Enjoying the early winter so far? I know I am.

I’m a cave bear and enjoy spending the long Scandinavian winter evenings in my studio or couch, working, crafting or watching Daria. In fact, since it is so windy, wet and utterly, depressively dark, I feel less bad about not hanging out on the beach, not frolicking around in the sun or not jogging around the lakes that I live nearby. And I don’t miss summer and all its tedious focus on body, tan and skin deep waste of time.

And since this spring, when I was forced to change my diet, eat less takeaway and more homemade Japanese food, I spend more time in the kitchen. However, I haven’t turned into a zombie foodie who talks about artisan vinegar or wheat ban enforcements all the time. Yet.

I just like to cook healthy, eat leisurely, clean quickly and get on with other stuff. But it’s not a pain anymore, I actually truly enjoy it as long as it’s not a day-long effort.

Which is why I like Bacon Udon – a recipe I got from my Mile High Club friend. It’s another super easy dish you can throw together in 15 min or less if you’ve got snappy kitchen fingaz.

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BACON UDON
(2 peeps)

INGREDIENTS
4-5 slices of bacon
1/2 broccoli
3 spring onions
50g of mushrooms (can be left out)

Udon noodles, half a pack or more
1 tsp powdered dashi (Ajinomoto = MSG!)

Shichimi togarashi(Japanese 7-spice mixture)

Salt + pepper

QUICK RECIPE
1. Put some drips of sesame oil (or really any high temp durable oil) in a wok pan and heat up. Place the slices of bacon in the warm oil and let it sizzle real good.

2. Heat up a big pot of water and when it boils, throw in the udon noodles. Check the udon pack for specific instructions. I cook these for 8 minutes.

3. Rinse and chop the broccoli, spring onions and the musrooms while the wok and the pot are simmering.

4. When the bacon is well-done and crispy, remove from the pan and pour half of the remaining fat out of the pan (don’t pour fat in the sink! Save it in a jar for a rainy day). Put the chopped greens into the pan.

5. Stir fry the greens and chop the bacon. Add some salt, pepper and shichimi spice while frying.

6. Remove 1 deciliter (about 1/2 cup) of the boling hot water from the noodles and pour in some dashi. Stir and let it sit.

7. When the noodles are done, rinse them in cold water to clean out the starch.

8. Put everything back into the wok and heat up: noodles, dashi and bacon into the greens.

9. Serve when hot, steaming and full of bacon umami.

EASY & HEALTHY, no?

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Broccoli, spring onions, Danish bacon, mushrooms and udon noodles.

Udon!

Heat some oil in a pan. I like this sesame oil.

And place the bacon — let sizzle.

I eat so much spring onion. I wonder if you can have too much?

Chopped broccoli (super healthy)

Oyster mushrooms. I also use these in miso soup, they’re very soft yet fleshy.

3. Place the noodles into boiling water.

Not entirely done yet, hold on…

Looks good now — very crispy but not black and overdone.

Chop it up!

Put all the chopped vegetables in the bacon — juicy wok oil fat and stir fry.

And the bacon.

Shichimi togarashi - a Japanese spice mix perfect for a dish like this.

It’s red, beautiful and not too spicy.

Remove 1 deciliter (about 1/2 cup) of the boiling water.

Pour in some powdered dashi (about 1 tsp) and stir it up in the boling cup.

Or, you could be like Yoko, not be lazy, and make your own dashi. Imagine that!

When the udon noodles are done, wash them well in cold water to remove starch and add them to the wok. Add the cup of dashi and fry!

And it will look like this: delicious sticky noodles in a bacon + broccoli embrace.

Serve in Japanese udon bowl, of course.

My mom loves it. She says it suits a glass of red perfectly. Chopsticks are too much fuzz though.

Bon appetit, noodle heads.

Downtown Los Angeles is a special place–a part of town that still feels authentically gritty and big city-like. Even amongst the gentrification going strong in a few, piecemeal pockets, downtown LA is still pretty much what it was in Beverly Hills Cop 2. Sure, the crime rate and smog levels have dropped since the 80’s, but the landscape remains somewhat untainted.

On a particularly hot summer afternoon, we decided to get brunch at the Nickel Diner, home of the maple bacon donut. Though it’s not necessarily a long standing LA establishment, it is: a) In a historic building in downtown Los Angeles; and b) has become an institution for reliable, low-key food downtown.

We beat the Sunday crowd by arriving before 11 AM and as a party of two waited maybe 10 minutes for a table. It was almost too hot to eat, but I was starving and when the table next to us got their food I knew that this was going to be a gluttonous meal.

