The Daily Experiment

The Daily Experiment
Bacon care of business
Opened the fridge once again today to a hopeless mismatch of assorted leftovers and random ingredients. Spotting the pancetta pieces I had bought earlier for one of these sorts of occasions my first thought was a cassoulet. This was quickly discarded due to the lack of sausages or beans… So instead I decided on a lentil hotpot; potatoes, lentils and bacon – I could go from there. First I pan fried the bacon pieces till golden. While waiting for this I got bored so opened the spice cupboard, added a few juniper berries, coriander seeds, pinch of mixed spice, salt and pepper.

When brown, I added a spoonful of honey, the lentils, found some red wine, a beef stock cube and hot water, thyme I found in the fridge and a bay leaf. It smelt pretty good by this point so I poured it straight into an ovenproof dish. To finish I sliced up some potatoes thinly, layered them up on top of the dish, drizzled over walnut oil, salt and pepper and put in the oven at 140oC for about an hour.

           

At this point I turned the soundtrack of Matilda loud was singing somewhat un-tunefully when my mum came in with a bowl of apples she’d just picked from outside the house, the only thing our pathetic excuse for a garden comes up with….. (Although to be honest the hopscotch and climbing wall sometimes makes up for this). Just because I never like to see food go to waste (and she told me to use them) I decided to experiment with baked apples. I cored them, placed them on foil and filled the centres with what I found in the cupboard. This turned out to be honey, vanilla extract, cinnamon, sultanas, pumpkin seeds, pinch of salt and the last dregs of a bottle of amaretto that looked like it had been around before I was born. I wrapped them up, cooked them on high for about 20mins and they came up quite mushy, but delicious nonetheless with a bit of vanilla ice cream.

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