Jalapeño Bacon

It is hard to believe that it has been almost two years now since we first posted on making bacon. That batch was our first, and it was so good that I ended the post by declaring: "we won't be buying bacon again". And we haven't!

A fun variant on traditional bacon that we've been playing with recently is adding jalapeños to the brining stage. We've been known to enjoy a bit of heat on occasion, so we figured why not add some spice to our homemade bacon?

Our first attempt to do this used fresh chiles. It was very pretty:



But it ended up not doing much. What worked better was using canned jalapeños (you know, the kind that always come with carrot slices). It took a much larger quantity than we expected to get the desired effect, and over the course of multiple batches we noticed that a fattier belly carried the flavor much better than leaner meat.

Here is a belly all zipped up and ready to cure, with some carrot slices added because it seemed like they should be:



I love the way bacon looks hot out of the smoker:



This is the same batch pictured at the top of this post. Once it cools and you cut into it, you get that characteristic bacon look.

It made for a very nice bacon cheeseburger...



You can use this bacon pretty much as you would any other. It is lighter on the sugar than some recipes (we prefer our bacon more salty than sweet). The heat from the jalapeños is definitely present, but subtle.

Jalapeño Bacon

This bacon works best if the belly is somewhat fatty rather than lean.

1 (3-4 pound) slab pork belly, skin on
40 grams (3-4 tablespoons) kosher salt
20 grams (approx. 5 teaspoons) sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons pink salt
4 canned jalapeños in escabeche, plus 1-2 tablespoons of the liquid
4 garlic cloves, sliced or crushed
2 bay leaves, torn into small pieces
1 tablespoon black peppercorns, slightly crushed

Mix together the salt, sugar and pink salt. Sprinkle generously over all sides of the belly, then gently shake off the excess. Place the belly into a non-reactive dish or zip lock bag. Blitz the jalapeno with the pickling liquid in a food processor or blender. In a bowl, stir the garlic, bay leaves and peppercorns into the jalapeño, then add to the belly being sure to coat all sides fairly evenly.

Let cure in the refrigerator 5 to 8 days, turning the belly every other day. The meat is ready once it is reasonably firm when pressed. Remove the belly and rinse off the cure with cool water. Pat dry, place on an oiled rack and return to the refrigerator to dry uncovered, overnight.

Smoke at 150-180 degrees using apple and oak. The bacon is ready once it reaches 150 degrees - usually in about 3 hours.

Some Dishes with Fishes

What with it being Fish! Week next week in San Diego, it seems appropriate to post some pictures of recent fish dinners. For a month or so now, we've been getting fresh, locally caught (primarily from Baja California) fish and shellfish every week from Catalina Offshore Products. The quality has been great, and we've really enjoyed eating more fish, so I fully expect this new tradition to continue.

Mano de Leon scallop. Snap peas, beans and beet green stems. Warm potato salad with bacon.


Sichuan Halibut


Grilled Yellowtail with Blood Orange and Fennel


Grilled Black Sea Bass with Baby Bok Choy


Green Curry with Halibut


Yellowtail Confit Salad


Grouper and Chips

Pizza Port Ocean Beach is Open!

The long, painful wait is over - the Pizza Port Ocean Beach location finally opened its doors to the public last Friday. We weren't going to brave opening weekend crowds (I heard it was crazy), but Sherry had yesterday off and the weather turned unexpected beautiful, so we hopped on our beach cruisers and headed down to OB.

The place was pretty active for a Tuesday afternoon, but not at all crowded. The deal here is just like the other Port locations - one line for beer, and another for pizza. They have a good number of taps (not sure exactly how many) with beers brewed on premises, other Port beers and a selection of guest beers.



They have a tiny bar seating area:



And of course the expected rows of picnic tables:



The prime seating on a warm spring afternoon, however, is their outdoor patio, which is where we made a B line for after grabbing a couple pints of their house IPA - the Jetty IPA.



I liked the Jetty - it is a good west coast IPA. Maybe a bit heavy on the bittering hop versus aromatic for my taste, but still very nice.



Sherry tried their New Break Pale Ale, which is a slightly hoppy pale - a fine beer if that's what you are looking for. Their other current house offerings didn't grab me (Chronic Amber, a honey blonde, a brown and a hefe), so I opted for a Bizon Belgian IPA from Port San Clemente. I found it to be more IPA and less Belgian than is typical of the style, but I enjoyed it.

