Sunday Breakfast: Champagne-Braised Pork Belly and Eggs with Bacon Popcorn

First of all, for some reason, I woke up at 11:15 this morning, completely appalled that I had slept until 11:15 but also extremely angry that B interrupted my dream where I was on a beautiful, warm tropical vacation on some clear water, white sand beach somewhere.

Secondly, I made a tasty experimental breakfast: Champagne-braised pork belly and eggs with bacon popcorn.

I'm not going to pretend that I was out of bed by 11:17 and whipping this breakfast together with random bits from the fridge and pantry. It was around 11:45 when I finally forced myself out of bed. And I actually spent yesterday afternoon braising the pork belly in anticipation of this meal.

I bought popcorn from the bulk section at the corner greengrocer a few months ago for a movie night on the couch that never happened. The bag has been sitting in the fruit basket on the counter ever since. Growing up, my parents used to make popcorn in this funny little vertical hot-air popper that resembled a 1980s space-age grain hopper. It had a cup on the top of it that would melt butter as the popcorn popped; at the end of the popping cycle, you'd take the cup of warm butter and drizzle it on the warm popcorn. I loved loved loved the popcorn bits that would get extra-soaked with butter (excuse me, margarine--this was the late 80s). The ones at the top of the bowl, near the center, where my dad would start the warm-butter pour. Something about the combination of the chewy popped texture on the outside and the crunchy inside kernel, and the fact that there were only a few of these per bowl, made popcorn night so delicious.

So it dawned on me that a fried egg could have the same effect. The gooey yolk, soaked up by the outer warm softness of a piece of popped popcorn. The same crunchy inside kernel.

I was thinking about a good hunk of meat that I could pair the egg-and-popcorn combination with, and pork belly popped into my head. Pork belly is the original bacon gangsta--it's the cut of meat that is cured to make the bacon we all know and love--so it seemed appropriate for a hearty breakfast. Bacon itself can be a little overpowering (and salty) on the flavor front. Working with pork belly would give me more control over the flavor profile of the final dish.

We keep a jar of bacon fat in the back of the fridge for such uses as cupcake filling. I thought it would be fun if I used the OBG (Original Bacon Gangsta), which isn't actually bacon, and then use an actual bacon by-product (bacon fat) in something else, like the popcorn. Get it? I'm totally deconstructing bacon in this dish! Like one of those fancy chefs on TV! A quick Google search informed me that bacon fat was actually used quite often in stovetop popcorn in ye olden days. So, down with margarine. And, those 1950s families really knew how to eat.

I'm not going to give you a recipe for the pork belly braise because it wasn't that great. It was good (what slow-cooked fatty piece of pork isn't?), but not very interesting. Next time, I might try a braise that's a little sweeter to evoke another breakfast staple: maple syrup.

Here's what the final product looked like. I recommend popping the popcorn (1/2 c of kernels + 2 1/2 tbsp of bacon fat), then letting it sit for a few minutes to really soak up the bacony flavor. The eggs need to be over easy so that you can burst the yolk all over the bacony popcorn and let it sop up some more good flavors.

Enjoy! Then take a nice long walk to clear the arteries.



Before.



After. Let the amazingness ensue!

Cupcakes With Bacon Cream Filling

You heard me.

In early November, we celebrated girlfriend's birthday, our decision to shack up together in cozy San Francisco bliss, and my new life as a cat-mom with a fancy little shindig at the apartment. This is the same occasion where I discovered the to-die-for chocolate stout cake recipe on epicurious.com. I also decided to try my hand at filling cupcakes with tasty vanilla cream.

And I bought all of the implements to complete my project, finally replacing the muffin tins I had lost and picking up some pastry bags and tips for the filling portion of the program. I found a basic vanilla cream filling recipe online from a fellow baker-blogger and felt satisfied enough with the positive comments to try it.

It didn't turn out great (so thank god for that chocolate stout cupcake recipe I can't stop talking about). First of all, the filling recipe called for a lot of powdered confectioners sugar, which I had on the shelf, but apparently hadn't touched in a year. The result: Really lumpy confectioners sugar, which not only didn't blend well, but also clogged the tips on the pastry bags. Some cupcakes got tons of filling, some got zero. Second problem: Shortening.

I totally hate shortening. Shortening tastes like slippery. This filling recipe called for shortening and I knew I shouldn't do it but I did it anyway because it was my first time doing it. And so the filling--at least in the cupcakes that didn't fall victim to the clogging--tasted like white vanilla slippery. When girlfriend and I sampled one before the guests arrived, I said,

"I hate shortening. It tastes like slippery." [Pause, thinking about my soft fat alternatives.] "Wouldn't this be great with bacon fat instead?!"

Flash forward a few weeks. It's Sunday, one week after having made a fantastic breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast at home. I've got a few tablespoons of bacon fat in the fridge, and it's a few hours before Colleen's birthday potluck. I decide to give the bacon cream filling concept a go.

I scour the interwebs for a different decent chocolate cake recipe, just to switch it up a bit. All signs point me to a devil's food cake recipe from that lady Martha. I'll summarize the recipe with two words: Big. Disappointment. The cake really lacked the deep chocolate flavor I was looking for. I guess I also could have made it wrong, too.

But no matter, because it was the bacon cream filling that was really supposed to shine anyway.

I adapted this recipe from the Delish blog
(note that there's not a spec of slippery shortening in sight, yay!). I have no idea if it's really okay to just dump a bunch of bacon fat into a recipe and call it even. But no one vomited or immediately died, so I'm assuming it's not a short-term problem. I can't make any guarantees about long-term artery health, however.

Bacon Cream Cupcake Filling
fills up to 36 cupcakes

3 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
3 tbsp bacon fat [note: Some potluck people complained that the bacon flavor wasn't strong enough. I might next time take this up to 4 tbsp fat and 2 tbsp butter to really make it pop.]
1 1/2 c confectioners sugar
3/4 c marshmallow creme
1 1/2 tbsp heavy cream

Using a mixer, beat the butter and bacon fat with the confectioners sugar, marshmallow creme and heavy cream until fluffy and bacon-y. Transfer filling to a pastry bag with 1/4 inch tip.

Insert the tip of the pastry bag into the middle of each cupcake; squeeze lightly for about 5-7 seconds to fill with cream.