Back in the spring, when I first encountered the smoky, fiery, spreadable Calabrian salami called nduja at London’s Borough Market and posted on it (on April Fool’s Day, no less), I had no idea that nduja fever would sweep American meatheads and that my posts on trying to recreate this salami would become the most frequently viewed of all I’ve written. Apparently, you don’t have to taste the real thing to catch nduja fever; its regional nickname, as “the Red Nutella,” is enough to enflame the imagination.

The biggest obstacle I faced in reproducing what I had tasted is that I don’t have access to any of the Calabrian peppers that traditionally go into this salami. Seeds from Italy had already sold out of Calabrian peppers for the season, and Scott over at Sausage Debauchery is the only one to have tracked down some concentrato di peperoncini with peppers from Calabria at a reasonable price – almost a kilo for a little more than $10 – but I have yet to see a can of it! (Hint, hint. If he can’t send me a mail order address, maybe we’ll just have to do Christmas early this year, and mail him some goodies from the clubhouse in exchange for some cans of fire concentrate.)

In the meantime, I am working on perfecting a secret weapon of my own to turn up the heat.

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No, not after you’ve drunk it all, silly (that would be the mother of all hangovers), but after you’ve made a batch of vin d’orange, you’ll have a pile of peeled blood oranges and be wondering what to do with them.

Marmelade is an obvious choice. Just finish peeling the oranges, tear the sections into smaller pieces (discarding any seeds), layer them in a wide, heavy pot with sugar (mixed with a teaspoon or two of citrus pectin to help it set up), and add some citrus peel (in addition to some extra flavor, this will also contribute pectin to the preserve). When the sugar has leached out a little juice, turn the heat on, and bring the pot to a boil for a few minutes. That’s all there is to making some of the best marmelade you’ve ever tasted.

This year, I’ve decided to keep things simple, as in simple syrup. I simply finish peeling the white pith off the oranges, pop out any seeds, layer the sections in a heavy pot with sugar, and then let it sit for a few hours to allow the sugar to start extracting the juice. No added water to dilute the flavor! Cooking fruit normally turns it to mush, but when fruit is poached in a sugar syrup like this, it actually firms up, as water is drawn out and sugar is drawn in. Then you have both preserved fruit and fruit-flavored syrup.

You could use this preserve as is for putting on pancakes, layering in cakes or trifle, or spooning over ice cream. Think about a pork loin roast stuffed with preserved blood oranges and then basted with the syrup! Or separate them and use the fruit for one thing and the syrup for another. Blood orange syrup should make some bloody good cocktails! How about a blood orange margarita? If you like sauvignon blancs from New Zealand, try this twist on a kir and add a splash of blood orange syrup instead of the traditional cassis. While you wait for your vin d’orange to mature and mellow, you can also fortify your patience with a couple variations on those classic Campari cocktails, the Negroni and the Americano, substituting blood orange syrup for the sweet red vermouth.

Had a great trip to England, but more on that later. I arrived home today to find the blood oranges at their peak and, for those of you who know me, that means one thing: vin d’orange.

This recipe comes from a little and too-little-known book by Georgeanne Brennan, called The Glass Pantry. Where else are you going to find a recipe for making your own capers from nasturtium buds? It also has a recipe for candied rose petals. (They were a big hit on cupcakes at Rosie’s eighth-grade graduation party.) She describes her vin d’orange as “a California version of an old French farmhouse recipe for a flavored, fortified wine.” Over the years, I’ve modified it until I’ve found a combination that seems perfect, so here’s my recipe for one bottle. (Chez Larbo, things have gotten so out of hand that I now mix my batches up in five-gallon carboys, with three cases of wine going into this year’s production.)

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Now we’re talking! Finally, someone has come through and provided the perfect drink to have with TLP’s pulled pork. Not surprisingly, it’s Cuban-inspired and features rum, a fair amount of lime juice, and a good amount of ginger beer, which stand up to all the smoke & spice in the barbecue and slice right through the fat of the pork shoulder.

This cocktail was created by Dale DeGroff, a master mixologist and author of a number of fine cocktail books. Here’s the recipe.

