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Jersey Mosquitoes
Mash sardines with mustard, salt, and pepper, spread on bacon slices, roll, and fasten with toothpicks; fry in bacon drippings, slap onto cheese wafers, with a dash of Tabasco to help the mustard sting.
Swallowing these biting little snacks gives a chance for poetic revenge in the State most famous for mosquitoes in vacation time.
A savoury bacon roll of the 1930s campfire type, written as a sketch rather than a formula. The proportions are left to the cook, so a little scaling is the first job.
- Working quantitiesOne standard 3.75 oz tin of sardines, drained and mashed, will fill about eight to ten half-slices of bacon. Figure roughly a teaspoon of mustard, a good pinch of salt and several grinds of pepper per tin, tasting before you roll.
- The mustardThe recipe does not specify which. Dry mustard powder stings the way the headnote promises and keeps the paste stiff. Prepared yellow mustard will work but adds vinegar and water and loosens the paste; if you use it, drain the sardines very thoroughly.
- Cut the bacon shortFull-length modern slices are too long to cook evenly around a wet filling. Halve them crosswise so each roll is one snug wrap with a slight overlap, and secure through the overlap.
- Bacon has to cook throughThis is the hinge. Fry over medium heat, turning, until the bacon is fully crisp on all sides -- eight to twelve minutes. Rolled bacon shields itself, and a roll that is brown outside can still be raw where it laps.
- ToothpicksUse plain wooden picks, not lacquered or coloured ones. Pull them before serving.
- Cheese wafersThese were thin baked cheese crackers or cheese straws, made at home from a short cheese pastry. Any firm cheese cracker stands in; choose a sturdy one, since a hot roll straight from the pan will soften a delicate wafer at once.
- Drain before slappingRest the rolls a moment on paper before they meet the wafer, or bacon fat soaks straight through the base and the whole thing collapses in the hand.
- Yield and servingOne tin makes eight to ten one-bite hors d'oeuvres, enough for four people with drinks. Serve hot, with the Tabasco added at the last moment so it stays sharp.