Everything's Better with Bacon!

It’s the day after Thanksgiving and my two sons and husband are watching the Alabama-Auburn football game and eating the bacon cheese sticks I made for them just minutes ago. These pastry twists have the texture of croissants and are a snap to make using store-bought puff pastry. I am in the first weeks of writing a cookbook, with food writer and friend Peter Kaminsky. Peter, the author of Pig Perfect, also agrees with me that almost everything tastes better with bacon, and that’s why we’re on this food journey. 

I hope to use this blog to release some new recipes and test your reactions to them. But I also want to share with readers, who are as passionate as we are about bacon, my recipe testing process. I began this book naively thinking that I could simply take my favorite recipes and make them better by adding bacon. While there is some truth to this, there are also times when bacon doesn’t work, or when the recipe, which looks great on paper, fails to impress or satisfy. My criteria for accepting or rejecting a recipe for the book is based on three principles: I have to like the recipe I tested enough to make it again. It has to be easy enough that a good home cook can make it (nothing too chefy or complicated as people want food that’s simple to prepare). Finally, there should be something about the recipe that is different from other bacon recipes already on the Internet or in a cookbook. This last point, that I call the Peter Principle b/c it’s Kaminsky’s rule, is actually the most difficult to implement as there’s so much out there that uses bacon. Peter has been insistent, for example, that we stay away from the classics that combine bacon and cheese.  Offering these dishes, he aruges, would be a cheap trick or a cheat to the reader. Of course bacon and cheese works!  So, while we’ll have a few of these classics in the book for people who love them (and who doesn’t!), in the end we hope to find new ways to impart food with flavor by adding bacon. Bacon contributes the creaminess of animal fat, a distinct element of salt, a hint of smokiness, sometimes a note of apple, maple or hickory, (depending on how it’s been smoked), and often its crispy crunchiness is the quality that makes the dish sing. 

This will be an honest blog; You’ll hear my testing failures as well as my success and learn all that I learn as the recipe developer. I hope as you follow me, you agree that the kitchen testing journey is as much fun as the dinner destination. So, come along and let me know what you think of these recipes. Cooking and tasting in a vacuum is a lonely, limited process. This blog makes it possible for me to share with you what I think works and have you voice your agreement or dissent.

My next post will share a recipe and ask for your comments. 

PASTA SAUCE IS BETTER WITH BACON

Over the Thanksgiving weekend on a Sunday, I made what we Italians call a “red-led” tomato sauce. It’s a rich combination of browned beef bones, pork, ground beef, oregano, parsley, garlic and red wine. Now I’ve made this sauce several times for my family, and on this day something was missing. Its flavor needed a significant boost, and even my boys, who usually love everything I make, politely commented on the sauce’s blandness. Fast forward to the following Tuesday morning when I’m testing a red sauce with bacon for the book and using my weekend experience to produce a sauce with more personality. I start this sauce sauteeing 5 slices of bacon in my deep saute pan. I’ve found it’s critical to saute the bacon until its just lightly browned, not crisp. You want to retain some of its rendered fat because the bacon will cook further in the dish, releasing its fat into the other ingredients as it cooks. Then I add ground pork, and I’m thinking to myself how these two ingredients are cousins to each other; one compliments the other, they are natural partners. The sauce isn’t much different from the other red sauces I’ve made, except for the addition of bacon and the absence of beef bones, and yet at the end of the cooking process, it definitely has a more satisfying, flavor and I can’t stop tasting it right out of the pot. So, what have I learned … bacon is the ingredient I’ve been missing in my red sauce all these years. Wow! I can’t wait for the kids to come home again for Sunday pasta. 

Let me know if you taste the difference bacon adds to this red sauce. 

Quick Bacon and Tomato Sauce

4 slices bacon, finely chopped

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1 pound ground pork

1/3 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley

2 medium cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes with added puree

1/3 cup water

2 bay leaves

2 teaspoons chopped fresh oregano or 1 teaspoon dried

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

In large deep pot or Dutch oven, cook bacon over medium-high heat, about 2 to 3 minutes, until lightly browned and some fat is rendered. Add onion and sauté until softened, about 5 minutes. Add ground pork, parsley and garlic and sauté until pork browns, breaking up with wooden spoon and stirring occasionally, about 8 minutes. Stir in crushed tomatoes, water, bay leaves, and oregano. (I like to swish the water around the inside of the tomato can to capture any remaining tomato juice.)  Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer, partially covered, stirring occasionally, until sauce thickens and flavors blend, about 25 minutes. Remove bay leaves. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper, as needed. Makes enough sauce for about 12 ounces of pasta.