MITCH IN THE KITCHEN

oeufs en meurette

I used to dismiss poached eggs as something too fussy for me to make at home, and I would like to recant. They are less splattery than fried eggs and cook just as quickly. Having said that, I went a little beyond basic and cooked them in red wine, like I had at Balthazar one time. A pared-down recipe is here. Though it isn’t exactly traditional (I think the real deal requires a more complex sauce that gets spooned over the top), I appreciate its simplicity, especially after finding more proper recipes that require way more ingredients (herbs, beef broth, mirepoix). Best use of old, leftover wine and stale bread yet.

shanghai noodles with bacon and eggs

After returning to New York, I immediately went on a shopping spree in Chinatown to stock up on Chinese New Year supplies and other things that I hope will help me cope with how much I miss the food in Taiwan (when I can’t get out to Flushing, that is). Funny though, I also got a shipment of nice-looking bacon in the mail. What to do?

Jumble everything together, of course.

about 8 ounces fresh Shanghai (thick) noodles
3 strips bacon
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2-inch segment of ginger, minced
3 dried shiitake mushrooms (soak them in water for several hours beforehand), or a handful of fresh ones, or a mixture, sliced
lots of baby bok choy, halved lengthwise
1 scallion stalk, cut into 1-inch segments
3 eggs

for the sauce:
1 teaspoon corn starch
1 cup water or broth (or the water you soaked the dried mushrooms in)
1 tablespoon soy sauce (I mixed the dark kind and the light kind)
1 teaspoon rice wine
1 teaspoon sesame oil

Combine sauce ingredients and set aside.

Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook noodles according to package directions. When noodles are done, drain them and toss with a bit of sesame oil so they don’t stick together. (I try to time things so that the noodles are done cooking riiiight when I need them but this doesn’t always go as planned. But it’s always worth a shot.)

Meanwhile, cook bacon in a large pan over medium-low heat until crisp (but not burnt!). Set aside on a paper towel. Remove most of the bacon fat, leaving enough to barely coat the surface of the pan.

Turn heat up to medium. Add garlic and ginger. After a few seconds, add mushrooms and stir them around. Cook for a few minutes or until mushrooms are lightly browned (if you’re using fresh ones). Add bok choy and cook until the leaves are a bit wilted.

Cut bacon strips crosswise into 1/2-inch pieces. Add to vegetable mixture, along with scallions and sauce. Add noodles and coat them evenly with sauce. When sauce begins to thicken, push noodles aside and add the eggs to the pan, scrambling them a bit. Scrape them around. When eggs are mostly cooked, mix them into the noodles.

radicchio, pancetta, and mushroom pizza

I don’t know about the rest of you, but when the weather gets hot, I want to eat. And cook. A lot. I spent most of this last (very brutal) heat wave hiding indoors, soaking up other people’s air conditioning. While the streets of New York felt like an even dirtier sauna than usual, I was quietly slurping down iced coffee and eating chocolate cake, chocolate croissants, and squishy cheeseburgers within walking distance of my apartment. At home, I made big ass healthy salads (of the raw vegetable, whole grain, potato, and pasta varieties) while hoping that my responsible 80-degree thermostat setting would prevent any blackouts (I stocked flashlights, candles, and ice-cold tequila, just in case).

Also, I was nuts enough to bake pizza in a 500-degree oven, albeit very quickly. Feel free to try this in other weather.

To make it: Saute sliced mushrooms and chopped raddichio in a little bit of oil (tip: if your radicchio is really, really bitter, you can soak chopped pieces in ice water for at least 30 minutes to leach out some of whatever bitter-tasting compounds). Shape dough (I’m still doing no-knead) and top with mozzarella (torn into pieces), shallots (thinly sliced), mushroom and radicchio mixture, thinly sliced pancetta (torn into pieces), and pieces of aged gouda, in this order. Bake til crust is golden and cheese starts getting bubbly.

Previously: radicchio, apple, and gorgonzola pizza

bacon, cheddar, and onion jam sandwich

Sometimes I come home after a late night of grazing on nachos and beer followed by a late afternoon of brunching on buttery ham, egg, and cheese sandwiches with fries, and all I want to eat for dinner is more bread, more cheese, and more cured pork. Also, a huge salad with crunchy vegetables and fruit to restore my sanity and nutrition cred.

bacon and macaroni

date: Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 12:28 PM
subject: Chat with Mike

Mike: meanwhile in sweden
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d-qENAaNbM
their food network is different
gets good about 50 secs in
me: hahah korean subtitles?
Mike: just for that one food
those bacon pieces actually look really good
me: yeah they do
is the joke just that this guy is so aggro
Mike: i believe so
shit that made me hungry
me: ok, i’m gonna go do some reading
Mike: ok
what are you doing later?
me: dunno!
i was about to ask you
should we get crunk?
Mike: maybe
if i can get myself back to that point
me: or we could just eat
Mike: yes!
FOOD
me: eating is always good
cool
dinner then?
Mike: yes
bacon and macaroni?
me: HAHAHA
sure!

