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!

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

Saturday afternoon I bought four slices of Benton’s bacon from Zingermans Deli (it’s a dry cured bacon, and very intensely flavored), and headed home.

The bacon slices are very impressive – thick and meaty, a good ten inches long, and almost 2 inches wide. I pulled out my largest skillet, and they barely fit! First I fried the bacon until fairly crisp, but I did not make the mistake I made with Benton’s before of cooking it too long (it cooks faster than your conventional bacon, which has a lot of water in it), and so took it out of the skillet while it still had some bend to it – it seems to crisp up a little more even after it’s out of the pan.

The bacon shrunk a bit while cooking, but not very much! And it left a nice amount of fat behind. I chopped the bacon coarsely and set it aside.

Meanwhile I’d been cooking the gluten-free rice penne pasta in a large pot of salted water. (We’ve found Tinkyada brand rice pasta to hold up the best.) I drained it while it was still a bit hard – I have to keep tasting pasta almost every minute after the first 5 minutes of cooking. I’m classic for overcooking any pasta, and especially for rice pasta it’s essential not to overcook it since it disintegrates under any kind of pressure after that. The bag’s cooking directions are ridiculous – it says cook for 15-17 minutes, and I find it’s usually done in 10. Anyway, I managed not to overcook the pasta, drained it, and then put it right in the skillet with all the bacon fat, and added in the chopped bacon too.

It sizzled and I found it was necessary to keep stirring it pretty vigorously – the pasta was absorbing all the bacon fat at an amazing rate, and, wanting to stick to the bottom of the well-seasoned iron skillet at the same time. I stirred it over medium heat for a couple minutes, and then ground some pepper over the top, a bit more salt, and served it into bowls.

We had some fresh greens on the side, and ate every morsel! I liked the flavor a lot – an extremely simple dish but the smoky, salty flavor of the Benton’s really made it rich and satisfying. We thought maybe next time we’d toss in a bit of this or that for variety – maybe a few grape tomatoes, sliced in half – but it’s also quite good just on it’s own. As Ari mentions in the book, this really good dish gives a new meaning to “fast food”.

Recipe follows, from page 188, Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon: Stories of Pork Bellies, Hush Puppies, Rock ‘n’ Roll Music and Bacon Fat Mayonnaise:

Ingredients:

1/2 pound really good macaroni (I swear by the Martelli family’s)
8 ounces sliced bacon (about 4 to 6 slices)(I like Benton’s because the simplicity of the dish gets its full smokiness out front)
Coarse sea salt to taste
Freshly ground Tellicherry black pepper to taste

Procedure:

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add lots of salt, then pasta. Stir well.

While the pasta is cooking, fry the bacon in a large skillet over medium heat until done. Remove the bacon from the pan, reserving the hot fat in the skillet. Chop the bacon and stand by. As soon as the pasta is almost al dente, drain it well and add it to the skillet along with the bacon. Toss well and cook for another minute or two, so that the grease really cooks into the macaroni. Season with salt and plenty of black pepper to taste. Serve immediately in hot bowls.

Optional additions:

“Enh,” Meg wrote me a day or so after she’d sent the original recipe (the word means “yes”  in Ojibway). “Try the mac and grease with a few big garden tomatoes cut into 1-inch cubes.” It’s incredibly simple—just chunks of really good tomato tossed into the hot bacon fat for a minute or two with some salt before the pasta goes into the skillet. “The tomatoes,” she said, should “get hot but not saucy, if you know what I mean. I did, and I made the dish and it was, again, in its simplicity, really, really good. Of course it’s only worth doing when the tomatoes are in season. The rest of the year you could gussy up your Mac and Grease by tossing in chopped vegetables or greens of most any sort, and cooking until they’re somewhere between soft and golden brown. Thinking more exotically, I want to throw chopped hickory nuts on top, too. You, of course, can do whatever you like. Like most pasta dishes, this one lends itself to hundreds of variations.

Serves 2 as a main course, or 4 as a side dish

I was having people over on Sunday, and since they all eat bacon the time was ripe to try another recipe from Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon – called South Carolina Red Rice.

It came out well and was quite tasty. It only had a few ingredients, and, because it’s so simple, I think it’s key that all ingredients are very high-quality – good chicken broth, good tomatoes, artisanal bacon, and the Carolina Gold rice. I was skeptical that the rice-to-broth ratio was going to work at only 1 to 1, AND, that it would be done cooking after only 10 minutes with the burner on and 10 minutes sitting with the burner off! But I stuck to the recipe, and it worked just fine.

The raw rice was sauteed for a while over medium-high heat in bacon fat, with the carmelized onions, so I think that that reduced  the time it needed to cook in the broth, and since the rice is a special kind (the grains are shorter than your average rice), maybe that reduces the amount of liquid needed. Just a guess.

I used the Arkansas Peppered Bacon, which I had never cooked with before. It had a very generous amount of pepper on it, which flavored the dish pretty strongly, but fortunately I like pepper! And the bacon strips kept their size well even when fully cooked – it’s great how these bacons are mostly meat, rather than having a lot of water, as is the case for supermarket bacons. They also gave off a nice amount of bacaon fat, for cooking the onions and raw rice in – I did not need to add any more bacon fat. The recipe said to “season to taste with salt and pepper” at the end, but for most folks it would have plenty of pepper already. If you were not using peppered bacon though, you would want to add pepper. If you don’t like much pepper, you could fish out more the pepper from the bacon fat than I did, after you cook the bacon and remove it from the pan.

I served it with cole slaw on the side (which my cousin had made, a crunchy counterpoint), made a lovely dinner. I did 1.5 times the recipe, for five adults, but probably only needed to do 1 times the recipe – we had several cups worth left over. But happily, it makes a great meal the next day too.

