Results tagged “homecooking”

Isn't that pretty? After two weeks of curing, dry aging, smoking and slicing we now have 8 pounds of pancetta and bacon. The pancetta (pictured above), was ready for slicing and cooking. Here's something we discovered: For the bacon we had considered doing an applewood smoking of the bacon. Instead we went with hickory. For that, we set up our bullet smoker (a Weber Smoky mountain is ideal, we have a Brinkman bullet smoker) to reach a temperature of 120 degrees and smoked the bacon for 2 hours. You don't want the bacon to cook during the process, so try to keep the temperature constant.

   

This wonderful "San Francisco in June" we've been experiencing has its advantages. Among them is having the ability to fire up an oven and bake a pizza without turning the kitchen into a hot and unbearable pit of Hell. We also like making flatbreads on the grill and, rather than spend a small fortune on ready made pizza dough, we like to make our own and don't give a damn about having the dough formed in a perfect circle, so much as it's crispy when the baking's complete.

If you'll remember, we recently purchased 10 pound of pork belly. Eight pounds are currently suspended in our pantry being dry-aged into pancetta and bacon.

   

A week has passed since we threw 8 pounds of pork belly into freezer bags full of salt, sugar, cracked black pepper, fresh oregano and thyme and some pink salt, for some. Yesterday it was time to hang that pork belly and let it dry age.

     

When you walk into the Spice House in Old Town with 10 pounds of pork belly strapped to your back, you're telegraphing to the employees what you need. What we were looking for was four ounces of sodium nitrate, aka "pink salt."

• Hot on the heels of L2O's Beard nomination, Laurent Gras offers recommendations for cookware, appliances, spices and other kitchen essentials for the home cook over. The $279 brick toaster oven with convection from Cuisinart pictured above is among those listed. Also oin the list, a Pasquini Livia 90 semi-auto espresso machine ($1975 at Amazon.com). [men.style.com]
• Sun-Times food editor Janet Rausa Fuller also has some gadget recommendations, but at a more reasonable price range. [Sun-Times]
• Last week it was Pat Bruno, this week Helen Rosner casts a critical glare at Steve Dolinsky. [WBEZ, MP Chicago]

With a lineup filled with food seminars, cooking demonstrations, wine classes and a beautifully equipped Viking Culinary Stage at the Pritzker Pavilion, you would think that Chicago Gourmet would’ve been a Mecca for home cooks looking to jazz up their dishes. Think again. While some of the seminars were informative (most notably Greg Hall on beer and cheese and Paul Bartolotta on seafood), others were thinly veiled promos for books, products or restaurants.