Nuggetty Goodness

So while we've been doing our mad science bacon experiments almost every weekend, I've gotten lazy about putting up the photos. *scuffle* Here's a month's worth in a bunch!

Chinese Steamed Salted Egg Custard Buns Fried in Bacon Fat

These are really nice! Good steamed, but even better steamed, then fried (in bacon fat of course). The filling is slightly different from 'classic' custard due to the addition of salted egg. It's slightly grainy, and is mildly savoury on top of the eggy sweetness of normal custard. The buns were good in and of themselves, but the real, 'OoOooo,' came from dipping the bacon in the custard. Nomm.

Fried Jelly Donut Re-Fried in Bacon Fat

Oldie but goodie. Nothing more to add from before, just have better, eviler photos nao. (For some reason this looks very lewd to me. O.o)

'Fusion' (lol) Breakfast Bacon, Egg & Maple Bun

Take some Chinese leaf buns, steam them for about 5 minutes (longer is fine), then open them up and pour maple syrup on the inside. Close the buns and let them sit. Fry up the fattiest bacon you can find. Fry the leaf buns in the leftover bacon fat (there'll be a ton of it). Make scrambled eggs (we used eggs, soy sauce, 2-3 dollops of cream, and assorted herbs like rosemary, thyme, oregano, etc) with the leftover grease. Assemble the whole lot. Bite into it. Die of nommy happiness. XD

Bamboo Worms Fried in Bacon Fat

Maybe I should stop saying 'fried in bacon fat', it's not as if we fry stuff in anything else... These wormies a friend picked up for me weren't quite as nicely seasoned as the ones from Bangkok, but once they were fried in bacon fat... Oooh. O.o They turned into little crispy bombs of 'bacon fat lite' with a very faintly nutty flavour. The NuggetBoy will be bringing some bacon-fat fried wormies home to the US when he trundles off for Christmas.

Granita Evolution

1) Masala Coffee Granita: The freezing and mixing process results in a much more intense flavour than the warm drink. One cup of coffee makes a pretty respectable amount of granita to boot. O.o Unlike my first try with the honey-lemon granita, I didn't let it harden into a slab of ice before attempting to thwack it. Instead I beat it up regularly after the first 2 hours, then every 30 min. Result was much smoother than the honey-lemon, but I think I left it too long while it was freezing. >.> I wuz gaming okay!

2) Sake-Almond Granita: Take a coffee mug, fill it to about 2/3 with almond paste + a bit of milk powder and sugar, add hot water. Then add -_- 2/3 of a chinese teacup-full of sake. Mix it up regularly as it freezes, this time, I churned it up every 30 minutes. Lovely almondy flavour, the sake doesn't come through as a taste (and wasn't intended to), but it adds sweetness, and more importantly, it makes sure the granita doesn't freeze rock solid, so that it doesn't need constant refluffing before serving. Texture is light, grainy, and creamy all at once.

3) Umeshu-Almond Granita: Replace sake with umeshu, and make it a full chinese teacup of umeshu. Beat it up same as before. This particular mix is the best one yet. You can definitely taste the umeshu, and it works wonderfully with the almond. More alcohol changes the texture yet again, resulting in something that's close to fluffy, creamy snow.

^_^ The next granita shall be Baileys-Almond!

Sample of Da Fatty Bacon

Now whenever I go to the grocery store, I paw through all the bacons to find the fatty ones. Like so. XD

This Weekend's Test Subjects
(The usual pancackles were there on account of their being a safe, tasty staple.) Cajun fries leftover from dinner at Popeye's, and kou rou bao - a traditional steamed, savoury stewed pork bun. And um. Chicken skins. Yup. Chicken skins. That I stole from my cats, whom I feed raw. Rubbed up with 5 spice seasoning and left to sit in the fridge overnight.

The Results

Kou Rou Bao Fried in Bacon Fat
Oooh glorious. Super light and crispy outside, fluffy and airy inside, and right in the middle - savoury stewed pork oozing fatty goodness. OoOooO. If you've ever had pan-fried or deep-fried mantou, this is exactly what they would be like if you stuck meat in them, then fried them in bacon fat. ;)

Cajun Fries Re-fried in Bacon Fat
Hrm... Well they were nice, but I can't say they were hugely improved one way or the other. Not going to do these again.

Five-Spice Chicken Skins Fried in Bacon Fat
TBH the five-spice seasoning kinda overpowered the baconnyness of it. Nuggetboy supplies that they were very much like pork rinds, which makes sense, considering they're... welll - chicken rinds? Not bad, but horribly, horribly dangerous to cook. O.o The oil was spitting and jumping and bouncing everywhere. I think next time I'll just marinade the chicken itself in the five spices for a less dangerous and equally satisfying bit of chicken.

Masala Coffee Granita
Having seen the Error of My Fork Whacking Ways, I made up this batch by whacking it regularly as it froze, resulting in a much airier, finer texture. (Not that you can see it here. -_-) It's definitely less coarsely icy and granular than the lemon attempt, and I'm really quite pleased with it. Not to mention, a cup of coffee turns into a lot more granita than coffee! The combination of freezing and whacking seems to intensify the flavours. All in all - very pleased with this. In fact... dangerously so, because now I'm plotting a whole series of granitas! And I've gone so far as to buy more kitchen implements (eeeee!) because one of the instructions I turned up mentioned using a whisk in the initial stages for an even finer, creamier texture...

