Tag: Bacon

Healthy

Breakfast is commonly referred to as the the most crucial meal of the day. There is no scientific basis for that statement, but some research indicates that having breakfast may lower the risk of metabolic disorders and cardiovascular diseases. Some kind of breakfast is better than no breakfast.

Growing up in the British West Indies, visiting my grandmother in the Grenadines meant a breakfast of fresh oven-baked bread or fried “cou-cou”, a fried “sprat”, and a large enamel mug of “cocoa tea” (hot cocoa1). That was my favourite break, especially the fried cou-cou2. Delicious.

On the island of St. Vincent, where I was born, we would sometimes have bread with salted butter and English black pudding. Sometimes we ate roast breadfruit, fried and slathered with salted butter, fried sprat, and a few slices of fried sweet plantain.

These were hearty meals meant to get one going for a day of work.

I’ve now lived in the United States for over thirty years, most of that time in New Jersey. Black pudding is challenging to find in New Jersey. So are sweet plantains, sprat, cou-cou and breadfruit. I’ve had to adapt to my breakfast.

My current favourite homemade breakfast is thick-cut bacon cooked in the oven at 204ºC (~400ºF) for twenty minutes, with eggs cooked in the bacon fat, and a double protein Thomas’ English muffin.

That’s 27g of carbohydrates, 20g of protein, and 24g of fat. Healthy.

Created by photographer Frank Jansen, the Tuesday Photo Challenge is a weekly theme-based challenge for photographers of all kinds to share both new and old photography.

  1. Cocoa nibs ground up and mixed with spices like cinnamon and nutmeg, then rolled into tube-like cocoa sticks. The stick is ground up or boiled into hot milk and served in a mug. ↩
  2. Cou-cou, coo-coo (as it is known in the Windward Islands), or fungi (as it is known in the Leeward Islands and Dominica) makes up part of the national dishes of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, British Virgin Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands. It consists mainly of cornmeal (corn flour) and okra (ochroes). ↩

Not Your Basic Grilled Cheese

I'm practicing my food photography skills. They are quite basic. I am experimenting with lighting but most of my shots have been during the day, using a combination of window light and a strobe bouncing off the ceiling. For my first few attempts, I mounted the camera on a tripod and shot the food from above. For this set, I tried a direct front composition for one of the shots and I also played around with a reflector. I think it works but I would prefer to have a lighter background.

I made a "wooden table" to create surface for shooting the food but I have yet to stain or paint it. My design is a combination of four different designs -- DIY Distressed Wood Photo Backdrop from love and olive oil, Wooden Table Top Tutorial by the brewer and the baker, Reversible Wood Table Top Tutorial by semi sweet, and Wood Table For Product Photography by DIY Photography.

For this capture I modified a recipe I found on the food joy. The recipe is called Adult Grilled Cheese which my teenage daughter Kiran thinks is stupid because she doesn't understand what's grown up about it. I explained that I don't think kids would eat a sandwich with smoked Gouda, fig jam and apple slices. She disagrees because she would eat it and ... well, she's a kid. So my sandwich is called "Not Your Basic Grilled Cheese" since kids and adults can eat it.

The original ingredients included Fig Jam, sliced smoke Gouda and thick turkey bacon. I could only find Fig Preserves and a brick of Gouda. Turkey bacon isn't, so I use real Applewood smoked bacon and baked it in the oven.

Not Your Basic Grilled Cheese

  • Servings: 1
  • Difficulty: easy
  • Print

A grilled cheese with grown-up ingredients.



Harpoon Black IPA makes an excellent accompaniment to this sandwich.
Credit: islandinthenet.com

Ingredients

  • 8 slices of semolina bread
  • 16-20 of smoked Gouda
  • 8-12 strips thick cut Applewood smoked bacon
  • Fig preserves
  • 2 Granny Smith apples, sliced thin
  • Butter

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 400ºF. Place bacon strips on the top of a broiler pan and place in the oven and bake for 18-20 minutes. Remove the bacon and pat down with paper towels to remove any excess grease.
  2. Slice the smoked Gouda as thinly as possible.
  3. Butter the outsides of each piece of bread. On the inside, spread the fig jam on one side, then add 2-3 pieces of bacon, 3-4 slices of apples, and 4-5 slices of cheese. Top with the other slice of bread (buttered side on the outside!).
  4. Place the sandwich in a sauté pan on medium-low heat, browning each side of the bread. I use a cover while it's cooking to help melt the cheese.