‘Tis the season for bacon! I want to get straight to the recipe because I’m including more pictures than normal. Of course, if you want more pictures of all the unholy food I’ve been cooking you can always check out my Flickr Photostream.
Warning: visually sensitive vegetarians may want to take precautions in case of nausea.
What I Used
- Pork Tenderloin
- Bacon
- Fennel, toasted
- Cumin, toasted
- Dried Arbol Chiles
- Salt
- Flour
What I Did
- Toast up the cumin and fennel in the oven and grind with dried chiles in spice/coffee grinder
- Combine 2 parts flour and 1 part salt with water to create salt dough
- Roll salt dough thin on a well floured cutting board and lay bacon, tenderloin on top
Spread spice mixture on tenderloin and wrap bacon and salt dough around it
Bake in 350deg oven for 1 hr
Cut top or end off of salt dough, remove tenderloin, discard bacon and salt dough
Cut tenderloin into slices if you can keep it from falling apart when touched
Just ignore the other items pictured. One is a reduction of kiwi and onion, which is way too tart. The other is brown rice, which is cool and all but not exactly exciting.
For the record, this is a combination of barding, a technique for adding fatty moisture to meat, and salt-dough cooking, a technique for retaining moisture. The combination is another unholy means of roasting a pig in its own gluttinous fat.
Do you have any favorite recipes that take advantage of barding or salt doughs? Share them in the comments!
4 Comments
That looks pretty awesome, I might have to try making that. The discard bacon step makes me sad though.
Can you “that’s what she said” your own comment?
You could swap the discard bacon step with a consume bacon step, but let me suggest something if you do. Tear off a smile bite of the dough and eat it first. Then consume the bacon. This way, when the waaaay too salty bacon hits you’ll be able to say, “Well at least it isn’t as awful as that f#*^%@g dough!”
That’s what she said
It’s like a meat cocoon… (that’s what she said)