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Competition- Win free bacon for a month

Do you want to get your hands on a one month subscription of artisan bacon delivered straight to you door in the post?

One winner will be chosen at random and will receive one packet of bacon from Cure & Simple per week for 4 weeks. You can either have a different packet each week or choose your favourite from a choice of original, Thai, Pancetta, Bourbon, Old English, Smoked or smoked streaky.

If you haven’t already heard of Cure & Simple, they produce the best bacon I’ve ever got my grubby little hands on. The bacon is air dried, smothered in the finest ingredients meaning there’s no added water swimming in the frying pan making your bacon all soggy. Who wants soggy bacon? No me neither!

To enter the competition you have to follow @batch0ut on twitter and retweet the competition tweet. Competition ends on 14/04/2017 and is only available to UK mainland addresses. 14th April this year is not only my birthday but just so happens to be good Friday and what else could make a Friday better than a months supply of bacon I say.

The winner will have to provide the name and address they wish to have the bacon delivered to. We will try to contact the winner within one week of the competition close date and the winner will have 7 days to reply or we will choose another winner.

Don’t worry if you’re not a winner you can still get a discount on your first packet of bacon from Cure & Simple using the discount code 2SCRP8 at the checkout giving you 50% off.

Trust me once you’ve signed up, you will never want to buy a packet of laser cut, tracing paper like, steroid and water pumped cured pig slices ever again! I signed up about 18 months ago and haven’t looked back since.

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Easy Carbonara Recipe

Ingredients

Should feed 4 people

  • 500g pancetta bacon chopped into small chunks (I used 2 packets of Cure and Simple Pancetta)
  • 2 shallots chopped finely
  • 10 mushrooms of your choice chopped finely
  • 6-8 cloves garlic depending on how many vampires you’re trying to ward off
  • 400g of your favourite noodle pasta (We can’t be having any seashells in this recipe!)
  • 7 egg yolks
  • 100g Freshly grated Parmesan cheese
    NO CREAM!!!

Instructions

Start the pan of salted water on boil so it’s ready when you need it. You might need a decent sized pan to fit all the cooked pasta as it’s surprising how big it expands so don’t be using one you usually warm your tin of beans in as you won’t get very far.

Cook the Pancetta on it’s own in a pan slowly to render out all of the lovely flavoursome fat in the rind. Cook it too quickly especially the air dried type of bacon and it will burn before the rind has rendered and you’re left with soggy gelatinous crap to chew on.
Once the bacon has cooked and has a nice crisp on it, remove from the pan and set aside. Now add the mushrooms to the pan of rendered fat, you might want to add an extra chunk of butter to add to the mushrooms to absorb a bit more artery clogging deliciousness to the mix. Cook for a few minutes then add the chopped shallots to start to brown too.

At the same time add the pasta to the boiling salted water and cook to desired time. I like a bit of bite but depending on if you’re using fresh or dried cook accordingly to the instructions for desired texture.

Add the garlic to the pan of mushrooms, shallots and add the bacon back in to cook for two minutes, add a good grinding of pepper before removing from the heat. Now remove the pasta from the water but before you drain all the water, take a mug of the cooking liquor.

Leave the pasta drip drain for a minute or two before adding to the pan and mixing with the ingredients. Add half of the grated parmesan to the beaten egg and pour evenly over the pasta mixture in the pan.Take a pair of tongs and mix to combine the egg and cheese mixture a bit before adding a couple of splashes of the reserved pasta cooking water. Continue to to combine the contents of the pan whilst sprinkling in the rest of the shredded cheese so you get a beautifully emulsified pasta noodle with helps the bacon, mushrooms and shallots to cling to.

Notice we didn’t add any cream like most commercial offerings? you really don’t need if as you get all the creaminess you need from the egg yolks, cheese and a helping hand from the cooking liquor to give it a bit of extra moisture.Marlborough

Divide into 4 bowls, top with some ground black pepper and a bit more shredded parmesan to taste. Can be enjoyed with a good glass of Marlborough Sauv Blanc and a crispy wedge of garlic bread.

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Really Simple Hollandaise Sauce

It’s bank holiday weekend so no doubt most of the UK will be seeking out the ultimate hangover cure at some point over the next few days so what could be better than crisped smoked bacon, poached runny egg yolks with lashings of lemony hollandaise sauce mounted on top of crunchy crumpets fried in bacon grease!

I’m always seeking new ways of cooking and accompanying my weekly dose of bacon from Cure and Simple , the bacon subscription service where you get sent a choice of 6 bacon flavours through the post each week.

