The rising popularity of bacon

Bacon, until not so long ago was just another strip of tasty food. I'll admit to happily chowing down on unhealthy amounts of bacon. My favourite bagel is the most sacrilegious thing you could eat if you were Jewish – a bacon cream cheese bagel. Then mmmm...breakfast at Granma's...crispy bacon and her version of French toast which she called Bombay toast, but i'm not exactly sure why and if there as such a concoction in Bombay. Whatever it was, I liked saying Bombay toast because it felt flamboyant, like the mixture of eggs, milk and sugar would blow up in my face.

I digress.

Anyway, bacon has gained popularity in recent years to some sort of cult status. Even the anti-Scientologists are using bacon as a bribe. On my birthday, my coworkers gave me a bunch of bacon paraphernalia – a bacon wallet, bacon bandaids, a bacon folder and mini plastic pigs. My other coworker sent me links to a bacon scarf and a bacon alarm clock. Suddenly bacon was everywhere. At the farmers market, signs for "Seriously good bacon" and boards with a piece of bacon hanging in front of a spiral – bacon hypnosis.

Bacon bacon bacon bacon. Suddenly its cool to like bacon? But I've been a serious follower and avid consumer of bacon since childhood, not causing that much of a ruckus, sprawled out on the floor proclaiming my undying love for a strip of crispy pork. Does this mean that bacon will become passe? It's a little like people who feel like their neighborhoods have been invaded by flocks of tourists – I just want to eat some bacon without all the hooha. I don't need bacon muffins, bacon ice cream, bacon chocolate. I don't need a new age reinterpretation of bacon – I just want some bacon in my cream cheese bagel.

Existential muffin crisis

The bone I have to pick with muffins is that they're too big, too dry, too tasteless or too sweet. I have had great muffins – fluffy muffins. (the word "muffin" sounds snuggly and fluffy, like if it cram it into your mouth you'd be overcome by a blanket of food bliss – the ultimate comfort snack) I've made some pretttty good tasting muffins lately.

The thing is: I'm not sure if the muffins I've been making of late can even be classified as muffins.

What is a muffin? What is a cupcake? Is a cupcake a glorified muffin with icing and no filling? Is it possible to have a red velvet muffin? What about a fruity cupcake? Why do some people love cupcakes but avoid muffins? Would calling a cupcake a muffin make someone feel better about eating it? Would you rather eat a muffin for breakfast instead of a muffin? Is a cupcake even a breakfast food? Are muffins healthier than cupcakes if you disregard the icing? What if you put icing on a muffin? Is a cupcake a mini cake? Is a muffin a mini fruitcake?

The muffins I've made lately in my opinion, are a cupcake pudding muffin hybrid. Pudding (think bread pudding) because I've put so many ingredients of goodness in them (half a pint of blueberries and an oversized peach) that they're heavy and moist because of the juice in the fruit. Cupcake because they have a cake-like consistency and not crumbly (and the face that they're little). I've never liked "muffins" but mine are pretty darn good and if they were in a café I'd buy 2 of them. So maybe this is making a big deal out of nothing and I've made a muffin actually worthy of craving. Which in itself, is quite an accomplishment.

I want to start on another tub of ice cream. I'm a little disappointed with my watermelon lime and mint sorbet. It was tasty and all, but after all that straining and chilling, mixing and freezing, I'd rather drink a chunky watermelon juice with lime and mint.

I'm tempted to make another ice cream to make up for this, but this would mean another 6 egg white omelette, 60 merengues, or some pavlova, but this entails the use of my mixer that needs to devote its time to churning out ice cream.

This new Kitchenaid is a friend whore. First the ice cream maker, now potentially a citrus juicer (fresh orange juice for weekend brunch? LEMONADE? Limeade? Mojitoes?). What next? Rotor slicer? Pasta roller? Sausage stuffer?

el ron añejo

Here is a bottle of rum that is older than I am. I'm not sure exactly how old it is—I suspect it's around 28 or 29, possibly 30. In any case, it's way past its quarter-centennial.

Last week I threw this dinner party, and copious amounts of alcohol were consumed. Digging back into my experience working in a bar during university days, I cast about for interesting drinkables beyond the vodka+mixer varieties. 

Perhaps it would have been better to have drunk the rum straight up, but the daiquiris made with this were a big hit. They're so tasty and so easy to make I can't believe we didn't polish off the entire bottle. Then again, we'd already worked our way through a number of B-52s, a few rounds of Cosmopolitans and some freakishly addictive White Russians by the time I found the rum.

