerman’s Spicy Coffee Spice Rub is a blend of ground Roadhouse Joe coffee, Urfa red pepper from Turkey, Tellicherry black pepper, cloves and sea salt. I really like the coffee, clove and bacon blend of flavors—in some strange way it makes me think about a spicy, exotic version of red eye gravy. It’s appropriate, too, since Lex’s current life revolves a lot around the very fine coffee shop—called 3 Cups—he owns in Chapel Hill, NC. Having tried the dish with a number of different bacons, we settled on Allan Benton’s—its big smoky favor and silky fat served the dish well!
It should probably go without saying, but the better the chicken, the better the dish. I use free-range birds we buy from Amish farmers in Indiana. The chicken smells great in the oven, too — the aromas of roasting chicken and bacon both make me want to eat as soon as the thing starts cooking.

Ingredients:

1-1/4 pounds sliced Benton’s bacon (about 12 slices)

2 large Spanish onions (about 1-1/2 pounds), cut in half lengthwise and sliced into thin half circles

4 stalks celery, cut into 1/8-inch slices

1-1/2 pounds tart apples (about 3 medium), 1/2-inch dice, skins on

1 scant cup dried currants

1 clove fresh garlic, minced

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme or 1 tablespoon fresh thyme

1 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes (preferably Marash)

1 tablespoon lemon zest

1 teaspoon coarse sea salt

2 teaspoons freshly ground Tellicherry black pepper

1/4 cup parsley, chopped, rinsed and squeezed dry

1/2 loaf leftover country bread, such as a good crusty white country loaf, sliced 3/4-inch thick. If the bread is still fresh and soft, slice it and let it dry on the counter for a few hours before using.

1 roasting chicken (3 to 4 pounds), split in half and backbone removed

5 tablespoons Zingerman’s Spicy Coffee Spice Rub (or you can make your own—the ingredients are listed above)

1/4 cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 400°F

Arrange 6 of the bacon slices on a 1/4-inch-deep baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the bacon is crisp and most of its fat is rendered. Remove the baking sheet carefully from the oven. Drain bacon on paper towels and reserve for another use. When the fat cools a bit, pour into a Pyrex measuring cup. You should have about 1/2 cup.

Heat 1/4 cup of the fat in a large skillet over low heat. Add the onion and celery. Cover and sweat, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes or until soft.
Add the apple, currants, garlic, thyme, red pepper flakes, lemon zest, salt and black pepper. Stir to mix. Cook, covered, until the onions and celery are translucent, about 5 to 7 more minutes. Remove from heat, stir in the parsley, and set aside.

Lightly brush the bottom and sides of a 15-inch oval roasting pan with 1 tablespoon of the rendered bacon fat. Arrange the bread slices to cover the entire bottom of the baking dish. (If the bread is too big to fit easily, simply cut the slices into smaller pieces so that they tile the entire bottom of the dish properly.)

Layer the onion mixture atop the bread. Place the chicken, skin side up, over the onion mixture and bread. Rub it with 2 tablespoons of bacon fat and 4 tablespoons of Coffee Spice Rub. Pour the lemon juice over the chicken, then lay the remaining bacon slices across the top of the chicken.

Place the entire dish in the oven and cook, uncovered. After 45 minutes or so, check that the bacon has crisped on top of the chicken. Once it has, pull it off the chicken and lay it directly onto the bread mixture so the chicken can brown. Change the oven function to broil, but continue at 400 degrees F. The chicken should be done in 15 to 20 minutes: the skin should be nicely crisped and its juices should run clear when the bird is pricked with a fork.

Remove the pan from the oven. Sprinkle the whole dish with 1 tablespoon Coffee Spice Rub and let stand for a few minutes. Remove the chicken to a cutting board and cut into quarters. Draw a sharp knife through the bacon, bread and onion mixture to break it up. Spoon some of the mixture onto each plate and place the chicken on top.

Serves 4 as a main course

Tonite’s culinary foray was American Fried Bread. (Yep, my hubbie is away for the weekend again, a good time to cook with gluten!) It sounds plain. And for sure it is simple, but too good tasting to be plain, due to really good bread, bacon fat from a flavorful dry-cured artisanal bacon, and real maple syrup drizzled over.

For bacon I had three slices of Edwards bacon. Sliced medium-thick, and so long that they can’t fit in my largest skillet! And since they aren’t pumped full of water they did not really shrink, so in the end I cut them in half so the outside ends could be moved into the middle.

Edwards' dry-cured bacon

I used a couple of slices of Zingerman’s farm bread, which was fresh but I put the slices out on the counter for a couple hours to “stale” them up a bit.

Edwards’ bacon I find, I am particularly prone to overcooking.  Still very edible, just crunchier than I mean for it to be. I pulled out the bacon, and in went the bread, and after a minute, I added 2 tablespoons of milk, too, which hissed and bubbled in the hot pan, and sprinkled the bread with a bit of salt.