The menu was practically entirely comfort food and once I saw the maple bacon donut, I needed one. It arrived on a warm plate and the first bite was exactly what you ever wanted from a donut. The decadence is overwhelming as the sweetness of the maple overshadows the bacon. Though crispy, the bacon is cooked and dried in it’s fat which complicates the generally harmonious partnership of maple and bacon.

I wanted something heartier than just eggs so I decided on the Bacon Lettuce Tomato Avocado Egg sandwich, or the BLTAE. [Why isn’t it just called the BLAT, or the BLATE? It would be so much easier to pronounce]. The crisp bread was covered with a thin layer of aioli, which added a bit of spice to the sandwich. However it also added thin layer of fat as well, which coupled with the bacon, overpowered the avocado and tomato.

We also made a last minute decision and went with the BBQ pulled pork sandwich served with coleslaw on Hawaiian bread. Holy shitballz this was amazing. The pork was moist, tender and flavorful, having all of the integrity and flavor of a pork stewing in it’s own juices for 72 hours, but lacking the fatty, greasy flavor it often carries in some BBQ joints. I would recommend this sandwich to any meat eater and would suggest to order an additional side of coleslaw as the crisp cabbage serves as a perfect counterpoint to the soft and flavorful pig.

We were stuffed, but as soon as the waitress presented the dessert tray to our table neighbors I knew the meal was not over. A few minutes passed and she arrived at our table with an incredibly indulgent selection of homemade treats, curated to pique the interest of any glutton with a sweat tooth. The tray included a chocolate, caramel, marshmallow cake with a thin layer of mashed cornflakes to offset the soft sugar layers, a butterscotch pudding with caramel and sea salt and homemade tapioca pudding. We went with the homemade strawberry pop-tart and the homemade ding dong.

The pop tart was one of the best desserts I’ve ever had. The pastry layers were flaky buttery and light, and although the strawberry jam was made in-house with excessive amounts of sugar, there was still a strange familiarity to the usually store-bought, packaged breakfast pastry–that preservative quality. This is the same quality that I’m sure would cause you to blackout and eat two or three pop tarts in one sitting.

The homemade ding-dong was good–delicious chocolate cake layers held together by a white, creamy frosting, which was too dense for my taste. The dense cream made the dessert one of those things that you only need a bite of to get the idea. And some might say the same thing about the restaurant itself: “A modern take on diner classics? You eat there once and you get the idea…” However for me it was so satisfying I would definitely go back.

Recently, I was at someone’s house for brunch and bacon-covered mazoh balls were served (I believe inspired by this NPR show). How terribly traif! Well… almost. This meal was in a kosher home, so the bacon was not actually pork, but beef. Rebellious nonetheless? Certainly delightful! As a pork loving Jew, perhaps I should finally make the trek across Brooklyn to Traif, a restaurant that sounds blasphemously delicious in Williamsburg, a neighborhood known for its hipsters and Hasids.

Photo by Erin Gleeson.

Is that a piece of bacon on top of that cupcake? Yes! It was Buzz’s cupcake of the month… peanut butter bacon cupcake!! Of course, I had to try it, as I love the sweet and savory combo (have you put m&m’s in your movie popcorn?).

It was a chocolate cupcake, with a peanut butter frosting, with just a small sprinkle of bacon on top. Very intriguing – the peanut butter frosting was actually too sweet and overpowered the salty bacon… glad I tried it, but can’t say it was a winning combination for me.

The other good thing about Buzz Bakery is that it caters to those with celiac disease… gluten-free cupcakes and brownies that taste just as good as the regular ones!

BUZZ
901 Slaters Lane
Alexandria, VA

Sweet and salty is something we do enjoy. Chocolate-covered salty rice crackers have been available in Japan, and they are pretty tasty. Sea salt with ice cream is available at some restaurants and it’s kind of refreshing.

I always get grossed out when I see many people at brunch eating pancakes or french toast with a side of bacon, all drizzled in maple syrup. I always ask for bacon on a separate plate. But I recently saw a recipe called “French toast bacon cupcake with maple buttercream frosting”. My curiosity was pretty high, and I decided to make this unthinkable combo of bacon in a cupcake.

I found two recipes, and somewhat combined them into one. Here is the recipe I ended up using. Both recipes were pretty peculiar, but I couldn’t be bothered to go to a store to buy vanilla pudding mix, or milk, so I just used what I had in the house.

1 cup of flour
1 cup of cake flour
1 table spoon cinnamon
1 table spoon nutmeg
1 table spoon baking powder
1 tea spoon salt
1 table spoon corn starch
1 stick of unsalted butter
3 eggs
3/4 cup of brown sugar
1/2 cup of regular sugar
1 tea spoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup of maple syrup
1/4 cup of heavy cream
1/4 cup of water
12 strips of bacon

Cook bacon. I cooked bacon in the oven. I find it a lot easier and less messier, but be sure not to cook them too crispy. Cool them and cut them into pieces, set aside.

