In addition to the recent forays into duck confit and duck prosciutto, charcuterie mania has taken me down the bacon path as well. While I have a love/love relationship with pork in all of its wonderful and manifold forms, bacon is where the world slows down, my toes curl, and my eyes roll back into my happy place.  The combination of salt, fried crispy fat, and an unctuousness that heralds a heart attack, bacon was the perfect thing to try and make successfully at Chez DL.

Most bacon is smoked.  So-called fresh bacon, however, is only the product of a salt cure and some time.  It starts wth a good fatty piece of pork belly  (is there any other kind?  Alas, yes. Eschew those).  Pork belly is all the rage now among the jet-set of cooking, and prices are beginning to edge up on this traditionally ignored, and perhaps even slightly disdainfully considered, piece of the pig.  Most Asian and Hispanic markets have always had these sorts of pig bits, and prices there are about where they’ve always been.  Cheap.

Once rubbed with a cure of kosher salt, pink salt, and  some sugar, the bacon goes in the fridge for a week.  After that, you’ve got bacon.  For a specialty application, however, like spaghetti carbonara, I left it in to cure for substantially longer.  Since I was going to dice it, and toss with semolina pasta, I was looking for a stronger and deeper salting of the meat.

Coming out of the cure, the bacon was firm, and sliced easily.  Pork is so popular because of its ability to soak up flavors while still maintaining its own distinct character.  The cure had clearly worked its way all the way through the pork belly.  The result was some gorgeous looking tastiness.

As with so many other things, a cast iron skillet is the way to go with this.  The thickness of the bacon requires that you slowly render the fat; too fast and you’ll lose that combination of soft and salty that you want.  Bad.

Cooking away, the bacon shrinks some (but not a lot), and once it is evenly (heavenly) brown and the fat has crisped, it’s ready to go.  I took it out, drained it, and then cut it into thin slices before tossing it with raw egg, cream, crushed black and red pepper, and parmigiano in a bowl of hot spaghetti.

Best. Bacon. Ever.

What a better way than hand-crafted duck prosciutto to welcome the fall, and welcome back DL to the foodosphere!

Inspired by Ruhlman and Polcyn’s Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing (like many before me), I’ve been diving into the world of really slow food.  While it is true, that at this very minute, the fridge at Chez DL has both duck confit nestled under a couple of pounds of duck fat, and pork belly curing into bacon, it also has a couple of pounds of duck prosciutto (so I’ve been a little preoccupied with the whole charcuterie thing (so sue me)).  Now, for those of you that have been missing the food porn fiesta going on over on flickr around this very topic, it’s been a lot of fun.

So…just last week, in celebration of one of the round-number birthdays, I opened up my first finished breast of duck yumminess, and sharpening up my sharpest sushi knife, sliced off a razor thin portion.

Duck prosciutto is really unknown in the US.  Of the dozen or so people I’ve talked to, both of the food persuasion and the more rational type, I’ve found only a couple that had ever heard of it, and most couldn’t even imagine it.  Well…there is a reason.

Duck prosciutto is not prosciutto as most people know it.  It lacks the subtlety of pork, preferring instead to simply smack you in the taste buds.  It is gamier, bigger, bolder, and completely interesting.

What it has done at Chez DL is set off a flurry of efforts to find the perfect accompaniments.  I’ve done pear (which works pretty well); by itself (which works really well in very small doses); with crusty bread (also not too bad); and with a drizzle of Ligurian olive oil (which worked surprisingly well).  The key is the fat, which literally dissolves in your mouth.  Its flavor is succulent, and needs some balance.  I’m bringing a breast down to one of my favorite restaurateurs next week, and we’re going to do some experimentation.

In the meantime, DL is back in business.  Keep your eyes peeled for our new spice store opening soon.

I’m an Anglo Round-Eye. No doubt about it. There is nothing particularly exotic about my appearance, and I cannot pass for anything other than who I am (although I did once have a masseuse tell me that she was sure I had some Native American blood in me, but I think she wasn’t being completely innocent in saying so). The problem is: I don’t eat like an Anglo Round-Eye. I eat like a crazed panethnic sperm whale (I’ll wait until you’ve got a good visual. Good? Okay, let’s proceed). So…as I spend a chunk of time in restaurants all over the country - most of which cater to people other than me - I’m used to the puzzled looks, the attempts to save me, and the oftentimes very funny explanations offered. In turn, I’m always interested in how poorly the melting pot actually works: there is no expectation that I - as the aforementioned Anglo Round-Eye - would have any knowledge of, or interest in, any other experience than Whitebreadia.

Aside from my foray into chicken stuffed waterbugs last month, I’ve had two other recent experiences that have convinced me none of this is going to change. The first was in an Indonesian restaurant in Roswell, Ga. Let me repeat that, for those of you not paying attention: an Indonesian restaurant in the northern burbs of Atlanta (which, if you’re running for your atlas, is in fact, a province of Whitebreadia). I was the only Anglo Round-Eye that had been in since the place opened over a month ago. You know that classic scene where the stranger pushes through the saloon door and the place goes quiet and everybody stares, glasses halfway to mouths, cards unplayed? Yeah? Now imagine that in a strip mall in Roswell, and that they crazy old guy that always breaks the tension in the movies is instead a nice middle aged woman who asks if I didn’t mean to go into the Crazy Taco next door.

