We’re SO excited about Bacon Camp, San Francisco, on Mar 21. I get to be a judge. If you haven’t heard about this event, you’re in for an excitingly culinary treat. It’s produced by my dear friend Karen. Tickets are available here. So come out for the bacon and meet me and a host of other baco-celebs.

I’m also a little tickled that Steve’s and my creation, Bacon Man has a cameo in the Bacon Meme Video, a trailer for Bacon Camp!

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Sorry I don’t have photos but this dish was so good, I’m sharing the recipe right away. This was a spicy fusion spin on miso chicken.

Ingredients

For the Chicken

• 1 lb chicken thighs (remove skin)
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• ground ginger powder
• garlic powder
• salt
• pepper

For the Sauce

• 4 tbsp red miso paste
• 1 cup chicken stock
• 1 tbsp dark molasses
• 2/3 cup soy sauce
• 1 bunch finely chopped scallions
• 2 tbsp grated chopped fresh ginger
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
• 1 tsp Sriracha sauce (or to taste)
• 1 cup bourbon

Preparation

Heat oven to 350°F. Remove skin from chicken and cover each side with a generous sprinkling of salt, pepper, garlic powder and ground ginger. Heat the oil in a skillet, preferably cast iron. Brown the chicken on both sides. Place entire skillet into oven for about 45 minutes or until done in the middle (about 170°).

While chicken is baking, add all of the sauce ingredients except the bourbon to a bowl and whisk together until miso is completely dissolved.

When chicken is done, take the skillet out of the oven and move the chicken pieces to a plate. I placed them in the broiler with the heat off just to keep them warm. Deglaze the pan by placing it over high heat and then adding the whiskey. Lower it to medium and stir until all that lovely chicken juice begins to dissolve into the whiskey. Now stir in the rest of the sauce and simmer over medium for about ten minutes or until the scallions soften.

Plate the chicken and pour sauce over each piece. Garnish with a sprinkling of freshly grated ginger.

Cook time: about an hour

Prep time: about half an hour

Servings: four

With salmon being virtually unavailable this year, and the list of over-farmed seafood growing, I feel like the fish choices keep getting slimmer all the time. Luckily, tilapia is still a great choice*.

I really like this fish. It’s available at any decent fish market or Asian grocery store, usually live or very fresh. It’s also much less expensive than other seafood choices, usually about $3/lb. And unless gutting fish is your thing, ask the guy at the meat counter to clean it for you before you bring it home.

Here’s one of my favorite ways to prepare tilapia. Herb Stuffed Tilapia makes a great summer main dish that’s low fat and full of delicious flavor.

For more tilapia recipes, Tessa Evans has a blog devoted to them. You can also find a list of tilapia recipes presented by the American Tilapia Association.

Herb Stuffed Tilapia

Prep time: about 20 min. Cook time: about 30 min. Skill Level: medium to easy.

1 large whole tilapia, cleaned
1 lemon sliced into thin wedges
1 lemon sliced into rounds
2 tbsp fresh dill, finely chopped
2 tbsp fresh thyme, finely chopped
2 tbsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped
3 green onions, finely chopped
3 or 4 green onions, sliced vertically
1 tbsp minced garlic
1/2 stick butter
1 cup white wine
1 tbsp peppercorns
salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a bowl, mix dill, thyme, rosemary, chopped onion and garlic. Place fish into 9″x13″ baking pan. If the tail sticks out, just trim it with a pair of scissors. Next, lay 4 or 5 slices of butter into the body cavity of the fish, spread out. Stuff the fish with most of the herbs mixture leaving out about 1/4 cup. Pour 3/4 cup of wine into the fish. Now seal the opening off with the lemon wedges (see picture). Pour the remaining wine over the top of the fish and salt. Sprinkle the rest of the herb mixture over the top. Lay the sliced lemons over the top. Arrange the other onions on the bottom of the pan.

Cover tightly with foil and bake for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees or until fish is done and tender. It should just fall apart with a fork.

* Just be sure that you’re getting tilapia farmed in the US or Central America as the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch warns against the fish if it’s farmed in China.

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Buying Locally Offers Better Prices & Selection

I avoid Safeway as much as possible. I used to think I didn’t have much of a choice for buying groceries. Now I’m learning that there are plenty of options that beat chain grocery stores for both price & selection.

