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Angels on Horseback
I POUND CHEESE 16 SLICES BACON. 8 SPLIT ROLLS, WITH LETTUCE Cut the cheese into small cubes. Wrap the bacon around it both ways, and if necessary tie with grasses or pin with a skewer. Then run it through with a sharp pointed stick and toast quickly over a hot fire. Have ready a split roll and lettuce to hold the "angel" when it is ready to unhorse, or if it seems likely to fall off.
A variation is to put the cheese in a roll, wrap the bacon around the outside and toast the whole thing together.
A campfire sandwich built on the old savoury of bacon-wrapped oysters, with cheese standing in. The whole thing succeeds or fails on how fast the bacon cooks relative to how fast the cheese runs.
- Quantities and yieldA pound of cheese, 16 slices of bacon and 8 rolls fits the instruction to wrap the bacon "both ways": two slices per cube, one bundle of roughly two ounces of cheese per roll. The recipe does not say how many bundles go in a sandwich, so a pound divided as one-ounce cubes with a single rasher each would also work. Either way it is eight servings.
- Choose a cheese that holds togetherUse a firm aged cheese — Cheddar, Gruyere, halloumi, or a smoked provolone. Soft or young cheese liquefies and drips into the fire before the bacon has coloured. The recipe says "small cubes," but cutting nearer an inch gives the bacon time to cook before the centre runs.
- The bacon is the hinge"Toast quickly over a hot fire" will scorch the outside of the bacon while the inside stays raw and flabby, because the cheese sets a low ceiling on how long you can hold it over heat. Render the bacon in a skillet until it is cooked through but still pliable, cool it, then wrap and toast only to crisp and melt.
- Skip the grassesFasten with butcher's twine or plain wooden toothpicks soaked in water for twenty minutes. Foraged grass may be sprayed or simply unidentified, and it burns through at exactly the wrong moment.
- Sticks and skewersIf you cut your own stick, use green hardwood, never a resinous conifer, and strip the bark where the food sits. A pair of long metal skewers run through parallel keeps the bundles from spinning as they soften.
- Manage the fireCook over a bed of glowing coals rather than open flame. Dripping cheese and bacon fat flare badly, and a flare-up blackens the bacon in seconds.
- The roll variationWrapping bacon around the whole filled roll and toasting it together is the more forgiving method, but the bread chars long before raw bacon would cook. It only works with bacon already rendered.