Bacon and Cream Make Everything Better

I was reading the excellent 'Edible Seashore' book by John Wright the other day (it's one of the River Cottage series), and was amused by his comment about (if memory serves) a cockle recipe which included bacon, cream and garlic, making the entirely sensible point that with those additions, pretty much everything tastes good. Looking over one of Nigel Slater's tomes shortly afterwards, it was clear that the fringed fop has built much of his style on that very thought. [I enjoy his ideas, but his writing style can be a trial - not everything is comfort food for goodness' sake - though why goodness and rice wine should be linked I have no clue]. Nigella Lawson, it could be said, did the same with buckets of thick cream (and a considerable cleavage).

With our now well-established healthy approach to matters culinary cream is a rare treat, but I had a hankering for lardons during a visit to Aldi for fruit bushes (£2.49 for three, and they're in very good nick, top bargain), and incorporated the pack in what would normally be a vegetarian warm salad, bacon replacing mushrooms. Naturally it worked, the other ingredients of blue cheese, rocket, roasted butternut squash (yes, it's a take on an HF-W recipe) greeting the salty stuff with open arms. As I had the oven on for the squash I cut large toms into thick slices and roasted them too for 20 minutes, half the time the squash got, and included a handful of bashed unpeeled garlic cloves, which roasted to nearly burnt brown were the most garlicky thing I've had in weeks. Cold the same toms are tastless; cooked and warm they are sharp and pleasing, a nice balance to the rest of the dish. Some walnuts warmed in with the bacon proved a bit superfluous.

The question is, would the dish have been, though clearly different, as good or even (whisper it quietly) better without the lardons? I actually think that as they were the overly dominant flavour (the slightly caramelised squash and the garlic equal second), taking a bit of limelight away from the veg, this was something that actually would have been better without bacon. My world view is shaken to the core.

Processed Meat is Coming to Get You

The story about the dangers of processed meat is leading on the radio, TV and though I don't buy a daily paper so can't be sure, doubtless in the press too. Sadly from the interview with one of the researchers on whose report the story is based quality is not the issue, but the presence in all such meats of preservative chemicals.

Apparently the safe level of consumption is deemed to be one rasher of bacon, or one sausage, per day. That is each rather than for the entire country, but it is only a matter of time.

I don't doubt the science, and will take it into account in my cooking, but am saddened that yet another of life's pleasures now has a safe daily limit. We have limited our alcohol consumption to Fridays, Saturdays and some Sundays, though not without the occasional sip midweek when circumstances dictate. I now await with dread the announcement on Today that reading more than two pages of PG Wodehouse a day is thought to be carcinogenic.

On reflection, however, I am pretty sure that we don't exceed that limit of one rasher/link a day, even taking into account occasional enjoyment of Mortadella, Parma Ham, and salamis various. That researcher said it wasn't a matter of quality, but if we are to limit our consumption of such things, surely we (if we have the means) should seek out the very best, so that this now slightly guilty pleasure should maximize said pleasure? As ever a bad meal is a wasted opportunity, and within that meal wet and tasteless bacon, or foully bready sausages, wastes our ration of preserved pork.

Yet again, btw, nobody on Today mentioned enjoyment as part of our dietary benefits. I recall (as I may have done previously here, but never mind) the thriller writer whose name escapes me who retired to Jersey and every day there ate the same lunch at the same table in the same restaurant: eggs and bacon and champagne. Setting aside the monotony that doesn't appeal, the decision to enjoy to the utmost a glorious obsession is clear and for me laudable. That writer may have died of cancer eventually, (then again he may not) but for the years in which he tucked into his favourite meal he packed a vast amount of pleasure. Which would you judge preferable - his perhaps somewhat shortened but pleasing existence, or someone who lived five years more lunching on brown rice and cabbage water?

Nearly Vegetarian

As posted previously, I am trying to fit in one fish and two vegetarian main courses into our week's eating. Or nearly vegetarian. Like tonight's offering, which will be mushroom risotto, maybe with some peas to give a contrast of textures and some more vegetable matter (yes, I watch QI too, fungi are closer to animals than vegetables, but for culinary purposes let's forget the DNA analysis). Except I have some ham stock to use in making the dish, and am probably going to use up the last little bit of a packet of 'recipe' bacon too.

So the definition is broadening to mainly vegetarian. True moral veggies would be horrified by this. I am not a vegetarian at all, certainly not by belief. I just know that too much meat is not good for us. And is weight-for-weight far more expensive than mushrooms or vegetables other than those wastefully (and given their loss of freshness pointlessly) flown in from Peru, Egypt etc.

The inclusion of bacon as above reminds me of a couple of incidents long past. In my Sixties and Seventies childhood one of our neighbours was a vegetarian. When she came over for a party my parents gave my mother cooked her a vegetarian dish - a pie - specially. Except she later admitted to having included "A little bacon, for flavour." And holidaying in Brittany with another couple who were vegetarians I carefully explained to a waiter in a little restaurant that our friends didn't eat meat. He suggested a salad, which duly came with lardons. When challenged about this he said: "But it is only a small amount."