This recipe is courtesy of Rick Browne. Read more about favorite Superbowl Party dishes from chefs on the Burn! Blog here.

Ingredients

4 large Bosc (or D’Anjou) pears
4 cups cranberry-raspberry sauce
2 cups Riesling or other sweet white wine
1/4 cup sugar
2 cinnamon sticks, broken into pieces
1 (10 oz.) package frozen raspberries in syrup, thawed

Instructions

Combine the juice, wine, sugar and cinnamon stick halves in deep saucepan or casserole.
Peel the pears, slice a small piece from the bottom so they’ll stand up in a pan, and core the bottom of the pears using a sharp-serrated edge corer. Stand the pears upright in the pan and cover; bring to a boil then reduce heat to simmer the pears for 20-25 minutes, or until they are fork-tender. These can be cooked on a stovetop, on a bbq side burner or in the barbecue grill for a slightly smoky flavor.
Remove and discard the cinnamon sticks.
Process the raspberries in food processor or blender until smooth; strain and discard the seeds. Spoon the raspberry coulis onto serving plates; place pears on top of sauce.
Drizzle the chocolate sauce over pears and then sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar, serve.

Unlike bacon that comes from the pork belly, Canadian bacon (also called back bacon or Irish bacon) is made with trimmed pork loins or tenderloins. It is traditionally wet-cured by injecting the meat with a curing solution. In England this bacon includes the fat portion of the loin. Read more about making bacon in Mike Stines’ article here.

Ingredients

1 2 1/2-pound center cut boneless pork loin

For the brine:

2 quarts water, divided
1/2 cup (4.95 ounces or 140 grams) coarse kosher salt
1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
4 Turkish bay leaves, crumbled
1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 level teaspoons pink salt

Instructions

Remove any fat and silverskin from the loin. (The trim weight will be about two pounds.)

Bring one quart of water to a simmer over medium heat. Add the remaining brine ingredients except the pink salt. Simmer and stir until the salt and sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat, add the remaining quart of water and cool to 40 degrees F. Once the brine is cool add the pink salt and stir well to dissolve.

Using a kitchen syringe, inject the pork loin with the brining solution (you want to inject 10 to 15 percent of the raw weight with the brine solution so for this loin I used one half cup of brining solution). Place the injected loin in a large nonreactive container. Cover with the remaining brine and refrigerate at least five days or up to seven days, turning every day.

After brining, soak the loin in cold water for at least one hour, changing the water every 30 minutes. Pat the loin dry and refrigerate, uncovered on a cooling rack over a half sheet pan, for one or two days to allow a pellicle to form.

Remove the loin from the refrigerator and season liberally with your favorite pork rub or Cajun seasoning. My recommendation is 1/2 to one tablespoon of rub per pound. Bring the loin to room temperature. I tie the loin with butcher’s twine to form a cylindrical roll but it’s not really necessary.

Prepare your smoker for cooking at 225 degrees F., using apple and sugar maple wood (or whatever wood you prefer; I would not use mesquite or a heavily flavored wood). Smoke the loin to an internal temperature of 150 degrees F. (about two hours or so depending on your smoker temperature). Remove the loin from the smoker and allow it to cool for at least 30 minutes before slicing.

After smoking, the loin weighed in at one pound seven ounces so if you’re going to the time consuming process of making your own bacon, it’s probably a good idea to do either a full loin or a half loin.

Pan-fry or oven-roast the slices to your desired degree of doneness (you don’t want to overcook the bacon). The sliced, uncooked bacon may also be frozen between sheets of waxed paper and wrapped with plastic wrap for up to six months.

Most pumpkin pies use canned solid-packed pumpkin, which gives the end product that nice smoothness we’ve all come to appreciate. The flesh you scrape out of a large pumpkin is more akin to wet pasta than what you find in a can. No one likes runny pumpkin pie. Luckily, my friend Sam had some experience dealing with scavenged pumpkin meat. On his advice, I strained the pumpkin through some cheese cloth and let it dry until it was damp but not wet, then pureed it until I had the 2 cups called for in the recipe.

You can read the entire article by Mark Masker on the Burn! Blog here.

Ingredients

2 cups strained and pureed smoked pumpkin
2 eggs
1 cup evaporated milk
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
pastry for a 9-inch pie crust

Instructions

Start by straining the smoked pumpkin to get rid of excess liquid and let it dry a little bit. Puree it in small batches, then combine it with everything but the pie crust and blend it all until smooth. Pour the mixture into the crust and bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until you can insert a knife into the pie one in from the edge and pull the knife out clean. Let it cool for an hour, then chill it in the refrigerator before serving.