TGRWT #22: Raisin

After a long vacation, TGRWT is back! The theme is raisin and there's a new twist to this round... no second ingredient given. Instead, we've been encouraged to use the foodpairing site to find our own pairings. I went with bacon, apple and walnut for the pairing ingredients and, since my usual inclination is to think sweet, with raisin making that an even easier choice, I decided to go savory with the dish.



fried bacon
60 g egg whites
340 g cold soda water
162 g flour
18 g crisp coat (you can omit this and use 180 g flour)

Cook bacon strips until lightly browned but not crisp, drain on paper towels. Beat the egg whites to soft peaks. Combine the flour and crisp coat. Whisk the water into the flour mixture and fold in the egg whites. Very lightly coat the bacon strips in the batter and fry in 375 F oil until golden brown and crisp. Drain on a rack.

pickled raisins
150 g raisins
115 g cider vinegar
115 g water
50 g sugar
5 g salt
1/2 jalapeno, minced (I used a ripe red jalapeno for color)
1 clove garlic, minced
2 g mustard seeds
small sprig fresh thyme

Heat everything to boiling, simmer briefly, cool and store in the fridge for at least 8 hours.

toasted walnuts
Chop walnuts, lightly toast them in an oven or hot pan, toss with roasted walnut oil and smoked salt.

apple butter
apples
brown sugar
cinnamon
nutmeg
cloves
salt
vanilla extract

I didn't bother with measurements for this one, just kinda winged it and adjusted to taste about halfway through the cooking. I put everything except the vanilla in a slow cooker, cooked it on high for a couple hours stirring now and then, set the cooker to low and let it go with occasional stirring for about 10 hours. I then pureed it with a stick blender, bumped the cooker back to high and cooked it with the lid off for a while to thicken. I added the vanilla at the end and put it in the fridge to chill.

Ultra-Sperse 3
fresh thyme
cracked black pepper

Whisk Ultra-Sperse into some of the apple butter. (I do this to keep any liquid from seperating out on the plate and to help it hold it's shape better, it's completely optional. I'd give a measurement but I didn't measure, I just looked for the texture I wanted.) Put a strip or two of the warm bacon on a plate. Garnish with drained pickled raisins with some of the garlic and jalapeno, toasted walnuts, a few dollops of apple butter, fresh thyme leaves and cracked black pepper.

Verdict: In my opinion, a tasty and well balanced dish. Perfect? Of course not. But I was very happy with the result for a first-round untested idea. It was no great stretch to imagine raisin, bacon, walnut and apple tasting good together so I tried to put a little imagination into how I used those ingredients to maintain some of the spirit of TGRWTs past where the pairings were not always easy to picture working well together.

Would I cook it again? Absolutely. A future rendition would probably include a little more heat, the jalapeno I used was a bit on the tame side, and more thought put into the plating but I was pretty happy with the result overall.