Ingredients:

- Mild oil of your preference; I used grapeseed, olive would be good
- Garlic, either minced garlic or sliced garlic scapes
- Rosemary, fresh or dried
- Asparagus
- Bacon, thick cut
- Toothpicks

1. Pour generous blorb of oil into a small pan.

2. Chop garlic scapes and crumble rosemary into the oil in a pan. Heat, probably stirring more than is really necessary, until the kitchen smells delicious and the oil is all nice and flavored. PROTIP: Don’t overdo it, or your garlic scapes will transform into small dark balls of burnt. Don’t ask how I know that.

3. Preheat oven to 350F, or 375F if you’re hungry RIGHT NOW.

4. Wash the asparagus, snap off the gross woody ends, and slice into 2-3″ lengths.

5. Slice each bacon strip into thirds or 4″ strips, whichever makes more sense to you.

6. Pile four or so asparagus mini-stalks onto a bacon mini-strip, perpendicular to the strip (you’ll be making a little asparagus bundle).

7. Drizzle a bit of the oil with garlic and rosemary onto the asparagus.

8. Wrap the bacon around the asparagi and secure with a toothpick.

9. Bake in a baking dish for 30-40 minutes, or until bacon looks cooked.

10. Dip in remaining oil + garlic + rosemary and eat. I cannot believe what a beautiful blend of flavors this produces. It’s like tasting the Sistine Chapel. But with bacon!

A BRIEF HISTORY: In late December of 2008, bbqaddicts.com published a post detailing a marvelous creation they dubbed the Bacon Explosion. It spread across the internet like fat-fueled wildfire, and cardiac surgeons the world over rejoiced in their sudden windfall.

Bacon Explosion

1.5 lb thick sliced bacon
1.5 lb ground pork
bbq sauce and seasoning to taste

1) Weave bacon into bacon mat. Try not to eat it yet.

My previous attempt was a 5×5 weave whose structural integrity left a little to be desired. This latest effort, a 7×7 weave, closed all the gaps between rows and generally did a better job at being a bacon sheathe (of bacon, for bacon).

(At this point the cat made a desperate bid for the pile of bacon on the counter, and with ninja speed and total lack of ninja foresight I intercepted her just as she alit next to the bacon mat. I swept her off the counter – with my thoroughly bacon-greased hand – and she spent the rest of the evening happily licking herself. Whoops.)

2) Start cooking the remaining bacon. Stick in a pan and fry it however you please, but under no circumstances should you add more oil, because that’s just disgusting. Is 5000 calories not enough for you?

3) On top of the weave, spread a layer of ground pork that doesn’t quite reach the edges and, for ease of rolling, is tapered thinner along the side closest to you.

This picture shows nearly twice as much pork as is necessary – the roll ended up far too big for the weave, and I had to scoop a bunch of the ground pork out. Also, be careful with spreading the pork, as it will adhere to the weave underneath and push it around, mucking with your careful artistry. I formed little flat patties and set them on the weave, patchwork-style, then smoothed the seams together to form a solid square.

3) Top the pork layer with barbeque sauce and seasonings. I used a nice organic bbq sauce (sweetened with honey and sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup! Amazing), as well as oregano, basil, and black pepper.

4) The frying bacon should be done by now. Remove it from the pan with a slotted spoon and let it cool a bit on a couple layers of paper towels. When you can touch it, crumble/rip/chop it into small bits and spread over the ground pork + seasonings.

5) Carefully, leaving the weave on the cutting board, roll the ground pork up into a meat tube. Wrap the weave around the tube and lay seam-down on a pan, preferably one of those cool two-layer pans for cooking fatty stuff, and tuck in the ends.

6) Bake @ 225 for ~1hr per inch of thickness, or until meat thermometer reads 165 degrees.

7) Cut in ~1/4″ thick slices, pace yourself, and enjoy!

And please, for the love of arteries, don’t stick this in a bun and eat it like a sub.

Seriously, I can’t shut up about this. You can make this pasta in approximately 20 minutes, which to starving people spending too much time at the gym because now they live with gloria who eats, like, 30 gallons of butter every day but still keeps her girlish figure, is pretty awesome.

Oh, hey. Besides the header picture, which I REALLY encourage you to set as your background and stare at all day, you can ignore that DCist recipe. It is not the best. Mine is the best.

Ingredients (for two or three hungry folks):

• 1 3oz. package of pancetta, or 3-4 ounces of pancetta, depending on how fat you feel. You can also use bacon.
• 1/2 pound of pasta. We used gemelli. Penne may work better.
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated like a mofo. (I bought mine at the store, pre-grated, because I am lazy!)
• 1/4 of a white onion. Gloria suggested adding more onion in the end, so you can do that too.
• PEAS. ONE CUP OF PEAS.
• salt and pepper.

Instructions, optimized for time efficiency:

1. Prep work: Chop yo onion however you prefer. Want huge chunks? Go for it! Dice yo pancetta. Nothing too fancy, just to the chunks will give their delicious fat to you. Thaw yo peas. THAW THEM! I did it in the microwave.

2. Salt some water up, and cook the pasta until it’s al dente, or if you’re cooking for Miss “Can’t Move Her Dang Jaw”, until it melts in your mouth. The salt is actually somewhat critical, I’d say, so don’t forget it. And don’t use too much, Goldilocks.

3. Put a panon medium, then toss your pancetta in when it’s hot. You can smell the aroma of rich people bacon right there. Once you see a decent amount of fat coming out and sizzling, throw your onions in. Now you have onions cooking in pancetta fat, and you win cooking. Feel free to eat some of your onions. They are delicious. I went until my onions were mostly clear.