Growing up in a nuclear family, I always thought that big grocery stores were necessary to supply my house with staples. Mom made the weekly trip to Stater Brothers or Alpha Beta and collected Blue Chip Stamps to save up for free appliances, long before the days of club cards. It seemed like back then, there were more major grocery stores as well as plenty of small markets you could choose from.

Nowadays, in San Francisco, you’re pretty much limited to Safeway and the Vons that’s out on Sloat. Calla Foods closed up a couple years ago. So are we stuck buying groceries from huge national chains that truck in supplies lord-knows-where and set prices however they please? Hell No!

San Francisco has plenty of small mom-pop markets with much better selection of produce, meats, and seafood than the Mega Marts. You just have to be willing to look for them.

While Safeway charges fifty cents per lime, my corner market sells them ten for a dollar. El Chico markets have wonderful produce and a fantastic meat counter too. I frequent the one on Mission in the Excelsior but they have locations all over town. Chain grocery stores also tend to have a very limited seafood selection. Try J.R. Seafood on BayView or Mission Meat & Poultry Market at 22nd & Mission for unbeatable quality, price and selection. In fact, Mission Poultry only sells sushi-grade fish. Your neighborhood Asian market is also going to be a great place to pick up fresh seafood. My favorite butcher, also at 22nd & Mission is Mission Meat Department. The staff is always so friendly and ready to offer recipe suggestions. They carry a variety of delicious hand-made sausages, too.

The best part about avoiding Safeway is that I am supporting local businesses and directly affecting the local economy. I may have to make a few more stops, but in my opinion, I get a much richer shopping experience and the access to greater variety of foods that chain stores just don’t carry.

I’ve listed a few of my favorite stores. I’d love to hear where you shop, whether or not you’re in San Francisco.

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M&D Ring of Fire Hot Sauce

I’m so excited! My package from Mike & Diane’s Ring of Fire Hot Sauce just arrived in the mail. Steve and I were visiting San Diego this winter and happened to pick up a bottle of their Garden Fresh Chile Sauce at a touristy hot sauce shop in Seaport Village. Wow! It really knocked my socks off. It wasn’t all vinegary like most bottled sauces. It tasted fresh, like I made it in my own kitchen. So I simply had to order more.

I got a bottle of their Tomatillo Roasted Garlic Sauce which is quite tasty! I can’t wait to try it over some breakfast potatoes. I also bought a bottle of the Original Habañero Hot Sauce. You can really taste the serrano peppers in there. This one is a little more vinegary but still delicious! I can tell I’ll be cooking up spicy food this week!

The sauces are a little pricey at $8.75 bottle, but they’re 12.5 oz bottles and the quality of the ingredients really stands out when you taste these products. The box came with a hand written thank you card—nice touch—and some freebies: M&D Ring of Fire Jerky, a magnet, and a “travel bottle”. Cute.

I am going to make one tiny little nit. My hot sauce was shipped in a ton of old fashioned pink foam peanuts. Not only are those messy to unpack, more importantly, they’re environmentally awful. I’d like to see them use more responsible packing materials.

All in all, I’m still pretty impressed with these delicious sauces. The quality and care put into making them really stands out. Now go out and grab a bottle of two!

http://www.mikeanddianes.com/

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I recently dined at Zuppa, 2007 winner of the San Francisco Boss of the Sauce competition where I was introduced to the best thing since bacon: speck. I was so excited after dinner that I got on the phone and called all my bacon fanatic friends to tell them I’d met bacon’s match.

Also called Speck dell’Alto Adige, it is a delightful thinly sliced Italian meat that has characteristics of both bacon and prosciutto. The wikipedia entry on speck says that this meat has been around since the fourteenth century. It’s both salt-cured and wood smoked and comes from the hind-leg of the pig.

We tried it by itself as an appetizer and for an entrée I had roasted quail wrapped in speck. My toes curled! I’d never even heard of this fabulous treat, but it was definitely love at first bite.

Since then, I’ve been on the look-out for a pound of speck. I hear that they sell it at Lucca. I’ll keep you updated once I get my hands on some. I’ll certainly blog my kitchen experiments with it!

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