The Miracle That Is Bacon

Occasionally I make a white bean and sausage soup, mostly because the ingredients are on hand and it's a relatively easy and healthful dinner. My version originated with a recipe in a soup cookbook, though I've long since stopped referencing the recipe. The soup was never great, but I kept making it because I couldn't figure out why it wasn't better. It always seemed to taste flat, though I've improved it by sweating the vegetables and cutting down on the tomatoes.

One day last week I decided to throw in a strip of bacon, only because there was some left over in the fridge. Lo and behold, that was the ingredient the soup had been missing. It went from dull to umami-full. Bacon is surely a cook's godsend. Here's the recipe:

White Bean and Sausage Soup

1 cup white beans, soaked for several hours or overnight
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon dried thyme
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 strip bacon
1 stalk celery
1/2 carrot
1/2 medium onion
1/2 pound sweet Italian sausage
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 large tomato, peeled and chopped, or 1/2 can chopped tomatoes

Drain the beans and add 4 cups water along with the bay leaf and thyme. Bring to low boil and cook until soft (1 to 2 hours).

While the beans are cooking, chop the bacon, celery, carrot, and onion. Heat a Dutch oven or other heavy pot and add the bacon and vegetables. Cover, lower the heat to a simmer, and stew for 20 minutes.

Add the sausage, breaking it up into small pieces, and stir in the garlic. When the meat is cooked through, add the tomatoes.

Add the beans, season with salt and pepper, and simmer for half an hour.

Texas Barbecue, Naturally

On my second day in Austin, my friend Maryrose drove us to Spicewood, Texas, to take a dip in Krause Springs, one of the many swimming holes Austin is famous for and possibly the most beautiful of the bunch. Fed by a waterfall and surrounded by sloping granite, it looks like a postcard from a tropical vacation.

The land is owned by the Krause family, who have set up a kiosk at the entrance, asking visitors to pay a few dollars and sign a waiver. While we were checking in, someone from an adjacent building called out to one of the very large Texans manning the kiosk: “Hey Tiny, want to get some barbecue?”

“Tiny” drawled in return that he’d been eating barbecue for days: “…and last night Mama got barbecue from the firehouse, so I’m barbecued out!”

I wasn’t in Texas long enough to reach the saturation point; in fact, I had only a few meals to spend on barbecue, what with the Tex-Mex, hippie joints, and trailer food I needed to try while in Austin. So I had to choose the right barbecue joint, and that was House Park Bar•B•Que. House Park has been operating since 1943, and the shack where the smoking and ordering takes place looks at least that old. The joint is open only for lunch on weekdays, so we had to scramble a little to fit it in.

Inside the restaurant, the air is thick with smoke, the photos and signs hanging on the walls yellowed beyond reason. We ordered mixed meat sandwiches, with two sides, from the guys behind the counter, one of whom was so edgy I feared he’d pull a shotgun if I didn’t make up my mind quickly.

Fortunately, there’s seating outside, so we were able to enjoy our meat, potato salad and coleslaw in relative safety. If you find yourself in Austin, I recommend the brisket platter with potato salad and whatever other side suits your tastes. 

Ugly but Delish

During a family trip to the mountains with a pile of teenagers, we were faced with two challenges: 1) bringing enough food and 2) finding protein that would keep well. With only coolers and block ice providing refrigeration, and the closest store a harrowing 45-minute drive away, we needed to plan ahead.

Ham and cheese are obvious choices, but my folks came up with something better: Grandma Jennie’s pickled beef tongue. The vinegar helps preserve the tongue, and it’s a sizable piece of meat that feeds a crowd, even when five are teens who’ve spent their morning hauling wood.

The pickled tongue made excellent sandwiches, with nothing more than mayo on sourdough.

Grandma Jennie’s Pickled Tongue

Cover one beef tongue with water and boil until barely tender. Remove from the liquid and immerse in cold water. Save boiling liquid. When the tongue is cool enough to handle, skin it and cut out fat.

To the liquid add 3/4 cup red wine vinegar, 1 tablespoon pickling spices, and a handful of fresh oregano. Simmer for 15 minutes. Let the liquid cool and pour it over the tongue. Set it in a covered bowl in the refrigerator. It’ll be ready in about a week.

