Cheese Loaf - Not Suitable For Vegetarians...

[curiouswombat]

D-d e-mailed me the other night to ask me for a recipe. It was for 'the cheese & bacon loaf the vegetarians liked'.



This is a recipe I got from my mother a long time ago - so long ago it is in ounces.


Cheese and Bacon Loaf


5 oz self-raising flour

3 rounded teaspoons dried mustard powder

1/4 teaspoon ground pepper

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 oz margarine

4 rashers bacon

4 oz cheddar cheese

1/4 pint milk

1 egg

1 rounded teaspoon baking powder.


Put all ingredients except 1 oz cheese in a food processor and whiz until blended, or grate cheese, finely chop bacon and beat everything together well with a wooden spoon.

Turn it into a greased and lined loaf tin, sprinkle the last 1 oz of cheese, grated, over the top, bake at 190C for 40 –45 minutes. Cool on a wire rack, eat buttered.

..............


It is very tasty, very savoury - and I used to make it quite often, especially to take to the sort of thing that my American Friends call pot-luck and I know as a faith-supper.

On one occasion I took it along to just such a gathering at a friend's house - she put it on the 'savouries' table along with sausage rolls, ham and tomato sandwiches, chicken wings and a few things.

At the end of the evening a lady I had never met before came up and said that the hostess had told her I had made the lovely cheese loaf. She'd never had one that was so tasty... and thanked me very much as it was 'the only savoury thing there that she could eat, being a vegetarian'.

I really hadn't the heart to tell her that probably what made it so much nicer than most other cheese loaves was that 4 rashers of bacon!



The next chapter of The Valinor Trail is written - it is just waiting for S2C to have time to go over it with a fine-toothed comb before I post it.

Comments

[zanthinegirl.livejournal.com]

LOL-- bacon makes everything better!

I was such a bad vegetarian. which is why I gave it up...

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

bacon makes everything better!

That's exactly what S2C said.

I have a friend who is vegetarian purely because she doesn't like the texture of meat in her mouth - so she would probably have eaten the loaf happily even had she known what the 'secret ingredient' is.

[zanthinegirl.livejournal.com]

I make a a beef stew-- I'm actually eating leftovers of it as I type this-- with bacon and dark beer (Rogue brewery's Shakespeare stout this time) You really don't taste either the bacon or the stout, but they add a lot of flavor. Yum.

I was a vegetarian partially because-- I'm going for honesty here-- it annoyed my parents. Also partially because I had ethical concerns about farmed animal, but mostly because my nephrologist at the time enrolled me in a low protein diet due to the kidney disease. There's a lot of evidence for low protein diets in diabetic kidney disease, though not for FSGS. I did the low protein thing for years. I did atkins last summer and that was really, really hard!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I do like a good beef stew. Actually I don't eat large amounts of meat - but probably there is some chicken, or pork/ham/bacon, or beef, in five main meals out of seven each week.

[zanthinegirl.livejournal.com]

I do like a good beef stew. Actually I don't eat large amounts of meat - but probably there is some chicken, or pork/ham/bacon, or beef, in five main meals out of seven each week.

Yup! me too; though this time of year I often make a giant pot of beef stew (or split pea, or lentil, or whatever) with meat in it. Food for days and days!

Though this is day 3.5 of the gorgeous beef stew, and I'm thinking of ordering delivery thai or possibly indian for dinner. LOL!

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

She didn't see the bacon? It does sound good.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It simply forms pink flecks, and the top was buttered, so I don't suppose she thought too much about it - I'm guessing that someone else simply said to her - that's a cheese loaf - and she didn't think of it being anything else!

It is really, really, tasty. I made one last night, just because D-d had reminded me about it.

[ellynn-ithilwen.livejournal.com]

Of course bacon made it perfect! :D
I think I'll try this one. ;)

P.s. Oz means ounce? I won't have problems converting that, but I'm not sure about pints... How much is a pint in litres?

P.p.s. I think I found it. Is your pint (I say your because I found some others too) about 0.56 litre?

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Yes - oz is ounce, and the 1/4 pint is about 150ml.

