If you think you’re passionate about America’s favorite – and perhaps least respected – breakfast meat, you’re not in the same league as Jennifer L.S. Piersall. No one loves bacon like she loves bacon. Hence, her new book, The Big Book of Bacon. The book’s subhead goes even farther into her scrumptious obsession: Savory Flirtations, Dalliances, and Indulgences With the Underbelly of the Pig.
See what we mean? Piersall doesn’t just restrict bacon to the breakfast skillet, though. She extolls the virtue of the porker underbelly in recipes for lunch, dinner, snacks, appetizers and pretty much any time you sit down for a meal or grab a bite on the run. And yes, there’s even an entire chapter devoted to bacon-enhanced desserts. Well of course there is.
Piersall spent months cooking up new recipes – using about three pounds of bacon a week while doing her research – and finding creative ways to enhance standard meals with bacon. As she states in her book’s Introduction: “Whether you eat it once a year, once a month, or every day, work bacon into a dish you hadn’t thought to try it in before. I’d bet my next slice of succulent, salty, savory bacon that you won’t be sorry.”
Now there’s a woman we could all fall in love with.