Mmmm…bacon.

When Brown Baby (aka Uncle Dave’s Cow 2.0) came to live with us, he prompted me to clear out the freezer. As when any large animal moves in, it was a day of reckoning, a use-it-or-lose-it scenario for the packages and parcels that needed to go in order for short ribs, New York strips, chuck roasts, arm roasts, and a wheelbarrow full of ground beef to settle in for a while.

One particularly large rectangular package I discovered housed half an uncut pork belly. I’d ordered this cut specifically so I could make my own bacon rather than having the processor smoke and cure the bacon for me. Well, now was the time.

I read up on a few different bacon techniques. When I collaborated with Ethan Stowell on New Italian Kitchen he’d included a promising recipe for bacon cured in salt, brown sugar, and a hint of Aleppo chili. I worried that the Aleppo would have too much bite for Atticus and Mo and knew they would have little forgiveness if I made bacon too spicy for them to eat. There were natural cured bacons, bacons with no nitrates, bacons full of them, bacons ranging from herbaceous and frankly weird to fairly basic. One morning, having made buttermilk pancakes for the boys I slipped a finger dipped in maple syrup to my lips. It was then   I made up my mind. I chose a maple and black pepper bacon fashioned after the recipe offered in Charcuterie.

The process is really quite straightforward. First, I squared off the pork belly so that I was left with two even slabs, roughly half meat and half fat, each weighing about 2 pounds. Next, I mixed the ingredients for the cure (including a small amount of pink salt or Instacure #1) and rubbed it well into the meat. Each slab went into a Ziploc bag. I pressed out the air, sealed, and popped each into the fridge. For a little over a week I flipped the bacon once or twice a day, massaging it a bit when I did so. I could feel the meat grow firmer as the days went on and the cure drew moisture out of the meat. The day before smoking, I removed the bacon, gave it a rinse, patted it dry, and laid it on a wire rack on top of a half sheet pan. Then I let it rest overnight to develop the all-important pellicle, the tacky outer skin needed to make the smoke really adhere.

Maple and black pepper bacon ready to rest and form pellicle.

Next day, I hot-smoked the bacon until it reached nearly 200 degrees internally which took close to 2 hours. Admittedly, I really smoked mine. When I took out the slabs they smelled deliciously like…ribs. But sliced thinly and cooked carefully (because of that sugar on the outside) the true bacon flavor came forth. I gave some to the bacon-loving Valenti who said unlike most bacon (and as we all know, she knows from bacon) the meat, not the fat, was her favorite part…full of sweet-spicy smoke. I fried it for breakfast, make it into BLTs, cut it into dice and used it as the base for delectable lentils. But the bacon found perhaps no higher calling than paired with Brown Baby in a two-animal extravaganza the kids proclaimed the best burger ever!

Finished slab bacon ready to fry up.

I can’t tell you the name of the steer graciously trotting to the abattoir today. What I do know is that he is a Murray Grey-Angus cross. According to the Animal Science folks at Oklahoma State University, my cow’s forbearers roamed among wallabies and crocodiles, the breed originating in New South Wales, Australia. Interestingly, it is reputed that in 1905…

…on the Thologolong property of Peter Sutherland, a particular roan Shorthorn cow, when bred to various Aberdeen Angus bulls, dropped only grey calves, 12 of them by 1917. Because Mrs. Eva Sutherland liked these grey calves, her husband didn’t slaughter them although he feared they would reflect poorly on his black Angus herd. When her husband died in 1929, Mrs. Sutherland sold the herd of Greys to her cousin Helen Sutherland who started a systematic breeding with 8 cows and 4 bulls.

Those industrious women! I’ll not repeat here the particulars of the cows’ emigration to the States but be warned that it involves some graphic and necessary animal husbandry. What is important to know is that these cows start out small at birth and grow at a good solid rate thereafter. The mama cows are good mothers and milkers and the breed in general is reputed to be docile. Their gray color reflects heat well, though in these parts I’d say it serves them better as camouflage from predators!

I told Husband Hendel this morning that I thought I would let the kids name this one, as they did the others (if that weren’t already obvious to you). However, in the spirit of community, I am open to suggestions. I’ll send some pepperoni, in fact, to the winning participant if we choose your name. Are you game?