Farm bread in the pan with bacon fat and a little milk

The first side got a lot more fat than the second side, but I did not add any more, I figured the first side had absorbed plenty for both! The cooking time was short of course. In the meantime, for a side dish I was also heating up some beets, and kale, from my garden, which I had cooked the night before.

When toasty on both sides (the first side completely golden brown from all that bacon fat, and milk too I suppose, and the second side toasted in areas), I removed the bread from the pan, drizzled it and the bacon with real maple syrup, and ate while hot. I ended up putting the bacon on top of the bread. It was a little decadent feeling, but holding firmly in mind that bacon fat from well treated, naturally raised pigs is better for you than butter, I told myself it was not THAT decadent, really. And its great comfort food.

American Fried Bread

This recipe is written up on page 162 of Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon, but I’ve covered all the specifics above. Ari does suggest using Zingerman’s Roadhouse bread (also known as Thirded Bread or Rye ‘n’ Injun bread in the 18th and 19 centuries) if you can get it!

It’s a rainy October Saturday, and my husband is off on a weekend backpacking trip. Normally I would be too, but my dining room table was literally covered with Roma and Brandywine tomatoes that I picked in a hurry before a hard frost on Wednesday, and I was itching to make a batch of sauce and can it – it takes ages and I knew I would not have time to do it on a weeknight. So, I stayed home, and made my sauce. And all that to say, it’s also a great opportunity to make some rainy-day comfort food for lunch that needs really excellent Brandywine tomatoes – yep, a BLT. And not just any old BLT – the TLBBLT.

It’s a simple sandwich, but I’m a firm believer in the concept of simple but excellent ingredients giving extraordinary results, and this was outstanding.

Here’s my ingredients, except the Hellman’s mayo which I forgot to put into the photo: 4 slices of Arkansas peppered bacon, some aged Cabot farmhouse cheddar, a couple of slices of one of my homegrown Brandywine tomatoes, some organic romaine lettuce, and two slices of Zingerman’s Bakehouse’s farm bread.

I cooked up the bacon in my favorite iron skillet, and took it out to drain. I drained a bit of the fat out of the skillet, but left some in to cook the sandwich in. (I save the fat of course, and use it all the time for cooking. The fat from the peppered bacon always has a nice kick to it!) I assembled the sandwich per the recipe instructions. (You leave out the lettuce during the cooking.)

And put it in the pan in the remaining bacon fat and weighed it down with a bowl. (This was a bit tricky in that my bowl was large and kept tipping, but on the whole it seemed to work well.) Flipped it over when one side was golden brown, cooked it another few minutes til also golden brown.

Then I pried it apart and added in the lettuce, cut it carefully and at a slight angle (Laurel would be proud I think, though I’ve never met her), stepped back to admire it, and then devoured it immediately.

Was a perfect combo of textures and flavors – the crunchy bread and chewy bacon,  soft juicy tomatoes and melted cheese – oh my. If I weren’t so full I’d do it all over again.

Here’s the recipe, from page 208 of Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon:

TLBBLT: The Laurel Blakemore Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato Sandwich

Aside from being the only palindromic recipe name I know, this also makes a really good sandwich, which has long been very popular at the Deli. It’s named for Dr. Laurel Blakemore, horse fanatic, show jumper, pediatric orthopaedic surgeon and a big lover of bacon. It calls for a good bit of mayonnaise—I think a good BLT needs that, but you can certainly cut back if you like. Either way, it’s easy to make and great to eat! The recipe is for a single sandwich but it’s not hard to do the math and make as many as you want.

Ingredients:

2 to 4 slices Arkansas peppered bacon
2 slices crusty country bread (we use Zingerman’s Farm Bread)
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 slices aged Vermont cheddar cheese
2 thick slices good tomato
Handful of good lettuce

Procedure:

Cook the bacon in a frying pan until done. Remove from pan and drain, but leave the pan on the heat.

Spread mayonnaise on both slices of bread. Put a slice of cheese on each slice, then add the bacon and tomato. Assemble the sandwich, give it a gentle press together with your palm and slide it into the hot pan. Weight it down with a bowl and fry until golden brown. Flip, brown the other side, and remove from pan. Add the lettuce, cut the sandwich on whatever angle your heart desires (remember, though, that Laurel is a surgeon and places great value on properly positioned knife cuts!), and eat it while it’s hot!

Saturday, September 5th, was International Bacon Day. I’m sure there were bacon events around the world; I did my part by heading down to Zingerman’s Deli, to buy a pound of artisinal Edwards bacon, and I got a free Edwards Bacon baseball cap, too! Predistressed.

I had some pepper bacon in my fridge already, too, so its a bacon-cooking weekend. Friday night we made hamburgers and topped them with the peppered bacon.

