Breakfast for dinner, inspired by a Facebook friend who mentioned cracklings and got me thinking about crackling cornbread with sorghum molasses. I had no cracklings and so had to make do with biscuits, but I did have the aforementioned sorghum molasses, as well as farm eggs, and I made some biscuits. I appear to have shaken off the bad biscuit juju; these rose decently and were pretty tasty! And I made them with butter, as I am out of shortening.
The Canadian bacon is from my second attempt at making my own, per the Ruhlman recipe. (My first attempt, I forgot the loin while it was curing in the storage room fridge...for about two weeks. It was a hockey puck when I discovered it.) Brined 72 hours, smoked to 145F, then chilled. I cut slices about 1/4 inch thick, seared them in a hot pan.
Pretty good. When I get ambitious, I'll slice up the entire chunk, vac-seal it in smaller portions, and freeze it. I think it'd be wonderful in a carbonara-ish pasta sauce, or a brown butter sage sauce, or in a lot of soup applications. I'm thinking I may have some tomorrow morning on a leftover biscuit for breakfast, too!
Yes, there was wine for dinner. With bacon and eggs. Sue me.