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.

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.