And Saturday night, we made a variation of a recipe from the book – Wittenberg Splits. With apologies to Tanya Nueske – we used the Edwards Bacon! And some Michigan-made pork bratwurst instead of all-beef franks. So we cooked the bacon a little bit, in an iron skillet, removed the bacon, then cooked the brats in the skillet (since they were not precooked like a hotdog would have been). Then we split the brats, put in slices of sharp cheddar and sour dills (homemade – one thing I really enjoy canning every year is my own dills), wrapped them in the slices of Edwards bacon and broiled for a few minutes. Was really tasty. We joked that it seemed like something Elvis would have eaten.

First, a confession – I had planned to make this recipe on a Saturday so I could buy the slow-cooking grits per the book’s recommendation, but when I went to Zingerman’s Deli on Saturday morning, after my habitual stop at the nearby Farmer’s Market, I accidentally bought a can of the quick-cooking grits, rather than the slow ones, and didn’t realize it til I got home. At which point, rather than make another round trip in to town, I decided to use what I had. So they cooked for at least an  hour I’d say, but not 4 hours. They were good; I have no doubt the slow-cooking ones are even better.

I also got the Benton’s bacon from Zingerman’s Deli. Sliced medium-thick. I used a wee bit more than the recipe called for – mmm, bacon.

Nicely colorful ingredients – the celery/onion/red pepper. I bought 18 large shrimp instead of the 12 jumbo, seemed to work out fine. And, since my husband can’t eat gluten, I used all purpose gluten-free flour in the pan to create the sauce – it seemed to do ok, although might not have been as thick as the regular flour version would be.

It worked fine to cook the shrimp for just a minute or two, and then shell and clean them after that – maybe that is a common way to do it, but I never had. I’ve always shelled and cleaned shrimp raw. I liked this method.

It was fun to tie the shrimp shells in the cheesecloth – I dont know why. Maybe because it felt old fashioned. Our big iron skillet was perfect for this dish. I did need to add maybe 1/4 cup more water at one point, but not much.

It cooked up easily, we heated the plates as directed, served the grits and then the shrimp and sauce on top, and ate it out on our back deck. Was scrumptious. And more than enough leftovers for lunch the next day.

Shrimp and Grits with Benton’s Bacon
From page 205 of Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon by Ari Weinzweig:

Ingredients:

For the grits:
4 cups water
1 cup coarse-ground grits
3/4 teaspoon coarse sea salt
2 tablespoons butter

For the shrimp sauce:
4 ounces (about 2 to 3 slices) bacon, diced
12 fresh shell-on jumbo shrimp
1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt, plus additional to taste
1/2 stalk celery, coarsely chopped
1 small sweet onion, coarsely chopped
1 large red bell pepper, coarsely chopped
1 clove fresh garlic, chopped fine
1 tablespoon flour
2 cups water
2 bay leaves
Hot red pepper flakes (preferably Marash), to taste
Freshly ground Tellicherry black pepper to taste

Procedure:

Heat the water in a large pot over high heat. Add the grits before it begins to boil, stirring well. Continue stirring while the pot comes to a boil, then reduce the heat. Add the salt and butter, stirring for a minute to melt the butter. Hold the pot at a low boil, stirring the grits regularly until they begin to thicken (3 to 5 minutes).

Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer, loosely covered, for 30 to 60 minutes – or longer still – until grits reach desired doneness. The longer you cook ‘em, the better they’ll get. Stir fairly often to avoid clumping and sticking.

While the grits are cooking, start the sauce.

Cook the bacon in a 13-inch skillet over medium heat for a few minutes until lightly cooked and the fat is rendered. Remove half the bacon from the pan and reserve, leaving the other half in the skillet with the fat.

Add the shrimp to the skillet, sprinkle with salt and saute briefly so that they’re very lightly cooked – but not cooked through – on each side (probably less than a minute per side). Remove shrimp to a platter and set aside.

In the same skillet, saute the onion, celery, red bell pepper, and garlic until the vegetables are soft and lightly browned, 10 to 12 minutes. Meanwhile, shell and clean the shrimp, reserving the shells and tying them in a cheesecloth bundle.

Sift the flour directly over the vegetables and give it a good stir until it dissolves. Slowly add in the water, mixing constantly, so that it forms a smooth sauce. Bring the mixture to a high simmer and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring steadily.

Add the shrimp shell bundle, the bay leaves, and red pepper flakes. Keep at a low simmer for 15 to 30 minutes or until the grits (which are cooking in the other pot) are almost ready. Add additional water if the sauce gets too thick. It should be the texture of a moderately thick pasta sauce.

Cut the peeled and cleaned shrimp into 1-inch pieces. (You can leave them whole if your prefer, but I like the more effective shrimp distribution that you get from having smaller pieces.) Return to the sauce and simmer for a few more minutes. Remove and discard the shells. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Ladle the cooked grits onto warm plates. Top with the shrimp sauce, sprinkle on the reserved fried bacon and serve hot.

Serves 3 to 4 as a main course