When left home alone with the task of feeding trick-or-treaters, one columnist came to discover the marvelous match of red wine and chocolate.
Bacon banter has finally leveled out a bit, but isn't going anywhere anytime soon. However, a recent local event preceding April's Baconfest Chicago wowed porcine appreciators, with dishes like the pumpkin-bacon-waffle with pomegranate-glazed pork belly.
More than "junk food with a European pedigree," Nutella is a "vaguely wholesome" snack with an interesting background -- and can be made at home from scratch.
Anyone who says the bacon craze is over clearly doesn't love bacon as much as we do or is, at the very least, unaware of all the ways bacon enhances our culinary world. And it's impossible to imagine any omnivore in his or her right mind hating on bacon when staring down at this bowl of cheddar corn chowder topped off with what blogger Ezra Pound Cake calls "God's confetti."
While the "hearty, creamy, comforting soup brimming with potatoes, corn, onions and sharp white-cheddar cheese" is enough to make anyone's mouth water, it's really the bacon on top that makes this Ina Garten recipe even more enticing.
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There are few combinations more satisfying than starch and fat. It's why hamburgers and macaroni and cheese always seem to please even the most picky eaters. Add a few colorful vegetables to the mix and you have a meal that covers the food groups and catches the eye, like this pizza from the Brown-Eyed Baker.
But this is not your typical slice. In addition to the square Sicilian cut, what you may not see right away is that the crust is made of crispy polenta and topped off with deliciously rich bacon and Fontina cheese, as well as a healthy dose of vegetables (cremini mushrooms, baby spinach and a Roma tomato).
When is a savory slab of bacon not a savory slab of bacon? When it's a deliciously sweet, sugary cake merely masquerading as a salted and smoked side of pork.
This bacon-slab "groom's cake" from Flickr user debbiedoescakes is entirely sweet and, even better, entirely edible, right down to the cutting-board base. It makes our mouths water for both, and forces us to ask: Which would you rather -- cake or bacon? Or cake that looks like bacon?
Dates wrapped with bacon and stuffed with fontina. Photo: Brown Eyed Baker.
Fontina-stuffed, bacon-wrapped dates. The description alone is enough to make one's mouth water.
It is probably a safe assessment to say that if you want to make everyone in the room like you (aside from vegetarians, of couse), this is exactly the kind of hors d'oeuvre you make for a party. And according to the Brown Eyed Baker, who made these, we're right. "This is quite possibly the most amazing appetizer I have ever made," she wrote. "I have never seen anything gobbled up by a crowd so quickly."
While this particular combination of fruit, cheese and meat is nothing short of culinary genius, let's be honest here: No matter what had been wrapped in that perfectly pink bacon, we'd have eaten it -- wouldn't you?
Hot dogs are as ubiquitous as Ray Bans this summer, with all-beef franks gracing grills at backyard BBQs and gourmet versions making cameos on restaurant menus. But a hot dog coddled in bacon is a rare treat.
These bacon-wrapped dogs were captured by our friend Fork This at a Hot Dog Cookoff before being placed in buns and topped with crushed almonds. Though we have mixed feelings about the crushed-almond topping, these look good enough to eat straight off the grill.
Aptly called Dog Date Afternoon, the heart-attack-inducing treats sadly didn't take home top (or any) honors, but it's pretty likely there were none left for their maker to take home, either.
Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell are the farmers and innovators behind Beekman 1802, a 200-year-old estate and farm in upstate New York. We'll be running recipes, gorgeous photos and tales from the farm as their crops come into season.
Native daughterRachael Ray has a profound appreciation for the farmlands of upstate New York, and just paid a visit to Beekman 1802 to learn more about our farm-to-table project with The American Hotel.
What does one make when Rachael Ray comes to dinner? We knew it had to be 1) delicious, 2) simple, and 3) easy. So we traipsed out to the garden for inspiration and found a few tender new green beans just ready for the picking. These are sometimes referred to by their French name, haricot vert, which translates to, you guessed it, "green bean."
Our "yummo" recipe and a bit about our hills of heirloom beans, after the jump.
There's something about pork that makes it the perfect wrapping and stuffing. Sizzling bacon often encircles the likes of scallops, beef, turkey and even French toast, while porcine goodness can occasionally be found in that classic junk food, pigs in a blanket.
Chef Albert Di Meglio of New York City restaurant Olana has taken it one tantalizing step further. In the above video, Di Meglio makes Sausage-Wrapped Pork -- a whole new world for the dedicated pig fan. He grabs a pork tenderloin, wraps it in a sausage filling and finally encases it with caul (a type of fat). He pops the whole thing in the oven and then slices and serves it.
Those who just can't wait till the end of the video to broaden their porcine horizons can click here for the recipe.
Bacon is a tasty treat, no doubt. It adds a lot of flavor to everything from your favorite breakfast to gourmet chocolates, and is a perfect match for refried beans.
Enjoying regular bacon once in a while is OK if you have a clean bill of health. I always tell people to check in with their doctor or a nutritionist. Consulting a nutritionist can be a real eye-opener, but can also help you understand exactly how much saturated fat overall you're consuming and how to make healthier changes if you need to.
Aside from bacon, lettuce and tomato, what makes the perfect BLT? Balance.
Because there are so few ingredients, each must be carefully weighed against the other: building the sandwich is not entirely dissimilar to building, well, a building. Or, if you're unlucky, a house of cards. Joy the Baker is well-aware of the perils concealed within the bready confines of a BLT, and has, if this picture is any indication, overcome the challenges to construct a real winner. Crispy bacon, thin slices of tomato, some crunchy lettuce and a smear of roasted red pepper mayonnaise on lightly toasted bread: this baby has enough balance to qualify for the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team -- or, failing that, a very tasty lunch.
Not Martha set the foodie world on fire -- uh, 378 commenters and a bunch of blogs, at least -- with her BLT-themed, freestanding bacon cups. But they required three hours of effort and resulted in a house full of smoke.
Then Merriment Design came along and introduced a microwave to the process. Voila! Cups large and small whipped up in as little as five fire-free minutes. All they required were a few pieces of kitchen paraphernalia, some paper towels and a whole lot of bacon. Click through for the particulars of how it's done, and be in bacon cups all summer long.
Love it, loathe it or live for it, meat's been on a lot of minds these days.
A recent study found that red meat consumption increases the overall risk of mortality. And even though swine flu is not transmissible through pork products (duh), it wasn't exactly a publicity boon for the other white meat, either. Even the beloved bacon has been taking a beating. One writer went so far as to declare an end to Baconmania, proclaiming that "Our Long Coronary Nightmare Is Almost Over."
Meat, needless to say, isn't going down without a fight. Aside from the expected army of industry lobbyists covering its (fat)back, it's got plenty of product tie-in love. There's these plush toys from Sweet Meats, so cute they could bring a smile to even a vegetarian's face. There's Meatcards, the beef jerky business cards that recently took the Internet by storm.
And, standing boldly in the face of the bacon backlash, there's Heather Lauer's "Bacon: A Love Story." Subtitled "A Salty Survey of Everyone's Favorite Meat," it includes profiles of bacon-loving chefs across the country, recipes for such delicacies as bacon-jalapeno pizza and bacon Bloody Marys, and tips for creating your own cure. Clearly, Lauer isn't writing bacon's obituary. And if anything can help meat get its groove back, its a 100 percent recycled fleece T-bone.
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