Side note: I always shake my White Russians with ice before straining, though I know the drink is usually just built in the glass. It just tastes so much better. The drink is chilled without having the ice sit in it and diluting it, and it gives the drink this delightful frothy mouthfeel.

Anyway, so: the rum. Slightly unorthodox, making daiquiris with dark rum, but I basically just slung some ice cubes in a shaker, generous tot of the rum, brown sugar (how come you taste so good), lime juice. And then shake it vigorously until fingers feel numb from the cold and the shaker is frosted all along its surface. Crack it open, strain into glass, little bit of Cuba in your life.

mmmaking mmmuffins

MUFFINS! double chocolate muffins with sour cherries and blueberries! I've stuffed two of these in my mouth and now it's time to snuggle.

Also, The Boozy Floozy comes to blog on The Mousse and the Pamplemousse!

Heart Attack Waiting to Happen

I was beside myself after I threw in more herbs with the sauteed fingerling potatoes and drizzled some CRÈME FRAICHE over them. I thought that I must've died or entered another dimension of space and time. Then I thought I'd make some basil ice cream.

I substituted the lemon verbena with basil and added a generous handful. I bought a LARGE bunch of it from chelsea market ("Do you have any lemon verbena?" "WHAT? LEMON JUICE?!" "that's ok, nevermind.") for $2, roots and all. I felt like it was such a waste and maybe I should quickly go home and re-pot it or something.

This is the first time I've made any ice cream, save for shaved ice in a snoopy sno cone maker and easy to make ice cream from powdered mix by the same people who made the easy bake oven. There are conflicting recipes for ice cream – some say to use heavy cream, some none at all, more parts heavy cream to less parts milk, some said only heavy cream and half and half (!!!!), but whatever it was, I wasn't going to do any dairy substitutions this first try, lest the proportions made my ice cream structurally unstable (too watery, an ice block, etc). The end result was extremely delicious and delightfully fluffy, but what I'd created was a heart attack waiting for me in the freezer, 6 egg yolks making very good friends with an army of heavy cream. I'm afraid to eat more than a teaspoon of it. Death by ice cream? More of a reality than ever.

If you were to do this, I suggest increasing the amount of whole milk and decreasing the amount of heavy cream such that you only use 3/4 of a cup of it.

Given I have a tub of death hanging out in my freezer, I might make a healthier friend for it. Maybe some blackberry and apricot sorbet. Or some blood orange, pamplemousse, basil and mint sorbet for when Pamplemousse comes to visit. I'm feeling better about the sorbet and won't be worried about halfing the sugar measurements and causing some horrible ingredient imbalance.

Ice cream isn't as daunting or complicated to make as you think. It's just a pain in the ass. It's a little like doing laundry, waiting an hour for your herbs to steep in the milk and cream, making the custard and then chilling it for another 2 hours, and putting it in the ice cream maker for another 20 minutes. In fact, I recommend making ice cream on the same day you do laundry for maximum efficiency. I also recommend making an omelette as well so the 6 egg whites don't go to waste.

I woke up this morning at 8 and flipped on the tv and watched Grill It with Bobby Flay. I'm not a huge fan of Bobby Flay, but what i loved about this was the SIMPLICITY of cooking on a grill with just spices, olive oil and a bit of foil.

I haven't cooked in a while because of how hot its been and I don't have a grill, but I was excited enough to pull my rainbow carrots out of the fridge and saute them with some lovely buttery creamy fingerling potatoes from the farmers market. These were so good on their own they hardly needed any salt. I wonder if maybe tonight I should make more of the same with a light cream sauce of some sort (just a drizzle), sans carrots.

It's nothing fancy, but its unquestionably delicious. I think I seemed to have skipped breakfast altogether.

Bon Appetite

I was standing in Pamplemousse's kitchen last month making a white bean dip with garlic scapes and took them out in their curls one by one and snipped them into her blender.

"Here smell them, they smell so good."

She looked at me and said "I know. I already chewed on it."

We've been friends for a while, but our mutual lust for food was only recently discovered over barbecue, strawberry salad and breakfast with herbs. I didn't always like to eat, it was a hassle and it was too hot to eat in Singapore. Now it's sort of taken over my life since cold winters were a force to be reckoned with and an onset of intense farmers market fervor. Vegetables have also are fairly recent thing for me. I never liked carrots until a year ago and meticulously picked them out of food. Now I've been seen clamoring for spring carrots at 7.30 in the morning and buying POUNDS of mesclun mix to hoard in my fridge.

So thus begins the food blog of The Mousse and the Pamplemousse (the thing and the thing configuration in most arbitrary names for English and Irish pubs). In other news, I might ask an eggshell blue mixer to come and live with me this weekend.