Cooking In, Dinner, Lunch, Quick PostKerry Alaric Cheeseboroalcohol, avocado, bacon, booze, brown, brown sugar, butter, buttermilk, chili, Christmas, cilantro, cognac, Cooking In, cream, cucumber, cumin, Dijon, Dinner, ends, garlic, granulated, grits, heavy cream, holiday, hot, juice, lemon, lemon juice, Lunch, milk, mustard, North Carolina, nutmeg, onion, paprika, pork, powder, purée, Quick Post, sauce, sausage, scallion, scallions, shell, shrimp, slab, southern, southern-style, spicy, sriracha, sugar, sweet, tradition, traditional, unbleached, XmasComment

Good "Bitings" Of Comfort And Joy

Cooking In, Dinner, Lunch, Quick PostKerry Alaric Cheeseboroalcohol, avocado, bacon, booze, brown, brown sugar, butter, buttermilk, chili, Christmas, cilantro, cognac, Cooking In, cream, cucumber, cumin, Dijon, Dinner, ends, garlic, granulated, grits, heavy cream, holiday, hot, juice, lemon, lemon juice, Lunch, milk, mustard, North Carolina, nutmeg, onion, paprika, pork, powder, purée, Quick Post, sauce, sausage, scallion, scallions, shell, shrimp, slab, southern, southern-style, spicy, sriracha, sugar, sweet, tradition, traditional, unbleached, XmasComment
Crispy Sriracha-Brown Sugar Bacon Ends | Cucumber-Avocado-Cilantro Purée | Shrimp & Grits | Shrimp sautéed with Sweet Sausage, Garlic, Onions, in Cognac, Lemon Juice, Butter, over Buttermilk Southern-Style Grits

SO, CHRISTMAS DAY, WHILE OTHERS—and probably many of you—were with family, friends, and assorted others, enjoying a umber of courses of a holiday meal, I had the great good fortune of having some long overdue alone time at home. Of course, I cooked. Not anything traditionally seasonal, but something comfortable that would bring joy to my taste buds and to my very soul.

On Christmas Eve I bought some bacon ends, which are the odd-shaped parts leftover from the slab of bacon that gets sliced for more general consumption. I marinated those ends overnight in a mix of sriracha sauce, brown sugar, orange juice, orange zest, nutmeg, onion powder, salt and pepper. The next morning I placed them in a large skillet, roasted them in a 200° over for 4 hours, then flash-fried them in hot oil to get a finishing crisp to the edges with pork skin.

Lean, fatty, crispy, spicy, sweet, porky, perfect bites that I complimented with a purée of cucumber, avocado, cilantro, and lime juice.

Crispy Sriracha-Brown Sugar Bacon Ends

Crispy Sriracha-Brown Sugar Bacon Ends

Crispy Sriracha-Brown Sugar Bacon Ends

Crispy Sriracha-Brown Sugar Bacon Ends

Christmas Morning, as the bacon ends were roasting, I browned some sweet pork sausage with sliced garlic and white parts of scallion, over medium heat, in a deep pot until the sausage was nicely browned. I then turned up the heat and tossed in a pound of jumbo shrimp—still in the shell but deveined—with lemon juice, dijon mustard, parsley, lots of butter, and a half a cup of cognac. I stirred all that goodness for two minutes, until the shrimp just cooked through and the liquid made a nice sauce, then spooned some of the shrimp and sauce over some North Carolina unbleached grits cooked with milk, heavy cream, and more butter.

Shrimp & Grits

Shrimp & Grits

Shrimp & Grits

Shrimp & Grits

I hope you had as yummy a Christmas as I did, and that Santa was good to you. Maybe if I leave a little plate for him next Christmas Eve, he'll bring me that panini press that I know I'll use three times in two days then not again for months...! :)

Bun Apple Tea!

KAC

Crispy Sriracha-Brown Sugar Bacon Ends | Cucumber-Avocado-Cilantro Purée | Shrimp & Grits | Shrimp sautéed with Sweet Sausage, Garlic, Onions, in Cognac, Lemon Juice, Butter, over Buttermilk Southern-Style Grits