Wizard Recipes

BACON Besides being delicious on its own, bacon lends incomparable flavor to many dishes, such as chowders and other soups, baked beans and collard greens, and savory custards and tarts. There are many types; look for bacon that is free of nitrates and other artificial ingredients.

Thick-sliced bacon, along with its melted fat, provides not only flavor but also a hot dressing for wilting spinach or other greens. The subtler flavor of Canadian bacon (which is also lower in fat and calories than American-style bacon), is an essential component of eggs Benedict.

Pancetta, a traditional Italian bacon, is cured but not smoked; it is highly flavorful and slightly salty, and a small amount is all it takes to flavor pasta sauces and other dishes. All bacon can be tightly wrapped and kept for up to three weeks in the refrigerator or three months in the freezer.

BUTTER Unsalted butter has the purest flavor. It is ideal for all types of cooking, especially baking. European- style butters are also good for baking, especially pastries and shortbread, as well as for spreading at the table. They have a higher percentage of butterfat (typically 83 percent compared to 80 percent) and a richer, more distinctive taste.

CHEESE

Of all the many types of cheese available, the following are among the more versatile. Of course, it’s also nice to keep a supply of favorites, such as Cheddar and Muenster, for making grilled cheese or for quickly putting together an appetizer to share with unexpected guests.

Fontina cheese is a cow’s milk cheese with a mildly sweet, nutty, buttery flavor. Smooth and shot through with tiny holes, fontina is a very good melting cheese and is excellent on pizza and in hot sandwiches.

Goat cheese Made from goat’s milk, this soft and creamy cheese is usually sold in logs or disks; French goat cheeses are often called chevre. Goat cheese is particularly good in egg dishes, salads, sandwiches, and savory tarts, as well as paired with fresh fruit as a light snack or dessert.

Aged goat cheeses are more pungent and often have a rind; they are harder in texture and not generally a good substitute for fresh in recipes (but they are delicious as a snacking cheese). Keep fresh goat cheese, loosely wrapped, in the least cold part of the refrigerator. It should not be frozen, but you may want to pop it in the freezer for five or ten minutes to make it easier to slice.

Gruyere is another wonderful melting cheese, and is traditionally used in making croque-monsieurs.

Parmesan This popular cheese is a hard, dry cheese made from skimmed or partially skimmed cow’s milk. The finest of the many kinds of Parmesan is Parmigiano-Reggiano (the name should be printed on the perimeter of the rind), produced in the Emilia- Romagna region of Italy.

Known for its sumptuous flavor, this cheese can appear at any point of the meal, from hors d’oeuvres to dessert. A good alternative is Pecorino Romano. For the best flavor, buy wedges of cheese (instead of already grated) and grate just before using or serving. To keep Parmesan, wrap it in parchment paper and then plastic, and store it on the bottom shelf (or in the cheese bin) of the refrigerator.

EGGS Eggs come in many sizes; large is the most common and the size most often used in our recipes. Shell color has nothing to do with flavor or nutritional value, but is determined by the breed of the hen.

When buying eggs, check to make sure the eggs are clean and free of cracks, and look on the carton for an expiration date. To store, refrigerate eggs in their original carton; it will help protect the delicate, porous shells from cracking and absorbing odors. Eggs are freshest within a week of purchase, but will keep longer (up to a month).

Have you ever paused to wonder what journey your bacon went through to reach your breakfast plate? Perhaps the pleasing aroma and seductive taste of bacon is too overwhelming for you to think about anything other than inhaling it as quickly as possible, so maybe you haven’t thought much about it.

And thanks to the easy access we have to a wide selection of bacon options at the grocery store, most of us don’t have to think much about how it got to us in the first place.

But there’s an entire industry behind each package of lovingly cured and smoked bacon, and it’s an industry full of people who are obsessed with bacon just as much as you are.

The bacon most consumers eat today is made by large corporate producers such as Smithfield, Hormel, and Oscar Mayer, and is sold at pretty much every supermarket in the United States. But like many independent bacon producers today, even these large players started out by paying their dues and earning respect for their products as smaller independent producers.

For example, Hormel has been making bacon since 1891. According to Jason Baskin, an associate product manager at Hormel Foods, their company started out small. The founder, George Hormel, used to personally trim every single bacon slab himself to ensure uniform excellence.