Amongst other things, I had the nasi gudeg, known amongst my people as beef skin. Half way through the meal, the cook and a waiter came over and demanded to know why I was there, and where - exactely - I had lived in Indonesia. And, by the way, how I could possibly enjoy the mounds of chilies I was going through. We had a nice chat, about the food, the business, and their prospects. In a slightly sad development, I learned that the Indonesian community - while strong - just couldn’t support the entire store, and so they were planning a lunch buffet in an effort to attract the local office lunchers. $5.95 for all the food you can eat. I’ve seen the buffets in Georgia, and they’ll get a nice flair at the beginning, but won’t attract people back for dinner - where they need to be, and where the melting pot has a chance to melt.

Even funnier? I was at a Korean restaurant this last weekend - in Northern Virgina - one very, very popular with Korean and Anglos alike - and as I was looking at the menu, the very nice and helpful waitress insisted that what I wanted to drink was a Budweiser. I swear I stared at her for two full blinks. And then ordered a bottle of soju (yeah, I know, in retrospect and for future planning: Soju + Gin + a little wine = not what you’re looking for. Regardless of what you’re looking for.).

Thankfully, that very same Korean restaurant does it right with its food. There is very little Anglosizing going on, and everything is really quite good. For instance, their dumplings (a weakness of mine, regardless of who makes them):

are really good (and a perfect excuse for this post’s only picture).

Being a white boy - I’ve discovered - allows you to star in a huge and unpredictable culinary adventure, even if you’re not actually aware of it.

Anubis, god of the dead, was perhaps the single least appropriate name ever given to a kitten. Nonetheless, Nubi (as he was known), bore it with incredible good grace, and compensated with an unmitigated - and infectious - exuberance in life. He was the perfect counterpoint to his older, and considerably more circumspect, adopted siblings. Where they were quiet and contemplative, he was vocal and experimental. Where they were shy and retiring in the face of the new, he was incredibly extroverted and social. And, also, where they long ago learned that the kitchen was a dangerous place, full of quickly moving feet, occasional hot liquids, and frequently loud noises, he ignored it all to be in the center of my cooking universe.

Inevitably, Nubi would find himself - mysteriously - underfoot in the midst of some mad dash to bring a meal together. His favorite assistance to the cook was to wait until the feet had stopped, then he would undertake a perfect, textbook flanking action before rubbing up against and then biting the cook’s toes. Repeatedly. Despite the flailing of arms and promises of pain and agony. Only when sprinkled with water would Nubi run from the kitchen, stop short under the dining room table, undertake a quick bath, and then return committed to his mission once again.

Many meals happened with Nubi at the center, which means of course that a great deal of my joy in the kitchen came from interactions with his good natured self and his insistence that whatever I was doing wasn’t nearly as important or fun as what he was doing. That, and I think he just enjoyed watching me attempt to steer my way around him while whisking egg whites, sauteing garlic, and sipping wine.

Nubi died this morning of a horrible, untreatable disease called feline infectious peritonitis (FIP). It was quick; he went from healthy to not in a short, short time. But, at only a year and half old, he was much too young to die the way he did; and I too close to handle it with anything other than grief and anger.

Clearly, I love to eat. It is, in fact, the sine qua non of me. But, as some of you may have guessed, I also love to cook.

I’ve never thought of cooking as chemistry, although it is, and lots of very accomplished cooks do extraordinary things working within that sort of framework (Achatz at Alinea comes to mind). Nor do I see cooking as a sport, as something that you must excel at to better others or to feel better about yourself. Cooking contests are fun to watch, and I like the Chairman and his stadium as much as the next guy. But, there, something lacks as well.

I find joy in cooking. I am rarely happier than when I’m in the kitchen, or thinking about the kitchen. I hold no illusions about it, no romance. But the smells and the sights of a meal coming together cause me to smile.

I’d grown up eating some version of chicken paprikash, concocted by my father, based no doubt, on some recollection of a story he read someplace. Then, sometime in the mid- to late-nineties, a radical (as in communist battling, flee the country, and work hard to undermine the system) Hungarian who I will call A, fixed a pot of chicken paprikash that changed the game for me entirely.

I’ve spent the last 15 years trying to get the same flavor…and I’m getting closer. But more than anything, more even than nearly transcendent moment when I tasted his version, I love cooking chicken paprikash because it is such a visceral dish. It is visceral in the way that babi guling is visceral. It it, simply, a joy to cook.

From the very beginning, when the cut-up whole chicken browns in butter with salt and pepper, the kitchen takes on the smells and sounds of a place where something good is happening. The butter, just as it begins to brown, gives off that wonderful rich, sweet smell, that then is transformed with the addition of the chicken into what is probably the consummate primordial smell: sizzling fat.

Once the chicken goes into the stock, and onions, and paprika, and begins to cook slowly into tenderness, the deep tangy richness of the the smell combined with the scarlet color (and the knowledge that I’m half-way to eating) makes this moment by second favorite of the dish. There is something about the color, the multitude of visual and physical textures, and the sound that inspires another glass of wine (and, conveniently, this is right about when you should need it…THAT I did take from my father’s school of paprikash manufacturing).

Despite the earlier addition of thinly sliced onions cooking in butter and chicken fat, my absolute favorite part of the dish is when, chicken removed to platter, I begin to cook down the stock, the onions, flour, paprika, and the chicken juices. Once I can pass a spoon through the mixture and leave a trail, I know that it’s time to whip in the sour cream, bring everything to a bubble with the chicken added, and then serve over noodles (or, if you’re feeling Germanic, spaetzle).

It is a joy. Anyway you serve it.