After all, what other meat can you name that when absolutely perfectly brined and dried and flipped and basted and rested and carved is described in inglorious terms as “not dry”? Right, chicken breasts. I think you just made my point for me. I strongly believe that when people proclaim the Thanksgiving dinner their favorite meal they are really talking about stuffing. Stuffing is delicious. But food experts say that cooking stuffing inside a bird is just a salmonella party waiting to happen, so losing the turkey won’t keep you from the good parts. Romeo then countered his brother. Who likes turkey? Evidently he does (when and where he’s eating all this turkey, I don’t know). I’ll admit, unlike, say, durian or Malaysian shrimp paste, turkey isn’t going to put you off. But is that really the high bar for a holiday meal? We should treat food with the same consideration we do people—if they don’t elicit strong opinions (either way) than they’re probably not the person you want to talk to at the cocktail party.

And so I suggested goat. A whole goat, marinated in a Greek fashion then roasted outside in my Caja China. I’ve never done one before and it seemed like just the time to try it. After all, a whole dressed goat weighs in at only around 30 pounds, and a large turkey could be over 20, so pound for pound it seemed fairly equivalent. And roasting outside, largely untended, would free up the ovens for sides! My brother’s response: he would come prepared to deep-fry a turkey.

Pie, anyone?

Just hot enough

While I can arrange to have an animal killed and haul it to the freezer, I leave tutorials in the outdoor arts like shooting and fishing to my brother Dale. Recently, it was Atticus and Romeo I hauled over to the east side of Washington for “Uncle Dee Camp.” This consisted of their dressing in camouflage, riding in something called a “Mud Whomper” around the “Duck Club,” shooting guns longer than Mo is wide, and hooking some monster-sized trout. It sounded fun to me, too. I really wanted to go fishing. But while I was allowed to make them pancakes in the morning, my presence during activity time was deemed verboten by my brother. I still don’t know if it was my being a (their) mom or being a girl that would have ruined it. I do know that the boys are still having conversations that sound like this:

“Remember the kick on that .38?”

“Boy howdy, do I!”

While the boys were off doing their thing, my mom, my sister-in-law, and I headed out even farther into the Yakima Valley to Wapato, home of the near-mythical Kreuger Pepper Gardens. My mom used to try to drag me there when I was a surly adolescent fairly uninterested in gardening, or plants of any kind. The new me, however, suggested going to Kreuger’s. Not only have they gone organic but they also grow over 80 varieties of peppers. In short: I wanted to make hot sauce.

It was hot that Saturday. Wapato was a big dust bowl straight out of a John Steinbeck novel with tiny signs for Kreuger’s pointing in tantalizing and seemingly opposing directions. I admit we encountered grave difficulty finding the pepper farm (I told you it was near-mythical), the result of directions being given by Dale, written down by my mother, and read aloud by me (no fault should be given Kreuger’s in this scenario). After a half hour of turning into random dusty driveways, we finally found the Holy Grail of pepper farms. We also then discovered that they are closed on Saturdays, a tidbit that I will share with you in case you decide to search them out for yourself.

I satisfied my pepper urge at Imperial’s Garden, a farmstand fixture in the valley for nearly a quarter of a century. They grow peppers, too, including some striking, elegant cayennes and tiny little yellow numbers that were labeled simply “hot.” They weren’t joking. Together, they made some rather fine hot sauce. Since I combined with them Yakima peaches from Johnson Orchard and my brother Jeff’s garden tomatoes, I dubbed it simply “Yakima Sauce.” And next year, I know just where to find Kreuger’s. On a Sunday.

Yakima Sauce

Makes about 8 1/2 pint jars

3 – 5 Yakima peaches, peeled, pitted and crushed
1/2 cup sugar
6 – 8 medium Yakima tomatoes, cored and chopped
1 Walla Walla Sweet onion, peeled and roughly chopped
6 – 8 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
20 hot chilies, stemmed and chopped
1 cup white vinegar
Salt

Place peaches and sugar in a medium saucepan and bring to a simmer, stirring to combine. Cook until thick, about fifteen minutes. Reserve.

In a large, heavy saucepan place onion with a splash of water over medium heat. Cover and sweat until onions are translucent. Add tomatoes, garlic, and chilies along with a couple good pinches of salt. Cook over medium, stirring, until vegetables are soft, about 10-15 minutes. Add about 3/4 of the peach jam and the vinegar and stir to combine. Blend to a smooth puree with a wand blender and taste. It should be a little sweet, with enough vinegar to carry the flavor and the heat should linger and burn. Make sure you add enough salt. If it’s too sweet, add more vinegar or maybe a dash of salt. Add more chilies if you dare. Too spicy, add more peach jam. Once the puree has the flavor balance you like, process in half-pint jars with 1/8-inch headroom for 15 minutes.