Yes bacon. We use a lot of bacon at this Scottish Estate. Bacon in cheddar and bacon rolls, bacon and tomatoes in eggs, bacon in beef stew for a little extra flavour. Even one enterprising Kitchen staffer even created ice cream with smoky bacon and chocolate as its flavour. It actually tasted rather good. Well you get the idea. So when I discovered this book in a pile of galleys sent to us, I decided to give it a review.
According to the book, Pearsall ‘is a well-known writer and editor of outdoor journalism. She has long been an avid cook, one who never leaves her guests wanting. Pearsall resides in central Wisconsin, along with her two Great Pyrenees dogs, Lucy and Hayden, cooking and eating bacon nearly every day.’
This is not a book for anyone expecting a deep discussion of bacon and its long history, but rather it’s a book written by someone who took their blog and turned into a book. Indeed the copy editor forgot this was a book as it has language like this: ‘Since this is a bacon blog, you, dear reader, are almost without doubt thinking I am headed for a dissertation on bacon cheeseburgers.’ Or perhaps there was no editor as that would explain the references to this as if it was a blog.
After an introduction explaining her and her blog which you can find here, she starts off with a detailed treatise on cooking bacon. Trust me — cooking bacon properly is an art that takes time to learn which is why only Kitchen staff cook bacon here. She ended up testing lots of bacon brands and ended up favouring Farmland, an American bacon that comes in the thick slices she likes as do we.
Being a breakfast person, I turned to the baconated breakfast and brunch section. Oh my. Apple bacon cinnamon rollups… bacon berry pancakes… Bread pudding with bacon and cheddar… Ok, I’ll stop drooling. It’s certainly not as wide- ranging as Breakfast for Dinner was, but it’s a really fun book in large part because she’s passionate about her subject and she’s really grounded in telling her readers why she’s doing something.
Oh and make sure you read her take on the way to create the best ever bacon cheddar cheese burger!
(Sky Horse, 2014)