Mike and I were roommates (and then building-mates) during the second half of college and the year after graduation. Some of the best times we had were over cured meats and alcoholic beverages; one time we polished off about a dozen sausages from Top Dog and a few bottles of wine over the course of two consecutive dinners while watching pirated Sex and the City DVDs. Seven years later, we’ve done it again, this time with inspiration from a YouTube video I found barely watchable. We made our pasta even better by using some beautiful thick-cut bacon from Mike’s local butcher, adding caramelized onions and a sharp cheddar cheese sauce, then baking it in the oven with breadcrumbs on top.

brussels sprout and pancetta pizza

It’s time for another cured-pork-and-greens pizza (previously: kale and bacon pizza). Slice has a guide for how to make the highly praised brussels sprout and pancetta pizza from Motorino. A New York Times review likened it to “a dog speaking BBC English” (this is a good thing). The restaurant version is delicious as hell, but the homemade version is pretty straightforward to make (though the crust won’t be all 900-degree-oven quality and the cheese may not be totally right). After all, you can’t go wrong combining brussels sprouts with salty pig things.

modified salade lyonnaise

This elegant salad hails from Lyon, France, and I’m a little surprised you don’t find it in more restaurants here on this continent. It’s a salad, but come on, it has bacon AND an egg in it. If this can’t get Americans to eat their vegetables, I’m giving up hope. (Please note that I am not actually advocating eating bacon and eggs with every serving of vegetables. Also I’m not actually giving up hope.) The traditional version uses frisée, which is a frizzy bitter green from the chicory genus that you’ve probably seen somewhere in a mesclun salad mix. But you could use any kind of bitter salad green, including escarole and arugula, as Mark Bittman advises. Lardons (little French cross-section batons of thick-sliced bacon) are also traditionally used, but I went with pancetta since there was some sitting around in the freezer. Finally, I find poaching eggs to be an unnecessarily fussy way to spend my time, so I went with sunny-side-up and only used one frying pan for everything.

To make the dressing, combine a little bit of Dijon mustard with a little bit of sherry vinegar, salt, pepper, and oil. Fry bacon pieces in a pan until crisp. Remove. To make croutons, add a clove or two of chopped garlic to the bacon fat and push it around to infuse the grease. Remove garlic from the pan. Add stale bread cubes (I had some leftover from Thanksgiving stuffing-making) and cook, tossing occasionally, until crisp and golden. Season with a little bit of salt and pepper. Wipe crumbs from the pan and add a little butter or oil. Cook an egg in it, but not too much because you want to smother this whole salad in hot runny yolk. Of course, you can also just go ahead and poach the egg like you’re supposed to. Toss dressing with frisée, bacon pieces, and croutons. Top with egg. Devour.

kale and bacon pizza

Between November and—oh, I dunno—April, I eat a lot of kale. It’s a fall/winter vegetable that is readily available, that isn’t a potato. I put kale in fried rice, in soups, tossed with pasta, mixed into mashed potatoes, and I’ve even tried my hand at making kale chips. But the pizza, my friends, was a first. As much as I love bacon, this thick-cut kind I picked up rendered a LOT of fat, which became a little overwhelming for me and John. You can’t really tell by looking at the photo above (or even the actual pizza), but I turned what was meant to be a healthy dinner into a sneaky lard bomb. If I could do it all over again (and I probably will), I would either use less bacon, thinner sliced bacon, a less fatty cured pork product (ham? prosciutto?), or something salty that isn’t made from pigs (anchovies? olives?).

pizza dough

5 or 6 medium kale leaves, stems removed, then chopped
6 oz provolone cheese, sliced 1/8-inch thick or shredded
little bit of thinly sliced red onion
4 or 5 sundried tomato halves, cut into thin strips
3 slices bacon, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch wide pieces
a few tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Line a half sheet pan (about 18 by 13 inches) with parchment paper.

Sprinkle some corn meal on the baking sheet. Place the dough on the baking sheet and drizzle a little olive oil on top. Shape dough to fit pan. If it won’t stretch, let it rest a bit before handling it.

Heat a bit of olive oil in a large pan over medium heat. Add kale (in batches if necessary) and saute until it begins to soften and turn bright green. Season with salt and pepper, and a little bit of crushed red pepper if you’re into that sort of thing. Add a splash of water and cook until kale is completely softened. Set aside.

Spread provolone evenly over pizza dough. Top with sauteed kale, then onions, sundried tomatoes, and uncooked bacon pieces. Top with additional Parmesan cheese. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until crust is golden and bacon is slightly crisp, rotating halfway through.

candied bacon + ice cream

I just wanted to say that imperfectly candied (uh, burnt) bacon is pretty good on homemade caramel apple ice cream.

loaded frittata

Like Mark Bittman, I like to make frittatas with more vegetables and less egg. In the past I’ve packed them with leafy greens, but this recent creation seemed eerily inspired by loaded potato skins from a sports bar.

There are recipes that call for starting the frittata on the stove, then finishing it in the oven. There are some that will tell you to flip it over onto a plate, then slip it back into the pan (be warned: a lot of mess potential in this technique). I like to make mine not-too-thick, and either simply put a lid on the pan, or cut the whole thing up and flip over one wedge at a time.

3 strips bacon
2 small waxy potatoes, quartered lengthwise and sliced
1/2 small onion chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 small head of broccoli, chopped
1 scallion stalk, chopped
5 eggs
salt and pepper
grated Parmesan or Romano cheese (cheddar would be good too if you’re finishing it in the oven)

Fry bacon in a pan over medium heat (I used a 9-inch pan). Remove and drain on a paper towel. Reserve a bit of the rendered fat in the pan (enough to coat the bottom of the pan).

Add potatoes, onion, a lot of salt, and pepper. Cover and cook until potatoes are soft, tossing occasionally. Add garlic and broccoli. Cover and cook for a bit more, until broccoli is no longer raw-tasting.

Beat eggs with salt and pepper. Pour into pan. Sprinkle scallions and chopped bacon over the top. As the edges set, lift them up with a spatula to let the uncooked egg move to the sides and bottom of the pan. Cover to let the top of the frittata set. Top with grated cheese. Or top with grated cheese, then move the pan (make sure it’s oven-proof) to a 350-degree oven for a few minutes.