#sizzlinwithSAS: Bacon Salad! BACON Salad!

Bacon Salad Appetizer

 Ingredients:

• 1 head of endive or radicchio (other bitter leaves of choice that make a good serving vessel!)
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 1 clove garlic, clove crushed (not chopped)
• 8 ounces bacon, cut into ½’ pieces
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 5 teaspoons cider vinegar
• Dash Worcestershire sauce
• 1 medium apple, cut into matchstick pieces sliced on a mandolin
• Couple of cracks of black pepper
• salted or BBQ peanuts (chopped) or Hickory Sticks to garnish

Directions:
Break apart endive into individual full leaves.  Crisp them in clean, cold salted water bath for ~20 minutes.

Over medium flame, heat olive oil in a frying pan (ideally with tall sides just to minimize the mess).  Once warm, add garlic clove and allow to poach in olive oil for ~5 min.  Remove clove.  Continue medium heat and fry bacon until crisp, about 5 minutes (you may have to work in batches). Transfer bacon with a slotted to a bowl.

Add the Dijon mustard to the bacon juices in the pan and whisk to combine.  Add vinegar, Worcestershire sauce and black pepper.  Whisk again.  Tossing in bacon and apple.

To serve:

Using tongs, fill the endive leaves with bacon mixture.  Top with peanuts or hickory sticks.
Serve immediately.

Additional notes:
When we made this for Get Fresh In The Valley in ~2014(?), we used 3 different kinds of bacon: -applewood smoked bacon; Cherry Pink bacon from Bartlett Road, Beamsville; and a custom / private order of Berkshire bacon from pigs raised at our good friends Dave and Louise at Featherstone Estate Winery.

Paired with 2019 Bank Barn Baco Noir and 2018 Swing Barn Baco Noir Reserve on #sizzlinwithSAS April 17, 2021