How can one recipe have so many of my favorite things in it? Bacon with bourbon, caramel, and apples? Awesome. It's probably too much to ask (and too gross) to add raw oysters, ramen, and jiaozi. Roasted nuts, however... I'll have to try this out.

Ingredients

8 Granny Smith apples

8 wooden sticks

1 (16 ounce) package brown sugar

2/3 cup dark corn syrup

3/4 cup water

1 tablespoon Bacon Salt

2 tablespoons bourbon whiskey

Directions

Insert wooden sticks 3/4 of the way into the stem end of each apple. Place apples on a cookie sheet covered with lightly greased aluminum foil.

Combine sugar, corn syrup and water in a large saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until thermometer registers 290 degrees F (143 degrees C). Remove from the heat and stir in the bourbon if desired.

Keep the saucepan over low heat to keep the caramel liquid for dipping the apples. Stir the Bacon Salt into the caramel. Working quickly, carefully dip apples in the caramel. Place apples on the greased aluminum foil until coating has cooled and hardened.

From: http://www.jdfoods.net/recipe/1086/Bacon%20Salted%20Bourbon%20Caramel%20Apples

Last weekend, my friend Sean Alexander hosted a "BBQ Fantasy Camp" at his home. He invited Grand Champion Pitmaster Konrad Haskins to teach this private class to a small group of us. Konrad is an interesting character, a South African who grew up in London, worked at Microsoft, and then went on to compete (and win) in BBQ contests. He has no shortage of opinions and stories on all topics (typically well-informed and entertaining), which he generously shared throughout our 9am-5pm meat-fest.

I was pleasantly surprised by how practical Konrad was about his BBQ. For instance, rather than smoke the pork shoulder whole for 12-13 hours, he butterflied it and then wrapped it in foil for a few hours after the initial smoking, shortening the cooking time significantly. (He finished it uncovered.) The results were spectacular.

It was also interesting to learn about how competition BBQ differed from home BBQ. He admitted he didn't really like eating competition BBQ. In competitions you only have one or two bites to show off to a judge, so you over-flavor everything to maximize the impact. However, if you did this for something you ate a whole meal of, it would be overpowering. They also use a lot of seemingly weird methods like cooking in fake butter instead of real butter, since the fake butters are engineered to taste more buttery than real butter. Gross.

Over the course of the day, Konrad cooked up a fattie (basically a whole Jimmy Dean sausage rolled in dry rub, smoked, and sliced onto biscuits -- yum!), brisket, pork shoulder, ribs, chicken, tri-tip, and burnt ends (plus biscuits and mushrooms). I never thought I could have too much meat, but I did. It was a good problem to have.

I really enjoyed the day and learned a lot. It certainly didn't hurt that the weather was gorgeous, the company entertaining, and the wine and beer plentiful and tasty. I'm ready to do more grilling and barbequing now. Thanks to Sean (and his awesome wife and my old friend Nickie) for hosting and to Konrad for the great lessons.

 

Here's Konrad showing us how to prep a full brisket; he separated the point from the flat, trimmed most of the fat away, and cooked them separately.

Part of the brisket being finished in a dutch oven with red wine and mirapoix - basically a BBQ Beef Bourguignon. Crazy good and falling apart tender.

Here's another part of the brisket, this one smoked for a few hours, wrapped for a few hours, and finished on the grill for an hour. Look at the smoke ring!

Konrad had a good tip for getting more ribs onto a grill -- roll them up. The rolls are held together with a bamboo skewer running through them.

When you order a steak in China (typically at a Western steak house), they will often not understand what you mean by "medium-rare", etc. Aside from the language issues, they use a different , numerically based system here.

Rare

• Very red and cool center == #3: 三成(sān chéng)－肉很红且凉

Medium rare

• Red, warm center == #4: 四成(sì chéng)－肉红，中心温热

Medium

• Pink center == #5: 五成(wǔ chéng)－中心粉红色

Medium well

• Slightly pink center == #7 七成(qī chéng)－浅粉红色 (I presume #6 is between Medium and Medium well)

Well done

• Cooked throughout == 全熟(quán shú)－全部烤熟，无粉红色

I think my friends know I like bacon. After my previous post about The Bacon Enthusiast Gift Guide, my hometown friend Steve sent me this link to The Ultimate Bacon Lovers Gift Guide. It's another winner full of great gift ideas for the bacon lover in your life (so, pretty much everyone, because who doesn't love bacon?!)

