Belated Bacon Sandwich

Like most of us here, I love bacon. I remember as a small child visiting my maternal grandparents in Melbourne, and along with weird and wonderful things like halved grapefruit for breakfast, and odd high fibre biscuits (sorry, crackers) my grandparents ate a lot of bacon. I’d steal it from my grandfather’s plate when he wasn’t looking, earning me the moniker ‘the bacon bandit’. I love bacon. These days, however, I don’t eat a lot of it. Partly cos I’ve been brainwashed that it’s not healthy, but also, I have a17mm gallstone that tends to make my gall bladder spaz out when I eat fatty things. So, taking my comfort and health by the balls, I decided to attempt a bacon sandwich.

Step 1 purchase bacon.

Local foodies rave about this bacon, and I’ve got to say, it’s pretty bloody good. Much thicker than your run-of-the-mill cheapo supermarket fare, and much much fattier. It’s made about 10k from my house (I know, not in my house, I’ll have to get on to that some time Jim) so I’m pretty pleased with that level of distance to my plate. I bought two packets of this about a week before I actually managed to make the sandwich, but it was a plan for sure.

Step 2 purchase bread.

We’re becoming quite a hipster city, which is no surprise really. We’re a middle class town, socially liberal and no blue-collar industry to speak of, and a conservative federal government who is happy to blame the previous liberal government for anything and everything. So there are massive job cuts, and the educated youth of my hometown have taken on the hipster culture with gusto. And you know what? I love them for it. They are my people. If I draw a 5k radius from my house, there are 3 coffee roasters, 3 bakeries, and about 17 bike shops. And more interesting facial hair than I can deal with and not get hot and bothered. So I ended up with sourdough from one of the bakeries that’s not within that 5k radius, though they do sell at my local shops, and at the farmers market (both within the 5k). It’s a pretty good sourdough, nice flavour, and good and chewy (turns out it was a mistake, but more of that later).

Step 3a the day dawns.

I arranged with my mate Simon to run the 11k around the base of one of my local mountains. As we ran we talked. As you do. Sometimes about our jobs and lives, sometimes about how warm and windy it was that morning, sometimes about food (bacon). Having virtuously done some exercise I felt justified in consuming large quantities of fatty pig flesh, and invited Simon to join us. Sadly he had other commitments and even refused coffee.

Step 3b coffee.

I’ve recently begun to drink caffeinated coffee again, having not for about 20 years, and I have to admit I really like it now. The buzz used to be way too intense, but now that I’v readjusted again, I’m just like any other caffeine addict. I’m really not awake until I’ve had one, so with that in mind, after my run, coffee was foremost in my mind. Even more than bacon.

Two-before-ten is one of the coffee roasters within the 5k. I like them. They’re nerdy hipsters, but not as arrogant as some of them. They’re happy to talk about coffee until your ears bleed and don’t mind if all you’re after is a bag of beans and you’re not going to sit down and spend $50 on coffee and breakfast in their coffee shop. I’m an Aeropress convert. I love it. (But I forgot to take any pics of that stage of the process, I was in too much of a hurry to get the coffee into my system).

Step 4 condiments.

Someone (I think it was Justin in melbs, a US expat) pointed out the omnipresence of “BBQ sauce” here, especially in the local version of the Commonwealth bacon sanger, but I didn’t have any. I clearly didn’t think this through. I didn’t have any HP either, so I thought fast and grabbed some of this from my cupboard.

It’s delicious, sweet and sour, and thicker than vinegar, but thinner than something like BBQ or HP (this also ended up being an error I think, but again, more later).

Step 5 cooking.

So yes, this bacon was thick, and really fatty. I’ve never seen so much fat come out of bacon, but man, it was good. It cooked so easily – no sticking, and no watery crap coming out of it. Just looking at this pic makes my gall bladder hurt. As you can see, I like my bacon crispy. It was great. I ate a couple of rashers straight out of the pan.

Step 6 assembly.

I cut a couple of slices of sourdough and drizzled them with vinocotto, laid on the bacon and went to work.

Remember I mentioned some errors? Well, the whole thing was too dry. The bread was thick and chewy, but with the bacon, it was all just too dense. The vinocotto flavour was great with the bacon, but it didn’t give enough moisture to the sandwich. I added some slices of cherry tomato, which helped a bit, and flavourwise were a winner, but too dry. It needed a big sloppy sauce.

Step 7 remake.

So I ate attempt #1, but there were still a couple of rashers of bacon left, and my gall bladder hadn’t exploded yet, so I thought I’d have another go. I had some cheap fluffy stupidmarket bread on the bench, so reckoned that, given my usual source of bacon sandwiches is the sausage-sizzle at the school on election day, I’d try with that. I still had no BBQ sauce, so went with the vinocotto and tomato slices again.

It was much better. The bread was so fresh and fluffy that it compressed as I picked the sandwich up to bite it. Its softness was a good textural foil for the crispy bacon and the vinocotto and tomato made it all good and soggy. So I was happy in the end, but $6 worse off in terms of the sourdough.  (I didn’t let it go to waste though. I ate it toasted with lots of butter, sliced strawberries and golden syrup.)

Crit

I’m a mother of two boys. I work selling organic produce to gullible locals, and in my spare time I run as far as I can. Oh, and I live in Australia, married to a US citizen.