A Leslie Wong Blog

16:40 PST.

Besides being a major sporting event, I look at the Superbowl as a yearly opportunity to pull out the DeLonghi deep fryer and fry everything in sight. The day before, I go the supermarket and buy everything that is fryable.

A couple of days ago, the NY Times, published an article on the Bacon Explosion and for the first time in 19 years, I decided to give the DeLonghi a rest. But The Times seems more concerned with the blogging phenomena, I’m more concerned with pork, so I went to BBQ Addicts for the recipe. The simplicity of the Bacon Explosion pushed me over the edge. Four ingredients and four pounds of pork. How can you go wrong?

The ingredients:

2 pounds thick cut bacon
2 pounds Italian sausage
1 jar of your favorite barbeque sauce
1 jar of your favorite barbeque rub

The most difficult part is the bacon weave and keeping yourself from eating the pound of cooked bacon you’re supposed to put inside the roll.

3:16 PM.

On our way home from Oakland, we stopped for dinner in Milpitas, at South Legend Sichuan Restaurant on North Milpitas Blvd. Everyone in the restaurant was of Chinese descent, always a good sign when you desire good Chinese food.

When I asked the waiter for pot stickers, he said, “We don’t have that kind of tourist food” – another good sign.

One thing they did have were pork ribs that had been cut into single ribs and then fried in a wok. Usually I cook ribs in our smoker, but how can you pass up deep frying something? So I bought a rack of baby back ribs, removed the membrane, dusted them with some corn starch, five spice, salt and sichuan peppercorns and tossed them into a wok full of hot oil.

I use a Lodge 7 quart Dutch Oven for my lazy-q smoker. I throw a couple of hunks of Lazzarri Mesquite lump in it and put it over a deep fryer burner with a low flame in the firebox of my smoker.

It’s probably overkill, but I thought it would be better at holding in the heat. I don’t really take care of it – after I use it in the smoker, I just put it on a concrete section of the patio to let it cool off. Then I store it under the smoker on the shelf. The heat from the burner is so intense that the bottom is actually convex – it won’t sit flat on a flat surface anymore.

I haven’t used it for a few months and the surprising thing was that I noticed it had actually developed a crack. It sits outside in whatever the humidity is here – I’ve never had to add water to the humidifier in my humidor – so I haven’t taken care of it. You can see the large flakes of metal that are coming off both the inside and the outside.

Fortunately, my well cared for 5 quart Wagner Dutch Oven that I use for deep frying (it very well seasoned) doesn’t suffer from this problem.

Today I saw that Certified Angus Beef brand Tri-Tip costs $8.99/lb at Nob Hill (Tri Tip is sometimes called triangular roast – it’s cut from the bottom sirloin). I did a double-take on the price and then wondered if I’d heard any Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy stories lately.

For some reason, my reference is still $0.29/lb chicken wings at Pioneer 30 years ago.

“There are many ways to sharpen a knife. This method produces a good general purpose edge.”

About 25 years ago, Kenny bought me a Henckels Four Star 8″ chef’s knife because I told him that I needed a good knife to slice some chicken breasts. I was going to make Pierre Franey’s Chicken and Avocado in Cream, which Kenny liked. When Pierre Franey’s column first came out in the NY Times, I thought the title was “The 60 Second Gourmet,” not “The 60 Minute Gourmet.”

A few months ago, I broke the tip off the knife while trying to separate some frozen hot links. (I use a flathead screwdriver now). I used my Dremel to grind the tip so it looks like a Santoku, but I haven’t been able to keep it sharp. I’ve had it sharpened professionally 3 times in the past 5 years but they weren’t great sharpening jobs.

I’ve used a Zip-Zap, the Accusharp All Purpose Knife and Blade Sharpener and a steel, but it still doesn’t hold an edge very well. My Dexter Chinese chefs knife always stays sharp. I have a 30 year old six-inch Sabatier chef knife that also holds an edge well. I used to get my knives sharpened by a knife sharpening guy in Manhattan who drove a Step Van around and stopped at restaurants. I would bring him 4 or 5 knives, but he would always say, “Ahhhhhh, Sabatier!” about the little six-inch knife.

I like Tim Andersen’s first paragraph of Step 3 (click read more). I had to go to San Jose to get my sharpening stone (at 99 Ranch) but it actually cost $0.99.

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