Food Friday: Ode to Bacon

Cue up the Beethoven

Bacon is one of my greatest joys: along with whipped cream, a good mattress, air conditioning and Diet Coke. Bacon can be enjoyed breakfast, lunch, dinner, brunch or linner. (I’ll bet even Ron Swanson likes a good rasher or two of bacon.) I must admit that I have not tried bacon ice cream or bacon-studded chocolate, though. I live in a small, cloistered town where ciabatta bread and quinoa are newfangled novelties. Perhaps the next time I go on walkabout I will stumble over some bacon ice cream and will give it a whirl.

For a while we even had a tin of bacon-shaped Band-Aids in the first aid drawer…

Breakfast with bacon is perfection itself. (Particularly if you persuade someone else to do the cooking.) Sometimes I don’t mind standing at the stove, turning the bacon as it hisses and spits at me, while I moodily read the morning paper and swab up the splattered grease. And then, one momentous day, a very clever friend taught me to roast the bacon! No fuss, no muss. (I rarely examine the inside of my oven, because the drifts of corn meal from Friday night pizzas might alarm my otherwise middle-class sensibilities about proper housekeeping and kitchen fire safety…)

This is an indispensible way to prepare bacon if you are cooking for more than one: preheat the oven to 375°F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper, arrange bacon strips on the parchment paper and roast, turning the bacon once about halfway through cooking. This takes about 15 minutes, during which you can amuse yourself with the Weddings pages of the New York Times. Don’t do what we attempted once – thinking that a 400°F oven would work better. Logic does not apply. The bacon browned way too much and way too fast. Slow and steady is the bacon way. Do not even think about using the broiler, which can render the bacon into charred cinders in a flash!

The Tall One is often invited away on weekends to homes where the mothers live to serve huge meals. He returns to our pathetic home and hearth, waxing poetical about the mountains of pancakes, towering redwood stacks of sausages, K2s of bacon and endless mountain reservoirs of pure maple syrup. I would like to be included in one of these weekends, please.

And, if the kind weekend invitations are not enough, The Tall One goes to university in a town with a Flying Biscuit restaurant. If you ever have the opportunity, you must stop and have breakfast there. Their breakfasts are huge, humbling affairs! Even Martha would be awed by the sheer depth and breadth and height of their cooking…

https://www.marthastewart.com/326883/bacon-pancakes?search_key=bacon

One of my many reasons for embracing the British is because of their all-consuming love for bacon. The bacon butty is practically a national treasure. Think of a mound of bacon piled on a soft roll. I draw the line at HP sauce, but then I also restrict the application of mayonnaise or butter. I think a bacon sandwich is best enjoyed practically naked. There is quite enough fat without an additional schmear of butter. I like a good bacon sandwich on rye toast. Which is also how I like my BLTs. And my grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches. And my club sandwiches. Imagine how desolate a thin, unadorned grilled cheese sandwich is. But add some festive bacon and you can toss confetti and start a party!

https://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Bacon-Butty?BxzlgrKgGLxadGYM.01

Bacon is handy at the cocktail hour, wrapped around water chestnuts or scallops. The Brits, who think nursery food is fine at all hours of the day, have some delightful canapé recipes for eggs and bacon, just this side of quiche: https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/bacon_and_egg_canapes_11283

For dinner we cannot face Fettucine Alfredo unless we lob in handfuls of crushed bacon just before serving. We also enjoy a BLT Chicken Salad in the summer, with many a rasher of warm bacon, and fresh garden tomatoes, but also enjoying the heart-stopping extra crispy and deelish croutons, made with day old crusty French bread, cooked by tossing the diced bread into hot bacon fat, and frying them up golden and fabulous. The kitchen is a very popular place when I am making croutons, which I sprinkle with Lawry’s Seasoning Salt, garlic and fresh Parmesan cheese. These folks insist on quality control, and testing the croutons to see if they are as good as they were last time. They always are, I type smugly. If I ever packaged them, I am sure they would beat Utz Sour Cream and Onion potato chips as the entry point to heaven.

The folks at Food52 were of a similar mind this week; they were also thinking of delightful ways to enjoy bacon for dinner. I might just have to forget about the Friday night pizza and try this tonight instead: https://food52.com/blog/8504-dinner-tonight-poached-egg-and-bacon-sandwich-roasted-za-atar-potatoes

And I would hate to wake up at four in the morning and toss about on my comfy mattress, worrying about what wines to pair with the bacon. Luckily, we always have a bottle or two of Prosecco in the fridge – you just never know when there will be some good news to celebrate. https://baconsmores.com/food-wine/pairing-wine-bacon/ I can go back to sleep, dreaming of pairing those leftover pancakes with some freshly roasted bacon.

“Double the sugar, and add bacon to everything.”
-Julia Child

And also this: “A party without cake is really just a meeting.” – Julia Child