Are you able to get dry mustard powder? If not, I reckon about 3 good teaspoons of mustard from the jar, and then either increase the flour a little or decrease the milk a little.

Self-raising flour has an average amount of baking powder added to it - I'm not sure if it is just a Brit thing of if the rest of Europe also has it! If you have plain flour without any built-in rising agent then it would need about 2 rounded teaspoons more of baking powder.

[ellynn-ithilwen.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the additional explanations. :) Now, I'm not sure if there is mustard powder in our shops - I've never looked for it - but I already decided I'd take some mustard from the jar. ;) Same with self-raising flour: I don't know if I can find it, so I'll use a little more of baking powder.
I'm looking forward to it! :)

[deborahw37.livejournal.com]

Oh dear!


I'm amazed that she didn't taste the bacon in it.

Actually this is why I'm really wary of eating buffet food, you'd be amazed how often meat gets into things that look veggie and even into stuff that's labelled veggie.

And after 30 years without meat such slip ups make me... shall we say intestinally uncertain :)
( nasty experience recently with a "veggie" soup that was actually based on chicken stock. I realised on the second mouthful and asked the waitress to double check... they were very apologetic but the effects were not nice.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

She doubtless did taste the bacon but, not having eaten it before, didn't realise that it was what made it so much 'nicer' than the average cheese loaf!

Mind you, I would reckon that, if you put extra cheese instead, with that amount of mustard it would be pretty tasty anyway.

[deborahw37.livejournal.com]

Could of been worse.. she could have been a Kosher vegetarian :)

And yes, adding mustard really brings out the cheesiness in most things... and of course a strict vegetarian wouldn't have eaten it in the first place because not all cheese is veggie ( much of it is set with rennet)

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I'd have been even less inclined to tell her then!

I have one friend who is vegetarian only because she can't cope with the texture of meat in her mouth, it makes her retch; so she's fine with ordinary cheese - but my friends down our street are vegetarian on principle and so if I make anything for them I am always careful to use the right cheese, and the right mince-meat at Christmas.

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

Oh my! That's quite funny. I wonder if she ever figured out why it tasted so good.
LOL
*copying the recipe because we aren't veggie and it sounds yummy*

(I can't get self-rising flour easily here. If I use regular flour what would I add to make it rise? Baking powder?)

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Here (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/content/knowhow/glossary/baking-powder/) is the BBC info on converting plain flour to SR - actually I only had plain flour when I made mine last night and I added an extra heaped teaspoonful of baking powder as 5 oz is more like 170g or so - it seemed to work OK.

There is also no magic to it being margarine rather than butter - all my Mum's old recipes seem to use SR flour and margarine, clearly the standard ingredients of recipes in the 1950s!

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link! That helps. As do your own indications.
:)

[estelcontar1.livejournal.com]

It sounds very savoury indeed and it's making my mouth water.

I can tell a very similar story about my sister. She stopped eating red meat around 40 years ago. Here in Brazil, we fry tiny bits of bacon till the fat part is very brown and crispy. A few months ago I used the liquid fat remaining on the skillet to season black beans. I forgot to tell my sister I had done so, and she ate the beans and said she hadn't eaten such delicious ones in ages. I didn't have the heart to tell her about the bacon fat either.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Hee - yes, the bacon fat would be a very tasty addition! And you, like me, obviously felt it was kinder not to let her know... :)

[timeofchange.livejournal.com]

Hee!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

:)

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

I really hadn't the heart to tell her that probably what made it so much nicer than most other cheese loaves was that 4 rashers of bacon!

I am dying laughing here! I have heard different versions of that stories to many times to count! So funny how those vegetarians are so bowled when they accidentally eat meat and no one tells them.

I do try to be honest and, if I know I have vegetarians around, I am careful. But it is true that animal fat is yummy!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Estelcontar, in a slightly earlier comment, was saying she had just done something similar to her vegetarian sister - with the same effect. Humans really are programmed to enjoy animal fats...

[mrowe.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that description looks tasty.

And lol at the vegetarian story:)

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It is really tasty. I did feel sorry for the poor woman - I certainly felt it was best to leave her in ignorance!

