i_openr wrote:I'm happy to have some new bacon sources.
sdbond, other than the bacon/ brussel sprouts ratio, anything to add on your recipe. My oldest daughter loves brussel sprouts and I'm going to throw your dish into the rotation this year.
i_openr, sure, happy to share! I got the recipe from a 2010 NYT article; it is from a Brooklyn restaurant called "Fatty Cue" that I think LTHers would like to visit -- at least I know I would! They describe themselves this way:
"Fatty ‘Cue is an effort, by a few of the members of the Fatty Crew, to bring the West Village and Brooklyn a little Southeast Asian fermented funkiness and a whole helluva a lot of smoke. Local and humanely grown/raised/fished products are subjected to our unique flavorings, scrubbed and rubbed, perhaps dropped in a salty-sweet dip pool, and then lovingly treated to low temperature smoke “baths.” All for your dining pleasure.
"Our goal is to balance quivering fatty morsels of deliciousness with bright citrus notes, fiery chili heat, rich fermented and briny washes and complex, unrefined, natural sweetness. Or, in a less obtuse manner, fun, tasty food! Our two Ole Hickory smokers are the main cooking elements in the restaurant, even providing the bar with many of their condiments.
The music is always on. And, we all smell like sweet, local oak wood and booze…which is a nice smell."
See more at:
http://fattycue.com/who-we-are#sthash.IPTqQZvk.dpufHere is the link to the recipe, as it appeared in the NYT; below that are my notes from making it last year in my home kitchen:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/dinin ... .html?_r=0Sharon's Notes on ingredients, prep and process from 2012:
1. Thai bird chilies – these puppies can bring some serious heat, so depending on your preference, you might want to only use one in this recipe, as outlined in Step 1 above. (For reference, I used one when I made the recipe.)
Also, while stemming and slicing the chili, consider wearing thin gloves so as to avoid getting the chili’s oils on your hands and possibly under your nails. It is very difficult to wash away, and isn’t really visible, but will leave behind an unpleasant stinging sensation for a while. I had always scoffed at the glove notion when working with chilies until I made this recipe (and something else recently that called for this type of chili), and did indeed get a bit of oil under my nails – not pleasant! Also, these are easily found in the produce section at Tony’s Finer Foods on Dempster, but are rarely seen at Dominick’s and Jewel.
2. Double-smoked bacon – I used the hickory-smoked bacon I had on hand. One more bacon tip: I had to slice up a lot of raw bacon for various Thanksgiving recipes, and I found the easiest and fastest way to do it was to use kitchen shears.
3. Coriander seeds, crushed – I only had ground coriander in the spice cabinet, and I think it works just fine, especially if you don’t have the extra time needed to crush the seeds. (I don’t have a spice grinder or mortar and pestle that can easily accomplish this kind of task, so for me, crushing from seed takes more effort than might be gained from the little bit of extra flavor you might get.)
4. 1 pound Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved – the recipe doesn’t specify if they mean 1 lb. of sprouts weighed before or after trimming, so I weighed them after trimming, and 1 lb. of halves fit perfectly in my 12-inch skillet.
5. The very first step says to “combine one of the chilies with the garlic and shallots in a food processor and purée, or use a mortar and pestle.” Later, it refers to what you get from the puréeing as a “paste.” Well, let me tell you, I processed and processed and processed the heck out of the shallot, garlic and chili, and was getting absolutely nothing that looked like a purée, or a paste, or a thick slurry, until I added in a tablespoon of water through my food processor’s feed tube. That seemed to do the trick. So, if you have the same issue, add water, one tablespoon at a time, until you get something that looks like what the recipe describes.
6. Again with the garlic-shallot paste: In step 4, the recipe says to “add garlic-shallot paste and cook over low heat until fragrant, about one minute.” This is probably related more to my having an electric rangetop that requires a fair bit of fiddling to get the burners to the best temperature, but I found it took way more than a minute for the paste to become “fragrant” at low heat. It just sat there like a lump in the middle of my skillet, daring me to will it into submission. I finally cranked the burner up a bit at a time, stirring frequently, until I got the “fragrant” result. (I didn’t want to burn the paste and have to start over with the pureeing process.) This step is also why you should add as little water as possible to the puréeing process so that you don’t end up having to wait for the water to cook out in the pan.
7. In step 4, the recipe says to “add chicken broth and bring to a simmer. Cover, reduce heat to low, and simmer until sprouts are mostly tender, about 5 minutes. Uncover and reduce broth to the consistency of a glaze.” I found that the ¼-cup broth called for was not sufficient to achieve what was described here – the sprouts soaked up the broth almost immediately, leaving virtually no liquid to either simmer or reduce to a glaze. Just in case this was a function of the sprouts I purchased being dry vs. a problem with the recipe, I would start out with the ¼-cup called for, see what happens after a few seconds, then, if needed, add up to ¼-cup more in increments, stirring carefully after each addition so as not to disturb the browned crust on the bottom of your sprouts. (To my mind, you don’t want to add so much broth that its flavor overwhelms the other ingredients.)
"When I'm born I'm a Tar Heel bred, and when I die I'm a Tar Heel dead."