The Fancy-Pants Way To Make A (Totally Awesome) Bacon Sandwich – 20SB Cooking Contest

“I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

This week’s 20SB Cooking Challenge was set by last week’s winner, Ellie, who gave us the task of turning our favourite meal into a sandwich. The rules were that the sandwich must contain two ingredients from the original meal plus an extra new ingredient.

I decided that my response to this would be to cook my current favourite pasta recipe – minus the pasta – and stick it on a sandwich. I thought this meal would be ideal to adapt into a sandwich since the key ingredient is bacon – and who doesn’t love a good bacon sandwich?

I imagined it tasting excellent on a nice, fresh, crusty baguette – with some garlic butter as my additional ingredient.

Unfortunately, as you can see, my actual creation didn’t quite live up to my vision – I didn’t get out of bed until embarrassingly late this afternoon/early evening and so when I went to the shop all the best bread had gone and these white bread cakes were the nearest alternative – but the sandwich I ended up with was still pretty darned awesome.

Here’s how I made it.

This recipe takes about twenty-five minutes to cook and as long to prepare as it takes you to dice an onion.

Ingredients:

• four tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
• 250g Danish bacon lardons
• a small white onion
• 390g chopped tomatoes
• a large glug of white wine
• two teaspoons of crushed chillies – or more, or less, depending how hot you like your sandwiches
• a warm, crispy baguette
• a generous amount of garlic butter

When I have pasta to accompany this meal instead of bread I usually make spaghetti or linguine.

Method:

Step 1. Set the olive oil to heat in a pan while you dice the onion into tiny pieces.

Step 2. Add the onion, and the bacon, and the chillies to the pan and fry for a few minutes until the onion starts to brown.

Step 3. Pour in the wine and add the tomatoes.

Step 4. Cook for another twenty minutes, or failing that at least as long as your impatience for the bacon will allow.

Step 5. Slice your bread, butter it with some garlic butter, and then encase it around some of your delicious bacon mixture.

And you should end up with something that looks a bit like this:

 And it will taste heavenly.