Mix dry ingredients except for sugars together in a bowl, set aside.

Cream butter, then add sugar, eggs and vanilla. Mix in dry mixture little by little, alternating with maple syrup/heavy cream/water. Don’t overmix, and finally stir in bacon.

Original recipe called for 1/2 cup of milk, but all I had was heavy cream, so I put 1/4 cup cream and 1/4 cup water. This might be completely wrong, but hey, it worked pretty well. Also I basically cut sugar amount by half. It is still sweet enough.

I had silicon muffin cups, and was going to use them. When I opened the container, it smelled like VERY stinky cheese. To my horror, they had bits of mold EVERYWHERE. You know these motherfuckas are very hard to clean, and I did wash them in dish washer, but I guess some particles remained there. Very grossed out and I threw out the whole thing. I can still smell it and makes me want to barf.

Since I don’t have muffin tin, I decided to make a cake instead. Muffin, cake, loaf, bundt, same difference. It’s just different shapes.

It took about an hour to cook the cake in a 325˚ oven.

It looks just like regular cake, right? While baking, it smelled like spice cake, especially with cinnamon and nutmeg, it smelled like autumn. No hint of bacon whatsoever.

So I brought it to work, without frosting, since I thought it would make too much mess. I brought them separately. I piped frosting from Ziploc bag, and it looks like a giant cupcake.

I gathered many of my colleagues, and served them pieces. Everyone was kind of grossed out by the concept, including me. Bacon + Cake = WTF?

Verdict – This is awesome. As you can see above, there are enough chunks of bacon in the cake, but it didn’t taste like bacon at all. Yes, by itself it is definitely bacon, but put everything together and it tasted very nice, with the mixture of sweetness from the maple buttercream and spiced cake, plus saltiness.

Here is the recipe for maple buttercream:

2 sticks of unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar
pinch of salt
2 table spoon of maple syrup

Mix butter and maple syrup, add sugar.

I should have decorated the top with pieces of bacon.

What if I use whole package of bacon instead? Maybe I will try that next time.

The Umami Reader brings you the freshest food news every Tuesday, however outdated it may be. Please email links to what you’re reading to umamimart@gmail.com. Follow UM on Twitter for more 24/7.

So when I saw a sign exclaiming, “Pig Candy Is Here!” at Roni-Sue’s Chocolates in the Essex Street Market, I stopped dead in my tracks. Actual strips of bacon dipped in milk and dark chocolate… oohlala! The little description card says, “Totally addictive!” The verdict: it TOTALLY IS!

Pig Candy is $38/lb., which sounds expensive but if you think about it, that’s A LOT of chocolate covered bacon. Here are some strips, dark chocolate in the front, milk choco in the back. Doesn’t the milk one resemble the face of a pig???

Here they are posing with a little toy oinker:

I bought a few strips each of the milk and dark chocolate Pig Candy to munch with my friends. I met them at Franny’s for dinner, and brought out the bag of delights for dessert. We couldn’t contain our excitement between the three of us, though, and ended up having the servers and chefs try it too. That saltysweet crunch is just irresistible- I’ll take a side of chocolate with my bacon please! We all swooned in unison. I had successfully converted any chocolate-covered-bacon-non-believers. Mission accomplished!

I don’t want to over-simplify it, but the recipe must go something like this (mas or menos):
1) Fry strips of bacon
2) Let bacon cool
3) Hand dip bacon in Calabaut milk or dark chocolate
4) PIG OUT!

But don’t try this at home, folks- leave it to the professionals, please. That professional being Rhonda Kave, Roni-Sue’s famed proprietress, who has been making chocolate for over 20 years. She opened up her charming little shop in 2007, and hoping to move into a bigger space within the market in the next few months.

Cute factoid about her logo that she told us, is that it was actually the sign for her mother’s baby clothing shop in New Jersey, named after her. I love that story.

I think that this should be the gateway food for vegetarians to start eating meat. For all you closet bacon-loving PETA heads, I say try Pig Candy: the birds will chirp, the clouds will part, and God will come down and say, “Now, there is light.”

Order Pig Candy online!

It arrived just in time because I had thawed out some chicken for dinner. I made a quick change of plans and wrapped my perfectly healthy boneless, skinless breast of chicken in some of the Hickory Smoked Bacon. I am pretty sure it is impossible to get more flavor into your standard chicken breast any other way. It turned my day from a 5 to an 11.

So next time you need to buy a gift, consider bacon. It will make someone smile for weeks!