Today Hormel is one of the largest bacon producers in the world, and their process is highly automated, but the basic concepts for making good bacon are the same as they were when Hormel was just a neighborhood operation. Find some good pork bellies, cure and smoke them with love, and the result will always be a happy human belly.

Despite the market dominance of the large bacon producing companies, numerous independent country-style smokehouses all over the United States are still doing quite well at making and selling artisanal bacon to a smaller but highly fanatical market that craves the traditional flavor of bacon.

Country-style hams and bacon are made all over the United States, but some of the best bacon in the world comes from producers in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri. A lot of people say this area of the United States is ideal for curing meat because of the year-round temperatures and humidity there.

Most smokehouses today have artificial temperature control, but there was a time when they didn’t have that option. Before artificial temperature control, the weather was too cold in the northern United States, too warm in the South, and too warm and dry out west.

Bacon won’t take the salt if it’s too cold. And if it’s too warm it will spoil. Bacon may be delicious, but it sure is finicky! So the tradition of making country-style hams and bacon has been alive and well in Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee for generations.

Most bacon producers in this part of the country also think there is just something special in the air-that the magical environment is conducive to producing the best possible bacon.

The best thing about a trip through bacon country is that you get to sample lots and lots of bacon, and at the end of the day your clothes and car smell like a smokehouse. Animals will be automatically drawn to your scent.

But despite the side effects, a tour of smokehouses in this corner of the United States will give you a real sense of the different approaches to makin’ bacon, from the smallest family-owned smokehouses to larger operations with a national customer base.

No matter the size of the operation, these businesses all aspire to make the highest quality country-smoked bacon your hard-earned paycheck can buy (just don’t spend it all in one place-there are lots of different kinds of bacon to try).

Ham comes from the rump and hind leg sections of the hog and is available in either fresh or cured forms. Fresh ham commonly is roasted, but cured ham, which is often ready-to-eat, can be quickly baked, panfried, or microwaved.

The meat is usually cured in one of three ways: dry salt curing, brine curing, or brine injection curing. For dry curing, the surface of the ham is heavily salted, and then the ham is stored to allow the salt to saturate the meat.

In brine curing, the ham is immersed in a sweet, seasoned brine. If sugar is added to the curing mix, the ham may be labeled sugar-cured. Most mass producers of ham use the injection-curing method, in which the brine is injected directly into the ham, shortening the curing process.

After curing, a ham may be smoked to add flavor and aging capability. Gourmet hams are heavily smoked for a month or more. A wide selection of specially cured hams are also imported from many European countries, including German Westphalian ham, which is smoked with juniper berry and beechwood.

Other specialty hams include English York ham and French Bayonne. The smoked flavor will vary depending on the type of wood used (usually hickory or maple) and the addition of unusual ingredients such as juniper berries and sage.

Once curing and smoking are completed, gourmet hams are usually aged to develop flavors further, sometimes for up to 2 years. Hams are sold in several forms, including boneless (with the hip, thigh, and shank bones removed), partially boned (with the hip or shank bones removed), and bonein.

Most producers of gourmet ham leave some bone in to enhance the flavor during cooking. Canned hams may be a whole piece of boneless meat or they may be created from bits and pieces of meat and held together with a gelatin mixture.

Preparation Tips

A fresh or cured ham should look firm and have a white layer of fat and pink to rosecolored flesh. Country-style hams (drycured hams) such as Smithfield hams are coated with salt, so they should be scrubbed with a stiff brush, soaked in cold water for 48 hours, and then scrubbed again.

Labels on hams should be checked for cooking and serving instructions, because hams are available fully cooked, partially cooked, or uncooked. Fully cooked hams, sometimes labeled “heat-and-serve”or “ready-to-eat,” do not require additional cooking.

Serving Suggestions

Keep in mind that the curing process for ham makes it high in sodium. Persons following a low-sodium diet may want to save ham for special occasions and minimize how much is eaten.

Those whose diets can tolerate a high-sodium food can add lean or extra-lean ham to a wide variety of dishes. Ham goes particularly well with pasta and rice dishes and in combination with vegetables.

Ham can be baked, grilled, sautéed, broiled, or simmered. Try adding lean or extra-lean ham to make a hearty salad that serves as the centerpiece of a meal.