We didn't get any food, but I expect it is exactly like the other locations. I'm no pizza snob, and I will happily eat Port's, but their beer is the real draw for me. Instead, after lazily enjoying our beers, we walked the block distance to the Ocean Beach Mariscos German truck and split a shrimp quesadilla (basically the same filling as a gobernador taco, but easier to eat). Yum.

All in all, the new OB Port location is a great addition to the beach beer scene. We plan to visit often.

Taco Shop Hot Sauce

Update: A revised recipe is available here. There is nothing at all wrong with this recipe, but the updated version is simpler to make.

The ubiquitous to-go hot sauce container above will be immediately familiar to anyone who lives in an area where taco shops ply their trade. Every place has their own sauce, and while they share a lot in common, each version is a little bit different. This one, however, is not from just any taco shop - it is our own house hot sauce.

If you've been following our blog since 2007 (which you haven't, because nobody was following our blog in 2007...), you may know that we've made hot sauce in the past. But that wasn't taco shop hot sauce - it was more of a Louisiana-style pepper sauce (think Tabasco). Taco shop hot sauce is a different animal entirely. Less vinegar flavor, more chile depth.

In coming up with a hot sauce recipe, I had a few goals in mind:

• Keep it pretty easy to make. Because I'm lazy.
• Get bold, but clean flavors - deep, but not overcomplicated.
• Make it plenty hot, but not so hot that you can't slather on a bunch without completely burning your face off.

Hot sauce was the main reason I started making the chile de arbol paste I posted about a while back - it provides the backbone for my recipe. If you have a batch of that chile paste on hand (and you should), making my hot sauce is easy.

Here is what I do. I take some tomatoes and cloves of garlic (with the skin still on) and toss them into a medium-hot frying pan:



You could probably do this with a pan in the oven, but I'm a stove-top guy. I like to see what's going on and poke and prod. I move things around every so often so they don't just cook on one side.



Once they are nicely charred and getting soft, I take them out to cool (the garlic usually is done earlier than the tomatoes). Let them cool enough to be able to peel them with your fingers without burning yourself. The garlic should pretty much pop out of its skin and the tomato skin should come off easily (and don't worry about getting every last bit off).



Then it is into a blender with some red wine vinegar, Mexican oregano, salt and enough water to loosen it up a bit.

Despite the posed picture at the top of this post, we put our hot sauce into a squeeze bottle for easy delivery. And deliver it we definitely do - we've been going through a ton of the stuff. Particularly at breakfast...



In addition to being great on a breakfast quesadilla, or in a taco, it also works well in other situations. We use it as a base for a killer ranchero sauce (and have also been known to just use it straight-up for that purpose), a little bit of it makes an awesome guacamole even awesomer, and it adds a perfect final touch to a ceviche.

When making hot sauce I've mostly been winging it with the exact quantities (and I encourage you to do the same). I did pay attention the last few times I whipped up a batch, though, so the following recipe is pretty representative of what I do on average.

Taco Shop Hot Sauce

1 pound tomatoes
4 garlic cloves (skin on)
2 tablespoons chile de arbol paste
4 teaspoons red wine vinegar
1/4-1/2 cup water
2 pinches Mexican oregano
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Put the tomatoes and garlic in a medium-hot frying pan and cook them for 15 to 20 minutes - until they get soft and are charred on the outside.

After cooling for a few minutes until you can safely handle them, peel the skin off of both the tomato and garlic. Remove any hard center bits from the tomatoes.

Add the tomato and garlic to a blender with the chile paste and vinegar and blend until very smooth.

Add water gradually to reach the consistency you want. The amount of water will very greatly depending on how juicy your tomatoes are.

Add oregano and salt to taste.

Smoking Almonds

Ahh, smoked almonds. We both have childhood memories of them being around occasionally - usually during the holidays. We got them in small containers and they felt like a precious, rationed commodity.

For some time now, we've been lucky enough to be able to purchase fresh almonds straight from a local grower, Hopkins AG, at our farmer's market.



I don't know why it didn't occur to us earlier that we should try smoking some. A few weeks ago we gave it a go, and they are were fantastic!

Our almond vendor sells both raw and roasted - for this purpose I chose shelled, raw nuts. To help the salt stick to the nuts, we considered olive oil, melted butter, or even water. We went the savory flavor route and chose butter.



After grinding some salt into a fine powder using a spice grinder, I mixed it liberally into the nuts while the butter was still warm.

Then I carefully spread the nuts evenly on a pizza grate and got them on the smoker.



Because the almonds sit on the top grate, you have room to smoke something else at the same time (in this case we had some homemade bratwurst hanging underneath, but that's another post altogether...)

