MR CHOPS HAS A HANKERING FOR BACON

Most Saturday nights we tend to treat ourselves to a nice home cooked dinner, and last night was no exception...except for the fact we didn't want the whole hog (pardon the pun I'm sorry). Mr. Chops had great idea as earlier in the day I'd made brown bread so the idea was to incorporate the bread into the bacon dinner. Now when you say bacon in Ireland you don't mean strips of bacon or rashers as we call them. You mean a slab or loin of back bacon, unsmoked of course as Mr. Chops hates anything smoked. The local butcher was doing an offer so we availed.

Having grown up in the countryside it was impressed on me at a young age how to cook a piece of bacon. No matter that the butcher tells you its not salty it often is. If you can soak the bacon overnight in cold water, start this process early in the evening so you can change the water a couple of times before you go to bed. If you haven't time to do it overnight then a couple of changes of cold water over a few hours will be enough. Then comes the cooking process. I always add a roughly chopped carrot, bay leaf, a large onion cut into eights and a good sprinkling of black peppercorns. This is what I suppose you'd call a brine. Make sure it completely covers the meat. It looks like this:

Bring it very slowly to the boil and let it bubble gently for 20mins or so. Then carefully remove the bacon to a plate and empty the contents of the pan into a colander getting rid of the water. Put everything back into the pan and replace with hot water from the kettle just making sure again that the meat is fully covered. Again bring slowly to the boil and repeat the process of changing the water. During the last boil you can make up your mustard glaze. Oh did I not mention you finish off the cooking in the oven with a delicious mustard and honey glaze. Now its up to you but I use 3 different mustards with my honey, which should be clear and runny. Here they are:

I mix a couple of large teaspoons of each of wholegrain, English and Dijon mustard with a couple of teaspoons of clear honey. Give it a stir to bring it altogether. Its not precise, I tend to make more than I need but I always use it up on the bacon, the thicker the layer of mix the crustier it gets and yummy!!!

Preheat the oven to roughly 160C fan/170C. Probably the best tip I can give you is to double line your oven dish with tin foil, it saves on the washing up afterwards which is very important for a Saturday night. Once the bacon has bubbled for another 20mins take it out and let it dry slightly, you can also dab it all over with kitchen paper. Pierce the meat with a long skewer but try not to go all the way through you want the mustard mix to seep through and it also keeps the meat moist in the oven. Remove any excess fat and skin from the meat, sit it fat side down on the tray and lather it all over with the mustard mix. You want to smother it really. It should look like this:

Give it about 30-40mins in the oven, cover it with foil if you think its getting burned - honey does tend to caramelise. Once cooked either serve it with the usual suspects of boiled potatoes & cabbage or do what we did: fresh brown bread generously buttered, slices of large plum tomatoes and chopped scallions. Absolutely delish and very satisfying indeed!