Inside Sonoma

As food trends come and go (goat, anyone?), one fad is surely sticking around.

It’s bacon.

It seems chefs can’t get enough of the salty stuff. Recently, I’ve come across chocolate-covered bacon, gummi bacon and bacon jellybeans, plus bacon-flavored toothpicks and bacon mints for an after-bacon treat. I’ve enjoyed pork belly BLTs; soy-soaked, pork-belly-stuffed, five-spice pot stickers; bacon bon bons (sautéed prunes plump with goat cheese wrapped in smoked bacon and slicked in port demi-glace), and a Pigwich (cocoa pizelle cookies, red-wine apples and maple bacon ice cream).

Last week, I ate a chocolate cupcake slathered in brown sugar butter cream crowned with bacon toffee.

I’ve even (unfortunately) tasted bacon-flavored lip balm.

So it’s really no surprise that there’s now a Bacon of the Month Club, from one of Sonoma Country’s leading purveyors of artisan pork. Duskie Estes and John Stewart, chef-owners of Zazu in Santa Rosa & Bovolo in Healdsburg and longtime promoters of heritage breed black pigs, have created a community supported bacon membership, where, for $110 a year, you can pick up a pack each month from the restaurant (shipping is available, too, for a fee). If you need more, you can double that to two packs a month for $199.

Such is Stewart’s passion, in fact, that he and Estes created an entire company around nothing but pork. It’s called, appropriately, Black Meat Pig Company.

What makes this bacon so special? First, it’s the pigs – sourced from a sustainable heritage breed hog ranch, raised without antibiotics and hormones, and allowed to roam free range.

Then, it’s the process – the meat is dry cured with brown sugar for up to 21 days and then finished with applewood smoking for 12 hours (compare that to the flavor of most commercial bacons that are quickly wet cured injected and treated with liquid smoke). The result is a bacon that is perfectly balanced in salt, sweet, and smoke; complex from the brown sugar and real wood smoke; and one where you can taste the quality of the pork.

Last but not least, it’s the bacon maker – John, himself. Trained by superstar chef Mario Batali and his father Armandino Batali, Stewart is a cured meats expert, and handles everything from breaking down the big beasts (the porkers may be 450 pounds), to crafting artisan salumi.

If an entire year of bacon seems like a commitment, grab a single 12-ounce pack to start ($10). But it’s a guarantee – after one bite, you’ll be back for more.

Details: Zazu Restaurant + Farm, 3535 Guerneville Rd., Santa Rosa, 707.523.4814, blackpigmeatco.com.

Editors note: John loves the pig so much he even got it tattooed on his arm http://inside-sonoma.com/blackpigmeatco/.