They were smoked with hickory and alder for about 2 hours (an hour at 180°F for the sausages, then a second hour at 220°F to crisp up the almonds).



They turned out great - salty, crunchy, savory and completely addictive. A perfect accompaniment to a nice, stiff gin and tonic on a warm spring evening.

Smoked Almonds

2 cups raw almonds
2 tablespoons butter, melted
4 teaspoons kosher salt
wood for smoking, such as hickory and alder

Grind the salt into a powder using a spice grinder or mortar and pestle. Put the almonds into a large bowl and stir in 1 tablespoon of the melted butter. Let sit 5 minutes to set slightly. Add the 2nd tablespoon of butter and stir in 1 tablespoon of powdered salt, 1 teaspoon at a time, until evenly coated.

Spread the almonds onto a pizza grate or other screen set on the smoker rack. Smoke for about 1 hour at 150°F to 180°F and 1 hour at 200°F to 230°F. Be careful to keep the heat below 250°F to avoid burning.

Let the almonds cool to room temperature, then store them a tightly sealed jar for 2 days before eating (if you can manage to resist them!).

Uni and Eggs

When Sherry went by Catalina Offshore Products this past Friday to pick up some fish (grouper and yellowtail - both were fantastic) she also grabbed a tray of uni. I'd been looking forward to trying uni for some time now  - admittedly with some trepidation, as I find the idea of eating sea urchin gonads a bit off-putting.

This is what the uni looks like in the wooden tray it comes in:



The verdict? At the risk of losing what foodie street-cred I may or may not have, I have to confess that I'm not a fan. We first tried them straight-up. I can see why lots of people like them - they have a sweet, rich taste of the sea about them. But I just couldn't get past the texture.

We also gave them a try in eggs - with much the same reaction from me, I'm afraid. And while Sherry liked it considerably more than I did, I don't think uni is going to find a regular spot in our rotation. The offal in our eggs is more likely to come from larger creatures.

For some more positive takes on local uni, have a look at this post from Dennis, and this one from Kirk.

A Visit to Suzie's Farm

Who knew that there was an operating farm in San Diego County west of I-5? We certainly didn't, but we do now. This past Saturday, Slow Food Urban organized a visit Suzie's Farm, an organic farm located just south of Imperial Beach in the Tijuana River Valley.

Pimping some freshly uprooted carrots in the picture above is not Suzie (although she gets asked that a lot). It is Lucila De Alejandro, who operates the farm with her husband Robin Taylor. Suzie was their dog. Well, kind of. Suzie was a Norwegian Elkhound that lived wild in the valley, and later with them.

And the property we visited wasn't strictly Suzie's Farm. It is "Kiki Town" - a 40 acre parcel of land right nearby their original farm location that they have been farming since last July. Why "Kiki Town"? Named after one of their current Norwegian Elkhounds, of course.

Right now the farm is harvesting the tail end of their winter and spring planting and are getting geared up for summer. Below you can some of the of thousands and thousands of tomato plants in numerous varieties that they've started:



Or are they nettles :-) By touring the fields and observing, it became immediately apparent that one of the challenges of growing organic crops near the sea in San Diego is that nettles will grow almost better than anything you intentionally plant.



The fields start nice and clean. Below you can see lovely young bean plants shooting up from beneath a soil-warming layer of black plastic (and right along side, the tender young nettle plants growing between the rows!).



They had a very nice variety of gorgeous lettuces growing, like these green and purple leaf lettuces.



Between the newly planted fields and the older, winter crops was a beautiful, edible "wall." One of the participants likened it to a stone fence, building up in layers. It is composed of carrots in the front (light green tops just visible here), followed by rows of black kale, swiss chard, purple mustard lettuce and finally arugula going to seed in a tall bright yellow swath. We tasted it all - the mustard leaf tasting very much like spicy mustard and the arugula intense and peppery even in its waning state.



So many plants looked picture perfect, like this late season cabbage. Where are the worms and pests?! (Unlike my home patio garden...)



The tour we attended included some opportunity to take home the ultimately fresh goods. We harvested rainbow chard (below), broccoli, cauliflower (had some roasted Sunday night - lovely), sugar snap peas, and a little of this and that as desired.



All in all, it was a very pleasant couple of hours.



Suzie's Farm has a CSA (if we weren't already very happy with our own farmers market we'd be very tempted to join), and they supply a bunch of restaurants in town.

Real people growing real food for real people. Just 20 miles down I-5 from our very urban home!