4. Everything will be fine on its own for a bit, so whisk (or fork) your eggy ingredients. When that’s nice, put in that cheese, and blend it all together into a nice, chunk mass. You want to coat all your cheese in egg, so it looks creamy.

5. Is your pasta al dente yet? How ’bout your onions, are they done? Good! Drain the pasta, but save the water.  Put your pasta back into the bowl it came from, kill the heat, and now work fast. Dump in your bacon, dump in your peas, dump in your eggy/cheesy stuff, and stir like the dickens until it’s all integrated. STIR. If you don’t stir, you’ll end up with scrambled eggs and pasta, which is not as good.

6. Okay, my pasta ended up a little dry. DON’T DO WHAT I DID. DON’T DUMP YOUR PASTA WATER DOWN THE DRAIN! If it’s looking a little dry, in step five, spoon in some of your pasta water and stir until it’s a consistency that you like. Then, finish it off by salting and peppering it. Taste it first–the pancetta/bacon probably salted it up a good deal for you already.

7. EAT.

Bonus: I paired this one splendidly with a Barefoot Merlot, which, if you’re still drinking it after you eat, turns sweeter after the food stops.

I essentially served myself and ate too fast for any attractive photos to be taken. Truly, pasta carbonara is the Loch Ness of foods.

PS: I love peas.

I understand, having once accidentally ordered a meat lovers’ pizza for my Muslim Chinese stepmother, that some people may feel offended by my passion for bacon.

Okay, so I was going to MSPaint me flicking off vegetarians in the blessed sight of God. But, it turns out that I suck at drawing heresy, and Ubuntu does not have an equivalent of MSPaint that I could find.

Anyways, I tried to put bacon into Asian pancakes. I mostly used the Yulin method, but I found one with pictures on the internet.

Ingredients:

- Five cups of flour

- Two cups of boiling water

- One cup of cold water

- Salt

- Vegetable oil

- Scallions, chopped

- Bacon, cooked to a crisp and crumbled

Confession: I fucked up bacon. These are paraphrased Gloria instructions for cooking bacon: “Heat the pan to medium, medium high. Put the bacon in the pan. Maybe move it around a little. If things get ridiculous, drain the pan.” If you are functionally stupid in a kitchen, I highly recommend turning your stove fan on its highest setting before doing any of that shit. And then make sure your boyfriend is out of the house so he does not see the smoky bacon disaster.

Okay, the fun part that doesn’t make you look like a jackass. Put the flour in a mixing bowl. Pour boiling water into the bowl and stir it around with a spoon until it’s crumbly. It doesn’t need to be fine crumbs, just kind of pieces. Now pour the cold water in. Then put your hands in and have a grand old time. If you want some structure, see Sophie’s post on baking bread. If you don’t have a pleasant, slightly sticky dough at this point, add some water. If your dough feels like an Alien facehugger looks, then toss in some more flour. Knead like a mofo. Knead until you can’t move. I’m not kidding. My triceps hurt the next day.

Let the dough rest for a bit with a towel on it so it doesn’t get dusty. If you’re feeling like a fancypants, brush some oil on it first. While the dough is resting, take your chopped green onion and sprinkle some salt on it so it gets wilty.

From here on, use Yulin’s instructions. I only have a bit of advice.

Bacon!

1. If you use these instructions, divide the pancakes into five pieces, not four. Four is too much. Four makes an Olympic-grade discus.

2. Sprinkle the bacon on liberally, but watch out: it doesn’t flavor the pancake as much as you want it. Sprinkle a little salt on before you hit Cinnabon stage.

3. Right before you fry, stretch out the pancake a little, until it is a size that you think is attractive.

4. When Yulin says “Generously oil,” he is not fucking kidding. This is not stir frying oil. You are practically deep frying your business. And the pancake will drink up a ton of it; my most successful pancake involved me reoiling the pan before I flipped.This oil means serious business.

5. Pro-tip from Gloria: toss your pancake in the air and catch it in the pan for bonus points. I don’t believe I did this successfully.

After three tries, I finally got one right. Fluffy, delicious, and perfect with Soy Sauce Paste. It sounds like crap and looks like crap, but it brings a party to your mouth and the cops aren’t invited.

This one turned out fluffy and delicious! I know what you Asian people are wondering: where are the layers? Well… shut up. It has bacon, dude.

Bacon and Cheddar Scones

Ingredients (makes about 8 large scones)

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 5 tablespoons chilled, unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch cubes
• 4-6 slices of bacon, depending on the thickness
• 1/2 cup scallions, sliced very thinly
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese
• 1 cup heavy cream

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix the flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, black pepper, cheddar and scallions together.  I decided to try a “stout cheddar”, which is basically aged cheddar with some stout beer in it. Cook the bacon in a pan  and then crumble into little bits.  Cut in the butter using a pastry blender or your fingers. The mixture should get a cornmeal-like texture once the butter is mostly cut in.  Add the bacon, mix, and then mix in the heavy cream with a rubber spatula or fork.  Mix until it starts to be dough-like and a bit sticky, then put it on a lightly floured surface and pat it out into a circular shape about 1/2 inch thick.  Cut it like a pizza, and you’ll get 8 triangular scones! Stick in the oven for about 15 minutes.

The results: quite tasty! I love plain savory scones for breakfast. The cranberry ones definitely go well with clotted cream and some jam.  I think the savory scones ended up a bit salty, which I suspect is due to the cheese I picked. So if you’re trying a batch yourself, try adjusting the amt of cheese to account for how intense the cheese is.

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