A Slice of America

Every year, the owners of Black Butte River Ranch, deep in the mountains of eastern Mendocino County, hold a bluegrass concert and pig roast for the Fourth of July. The owners, former Oakland denizens, invite their Bay Area friends to camp on the land and host the ’cue. But many of the guests are locals: backwoods hippies who reek of pot — growing marijuana is the local industry — and dance stoned in front of the bands.

My parents have a cabin on the mountain above the store, so I and seven other members of the Erickson clan were up there for the long weekend. On Saturday, after a swim in the Eel River, we headed to the party. While kegs of beer (pay what you can afford) offered other mind-altering avenues, the focus of the gathering was the pig. It was certainly our reason, besides people watching, for attending.

The pig was rotating above a fuel-fed wood fire on a makeshift spit: a metal garbage can cut in half housed the logs while a bicycle wheel provided the turning mechanism. A clamp kept the animal fastened to the spit. By the time we arrived, Porky was sporting a lovely golden-brown hue and was unloading streams of grease into the fire.

As other guests wandered by to view the turning beast, I approached the head cook to ask about his techniques. Normally, I can’t get chefs to stop talking about their craft, but this guy wasn’t giving me anything. I finally realized why: this is barbecue, and I’m not a dude. So I sent my dad over, and he got the 411. The 80-pound pig, purchased in Oakland from J&M Meat Company, was stuffed with onions and garlic, salted and peppered, and placed on the spit at 10 that morning. 

A little after 8 p.m., the cooking crew decided Porky was done and pulled it off the fire. While they sliced the pig until it was a pile of glistening white meat, we lined up along with the campers, hippies, and other locals. We loaded our plates ($10 suggested donation) with tri-tip, chicken, beans, green salad, and, of course, pork, which was as succulent as we hoped. Stuffed, we headed back up the mountain and crawled into our sleeping bags.

Buyer Beware Beef

Last night I made a classic beef stew of red wine, potato and carrots. It would have been a fine stew, a good stew, had the beef not been dreadful. This meat we’ve been choking down for about a year has the texture and flavor of cardboard—flat cardboard, not the corrugated kind, which might have been an improvement.

A few years ago, friends who live in the Central Valley knew a rancher who wanted to sell a steer. We bought a quarter of the carcass, negotiated among the other buyers which cuts we’d take, and brought it home. It wasn’t the meat you’d find in a steakhouse, but it made for decent steaks and good hamburgers. And the price was great.

Soon after we finished the freezer-full, the rancher asked if we’d be interested in buying another ungulate. We decided to go for a half steer this time. My husband, son and I set out for the valley with a car full of coolers, paid our $400 and returned home with a stand-alone freezer’s worth of steaks, ground beef, stew meat, roasts, ribs and soup bones.

Our first taste of the meat—T-bone steaks, grilled—left us woefully disappointed yet optimistic that other cuts would prove more satisfying. After all, the last animal had been edible. But after trying each cut, we gave up hope and dejectedly chewed our way through the rest of the sorry beast. Spices helped its lack of flavor, but nothing—not even long, slow stewing—improved the texture.

The steer was 19 months old, grass-fed and corn finished; the meat was aged two to three weeks. According to common wisdom of animal husbandry, the time of slaughter, feeding schedule and aging were correct. So what went wrong? When we asked the rancher, he wrote in a long, apologetic e-mail that perhaps the animal had been slaughtered too young, before the meat had a chance to become marbled with enough fat. He was aiming, he said, for meat that was lean (before it had marbled too much) yet still tender (because of its youth).

I asked Shannon Kelly of the California Beef Council what would render the meat of a young steer so unappetizing. She suggested that perhaps the animal could have benefited from more time on the corn lot. “The more corn they eat, the more intramuscular fat they have,” she explained, adding that more marbling makes the meat tender. In addition, poor packaging can cause freezing to draw out the moisture, she said.

We bought the half steer because we wanted to support a local rancher, and we loved the price. It was also great to have a freezer filled with months’ worth of dinners. For now though, we’re buying our beef at the store.