[kazzy-cee.livejournal.com]

I have copied that recipe because I'm all in favour of recipes you can do in the food processor!! Sound really great.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Don't laugh - when I did it on Saturday I did it by hand (already had the cheese grated in the fridge) because I couldn't be bothered getting the food processor out of the cupboard!

[momflower.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for sharing the recipe! What do you serve it with? I definitely will be making this!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

We would just butter it and have it with a drink for a snack.

As the original recipe is for self-raising flour, which I gather is not common in the US, you'd need to add extra baking powder, too. (I wonder why SR flour doesn't seem to have caught on outside the UK - it seems such an obvious idea!)

[momflower.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I wonder why you thought that? Have you had friends here who haven't found it? It is readily available here, and has been in every town and state that I have ever lived in. Very odd, indeed.:)

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

*Hi Lisa*
:)
I think she forgot that I live in Spain.
:D
We can't get it here at all.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I think the friend who didn't recognise what I meant lived over on the north-west coast. Perhaps it hasn't got that far!

But thank you so much for telling me, as I won't feel I have to explain any more. Although, it does occur to me, that your pint is a touch smaller than ours - so 1/4 pint is 5 fluid oz, not 4.

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

You can get the flour in the US but not here in Spain.
:)

[mummy-owl.livejournal.com]

Self raising flour in France is called 'farine gateaux' (cake flour) ...maybe Carrefour would have it?

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

I'll have to check again but here in Spain we have had traditionally only two types of flour: the very fine textured one (sans leavening of any sort) for cakes and baking, and a courser ground kind for coating fried fish! I can get baking powder separately so mixing it with cake flour will do the job.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I've had a couple of American friends over the years wanting to know what Self-raising flour was, and was it like all-purpose flour or cake flour? Now, as Mummy-owl tells us 'cake-flour' in France is actually SR, does that mean the American one is, too?

The person I discussed it with a few years ago said it was that it was finer than all-purpose, which made sense as we can get a superfine cake flour in both plain and SR versions - but I don't usually bother.

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

To me, self rising is old-fashioned.My mum used it for cakes in the 50's. I may be wrong and it still exists. Shelagh is in France so it's different there. There is something here that is "harina con fuerza" that *may* be similar but I'm not sure. I'll just use the add baking powder method.
:)

[chaotic-binky.livejournal.com]

Cheese and bacon loaf sounds yummy!

Thank you for posting it - I am going to copy it to my recipes to try Word doc :D Now I have a stand mixer the world is my oyster lol

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It is a really tasty change from fruit loaf, or cheese scones.

Hmm - cheese scones... I wonder if cheese and bacon scones would work?

[cairistiona7.livejournal.com]

I really hadn't the heart to tell her that probably what made it so much nicer than most other cheese loaves was that 4 rashers of bacon!

Oh goodness, yes... you couldn't at that point tell them about the bacon!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It would have probably have upset her - and I don't suppose it did her any harm!

[mummy-owl.livejournal.com]

Oooh! Sounds lovely....and easy too! Must try it :-)

We were out in a restaurant with veggie friends who ordered various salad/ egg dishes. They came with chips which they loved - Noel put his foot in it by saying "That's because they cook them in duck fat"...ominous pause...then they both laughed and agreed they'd pretend not to have heard him :-D

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It is a really good think to have as a snack - or for afternoon tea if you are feeling very English!

I keep all my goose fat for making roasties - so I can imagine duck fat chips would be most excellent.

[mummy-owl.livejournal.com]

We use duck fat occasionaly for roasting - this is duck country and we have duck about once a month (portions, not a whole one!). We keep the fat for later....although the dog gets a bit with her dinner too ;-)

[myrhiann.livejournal.com]

Your Loaf sounds yummy. I think I might make it, even though bacon is now forbidden.
BTW, I have a recipe for savoury muffins you would like. It is made with cheddar cheese, diced bacon and sweet corn niblets, although I don't think they are necessary. I would make them again but there is no room in the freezer to store them, and I am the only one who would eat them. I actually got the recipe from a brochure that Woolworths put out, which they do from time to time to encourage customers to buy more of their products.

I will look it out and post it later.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It is a good way of making very little bacon go quite a long way.

And yes please for the muffin recipe!