Makin' bacon and other culinary delights

Making one's own bacon, from the raw, just-cut pork belly, seemed as foreign to me a week ago as growing one's own wheat in pots on the back porch for making bread.

Once the process began unfolding, the peculiarity went away, largely because the formula is fairly simple: Cut the pork belly slab (left) into appropriate sizes and thicknesses, coat thoroughly in a salt cure formula, consisting of Kosher salt and brown sugar, wrap tightly in plastic for a wo-day cure, turning the package over after one day. Then one towel dries the meat, hangs it to dry for a day or two and then puts it in a smoker for a couple of hours.

On Monday, we will cook the bacon as part of a breakfast comptency test in which we also must prep, cook and plate a French omelet, eggs over easy and a poached egg.

Any bread that comes with the breakfast won't be from wheat I have grown on my back porch. I won't be doing that.

Today's menu: Could be flounder, could be omelet

A dose of reality for the culinary classroom today: Depending on what is delivered, and what is not, we will cook either a flounder dinner or an egg breakfast.

Chef said Thursday that he put in an order for fresh flounder, and if the flat fish with the bulging eyes arrive, each of us likely will get a whole one to clean, fillet and cook to chef's specifications. First course will be a salad that hasn't yet been defined and second course a soup, possibly based on cauliflower.

If the fish don't arrive, we will cook breakfast -- French omelet, eggs over easy, scrambled eggs in a vol au vent tube of pastry or poached egg. And, maybe, bacon. Our bacon slabs are at the end of their curing, hanging in the walk-in cooler to await today's smoking in cherry-wood chips.

That's the reality. In a restaurant, one must make do with what is available.

Chef and we students are banking on the fish coming in. Then we can cook breakfast on Monday, our final daily cooking lesson before the midweek final exam.