Recipe follows.

South Carolina Red Rice, from Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon, by Ari Weinzweig, page 190

Ingredients:
2 cups Anson Mills Carolina Gold rice
4 medium tomatoes or 1 (14.5-ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes with their juice
8 ounces sliced Arkansas peppered bacon (about 4 to 6 slices)
1 small onion, chopped
2 cups chicken broth (preferably homemade or one of the better commercial brands: you may not end up using it all, but any leftover broth can be cooled and used later in the week)
Coarse sea salt to taste
Freshly ground Tellicherry black pepper to taste

Procedure:

Wash the rice in cold water three times, or until the water runs clear. This keeps the grains from sticking together.

Halve the tomatoes and squeeze the juice into a medium bowl. If you’re using canned tomatoes, use the juice from the can. You’ll want about 2 cups of liquid for cooking the rice, so top off the tomato juice with chicken broth if necessary.

Chop the tomatoes and set aside. You should have about 1 cup.

Fry the bacon in a heavy-bottomed stockpot over moderate heat until almost crisp. Remove from the pot and drain. (You’ll want about 1/4 cup bacon grease, so add a bit from your stash if needed.)

Reduce heat slightly and add the chopped onion. Saute, stirring occasionally, until nicely caramelized – about 20 minutes.

When the onions are just about ready, bring the broth and tomato juice to a boil in a medium-sized pan and reduce to a low simmer. If you’re working with unsalted broth, add 1 teaspoon coarse salt.

When the onions are caramelized, raise the heat in the pot a bit, add the rice and stir well. Saute for a couple of minutes, stirring constantly, until the rice is very hot and shiny.

Stir the chopped tomatoes into the rice and cook for several minutes, stirring constantly.

Add the simmering broth into the rice, stirring well. Bring to a boil, cover the pan, reduce heat to low and cook for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat. (And don’t pick up that lid to look, either, OK?) Let stand, covered, for another 10 minutes.

While the rice is cooking, chop the bacon.

Remove the lid from the rice pot, add the bacon and stir gently. Flavor with salt and a generous dose of freshly ground black pepper, fluff with a fork and serve.

Serves 4 to 6 as a main dish

So this past weekend I cooked up a bacon appetizer for a fancy dinner party that I was going to – bacon-wrapped dates, with Balinese long pepper. It was a huge hit!  And super easy to make. The only potential hard part is, you need to get your hands on the ingredients.

I found some large, appetizing-looking dates at my local grocery store. And since I’m lucky enough to live near Zingerman’s, I went to the Deli and bought a half-pound of Broadbent’s dry-cured bacon, sliced thickly. But then when I asked the Deli dry-goods person where the Balinese long pepper was in the store, he replied that they were out! And that it’s hard to keep it in stock. Oops. But fortunately, they did have a sample box still, and since I only needed a few of the large, oddly shaped long pepper corns, I was able to get enough to make my dish for the party with. Whew.

I went home with my haul, and made an appetizer for 8 in only half an hour. First I pitted the dates. Then with a large knife, held very carefully so I could not cut myself, I managed to chop the inch-long, rock hard long pepper somewhat into strips, or at least small pieces when the strips broke up. The long pepper is very spicy, so I did not want the pieces to be too large. It is spicy in a very aromatic, flowery kind of way though – not just hot. Very much worth trying.

Then I put a couple of slivers/pieces into my pitted dates – roughly in a line the length of the date, so that if you ate the date in 2-3 bites you’d still get some long pepper in each bite. Then wrapped each date with a half slice of Broadbent’s bacon, stuck a toothpick through in whatever way seemed like it was most likely to hold together. And broiled them for about 10-12 minutes and turned them once.

The toothpicks got a bit charred but none burst into flame so that was good. Some of the smaller ones were done before the largest, so I took them out in three or so batches. I let them cool for 15 minutes and we ate them warm. I’m not a bit sweets fan, I go for savory over sweet in general, but this was a perfect combo of the sweet dates, the flowery/spicy/crunchy long pepper, and the salty-bacon-ey Broadbent bacon. We each ate our two dates and looked around hoping there might be a few more hidden somewhere! The recipe from the book follows.

BACON DATES from pages 165-66, Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon

Taking our passion for bacon a tad bit beyond the now-standard allusions to love and sex, it seems reasonable to go ahead and actually make a real life “date with bacon,” don’t you think? That said, I guess this recipe really is a literal as well as figurative date with bacon (or, actually, if you prepare the whole recipe, 16 dates with bacon). Of course there’s really no limit, since you can multiply the recipe as many times as you like.

Bacon dates are a great little appetizer and extremely easy to make. If you’re up for a “double date” you could serve it for dessert, too—I’ve never thought of using the same dish to both start and end a supper before, but given Americans’ fondness for bacon it sort of makes sense to bacon-end the meal. I love the organic dates from Four Apostles in Bermuda Dunes, California. The sweet smokiness of the bacon with the buttery richness of their ripe dates and the spice of the long pepper gives this finger food a great bit of balance in its flavors.

Ingredients:
16 dates, pitted
8 slices bacon (we prefer these with the Broadbent bacon), cut in half crosswise
4 whole Balinese long peppers, quartered lengthwise

Procedure:
Heat the broiler.
Stuff each date with a sliver of long pepper, then wrap with a half-slice of bacon and secure with a toothpick. Place the bacon-wrapped dates on a baking sheet and broil 10 to 15 minutes or until the bacon is crisp, turning once. Keep an eye on them so they don’t burn!
Remove from the oven once the bacon is done, let cool for a couple of minutes and serve while still warm.