I'm hoping there's a My First Bacon under the tree this year. Just sayin'.

The Ultimate Bacon Lovers Gift Guide from The Bachelor Guy

Nothing says Christmas like bacon. My good friend, Craig, passed this awesome list of bacon gift ideas to me. (Ignore the irony of my Jewish friend sending me bacon gift ideas for Christmas.)

This Bacon Moon Pie looks insane. I hope I'm on Santa's nice list...

Uncrate's Bacon Enthusiast Gift Guide

It's definitely winter in Beijing now. With the cold weather comes a typical Beijing treat -- tang hu lu (糖葫芦). These are Chinese hawthorn fruits on a stick that are candied in a sugar glaze. The fruit is cut in half and pitted, then put back together on the stick. It's really a great combination with the sugary goodness balancing the tart hawthorn. I think they're quite lovely too. You can now get other fruit like kiwis and strawberries done this way sometimes, but hawthorns are the real deal.

In addition to shops and stalls, you'll see people selling tang hu lu off the back of a bike. Regardless, they're always poked into a round stand like below.

Here's Michael (10) enjoying his tang hu lu this evening (artsy photo courtesy of More Lomo, an iPhone app.)

In addition to my tours of Golkonda Fort and both the old and new parts of Hyderabad, obviously, I ate a lot while I was in India. I don't have any photos of the meals (bad foodie), but I thought I'd share a few thoughts and observations.

I've always loved Indian food; I will reliably eat Indian food like a starving dog and continue to eat until I am beyond painfully full. I simply have no self-control around the stuff. Even though I really only ate in the hotel and in the Microsoft cafeteria (due to some risk of civil unrest around the Ayodha ruling), it should be no surprise that the Indian food in India was better than any I've had outside of India (including amazing Indian meals I've had in London and Singapore.) The flavors were just deeper and more complex than those I've had before.

Hyderabad is known for it's biryanis -- a rice dish typically made with goat meat in Hyderabad. Even the chicken version in the Microsoft cafeteria was spicy and ridiculously tasty -- a far cry from the biryanis I've had before. I also gorged on masala dosas and spicy lentil stew for breakfast; not my typical breakfast fare to be sure, but I think it would be if I had a source of dosas near home. The other curries, dals, breads, and tandoori roasted meats I had were stunningly good as well. (My mouth is watering as I write this...)

The only meal I had in a restaurant outside my hotel and the Microsoft cafeteria was actually a Chinese meal! As it turns out, the Indians are crazy about Chinese food (or their take on it); it's apparently the most popular cuisine in India outside of Indian food (there is even have an Indian Chinese restaurant in Redmond, WA but apparently it's not very good.) I saw Chinese restaurant signs all over Hyderabad, even in the less affluent parts of town.

The Indians have adapted Chinese cooking to their tastes and ingredients. My friend Saurabh took me to a very upscale place in the Taj Hotel; it looked pretty authentically Chinese and the menu looked relatively familiar as well. That's where the similarity stopped though.

The appetizer was sort of like french fries in a chili sauce. It tasted very good, but the flavors were a mix of Chinese and Indian tastes (and french fried potatoes don't factor into Chinese cuisine much). For our mains, we had two of the more popular dishes: "Manchurian gravy" and chow mein. The Manchurian gravy was a brown sauce with deep fried cauliflower balls; it was sweet and soy saucy with chilis and garlic. Pretty tasty. The chow mein was like other Chinese fried noodles, although there was something a little different about it as well.

For dessert, we had a classic Indian-Chinese dish. It was deep-fried wonton skins cut into wide noodles soaked with honey and served with vanilla ice cream. Of course, it was delicious, although I'm quite sure no Chinese emperor ever had this delight.

Wikipedia has a whole article on Indian-Chinese food. Fascinating! Who knew?

I really wish I had more time in India to try even more dishes. Next time...

Last week we rented a house in Holmes Harbor on Whidbey Island with our friends Barbi and Kellie for a few days of crabbing, sunshine, and general laziness. Our friends Nori, Stacy, and Jarrett (and Stacy's dad) from Beijing came out too for a bit since the were in Seattle as well.

