Squeaking Spinach, Sizzling Bacon
Ingredients
Preparation
Step 1
It’s the first week of June, a gray sky threatening rain. I have bought true spinach home, the leaves pointed like the iron head of a prehistoric arrow. Tight little sprigs that stand up proud if you hold them at their pink base and crisp, water-rich stems that crunch when you break them.
Step 2
It takes four washes to get the Herefordshire mud off them, plunging them over and over in deep water, each spent bowl of water poured over the garden. I have also bought some Ginger Pig long-back bacon, the slices so long they have to be doubled over in the pan.
Step 3
No oil, just the hot fat from the frying pan and a splash of sherry vinegar poured over at the last minute. I put the leaves in a dish, then a splash of vinegar, the coarsely cut hot bacon, and the spitting fat. No salt or pepper, but a few cooked fava beans instead. Just everything tossed immediately while the fat is still hot and the spinach cold. Not so much a recipe as an assembly—crisp, juicy stalks crunch under the teeth with the hot, salty, fatty bacon.
Step 4
Such a simple salad works because the sweet bacon mellows the clean acidity of the spinach and the sherry vinegar unites the two. The vinegar turns the two ingredients into a salad, like someone introducing two friends they know will get on.
Step 5
I could have included capers, or seeded grapes or even some sliced avocado, or hand-torn croutons cooked in the bacon fat. But I didn’t.
