Bacon Nation: 125 Irresistible Recipes (34 page)

3
Add the red onion to the skillet and cook over medium heat until it begins to soften, 2 to 3 minutes, stirring often. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant and the onion is softened, about 1 minute. Add the bread crumbs and basil and stir until well combined. Transfer the onion mixture to a medium-size bowl. Add the blue cheese and the drained bacon and set aside.

4
Cut about a ½-inch-thick slice off the stem end of each tomato. Using a paring knife, remove the cores of the tomatoes by cutting a cone-shaped piece about 2 inches deep and 1½ inches wide in each. Cut a very thin sliver off the bottom of each tomato to help stabilize it as it grills.

5
Whisk together the olive oil and wine vinegar and drizzle about 1 teaspoon of the dressing over each tomato. Sprinkle the tops of the tomatoes lightly with salt and pepper to taste. Divide the bacon and blue cheese mixture evenly among the tomatoes, filling the cores and patting the mixture firmly in place to cover the top of each tomato.

6
Place the tomatoes on the oiled grill grate, cover the grill, and grill the tomatoes until they have softened and the stuffing is warmed through, 10 to 15 minutes. If you are using a charcoal grill, check the tomatoes after about 5 minutes and if the fire is too hot, causing the tomatoes to burn or cook too quickly, move them to the edge of the grill to continue cooking. If you need the center of the grill for cooking other foods, such as chicken or steak, the tomatoes can be cooked on the outer edge of the grill or on the grill’s top shelf over the main cooking grate; the cooking time will be longer. You can also bake the tomatoes in a shallow oiled baking dish in an oven preheated to 400˚F. After baking the tomatoes for about 12 minutes, place them under the broiler for about 1 minute to lightly brown the stuffing.

Bacon Bread Crumbs

Makes about ¾ cup

This bread crumb garnish takes just a few minutes to put together and adds crunchy bacony flavor to grilled, sautéed, or roasted vegetables. Sprinkle it on grilled asparagus or portobello mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, sautéed broccoli florets, baked acorn squash, or pasta tossed in olive oil and garlic. We served the bacon crumb topping over thick wedges of buttered oven-roasted cauliflower—delicious.

3 slices bacon, diced

½ cup coarsely ground homemade bread crumbs (see
page 32
)

¼ cup pine nuts or coarsely chopped cashews

2 medium-size cloves garlic, minced

Generous pinch of cayenne pepper or curry powder

Cook the bacon in a medium-size skillet over medium heat until the bacon is lightly browned and most of the fat is rendered, 5 to 8 minutes, stirring often and adjusting the heat as necessary. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the bacon to a paper towel-lined plate to drain, reserving 1 tablespoon of bacon fat in the skillet. Add the bread crumbs, pine nuts or cashews, and garlic to the skillet and cook, stirring occasionally, until the bread crumbs are lightly toasted, about 4 minutes. Add the drained bacon and the cayenne pepper or curry powder to the bread crumb mixture and toss to mix well before using.

Downside-Up Apple-Bacon-Pecan Muffins

 

In This Chapter

Downside-Up Apple-Bacon-Pecan Muffins

Bacon Crumble-Topped Bran Muffins

Cheddar Cheese and Bacon Biscuits

Bacon and Rosemary Shortbread

Herbed Bacon Flatbread

Bacon and Cranberry Corn Bread

Oyster and Corn Bread Stuffing with Bacon

Bacon, Sweet Potato, and Greens Stuffing with Jalapeño Corn Bread

Our thrifty American ancestors understood that bacon fat, while different from butter fat, is an equally delicious addition to batters for muffins, breads, pancakes, and biscuits. And the fact that it could be produced, without extra cost or time, from the simple frying and rendering of raw bacon slices made the bacon fat-filled coffee can ubiquitous on the back stove for many generations of Americans. From hardy pioneers to the refined homes of our Founding Fathers, cooks conserved bacon fat. There are few things in this world that can be said to be the equal in flavor to butter: bacon can.

Here we offer muffins, biscuits, flatbreads, and stuffings that make it a crime—or at least a minor sin—to even think about discarding bacon fat once you know you can put it to such good use. For instance, we flat-out love an Herbed Bacon Flatbread with the texture of a crisp, thin cracker that’s excellent as a base for creamy spreads or a soft goat cheese. In our Downside-Up Apple-Bacon-Pecan Muffins, a moist mixture of apple, bacon, pecans, brown sugar, and butter is added to the muffin tin to become a gooey, glistening muffin top. In the Bacon Crumble–Topped Bran Muffins, a mix of bran, whole-wheat and white flours, yogurt, molasses, raisins, and bacon puts some fun back into healthy food equations whether for breakfast or served as an afternoon, after-school snack. The Cheddar Cheese and Bacon Biscuits are our personal affirmation of our deep faith that “every dish is delish” when these two flavor-filled ingredients are joined in culinary matrimony. Make and serve them just out of the oven with any kind of meat, fish, or poultry.

