Bacon

You will need to make the stock at least 1 day before you make the soup.

The single most vivid taste memory I associate with Thanksgiving is the flavor of crisp turkey skin. I almost always get first dibs on the wing tips and sneak into the kitchen to peel off the crispiest pieces of golden, salt-and-peppery cracklin’s before the carvers go to work. The intensity of flavor means it doesn’t take a lot of skins to satisfy my craving, but by the end of the meal, I usually find myself yearning for just one more piece. This corn bread is designed to take the pressure off that yearning, substituting the smoky, salty flavor of crackly bacon for the turkey skin. However, I often make a variation of this, buying a half-pound of chicken or turkey skins from the butcher, laying them out on a sheet pan, seasoning them with salt and pepper, and baking at 350°F until they render their fat and become very crisp and crumbly, just like bacon. The use of sugar, honey, buttermilk, lots of corn kernels, and polenta-grind cornmeal (rather than the usual finely ground cornmeal) gives this bread moisture, texture, and sweet yet tart flavor bursts. The bacon (or cracklings) on the top is the final payoff, complementing any Thanksgiving dinner or re-creating Thanksgiving flavor memories throughout the year. I have an ongoing love affair with good corn bread. By good I mean moist and sweet, with crunch and texture. This recipe is my favorite, and it is the best corn bread I have ever made or eaten. Corn bread falls into the category of quick breads, since it is leavened by baking powder (see information on chemical leavening). Even though this book is not about chemically leavened quick breads, I couldn’t resist adding it to the collection because, frankly, I just don’t think it gets any better than this.

Many camping menus include pork and beans. You can use ham, salt pork, bacon, or leftover pulled pork to season the beans. If using canned beans, rinse well and add for the last half hour of cooking. An excellent source for dried heirloom beans is Rancho Gordo (see Resources). Chipotle powder adds a little kick to this recipe.

My mother often cooked this dish when my family camped out. If you have leftover cooked chicken, use that instead of the smoked chicken, though the smoky taste is great in this dish.

Traditional chowders all start off with a hearty soup base of onions and potatoes, and that makes a good soup just by itself. To this fragrant base you then add chunks of fish, or clams, or corn, or whatever else seems appropriate.