Here’s a terrific HD video made at the recent Que’n For Kids BBQ Contest by Deep End Diner Eddie Lin:

The Bacon Explosion from Ed Lin on Vimeo.

I never thought that bacon can actually “lighten” a dish as calorically dense as the bacon explosion, but it does. In case you don’t know about the Bacon Explosion, it’s a mat of woven bacon wrapped around the sausage encasing a core of crispy, cooked bacon. It was an internet phenomenon a couple years back and I’m finally getting around to making one and blogging about it.

Listen – if you’ve ever seen an uncooked Jimmy Dean chub, it’s a fat cylinder the diameter of a soup can. If I were to cook this chub as is, sliced it into rounds, and served it, it would be a dense, 3 inch disc of meat, fat and gristle. The way to lighten this dense disc, ironically, is to press out the sausage into a thin layer first, wrap it around a core of crisp, coarsely chopped bacon, and reform it into a log. The bacon in the center actually breaks up the dense texture of what would be a solid slug of sausage and makes it much more pleasant to eat.

Now that we’re clear on the definition of “light,” do these jeans make my ass look “fat?”

…  a great food country. Cooks from every other nation bring their proud food traditions, and submit them before the collective “eeeew, what’s that?” of a squeamish American public.

… a place where our most delicious native culinary tradition, slow smoked barbecue, is celebrated in backyards and contests from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon.

… a country where my rainbow coalition of a BBQ team was chosen to represent America’s other, other favorite national pastime (after baseball, and invading sovereign nations) for a short video documentary by the US State Department. Check it out here:

This was shot at the 2008 Stagecoach country music festival. If you didn’t know better, it looks like they held a  concert to play second fiddle to an enormous barbecue contest, instead of the other way around. Thanks to Big Country for joining forces with the Four Q team for this contest (hence “Four Q Country”), our friends Glen and Janette for their hard work at this event, Janine and Brian for a fantastic video production, and Thom Emery and Ben Lobenstein for their work to make this contest successful.

Happy Fourth of July, everybody!

I’m in Modesto, California this week for The Meet: Blues, Brews and Barbecue. It’s one of the biggest barbecue contests west of the Mississippi held in conjunction with a national caliber track meet. I’m sharing a stage with Ray “Dr. BBQ” Lampe and Brent Walton, one of the best competition BBQ cooks in the country who also lives in this area. We’re teaching a BBQ 101 class in front of 3000 or so people this Saturday, and my segment is about grilled pizzas.

As part of the buildup, we taped a couple of preview spots for Sacramento’s News10 morning show, Sacramento & Co. You can see me on today’s video clip here . Yesterday’s clip with Ray and Brent is here. Part of my mission was to pitch this class and get people interested in coming to learn how to grill a pizza.

How did that pizza look on the grill? Bet you didn’t realize it wasn’t baked. I was asked to have a pizza made before the spot because I only had about 60 seconds for my bit. That’s not enough time to bake pizza live for the camera. If making a cold pizza look delicious weren’t hard enough, we also didn’t have that grill fired up, either. We didn’t want spend all morning firing up the charcoal and waiting for the grill to cool down after the taping. So what to do? I put the flame spreader tip on my propane torch and “baked” the pesto and chicken sausage pizza. How’d I do?

Sorry to keep you in suspense by not ending this mango saga sooner. I sold this story to the L.A. Times, and wanted to avoid any rights conflicts with them. Read about it on page three of today’s Food section, or for a limited time, on the Times website (free registration required).

From a business standpoint, 2007 was a trial run for all parties in the supply chain, and they smartly chose a “wait and see” approach in this new business of importing mangos from India. This year, they brought in relatively small consignments by costly air freight. Why risk big shipments of expensive fruit that might not sell? When they smooth the import process, we’ll probably see an improvement in the quality of fruit, access to more of the other commercial mango varieties grown in India, and most critically, lower prices.

The price of these mangos is expected to drop substantially when they can perfect the logistics of shipping them via refrigerated ocean freight. Since Indian produce exporters already send their mangos on sea voyages to other nations, it’s a matter of time before they perfect the timing of picking, packing and shipping mangos for U.S. consumption.

The catch 22 is that few American distributors are willing to foot the financial risk of importing an ocean container full of Indian mangos. Why not? American consumers haven’t shown enough interest them yet. How come? Because they’re too expensive. Why’s that? Because they’re shipped by air freight. What would it take to bring down the cost? And so on.

In the meantime, expect to pay high prices for Indian mangos, if you can find them at all. You’re most likely to find them at the largest Indian groceries in cities with a big Indian-American community. In Southern California, these stores stocked them as of last week, for an average price of $35 for a case of twelve.

Pioneer Cash & Carry, 18601 Pioneer Blvd., Artesia, CA; 562-809-9433.

Ambala Cash & Carry, 18411 Pioneer Blvd., Artesia, CA; 562-924-1441.

Farm Fresh, 18551 Pioneer Blvd., Artesia, CA; 562-865-3191.

New Bombay Stores, 917 W. Foothill Blvd., Upland, CA; 909-981-9323; and 1385 Blaine St., Unit H3, Riverside, CA 951-788-3042.

Bombay Bazaar, 3848 N. McKinley St., Corona, CA; 951-272-3820.

Melissa’s World Produce http://www.melissas.com ; 800-588-0151; $55 per case, plus shipping.