Birthday Bacon

Today is my younger child’s 12th birthday, so a perfect opportunity for cooking massive quantities of very good bacon. Unlike Jim, I don’t have the skill-set, equipment, or space to smoke/cure my own, but this is a Very Good Bacon. Husband cooked up 800g of this, and then in the fat, he sautéed a couple of thinly sliced brown onions until they were soft. He’d also bought a bunch of bánh mì rolls from one of the small Vietnamese family run bakeries which have emerged in the last 15 years or so. They flew under the radar for quite some time, offering the standard Australian bakery fare: meat pies; lamingtons; custard tarts; snot blocks… but now are much more “yes, we make Vietnamese Saigon-style bread”.

So, I took one of these lovely bánh mì rolls, split it and spread it fairly thickly with hot English mustard. I like the bite, and this jar has been open for a while, so had lost some of its sinus cleansing fire. As it turned out, I’d add more after the first taste.

Next came the onions. They were dripping with fat, which is something I tend to avoid these days, but occasionally I like to indulge.

Then for the bacon, which was very crispy and delicious.

The money shot.

This was a great sandwich. On the first bite, I realised I hadn’t put enough mustard in, so went and added a lot more to the top inner side of the roll. I also retrospectively thought that I should’ve put in some halved cherry tomatoes. As it was, the onions were sweet enough to balance out the saltiness of the bacon and the mustard. The mustard itself added sour and wonderfully bitter notes. I had initially thought there was too much bread, but of course, once the fat from the bacon and the onions had soaked into the bottom half of the roll, it was perfect. Chewy and resistant on the outside, soft and squishy, but crunchy in the middle.

Birthday boy enjoyed his too (no mustard, and potato gems on the side) with orange juice and orange cat.