The house was part of an eighteen acre holly farm (yes, Christmas holly needs farms too), appropriately named Holly Hills Farm. It was really a lovely place on a quiet harbor. They have three houses for rent there - a larger, modern place (which we had), a mid-sized farm house, and a smaller farm house. Our place was well outfitted with everything you could want -- great kitchen with every manner of tool/pot/pan, grill, propane boiler (for all those crabs!), washer/dryer, fluffy towels, etc.

Here's the house from the water side:

Here's the view down from the house toward their dock:

Barbi brought her 19' speedboat and crab traps along. We soon found a good spot and were hauling in tons of crabs. We probably pulled up 200 over the course of four days, keeping about fifty (there are size/gender restrictions plus daily limits -- fortunately, we had several licenses so we could get a lot of crabs. The beach was also full of lovely, easily-dug clams as well as mussels, although we bought mussels since the store-bought ones are cleaner and not stuck together.

Michael (10) driving out to check out traps:

A pot full of yummy crabs -- turkey legs are awesome bait! They are cheap, last all day, and crabs can't resist.

A blazing pot full of crabby goodness:

The day's bounty (actually, just part of it...) We wound up eating crab a million ways -- boiled crab, crab fried rice, black bean crab, crab roll, crab omelets, crab cocktail, cold cracked crab, and more. We also had oysters (with whisky and one of this year's Oyster Wine Content winners), hyper fresh and ripe berries of all descriptions, black cod kasuzuke, fresh corn, and mussels and clams. It was absolutely incredible. By the second or third day, though, Michael declared a crab moratorium for himself.

In addition to crabbing and being lazy, the kids fished a bit. Stacy's dad is an avid fisherman and taught the kids how to bottom fish for dogfish -- little sharks:

Andrew (13) hooked into two of the dogfish, but since we weren't using steel leaders, both cut the line as they approached the dock. I can't say that I'm disappointed that we didn't land it. I wasn't sure I wanted to mess with unhooking the things.

We also just played in the water a bunch (OK, the kids did -- it was pretty cold...)

It was really a perfect way to spend a few days. We highly recommend Holly Hills Farm and hope to go there again next summer.

Like many boys, Andrew (13) and Michael (10) are fascinated by all things military and have expressed interest in becoming snipers or some such. So, as part of helping them explore this interest, on our recent camping trip, I brought an MRE (Meal Ready to Eat -- a military ration) along for them to try.

Here are the contents of the MRE laid out. Our menu for the evening was a "pork rib, boneless, imitation" (really a chopped pork burger formed into the shape of ribs and covered in a barbecue sauce of sorts), refried beans, crackers, cheese spread, peanut butter (which we couldn't eat since the kids are allergic), and an oatmeal cookie.

In the interest of giving us the best chance of enjoying the meal, I heated up the meat and beans in some boiling water (the pack didn't contain chemical heaters unfortunately).

Here's what the meat and beans looked like. The beans tasted fine, just like you'd expect canned refried beans to taste like. The "pork rib, boneless, imitation" wasn't as bad as I had feared. Overall the meal tasted like a mid-quality school cafeteria lunch.

That said, once they had a taste of the various parts of the MRE, the boys went back to their hotdogs pretty quickly.

Even after this experience, the boys have not renounced their interest in going military, although I think they'll have to broaden their dietary tolerance before they can really make it.

(For the record, the MRE was made by Sopackco and was a civilian version of the MREs they make for the military.)

Once again, Taylor Shellfish (and my friend Jon Rowley)sponsored the Pacific Coast Oyster Wine Competition to find the best wines to accompany oysters. The best wines are crisp and God-like with fresh oysters. Here are this year's winners:

Listed alphabetically:

Acrobat 08 Pinot Gris (OR)

Anne Amie Vineyards 09 Pinot Gris (OR)

Anne Amie Vineyards Cuvee A 09 Müller-Thurgau (OR)

**Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery 08 Sauvignon Blanc (WA)

CMS White 08 (WA)

*Columbia Winery 08 Pinot Gris (WA)

Franciscan Estates 08 Sauvignon Blanc (CA)

Heitz Wine Cellars 09 Sauvignon Blanc (CA)

*King Estate Winery 08 Pinot Gris (OR)

**Kunde Family Estate 09 Sauvignon Blanc (CA)

* Prior Oyster Award Winner       ** Multiple prior Oyster Awards

I'm sure these are all great, or you can always drink whisky with oysters for my personal favorite food/drink pairing...