Bacon

Bacon is meat from the side of a hog - the pork belly - that is cured and smoked. Fat imparts the crispness and flavor to bacon and is usually half to two-thirds of the total weight, making it more of a fat selection than a meat selection.

Bacon is also high in sodium and contains nitrates and nitrites, which are chemical preservatives that have been shown to cause cancer in animals. The amount in bacon is not great, and therefore it is not clear that they are harmful in the amounts normally consumed.

For all of these reasons, the regular inclusion of bacon at breakfast should be reconsidered. Compared with American bacon, Canadian bacon is more like ham, because it comes from the tender eye of the pork loin. It is more expensive than regular bacon, but it is leaner and precooked (less shrinkage), providing more servings per pound.

Sliced bacon comes in thin slices (about 35 strips per pound), regular slices (16 to 20 strips per pound), or thick slices (12 to 16 strips per pound). Canned bacon is popular with campers because it is precooked and needs no refrigeration.

Bacon bits are crisp pieces of bacon that are preserved and dried. They should be stored in the refrigerator. (A popular imitation made from vegetable protein may be kept at room temperature.)

Bacon grease, the fat rendered from cooked bacon, is sometimes used as a cooking fat in regional dishes, as are salt pork (salt-cured cuts from the sides and belly of the pig) and fatback (fat from the pig’s back, that can be salted and made into “cracklings” or unsalted and made into lard).

Preparation Tips

You can reduce the fat in bacon by broiling it on a rack, allowing excess fat to drip away. Microwaving is another option for reducing the fat in bacon. Put paper towels under and over the bacon to absorb the fat as the bacon is cooked.

Serving Suggestions

Bacon is too fatty and high in salt for everyday use. On occasions when it is eaten,reduce the amount of bacon strips used in the food. Or, add flavor without using a lot of bacon by using bacon bits.

Even better, try imitation bacon bits, which are not made from bacon at all but from a vegetable protein. The result is bacon flavor without bacon’s nutritional drawbacks.

Here are some assorted hints to help you with your meat cooking.

Beef. This list from the National Cattlemen’s Association gives you beef steaks with decreasing degree of tenderness.

¨ Tenderloin

¨ Chuck top blade

¨ Top loin

¨ Porterhouse/T-bone

¨ Rib

¨ Rib-eye

¨ Chuck-eye

¨ Round tip

¨ Top sirloin

¨ Chopped steak

Veal. Veal comes from young cattle. It is a very tender, light-colored meat with little or no fat and connective tissue. They market virtually all veal and calf fresh (not frozen). The meat has a high moisture content and doesn’t improve with aging as beef does, so you want to use it soon after purchase.

Baby veal is the most tender and lightest in color of all veal but with very little flavor. It comes from baby animals of mere 2 or 3 days old that weigh between 22 and 55 pounds (10 and 25 kg) (not much more than a large tom turkey).

Meat labeled veal comes from slightly older 1 to 3-month old animals that were entirely milk-fed. The meat is white (there is no iron in milk that would darken the color). If the veal is not white, the animal had supplemental feed, that turns the color pink. Meat labeled calf is still from a young animal in the 3 to 8-month range, just a little older than veal. Calf meat is tender but no longer a light pink color.

Baby beef is another category you occasionally see at the meat counter. This comes from immature, 7 to 10-month old cattle. Ranchers usually sell these when economic reasons or adverse weather conditions force them to reduce herd size. Although low-priced, this meat isn’t a good buy because these young animals have already lost the desirable characteristics of veal, but haven’t yet developed the true beef flavor and marbling.

By itself, veal is dry with little flavor. Its low fat and high moisture content does poorly in dry heat cooking. It is best if you sauté veal (because frying oil adds lubrication), or serve it in rich sauces or with high-fat fillings. Retail cuts of veal are similar to beef, but the size is smaller-veal round steak, for example, is smaller than a beef round steak.

Pork. Because pork used to be much fatter, you may have to alter recipes from older cookbooks. Add a little more liquid and baste more frequently to compensation for today’s leaner pork.

Like other red meats, pork is best when you roast it slowly at a low oven temperature. If you rush it, you’ll lose more liquid and a hard outside crust forms that heat cannot penetrate evenly. Part of the roast may be done while the rest is still pink. The hard crust also makes carving thin slices difficult.

