For Christmas 2009, my husband and I received a subscription to The Pig Next Door’s Heirloom Bacon Club. The card read “For the bacon lover in all of us.” The Pig’s Heirloom Bacon Club entitles you to a 12 to 16 oz. package of artisan bacon, made from heirloom breeds, delivered to your door step once a month for the duration of your membership. This must be a gift that keeps on giving as the giver is a regular at our dinner table.
First we received a welcome package. Its contents included a coffee mug & refrigerator magnet adorned with The Pig’s logo and a bar of chocolate w/bacon. This teaser came a full three weeks before receiving our first delivery. The bacon arrived in a flat rate USPS box, lined w/Styrofoam and a frozen gel pack. Included with the bacon was the following blurb written by The Pig…
“After spending his childhood summers helping his grandfather cure and smoke meats at the family farm in the Hudson River Valley, a 16-year-old Hobs Shore once vowed, “if I ever get out of here alive, I’ll never look another smokehouse in the eye again.” Fortunately for bacon lovers everywhere, Shore changed his mind and started perfecting his craft on pork bellies from hybrid Berkshire-Duroc hogs near the San Francisco Bay Area. These days, the company Shore started is the main bacon supplier at both Chez Panisse and The French Laundry, widely considered to be among the best restaurants in the United States.
The pure, never-too-smoky flavor of Hobbs Applewood-Smoked Bacon makes it a perfect ingredient in any dish that’s looking for a kiss of bacony goodness…”
What could I say to that? Besides, who doesn’t want to add a kiss of bacony goodness to their meal? AND if this bacon is good enough for Alice Waters & Thomas Keller then it must be spectacular…right?
Hobbs Applewood-Smoked Bacon was indeed delicious. The thick meaty slices were the perfect accompaniment to my poached eggs & ruby red grapefruit. I also used the fancy bacon to impart a subtle smoky flavor in braised rabbit legs. Pictured is a rabbit loin that has been wrapped with Hobbs Applewood-Smoked Bacon and asparagus, drizzled w/pan juices & blackberry balsamic vinegar.