Aaaaand this week from the land of mad bacon science we brings you...

Bacon-wrapped scallops
According to nuggetboy, the little buggers were rather hard to wrap in bacon. We wrapped most of the ones we defrosted in bacon, and tossed 4 other unwrapped ones to fry in the bacon fat with their more dressed-up brethren. >.>

Verdict! Uh. Scallops fried in bacon fat are better than scallops wrapped in bacon. O.o It's troo!

See, the scallops fried in bacon absorb a massive amount of bacon fat into their scallopy fibres, resulting in a bacon scallop explosion of taste when chewed. Oddly enough, wrapping the scallops in bacon seems to protect the scallop from... the bacon fat - resulting in scallops that are less bacony than the plain fat-fried ones, but with nice contrasting textures from scallopy goodness and bacony crispiness.

Lemon Sorbet Wannabe
I saw a recipe on the interwebs somewhere that said, make sorbet! It's easy! combine ice, sugar, juice, freeze in a flattish shallow container, and WHACK IT HARD REPEATEDLY WITH A FORK (and replace in the freezer each time) until it becomes sorbet. -_- What they neglected to mention was the exact technique for whacking with a fork until it becomes fine and grainy. Right now, it's at the crushed ice stage. I'm beginning to wonder if it would be better with a blender - but unfortunately, I don't have one. The recipe says whacking it repeatedly until it submits and becomes a sorbet is the way it's traditionally done... so I guess I'll just keep beating it up over the week.

It does taste awfully nice, even though in typical nugget fashion, I neither used the exact same ingredients, nor followed any measurements. XD What I used was enough water for a shallow soup dish, with a heaped tablespoon of manuka honey, and 3 lemons. It's very potently lemony, and quite refreshing, but if we do this again, I think I'll put 2 tablespoons of honey in rather than one. Nuggetboy likes his desserts sweeter, I do like honey, and right now, while my nuggetly senses can detect the honey quite distinctly, he can't taste it at all.

Updates on sorbet beating to follow!

 

This weekend's bacon science!

Bacon-Wrapped Teriyaki Steak Chunks
Steak cut up in decent-sized chunks (mini sausage sized really...) and marinaded in teriyaki marinade + chinese cooking wine overnight. Then wrapped in bacon and pan-fried!

This turned out really good, though due to nuggetboy being paranoid about crisping the bacon, the cow was more done than I liked.  Of course, I like my cows practically still moving so... XD Nuggetboy likes his well-done though, so good on that front.

Next try with this shall be chicken! At least the done-ness will be agreeable to us both.

Caramelised Maple Syrup Pancakes Fried in Bacon Fat!
These were great, but they didn't really need the bacon fat. Yes, inoes! How can it be!

Well it turns out that all the maple syrup the pancakes absorbed while soaking in syrup overnight gushed out when we plopped them in the pan. This had the unforeseen result of caramelising the maple syrup all over the outside of the pancakes, along with infusing them with mapley goodness. The downside is, the caramelising maple syrup basically forced all the baconny fatty goodness away from the pancackles, so we couldn't really taste any bacon at all.

Verdict: Great, but might as well be fried with butter.

Creampuffs Fried in Bacon Fat
Pleasant, but better as the frozen creampuffs they were. Turned out like little poofballs of crispy milk.

Sperm Jellies...
Erm... well - we found these in a dessert at a chinese restaurant and just had to bring them home. >.> They're jellies. That look like spermies. That is all.

Mini Bacon Explosions
Take some small good cocktail smausages. Wrap with bacon, stick with toothpicks to hold bacon in place, panfry! Next time we will glaze them with barbecue sauce and they will be TROO MINI BAYCUN ESSPLOSHUNS! Other than the lack of barby sauce, it's very very similar.

McGriddle Buns Fried in Bacon Fat
Oh this is absolutely amazing. O.o The evil things are maple syrup (or maple syrup flavour - more likely with McDs) infused, and are absolutely GLORIOUS when fried in bacon fat. Arguably better than the jellydonuts. This Friday, I'm going to have to try to remember to soak two of our mini pancakes in maple syrup and see how they turn out.

McD's Hashbrown Fried in Sausage Juice + Bacon Fat, Then Refried in Bacon Fat
This was a bit odd, the frying didn't look like it was doing anything. >.> But sopping up a ton of grease. But when we ate it, it didn't taste greasy at all. In fact, it was really good. But seeing the amount of grease it soaked up and simply erm... vaporised (as far as eating could tell anyway), it was kinda disturbing...

Butterscotch Bread Fried in Bacon Fat
We've been doing this one for the past 2-3 weeks, it's just plain tasty. Like if you fried slightly crumbly and dry Sara Lee pound cake in bacon fat. Hm we may just have to do that...

Oh yes, and we put icecream on top of everything except the MBEs and the bacon itself. Weis Mango Sorbet with Cream for me, and Ben & Jerry's Vanilla for the nuggetboy.

~_o Kudos to nuggetboy who makes this possible! He's the one at the stove, I just come up with ideas and hide from the spitting bacon. XD

...oh yeah the spoon. The spoon is totally unrelated. The spoon was on the menu of a Japanese restaurant we went to. Came with the kid's meal. Hmmmm.