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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It all started so innocently, with a bottle of bacon-infused vodka.

[If this isn't one of the greatest of all opening lines, then I'm not a former English major!]

That led to the bacon-infused bourbon. Jamie Boudreau’s cocktail recipe for his bacon bourbon called for cherry cordial, and that got me thinking about making my own cordials or fruit syrups. It’s a well-known preserving technique to cook fruits for a brief time in a simple syrup. While water is extracted from the fruit, sugar is absorbed and incorporated, firming up the fruit and keeping it from turning into mush. The concentration of sugar in the syrup lowers the water activity level and prevents just about anything from growing, with the exception of molds. Add enough alcohol to fortify the syrup (so it’s about 20%), and it will keep indefinitely, without fermenting or turning into vinegar. You can stick to pretty neutral flavors, like white sugar for the sweetener and brandy for the alcohol, or you can compose each jar like a cocktail, choosing honey to complement apricots and kirschwasser to go with preserved cherries.

In the summer, I plan to make some syrups from the fresh fruit that will be available–strawberries, raspberries, blueberries. But once inspiration strikes, it’s hard for me to hold my horses. Fortunately there’s plenty to do this time of year, as many other fruits, particularly stone fruits, work better to make a flavored syrup after they’ve been dried. So here’s what I’ve put up in the last couple days . . .

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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!

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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