Bacon

Jet never fails to amaze me, and so when she emailed me links to Berkshire bacon that retailed at $50/lb, I thought “There’s no way.” But now I’ve had a chance to try it too, and this bacon is transcendent. Here is Jet’s take on it – Christiana

Michael has asked two or three times a week since I brought most of our half of the hog home in September why we didn’t have bacon and ham.  We didn’t have bacon and ham because I left it with Kent to be cured and smoked and his process takes about a month. I called Old Fashioned Country Butcher a couple of days before Michael’s birthday, which was about a month after our butcher date.  Kent answered the phone and, with some surprise, informed me he had just taken our ham and bacon out of the smoker, he would be out of town for a few days, trout fishing in Mammoth, but sure, I could stop by to pick up the rest of our hog: 10 pounds of ground pork, 10 pounds of Linguica, 10 pounds of hickory smoked BACON!, a 12 pound hickory smoked American Style Country Ham!, and the smoked knuckle and hock from the ham.

Kent’s delightful daughter and crew were busily cutting and wrapping a dry aged steer they had been hanging for 40 days.  They all got a kick out of my travails with the home cured Peruvian ham and suggested it would be much easier to just drive out there and use the Jet Netter anytime I needed to tie a roast, as opposed to actually learning how or ever attempting to do so on my own again.  They also *gave me* about 10 pounds of beef marrow bones their customer didn’t want.  As an aside, who buys a grass fed steer, has it custom butchered and dry aged and doesn’t want the bones?  When the lead cutter, this cute red headed kid who always seems vaguely amused by my presence in the shop, realized I was actually going to cook the bones, he said, “Oh, Jeez, you’re going to cook with those?  I thought you wanted them for a dog.  Give those back to me so that I can clean them up for you!”  Apparently, exactly zero people who buy steers want the bones, unless they have a dog.

Michael’s birthday started with buttered and jellied toast, scrambled eggs, and BACON! Really, truly, completely delicious BACON!  Tonight we’re having a surf and turf dinner with the marrow bones, kumumoto oysters and manilla clams from our friends over at the Jolly Oyster.  This promises to be a very happy one indeed.