Seeing that i’ve had a fry up the past 3 days I thought i’d give my old favourite eggs Benedict a bash. I’d only ever tried making hollandaise once before and I think I put a bit too much vinegar in this time so it was time to make some amendments to my recipe this time.

Really simple hollandaise sauce for Eggs Benedict

  • 3 egg yolks
  • 100g butter
  • 1/4 lemon for the juice
  • 1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon English mustard
  • 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • salt to taste
  • cracked black pepper to taste

How to make the really simple hollandaise sauce

  1. Put a pan of water on to boil. Kill two bird with one stone and use the bowl you’re going to cook your poached eggs in to cook the hollandaise sauce.
  2. Fill cold water in the sink or in a larger bowl just so you can place the hollandaise bowl into if it starts to heat to quickly.
  3. Melt the butter and allow to cool in a glass bowl
  4. Separate the eggs discarding the whites to leave you with egg yolks and add to the glass bowl with the butter.
  5. Squeeze the lemon 1/4 to get the juice into the egg and butter mixture
  6. Add a teaspoon of the white wine vinegar
  7. Add 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne to the mix
  8. Add salt and pepper to taste
  9. Place the bowl over the boiling pan of water and keep whisking. Take the bowl off the water from time to time as not to overcook or heat too much as the yolks will start to scramble.
  10. You can drop your eggs into the pan whilst your thickening the hollandaise sauce it just depends how well done you like the yolks but I have to have them runny so don’t put the eggs in until the sauce starts to thicken slightly. It should take about 4-5 minutes to thicken depending on how high you have the heat.
  11. If the sauce thickens up too much and becomes a bit gloopy then just add a dash of water and cool the bowl down by dropping into the cold water in the sink or bowl.
  12. Place your poached egg on top of your preferred carb base and crispy bacon. If you haven’t got muffins then I like to use crispy crumpets that have been toasted first then crisped up in a pan full of bacon grease from the bacon I have to accompany the eggs benedict.
  13. Spoon a good dollop of the hollandaise sauce on top of the eggs and break the egg yolks so it oozes out over the toasted muffin/crumpets and bacon.
  14. Top with a bit of cracked pepper and start to devour! Licking the bowl is optional.

 

 

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Cure and Simple Bacon Subscription Discount Code 2SCRP8

[fusion_text]I’m not even going to ask if you like bacon because if you don’t then please leave this blog immediately, sit in the corner of whatever room you are in at the moment and have a quiet word with yourself!

Bacon as far as I’m concerned is the king of all food and of course the main ingredient in any ultimate hangover cure so it’s quite fitting that you can choose your favourite bacon online whilst wrapped up snuggly in under your duvet and have the salty crispy goodness dropped off by Steve the postman in 24 hours.

If you haven’t heard of it cureandsimple.com is a subscription based bacon delivery just like lovefilm or Graze except they send you small packs of hand cured artisan bacon in 5 different flavours either once a week, fortnightly or monthly with the option to pause your regularity at any time. The bacon is vacuum packed then put in an envelope that fits neatly through your door so you don’t have to wait in and because it’s cured in such a way that they don’t inject it full of water and whatever other crack they try to bulk it up with all the moisture has been removed so it doesn’t actually have to stay in the fridge so it will be fine laying on your floor until you get home from work or wherever else you might be during the day.

But I have a dog I here you say and Alfie the French Mastiff would love to get his humungous jaws wrapped around 10 slices of pork gold! Fear not as the guys at Cureandsimple.com seemed to have thought of everything here, they double pack it so it goes in an extra layer of protection and also spray it with dog repellent! These guys are legends in the making!

The Flavours of Bacon currently available on Cureandsimple.com are:

  • Original
  • Pancetta
  • Thai
  • Old English
  • Bourbon

You can also choose a mixed option so they send you a different one each time.

I’ve had 2 bourbon ones, which I used one for a  bbq tower pitta with pulled pork sausage, homemade guacamole, grated cheese and thinly sliced bourbon bacon bits to top it off. I had a packet of the Old English,which made an awesome bacon sandwich to take on the journey up to Birmingham airport to Ibiza a few weeks ago and to sort me out the morning I got back because I actually thought I was going to die!

I also tried the Thai flavoured bacon, which I used to make a Bacon and Scallop Pad Thai that was also something special.

If you want to get a discount on your first Cure and Simple bacon subscription then just use the discount code 2SCRP8 when signing up to get a 50% discount at the time of writing this post.

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