1 ½ oz Añejo rum
½ oz orange curaçao
½ oz lime juice
2 dashes Angostura bitters
2 oz ginger beer
lime wheel for garnish
orange slice for garnish

Añejo means “aged,” and the rum for this drink is specially aged for years in charred oak barrels, which gives it a smokiness that makes it pair wonderfully with barbecue. The lime juice, of course, must be fresh squeezed. I like my ginger beer strong, but then it tends to drown out the other flavors. If you go with a strong ginger beer, bump up the other ingredients (except for the lime) by 50%.

1 Piggy Point to Matt for supplying this recipe! It looks like we now have the official cocktail for this year’s Lar-b-que!

Ah, the sweet taste of vindication! Just a few months ago, Carlos was razzing me about the bacon-infused vodka I made, joking that if he got mixed up with this stuff he probably would not be let back into his favorite bar in Chicago. Then–lo and behold!–the latest issue of a cocktail magazine he gets shows up on his doorstep, with a feature article about drinks from bacon-infused bourbon!

A quick internet search turned up these other bacon-flavored drinks out there.

PDT in NYC has a has an Old Fashioned on their menu with bacon-infused bourbon.

Jimmy’s Cocktail Hour website has a similar Old Fashioned he calls “pig in a bucket.”

Meanwhile, the future of bacon-infused cocktails is being written by Canadian-born Jamie Boudreau, who has been hailed as a “molecular mixologist,” but who call himself instead the “cocktail whisperer.” On his website, spiritsandcocktails.com, he serves up a Bohemian Cocktail that pairs cherry cordial and cherry bitters with bourbon infused with bacon that was smoked over cherry wood (pictured). According to the the Seattle Times, the new three-page drink menu at the bar Tini Bigs, where he currently mixes it up, “features bacon-infused bourbon with chocolate finished off with an orange twist that was lit under a lighter to bring out a ’smokey orange’ flavor.”

Yes, next on my agenda is making some of my own bacon-infused bourbon! Can you imagine? The bacon is used to make the bourbon that’s then used to make the bacon that’s used to make the bourbon . . . in a continuous cycle. If I keep this up, both bourbon and bacon will be able to trace their ancestry to this first batch in January 2009. In reference to recent events that may come close to this in their ability to contribute to the happiness and wellbeing of humanity, maybe I’ll christen this my 2009 Inaugural Bacon and 2009 Inaugural Bourbon. Sounds a little classier than Obama Bacon or Obama Bourbon.

Update 1/28/09: A little more searching around the internet on the subject of “fat washing” (no, this is not something you do at a spa or in a washing machine) turned up other infused liquors: Don Lee at PDT also makes a rum infused with hot buttered popcorn. I say lay that on for the next Ebertfest!

When our good friends Kathy and Patrick lived here in Urbana, they hosted a series of fabulous cocktail parties. For some reason my memory is a little hazy on this point, but I seem to remember that they got up to #8, so I’m naming this gathering Cocktail 9 in their honor. Patrick, I’m even going to wear the black dinner jacket that I somehow picked up at one of your parties.

Sometime in the late afternoon, we’ll start trying out all the cocktail recipes members have submitted for bacon-infused vodka. Our new member Carlos will be in town that day, and he has generously offered to bring his portable bar and mix up a different selection of cocktails that might prove more potable. After the cocktail hour (or two), we’ll plan on sitting down to a potluck dinner. So bring yourself, bring what you need to mix up your cocktail contest recipe, and bring some food to share. I’m sure there will also be a selection of This Little Piggy offerings to sample.

around 5pm ’til whenever, 405 North Garfield Avenue, Champaign

Attention all you amateur mixologists! A pound of pulled pork will go to whichever one of you comes up with the best cocktail recipe featuring–drumroll, please–bacon-infused vodka!

When I told Doug at the Neil Street Piccadilly store what I needed the vodka for, he gave me a long, appraising look before announcing, “You’re. Totally. Fucking. Nuts. You know that, don’t you?” But making bacon-infused vodka is an arcane and elaborate art, known only to cognoscenti who can google “bacon vodka.”

So that you can appreciate the extreme lengths to which I will go and the exacting pains I will take to investigate any phenomenon having to do with porky goodness, however remote, I include full color photographs of the intricate process:

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