Cookbook: The Bacon Cookbook

the appetizer:

The Bacon Cookbook by James Villas, presents 160 sweet and savory bacon recipes, including Danish Potato, Tomato, and Bacon Omelette; Swiss Apple, Pear, Potato, and Bacon Braise; and Hungarian Venison and Bacon Ragout.

The Bacon Cookbook:
More than 150 Recipes from Around the World
for Everyone's Favorite Food

by James Villas

Click to buy The Bacon Cookbook

"Who, under any circumstances, is not rendered almost helpless by the tantalizing sound of bacon sizzling slowly in a skillet, by the taunting backwoods aroma that permeates the air, by the luscious textures of crisp fat and toothsome lean meat, and by the explosion of mingled salty and smoky and sweet flavors that virtually explode in the mouth?" asks James Villas in his new book, The Bacon Cookbook.

Bacon—a favorite food—is not just for breakfast anymore. In The Bacon Cookbook acclaimed author James Villas assembles over 160 irresistible recipes from around the world that celebrate bacon in all its forms, and provides new and inventive ways to savor it in dishes for every meal and for every occasion.

The Bacon Cookbook devotes chapters to canapes and appetizers, soups and chowders, salads and sandwiches, casseroles and stews, main courses, pastas, breads—even desserts! Included are recipes for such classics as the All-American Club Sandwich, Original Boston Baked Beans, Spaghetti alia Carbonara, and Key West Conch and Bacon Stew, as well as international dishes such as Portuguese Egg and Bacon Pudding, Ecuadorian Pumpkin Soup, Filipino Adobo, and Mexican Squash, Yam, and Bacon Soup. Bacon may be salty, but Villas proves it can be sweet in his dessert section with original recipes ranging from Bacon and Peanut Butter Chocolate Truffles and German Bacon Cookies, to Canadian Bacon Maple Custard and Swedish Spice Cookies.

Villas also provides comprehensive descriptions of the numerous styles of bacon from well-known and commonly used forms such as applewood, corncob-smoked, and maple bacon, to its international cousins such as:

British Wiltshire Bacon—Lean, brine-cured, oak-smoked bacon cut from the center backs of special saddleback pigs.
French Ventreche—Cured, unsmoked, rolled pig belly or breast; used mainly in cooking and similar to Italian pancetta.
Italian Pancetta Affumicata—Dry-cured, unsmoked, spiced, dry-aged pig belly with streaks of lean meat.
Spanish Tocino—Pig belly cured in a special storage of salt crystals and used exclusively in cooking.
Canadian Peameal Bacon—Authentic lean "Canadian bacon" cut from the eye of the pig loin; sweet pickle cured-unsmoked, and coated in peameal or yellow commeal.
Danish Brown Sugar Slab Bacon—Very lean, brown sugar-cured, smoked pig upper belly or tenderloin prized by bacon connoisseurs.

The Bacon Cookbook also features chapters on the history of bacon; curing and smoking; buying and storing; cooking with bacon fat; and bacon and health, as well as an extensive list of mail order sources for artisanal bacon products.

Containing more information about bacon than you ever thought possible, and more bacon recipes than you ever knew existed, The Bacon Cookbook is the ultimate bible on bacon. With its publication, food lovers everywhere will learn what Villas and other bacon fanatics have known all along—"Bacon is the greatest and most beloved food on earth."

About the Author

James Villas is the author of twelve cookbooks, including the top-selling. The Glory of Southern Cooking, and several highly-acclaimed essay collections and memoirs. His writing has been featured in numerous magazines and newspapers such as The New York Times, Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, and Esquire. For twenty-seven years he was the food and wine editor of Town & Country magazine. Villas has been nominated for both James Beard and IACP Awards and recently received a James Beard Journalism Prize for an article in Gourmet. He also received Bon Appetit's Food Writer of the Year Award in 2003, distinguishing himself as one of the most recognized visionaries in the culinary field.

The Bacon Cookbook:
More than 150 Recipes from Around the World for Everyone's Favorite Food
by James Villas
Wiley 2007
Hardcover; 288 pages; $35.00
ISBN-13: 978-0-470-04282-3
Information provided by the publisher.

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