Dilled Bacon, Potatoes & Tomatoes
Bacon. Potatoes. Sublimity.
Those were the guiding principles behind a recent bacon-infused dinner. After cooking my two strips of bacon, I knew I was going to have plenty of tasty bacon grease happily burbling away in the pan. Why throw that out when you can cook something in it…say, something that would absorb that luscious rendered bacon fat and make the most of it? Besides, the deal had been (unwittingly) sealed earlier that day — or at least set into motion — when I’d gone to the farmer’s market and had stumbled upon small, rounded, oh-so-cute organic potatoes at one of the stands. Those unassuming earthy jewels would be the ideal partner for my bacon drippings! And the golden cherry tomatoes that I’d later find in my garden literally made the deal even sweeter.
Dilled Bacon, Potato & Tomato Mélange
Serves 2 as a light main dish; recipe can easily be doubled or tripled according to your needs.
4 strips good-quality bacon (Applegate Farms makes a nice one, or better yet visit your farmer’s market to find local and pastured hog products)
About 8 small round potatoes, sliced into 1/4″-thick rounds
12 cherry tomatoes, halved
Pinch of sea salt
Sprig of fresh dill, 1 or 2 tsp. of the ferny fronds torn off (the main sprig will be used as garnish)
Get the bacon cooking over medium heat in a covered saucepan. If your bacon is more of the val-pak variety, you might want to use a deep-bottomed pot to ward off bacon grease splatters. (See the Summer Bacon Pasta post to learn more about what distinguishes great bacon from val-pak bacon.) The bacon will probably take about 10 minutes to cook, but may take more or less depending on what kind of pan you have and what kind of bacon you have. Carefully turn the strips over with long tongs at about the halfway point.
When the bacon is crispy and brown, lift it out of the pan and place it on a folded paper towel to drain. Remove the pan from the heat and let it cool for a minute before adding the sliced potatoes to the bacon grease. (If you add them right away, the still-very-hot grease will begin to splatter. Dangerously.) Cook the potatoes over medium-LOW heat for about 3 minutes or until the bottoms are golden. Flip them over and cook for another 2 minutes or until they’re just beginning to turn golden.
Add tomatoes and cook for another 2 minutes or until the tomatoes just start to shrivel. Sprinkle a dash of sea salt over the potatoes and tomatoes. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in lettuce and dill. (The residual heat will wilt the lettuce.)
Split the dish into two portions, plate, and crumble 2 strips of the cooked bacon over each portion. Add additional pinch of salt if desired and garnish each plate with large fronds torn from the remaining sprig of dill.
Enjoy!
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