For His Master's Veneration: ferie morgenmad

Beer Candied Bacon

The Danes celebrate J-Day on the first Friday of every November.

The tradition was, of course, initiated by Carlsberg Danmark to market their Tuborg Julebryg. Today, has become part of national folklore. The event is so popular, the expression “J-day” is now in the Danish dictionary.

“Delivering the first snow to the people”

Employees dress up in Blue and White Santa suits and spend the evening driving beer trucks and horse carriages around the country’s biggest cities to deliver the beer. Each truck visits approximately ten places giving away free beer and performing a Tuborg Julebryg song and dance.

This is very much a Christmas Tradition in Denmark. If you question the Blue and White suits, remember one fact. On this side of the Atlantic, Santa wears Red and White only because that was Coca-Cola's colors when they first ran their Christmas advertising. Slave guesses that blue and white merchandise is very fashionable there.

Anyway here is a dressed up holiday treat in honor of this Christmas tradition from Denmark.

The uses of beer-candied bacon are endless: crumble and toss on brownies, stick a slice in ice cream, add to a caramel milkshake or just eat it plain. Bacon doesn’t need anything else to make it special.

Beer-Candied Bacon

Start to finish: 48 minutes

Makes 1 lbs. thick-cut bacon per glaze recipe

Sweet Glaze:

• ¼ cup stout For a festive touch try: Tulborg Christmas Ale!

Slave could not find any here so Sam Adams: “White Christmas” was used

• ½ cup dark brown sugar

Cinnamon to taste

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line the bottom of a broiler pan with foil for easy cleanup. Spray a baking rack for the bacon.

Place bacon on broiler pan in a single layer and bake 12 minutes. Flip bacon and bake 12 minutes more.

• Brush bacon with glaze and bake 6 minutes.

Flip bacon, brush with glaze and bake 6 minutes more.

Flip bacon, brush with glaze and bake 6 minutes more

for a total of 48 minutes in the oven.

• Remove bacon from oven. At this point it will be pliable and can be twisted or rolled. As it cools to room temperature it will harden. Twisted and stuck into a glass makes a festive finger food for any event.

Slave suggests you copy and print those times and mark them through as you do them. It helps to keep track.

If your tastes run to a more spicy treat add:

½ teaspoon chili powder
½ teaspoon smoked paprika
¼ teaspoon cayenne

Now If you can keep from eating the whole pound at one setting, try this recipe:

Morgenmad Pizza

Ingredients:

3 slices of Beer Candied Bacon, cut into small pieces

1 package (tube) of ready to bake pizza dough

¼ cup grated Fontina cheese

¼ cup grated Havarti cheese

¼ tsp Garlic powder

Red pepper flakes

3 – 4 large eggs

Olive oil to drizzle

Salt and pepper to taste

Place pizza stone in the oven and pre-heat to temperature called for on the package of pizza dough. (400)

Sprinkle a cutting board lightly with cornmeal or flour. Open the tube of dough and roll it out over the cornmeal. It might take a rolling pin to give you the shape you wish. Now sprinkle a bit more corn meal on the pizza peel (or paddle) and transfer the dough to that.

The dough might need pre-cooking. Just follow the guidelines for that dough. In this case it bakes for 5 minutes before anything is added.

Prick the dough with a fork and slide it onto the heated stone.

While that is cooking, do your eggs. The trick is to cook the whites and still leave some of the yolk runny, so you can dip pieces into it.

Some recipes call for you to crack them onto the pizza while it is in the oven. This is unnecessary problems just waiting to happen.

Spray the skillet, heat to medium low and fry the eggs, sunny side up. In fact they do not have to be all the way done yet. Remove the skillet from the heat and let the residual finish it.

After the 5 minutes mark, pull the crust out using the peel, back to the cutting board and lightly drizzle olive oil onto the dough and spread it around with a spoon.

Top with cheeses and bacon pieces. Sprinkle with garlic powder and red pepper flakes.

Slide the pizza back into the oven onto the already hot stone.

The dough said it needed 10 more minutes so bake for 7 minutes.

Then carefully slide out the pizza again. Using the spatula, trim the eggs until they look like you want and slide them onto the pizza.

Return it carefully to the oven to finish cooking the last 3 minutes. The white parts of the egg should be set, the cheese just starting to get a touch of brown.

Remove: season with salt and pepper, slice and serve. Oh what a wonderful aroma!

What a yummy “ferie morgenmad” to serve for Your Master!

Glædelig jul