You’ll also find a recipe that calls for using stone-ground yellow cornmeal to make a shortbread and three different corn breads that balance sweetness and savoriness with the substantial rough flavor and texture of cornmeal, another early-American favorite. You will love the Bacon and Rosemary Shortbread with roasted pork or on its own as a light dessert with tea or coffee. And then, there’s everyone’s favorite—stuffing: Oyster and Corn Bread Stuffing with Bacon; and Bacon, Sweet Potato, and Greens Stuffing with Jalapeño Corn Bread. If no one had invented the idea of seconds prior to this, these recipes alone would have kick-started the practice of going back for refills.

So save the fat, because as Tina Turner said: “Ain’t nothin’ no good without the grease.” To which we add a reverent amen.

Makes 12 muffins

Eat one of these muffins and you don’t need anything else to satisfy you for breakfast. It’s not an everyday breakfast, though, because it’s sweet and gooey—the kind of thing you want for a treat, not a diet. Kids love to eat muffins and they love to help make them. It never fails to delight them when you remove these muffins from the tin and get a first look and sniff of the beautiful, irresistible topping—or is the proper word bottoming? Traditional cookbook titles often use the term upside-down, but we prefer downside-up because that is where the magic happens, when a plain-looking muffin is flipped over to reveal a treasure trove of flavor.

For the apple-bacon-pecan topping

6 tablespoons (¾ stick) unsalted butter, or as necessary, plus butter for greasing the muffin tin

6 slices maple-flavored bacon, trimmed of excess fat and cut into ½-inch pieces

2 large Granny Smith apples (about 1 pound)

½ cup packed dark brown sugar

Pinch of kosher salt

½ cup toasted pecans (see
page 264
), coarsely chopped

For the muffins

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

¾ cup packed dark brown sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon kosher salt

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

¾ cup sour cream

2 tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon maple extract or pure vanilla extract

1
Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 375˚F. Generously butter a 12-cup nonstick muffin tin. (Or you can use two 6-cup muffin tins.)

2
Prepare the apple-bacon-pecan topping: Cook the bacon in a large skillet over medium heat until lightly browned and most of the fat is rendered, 5 to 8 minutes, stirring often and adjusting the heat as necessary. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the bacon to a paper towel-lined plate to drain, reserving the bacon fat in the skillet. Set the skillet aside.

3
Peel and core the apples. Slice the apples lengthwise into wedges that are approximately ¼ inch thick. Cut the wedges in half crosswise into pieces that are 1 to 2 inches long so that they will fit in the bottom of the muffin tin cups.

4
Place the skillet with the reserved bacon fat over medium heat and add enough of the butter to measure a total of 8 tablespoons of melted fat. Add the apples, ½ cup of brown sugar, and pinch of salt and cook until the apples are tender and the brown sugar has caramelized, 8 to 10 minutes. Distribute the drained bacon evenly among the muffin cups, followed by the apple pieces, including the pan syrup. Sprinkle the pecans over the apple slices.

5
Prepare the muffins: Combine the flour, ¾ cup of brown sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, and ¼ teaspoon of salt in a large bowl.

6
Place the 8 tablespoons of melted butter and the eggs, sour cream, milk, and maple or vanilla extract in another large bowl and whisk to mix. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, folding them together until smooth. Evenly distribute the batter over the layer of bacon, apple, and pecans in the muffin cups. Bake the muffins until they are slightly puffed and lightly browned, 20 to 22 minutes. When the muffins are done a cake tester or toothpick inserted into the center of one will come out clean.

7
Let the muffins cool partly in the muffin tin, then turn the muffin tin over onto a platter, releasing the muffins. Serve the muffins warm or at room temperature. If some of the topping remains in the bottom of the muffin tin cups, gently remove it and place it on top of the muffins. The muffins can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.

Makes 9 muffins

We set out to create a muffin that could be breakfast with the easy addition of a cup of coffee and a glass of juice. It includes bacon and eggs and super-healthful bran. Fifteen or twenty years ago bran muffins were flavorless and so gummy that people who felt guilty about their eating habits could take solace in the “penance” of a chewy, tasteless bran muffin. But bran is powerful and assertive, just the thing to stand up to the bacon in these muffins. And adding yogurt is like adding the fountain of youth—just look at all those yogurt-eating Bulgarians who live to be a hundred. With all that healthiness going for these muffins, why not finish them off with a sweet, crumbly, bacony topping?

Here’s to health and fun!

For the bacon crumble topping

2 slices thick-cut bacon, cut into ¼-inch pieces

Unsalted butter

6 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons granulated sugar