Turning Pears into Bacon.

I was recently challenged to create a dish using specific ingredients (kind of like Chopped or Iron Chef without the time constraints).
How it came about: I was talking to a friend about adding another element to my poached pear recipe (more on that at a later date). The element of choice was a vanilla bean sweet cream sauce. And then she says, “Yeah, dude! Everything tastes better with cream!” Brief pause. “And bacon!” Pause. “And cheese!” Pause. “And butter! That’s sounds like the making of rather intense dish. You should do it!”

And somehow a conversation about partnering warm raspberry sauce with vanilla cream developed into a cooking challenge. Err, ok…

Create a dish using bacon, cream, cheese and butter. Ok, so maybe this sounds simple enough to some. But consider this; I haven’t eaten or cooked with pork since 1991! Where would I begin? How would I know if it tastes good or is seasoned well?

In spite of my reservations and the minor details, I accepted the challenge. At first I considered something simple: Mushroom, bacon risotto topped with fried spinach. Too easy. I wanted to do something that infused the flavor of bacon; a dish that was unsuspecting if you will. A dish that a true bacon fanatic would wanna bathe in!

The end result:
· Bacon Soup w/ White Truffle Cheese (ingredients included cream, butter and white pepper)
· Toast w/ Bacon Pate’
· BBT Sandwich (bacon, basil and tomato)

I left the room. She ate…. And tweeted:

in bacon bliss. my bacon-infused lunch (with a bacon triple cream cheese pate!) courtesy of @swankeventsolut :

If you’re so inclined to try it at home, hit me up for the recipe.

CHEERS