Its so true

Thanks to the folks at Married to the Sea for the wisdom. And the great comics.

Spaghetti Carbonara

It's not a very appealing picture, and the idea of semi-cooked eggs might make you a bit squeamish, but really, it's so simple to make, and quite tasty.

Spaghetti Carbonara

2-3 strips bacon

1-2 eggs

pasta

parmesan

salt

pepper

Boil water for pasta. Add salt. Coarsely chop the bacon. When the water is boiling, add pasta. Then put the bacon in a frying pan over medium-low heat. As those are in process, grate a handful or two of good parmesan into a bowl. Crack an egg or two into the bowl, and beat with a fork. Add a hefty amount of freshly ground pepper. When the pasta is cooked, drain it and dump in the bowl, tossing it like mad to coat it evenly with egg. The bacon should be nice and crispy at this point, so fold it in as well - though you probably wanna use a slotted spoon or some such device to remove it from the pan, because otherwise your pasta will be ridiculously greasy. 

Ideally, the final result is a somewhat gooey and creamy pasta, with the egg partly cooked and the parmesan partly melted, accentuated by the ground pepper and crispy bacon. 

All in all, it takes less than 10 minutes to make, and is pretty basic. A lot of carbonara recipes involve cream, but I find that it becomes much too heavy that way - the cheese, egg and bacon is already pretty rich. All the same, it's a fairly simple dish, and I'm still trying to think of ways to spice it up a bit. Please to leave comments with any ideas. 

Haggerty

I got the recipe for this from Maura Laverty's marvelous cookbook, Feasting Galore Irish Style, which has more bacon recipes than you can shake a stick at, not to mention a lovely style riddled with anecdotes. It comes across very much as a cookbook full of recipes that someone mostly wrote down from memory, perhaps in a bit of a hurry, while also reminiscing lovingly about various occasions in which these dishes were cooked. This sometimes requires you to improvise - in this case, for instance, the recipe never actually said what to do with the cheddar cheese - but it's wonderful nonetheless. What follows is my version of the dish:

Haggerty

3 medium sized potatoes

1 onion

a couple slices of bacon

some bacon grease

some cheddar

Slice the potatoes and onion paper thin. Chop up the bacon and fry it in a medium sized pan. Once it's done, remove the bacon, set it aside, and leave the grease. Throw another spoon or so of bacon grease into the pan. Then, put in a layer of potatoes, followed by a layer of onion. Sprinkle some cheddar on. Repeat. When you get to the middle, put the bacon in with the cheddar. Also, work it such that the top layer is potato. Oh! and sprinkle some salt and pepper in there*. Drop a few spots of bacon grease onto the top potato layer. Cook until the bottom has gotten nice and crispy, then carefully slide it only a plate, then return it to the pan bottom side up. Or flip it in the pan, if you have that much faith in yourself. As you can discern from the photo, I managed to botch this part a bit. Cover and cook until it's done - if you've sliced the potatoes thin enough, the whole thing shouldn't take more than 20 minutes or so. Slice into wedges and serve.

*I forgot the salt and pepper and just added it at the end. It came out ok, but I think it would have been better if I'd integrated it into the cooking process.

Irish Bacon

There's a new law in town. Irish bacon may have spoiled me, I dunno. American bacon is just never gonna be as good anymore.

Unlike yer everyday American bacon, which comes in thin strips streaked with fat, Irish bacon, aka rashers, are big ol' slabs of thick cut pork, so lean that you can't even fry eggs in the grease left in the pan after 'em. But it looks so gorgeous as its frying, it curls up and ripples, swelling with goodness.

My friend Simon and I acquired some after I found out that he'd never eaten a grilled bacon and cheese and tomato sammich, but we saved the rest for breakfast. I made the bacon, he made some lovely fried eggs with a glorious Irish cheddar, and we ate it all with toast and tea. A wonderful way to start the day.

bacon potato chips

Bacon is a fairly popular potato chip (ahem, crisp) flavor (ahem, flavour) here in Ireland, but unfortunately, the chips don't really taste all that much like bacon. I sampled two varieties, Taytos and Rancheros.

Despite their adorable name, the Taytos were totally unremarkable. Greasy pathetic flattened salty discs with a hint of something more like bbq flavor. 

Is it just me or does that potato look like Mr Peanut? Also, isn't a little weird to have an anthropomorphized 

potato man gracing the front of a bag that contains his shredded deep-fried brethren?

The Rancheros, on the other hand, have a totally kickass package, and are delicious. They don't really taste like bacon. Potato chip flavors never taste like their inspiration. But whatever, they taste like delicious potato chip. Also, they have a very pleasing shape, 3 dimensional rectangles, perhaps meant to vaguely approximate a bacon strip? I guess the shape is about as similar as the flavor, so hey. In any case, a satisfying snack.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be potato chips.

At the end of the day though, nothing really matches the sleazy goodness of Hunky Dory's Buffalo flavor chips. Or, for that matter, the lyricism of their self description:

Buffalo are here! You've seen buffalo grazing the plains of North America in countless Westerns, but would you believe that these mighty animals which can weigh up to two tonnes now graze the plains of... Co. Meath. Yes, Ireland has a buffalo ranch. But don't expect to heard beating drums or see smoke signals in the vicinity of these buffalo. These hairy giants are farmed in much the same way as conventional cattle (except for the much stronger fences). So now thanks to Hunky Dorys, you can saddle up and try a taste of the Wild West.

I am resisting the temptation to say more about that. It's especially difficult, because I'm actually attending a lecture series on the Irish and Native Americans. 

Instead, I'll just say that oh man, Buffalo is scrumptious. 

the bacon briefcase

Forwarded to me by Alexis.

I have no idea.

some truly fantastic bacon

I love bacon, but I generally just buy the Boar's Head stuff at the corner store - it's a step above, say, Oscar Meyer, but all the same, it's not exactly amazing. But just the other day, my friend Dan came over for breakfast and brought some absolutely fantastic bacon with him. Oh my goodness. Check it out y'all.




You see how thick those slices are? I fried 'em up on low heat so as to get a nice even cook, and oh man, they were delicious. They took longer to cook, due to the thickness, but wow they were tasty. It was like biting into a very thinly sliced pork chop. It was marvelous. I fried up some more for lunch, and then brought the remainder over to Kelly's for dinner, where she used it to make bacon fried rice. It had initially seemed like a pity to me to do anything but eat it straight but actually, the chopped chunks really highlighted the thick cut and fantastic flavor of it.

I dunno where Dan got it, but if you see the stuff around, treat yourself.