Bacon Foam!

Pauly, top bloke, vegan, and our ace correspondent from the coast, forwarded me a menu from the weekend and I'm still getting over the official existence of Bacon Foam. Here we see Bacon Foam appearing on a menu of an otherwise very nice indeed looking restaurant http://www.sandbanksrestaurant.co.uk/MENU.html

You know when you go camping and there is only a little shop about a miles walk down the mountain - that's where you wind up having to get that bacon which is vacuum packed in thick clear plastic, or if you used to - you start the little stove up and put your camping pan on it, throw in the 'bacon' and behold - a load of pink froth bubbles out of it when you cook it, and said bacon reduces dramatically in size. That was the most useful definition of bacon foam. After boiling in foam for a few minutes if you were lucky the foam would turn into a brown crust on the pan. Argh! Bacon Foam! You would vow next time to get some proper dry cured bacon on the way next time and so what if it takes longer and you have to put the tent up in the dark. Surely this was bacon foam?

Not any more. If you google Bacon Foam you'll get a surprising number of hits. Apparently now it's something completely different, and seen as quite posh. Two worlds of bacon with completely different connotations. Real bacon is very dry pork meat preserved in salt, often smoked. Bacon Foam(TM) is what comes from low grade brine injected pork. I'd imagine a lot of top restaranteurs don't realise this constructive stigma if never went up Kinder Scout with a primus stove and a packet of Walls.

I find things like this completly delightful. As an encore, a recent fact to come my way is that Barak Obama is Romanian for 'dilapadated-shed Obama'. Vote Delipidated Shed!