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The Bacon Finale

I smoked the bacon, what a splendid thing, using a fish smoker
and manuka chips. I cooked them up over the gas in the outside kitchen, fired the bacon in once it started smoking, banged the lid on, turned the gas off after about 15 minutes and left it for an hour. I have been reading a few French cook books and I have settled on a new name, bacon is out and my cured pig will hereinafter be named Lardons. I had to eat it twice yesterday and once today.

 



Creamy Vegetable Soup with Lardons
An onion
½ a leek
3 potatoes
1 celeriac
8 slices lardons, small dice
½ t nutmeg
200 ml cream
Salt & pepper
Butter
Peel and cube the potato and celeriac, slice the onion and leek and fry in some butter. Add the potato, celeriac and just cover with water and put a lid on it. Simmer until soft, blast with a stick mixer, return to heat, add cream, nutmeg, black pepper and easy on the salt. Meanwhile fry the lardons until they are little bursts of crispy goodness, stir into the soup and serve. 
For dinner I cooked some quinoa grown here in Hawera by some friends Hamish & Kate Dunlop, I act as their freight depot so I have an endless supply. https://www.newzealandquinoa.co.nz/. So now you know what to look for in the supermarket, my supermarket had it at the bottom with all the other brands at the top, I had to have a word. I served it with panfried gurnard, some of the above soup as a sauce, dried sage leaves and you guessed it lardons!
I kept the carrot, ginger and turmeric this time from the juice and busted out a refinement on the cracker recipe.
Carrot and Caraway Crackers
2 C carrot, ginger & turmeric
2 C white flour
1 t salt
2 t fennel seeds
1/3 C peanut oil
¼ c water
Mix all ingredients together in a bowl to form a dough, knead for a few minutes until it becomes shiny, cover and refrigerate. Roll out to cracker thickness, prick with a fork and cook at 190 degrees for 10-15 minutes. You can cut them into individual crackers, a tedious procedure I don’t bother with I just cook the whole sheet and break it up when it cools. 



My booze delivery from my mates at Big Barrel finally arrived, it took so long I figured the courier had highjacked it, but presumably booze is in high demand. Rustled up a round of quince ratafia tonight while my fish pie with lardons was cooking.

Quince Ratafia
5 quinces
1.25 L Mount Gay Rum
500g caster sugar flavored with vanilla pods
Peel core and dice the quince, put in two large jars share the sugar and the rum between the two. Wait a long time to drink, 6 months really.

Comments

  1. MargieApril 17, 2020 at 1:56 AM

    Well done Celine my mouth was watery just reading your delicious recipes. Can't wait til we can share a meal together again.

    ReplyDelete

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