Cured pork cuts. Salt pork and some brine-cured hams (Virginia and Smithfield, for example) are too salty for many people’s tastes. The answer is to soak some of the salt out. If it is a whole ham, soak it for 24 hours, changing the water many times. A small piece of salt pork takes much less time. Cover it with cold water, bring it to a boil, and simmer for 3 to 4 minutes.

Salt content, age of the meat and texture all make a difference. No exact timeline exists to guide you how long to soak a particular piece of salted meat. Let the piece of meat soak a while and then give it a lick test. Keep doing this until you are satisfied with the flavor.

Bacon. Have you ever wondered how much edible meat you actually get when you buy bacon? I selected three different brands: a high-quality bacon from a butcher shop, a better quality bacon from a supermarket deli counter and a standard lower-priced, but not bottom-of the-line brand, from the supermarket display case. I carefully weighed each batch on a laboratory scale and fried them to identical crispness, then weighed the final edible portions again.

The butcher shop bacon and the better-quality supermarket bacon yielded close to the same amount of meat-about 35 percent of the original weight. The standard brand only yielded 27.5 percent.What I lost, nearly three-quarters of the total, was fat and water. The higher-priced bacon had better flavor and the cost per pound (or per kilo) of the edible portion worked out about the same as of the lower-priced bacon.

When you buy bacon, it is more economical to buy a better-quality package and you get a better flavor. Considering such a high loss, bacon costs more than most of the highest-quality meats.

In fact, the price of the edible portion is only just below the price of the highest-priced item in the butcher’s display, fully trimmed beef tenderloin steak or filet mignon.

Lamb. Lamb has a delicate flavor, but to retain it without a gamy overtone, know how to cook it properly. Lamb fat is a hard fat with a lower smoking point than other animal fats, and it burns easily if the temperature is too high. Once it burns, it develops an unpleasant odor and flavor. Never roast lamb in an oven higher than 325°F (165°C).

Leg of lamb has a thin membrane completely surrounding the meat, separating it from the fat layer. This is called the fell. The butcher doesn’t remove it because it holds the bundle of muscle together and helps to retain moisture during cooking. It should be removed, however, in steaks and chops. If it is still there, simply pull it off with your fingers.

If you don’t do this before grilling or broiling, the heat shrinks the fell and makes the meat buckle-as a result it browns unevenly and looks unappealing. Scoring the fell in several places also helps to avoid curling. The term spring lamb refers to the very tender meat from lambs born in the spring, but in North America today it has no meaning because of improved shipping. Lamb ranchers and processors provide young, tender, spring-lamb quality meat year round.

In California, Arkansas and parts of the South, young lambs are born in the fall and flourish in the mild winter. They provide tender meat before the true spring lambs are born in cooler parts of the country.

There are good and “bad’ fats, some toxic, some neutral, and some essential to good health. All animal and plant fats can be broken down into fatty acids, glycerin, and water. Fats and lipids are better energy sources than protein or carbohydrates.

We need to add fats to our diets because they carry the fatsoluble vitamins A, D, E, and

K. Vitamin K is easily destroyed by the use of mineral oil, Heparin and Dicumarol

(blood thinners), drugs, or aspirin. Most people overlook, the need for vitamin K, but it has recently been linked to intestinal disorders. It is important in the treatment of arthritis.

One rich source of vitamin K is alfalfa. The right kind of fat is essential for good health. most people consume too much of the wrong kind. Excess fat is stored in the liver, in arteries around the heart, and in all tissues.

Cancer of the breast, prostate, and colon, not to mention obesity and an increased risk of heart attack, are linked to a high-fat consumpation. The typical American diet consists of 40-50 % fat, a primary reason for the rise in the disorders mentioned above.

Saturated fats are behind many health problems, and should be omitted form your diet. They are behind heart disorders and arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). High intake of saturated

fats have been shown to elevate serum cholesterol, and contribute to heart disease and cancer. Do not consume saturated fats! They slow the liver’s ability to remove arter-clogging LDL (low-density lipopreteins) from the blood. However, the nomounsaturated fats aid in removing LDl (bad fats) from the blood stream.

Saturated fats

Saturated fat is found in all animal products and many vegetable oils:

Butter/lard

Poultry

Beef

Chocolate

Plam oil

Coconut

Milk/cream

Cheeses

Bacon/pork

Palm

Coconut oil