You could be forgiven for thinking so, given its title, but Bacon 24/Seven, by Theresa Gilliam, isn’t the kind of book that celebrates the bacon explosion. Each recipe in the book includes bacon, either as a main event or trim, but not in a clumsy or obnoxious Guy Fieri kind of way. They range from simple (salmon/pineapple/bacon skewers) to slightly more gourmet (onion and bacon jam), and are all sensibly sized.
Bacon 24/Seven takes the second part of its title seriously; if you wanted to eat bacon every meal of the day, plus dessert, for a week without dying of a heart attack, the recipes in this book will let you. Actually, you could also plan a mother-in-law-pleasing dinner party too.
Since Gilliam takes bacon pretty seriously (like us, incidentally), she starts by walking you through the basics of cooking bacon, how to cure and smoke your own bacon at home (which, if food is your religion, we recommend), how to clarify your own bacon fat, and finally, how to make a simple but flaky pie crust. Wait, what does pie have to do with bacon? Well, it uses bacon fat. Plus, this is honesty the kind of book that you’d associate with teaching you to make the perfect bacon crust—see? told you there’d be no bacon explosions here.
The rest of the book takes you through breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert, featuring forty-eight bacon recipes and a whole lot of full-colour food photography goodness. Since the test of a good cookbook is actually cooking stuff from it, I did so a few Sundays ago. For breakfast, I made bacon cheddar biscuits with bacon redeye gravy (though gingerbread bacon waffles were tempting). For lunch, I had a frissee salad. No, really, this bacon cookbook has a pretty good salad recipe. For dinner, I made brussels sprouts with lemon and honey (and bacon), and a glazed pork tenderloin, wrapped in bacon. And finally, for dessert, I had bacon cashew caramel corn. All in all, a pretty awesome day.
Let’s just put this out there: bacon makes everything better. Every meal of the day can have bacon, and it can be great. If you buy into that, pick up a copy of Bacon 24/Seven.
Bacon 24/Seven is available from amazon.com for $22.
Dave Robson is the editor of DailyXY. He spends his time reading books, drinking Scotch, and smoking cigars.
Photo courtesy of Dave77459.
