Modernist Bacon and more demolition

Work in the kitchen progressed today, but before that happend I had to get the Modernist bacon hanging. The pork belly spent a week curing in a vacuum bag. Now it will spend a week curing in the fridge before smoking.

The pancetta will cure a few more days before I take it out. I think I'm going hang it next to the bacon in the basement fridge and see how it turns out. Work progressed in the kitchen today. Here is an afternoon shot.
 

And again this afternoon.

I'm gong to miss you most of all, Kitchen Sink.

Extrememly Scientific Girl Scout Cookies Study

The first round of cookie orders are due on Wednesday. Sales are continuing but if you have already placed an order, that order will get submitted this week so your cookies will arrive in the first truckloads delivered to the Capital District. The kids did a pretty good job selling. In this round of sales the two of them sold 152 boxes of cookies. Being the spreadsheet nerd that I am, I had to break down the sales and I am scientifically counting each box sold as a vote for the buyer's favorite Girl Scout cookie. At this time, the voting is over and all precincts are reporting. We now go to Wolf Blitzer at the CNN Girl Scout Election Headquarters in Atlanta for the results:

The Thin Mints win it in a landslide. Not even close. This was a pretty random sample covering teenagers working at an after school program up all the way up to senior citizens. Although my brother Mike may have skewed the results a little - he bought a case a thin mints to hand out as gifts. But he just padded the victory. The thin mints had it before he ordered.

Let the demolition & dust begin

Spent a few hours knocking tiles off the wall on Saturday. Made a little bit of progress.

Not all the tile came off easily. Probably not supposed to see that insulation behind the stove. My bad.

The current plan is to get the rest of the tile off tomorrow and Tuesday before 3. That's when the contractor is coming to remove the existing counter top and make his template. Once the template is made, it will take a few days (up to a week) to cut the stone and then get back here to install it. During that prep time, I am going to do my best to put up new or mostly new sheet rock on the walls. I want to be done before the counter is installed. Hopefully it won't be too bad.

Unfortunately, the counter top removal also includes the removal of the sink. So no sink or counter top for up to a week. Hello paper plates and take out.

Friday Night Dinner Art

I call this series Black Weber Kettle Grill At Night as seen by my crappy phone.

Dinner is served.

A new look in the kitchen

We are considering replacing the tile counter tops with this stone. You know, so the pictures of food that I take for this blog will look better.

And because we hate the tile. A lot.

Sausage from the trimmings

I took the flap off the pork belly and a few other trimmings while making the bacon lat night. Tonight I groun the pork with salt, fennel and black pepper. The bowl of sausage will get made into sausage and broccoli with cavatelli tomorrow night.

The pouch of sausage will get frozen and come out to top my next attempt at pizza. Not sure when that will happen, but I've been catching my brick oven bug again. Summer in February is coming up so I'll get to play with a little fire and a BBQ pit. Maybe that will scratch the itch. A new tile floor is being installed in the lobby of the building I work in. I'd be lying if I told you I never entertained the idea of sneaking out of the building with the contractor's obscenely nice wet saw. The saw is actually an older model, but nicer than the one in the link. The water pan looks better. With the right blade, I know it would slice through fire brick without flinching. I've been a good boy though and just drool a little bit every time I walk past it...

Makin' Bacon Again

The pork belly was a bit smaller than I was expecting. Instead of being closer to 13 pounds (which I thought was a bit big) this one was a little under 10 pounds. So instead of making bacon 3 ways, I dropped it down to two ways - Modernist Bacon and Pancetta. I didn't think the brisket flap would cure well so I sliced it off. With the trimmings, I'll get about a pound of sausage for some future dinners. Here's what I picked up at Adventure In Food on Monday afternoon. You can see my toes at the bottom of the pictures. I'm on my tip toes trying to get the whole belly to fit in the frame.

Here's the portion I cut off to make the Modernist bacon. This piece weighed in at 2767 grams (about 6 pounds). The Modernist recipe calls for a belly with the bones still attached. I'm not sure why. It wasn't an option.

Once I had the weight of the pork belly, I could measure out the rest of the ingredients. Some corriander got toasted before grinding.

 With the exception of black pepper everything else went into a bowl that I just kept zeroing out on the scale. You've got salt, sugar, cure#1, Fermento, mace star anise, and sodium erythorbate.

The belly gets rubbed with most of the cure and sits for 10 minutes.

While it was sitting, I tried to get my new vacuum bags that are extra wide set up. These bags were the only real problem I had tonight. It's always something. Not sure I'm ready to give up on the bags yet. I think I figured out a few tricks that will help next time. I wouldn't recommend these bags yet either. Here it is all sealed up.
 

Once that was in the fridge, I weighed the belly piece set aside for the pancetta. It weighed 1048 grams (about 2.25 pounds). I was hoping for a little bit more but the pancetta is easy enough to make again. And making it smells so damn good. This is Jason Molinari's recipe. Here's the cure: Salt, pepper, brown sugar, cure#1, juniper berries, bay leaves, thyme and some garlic. The combination smells really good.

Here's the pancetta vacuumed up in a pre-made gallon bag. This was much easier. Worked on the first try.

So now we wait. In about a week or so, they'll both come out of the bags. I'll have to find a place to hang the pancetta but the bacon will spend another week in the fridge before smoking.