Food trends: Bacon is the new black

Beyond Takeout

Tantri Wija | For The New Mexican

8/5/2008 - 8/6/08

People have always been very into eating. And I don't mean that, to avoid dying, they pick up a rock and stick whatever lives underneath it into their mouth.

In times medieval, the prevailing trend (among those who could afford it) was to stuff large animals inside of other large animals and then roast them. I once found a recipe for stuffing a pheasant inside a chicken inside a goose inside a pig inside a cow inside — oh, I suppose, an elephant, or, possibly, a blue whale. This would be served with pudding, as was everything back then.

During the Renaissance, food was simply dipped in gold and served with a naked courtesan on top. I don't know why this trend hasn't resurfaced yet; hopefully Emeril will come up with something similar that you and I can make at home. Next came the Enlightenment, during which people wore giant wigs that looked like cakes and ate giant cakes that looked like wigs.

I am personally intrigued by the food of the 1950s, featuring aspic, Jello, things on toothpicks, things that go straight from the oven to the table, etc. I look at my grandparents sometimes and marvel at their eagerness to place canned pineapple slices atop desserts — and, sometimes, pork dishes. This was the last significant style until the '80s,
which began a period of food trendiness that has yet to abate. We are nowhere near the apex of the cheese-fussiness, food art and exotic, hard-to-find ingredients begun in the '80s.

The status-hungry, Japan-obsessed '80s gave us vertical food, with chefs stacking tiny little squares of shaved daikon radish and beef carpaccio atop one another in artistic towers that look like hats from Fellini movies. For a good example of this, see the classic film American Psycho, in which the main character is subjected to just such a meal. He likes it. He orders it, in fact. Which may be why the movie is called American Psycho.

I'd like to make fun of him, but I've been known to order the occasional cheese plate, or stacked fondue, or amalgamation of pomegranate syrup and truffle aioli. Bring on the squid ink pasta! Give me your red-chile roasted walnuts and mâche salads! If it's seasonal and available only from Williams-Sonoma, I want it on my menu.

I've succumbed to pretty much every major food trend in the last three years. I deep-fried a turkey. I spent a season eating nothing but fish tacos. I prepared amaranth in my home. My cupboards are full of pomegranate-tinged condiments and ancient Aztec grains I can't prepare without a stone-carved tablet.

Trendy food hits the same acquisitive gene in me that goes out and buys pointy-toed shoes and tiny, pointless handbags.

I must admit, however, that my favorite food trend by far is the recent upsurge of "comfort foods." Possibly in response to the bulimic early '90s — during which everyone had to be skeletal and all we were allowed to eat was watermelon — the food community has swung a 180 and embraced the fatty, psychologically pleasing foods of our youth — and made them upscale.

Macaroni and cheese now contains gouda, taleggio, or Maytag bleu cheeses, and is made with boutique papardelle pasta. Lasagne contains layers of confusing Asian vegetables and ancient Italian strains of eggplant. Chicken is now "poulet."

The most welcomed trend — by me, anyhow — is the recent willingness of the food community to embrace bacon as it's new golden child. Everything has bacon in it. Bacon, once a meat in its own right, is now a condiment to be layered decadently on hamburgers. We wrap it around mochi balls, slide it into our burritos, fold it, skewered, on top of our vertical food. Salads, heretofore bastions of fiber-rich virtue, are now merely vehicles for bacon.

Bacon is the new black.

It all came to a head the other day, when I was cruising Whole Foods Market looking for Mayan chocolate ice cream and Italian wedding cookies for my midnight munchies. I pulled into the check-out aisle and unloaded my goodies, dreaming of sugar buzzes to come, when I saw it — the apex of all food trends combined: the bacon chocolate bar.

You have to try this. The bar is made by a company called Vosges and is called "Mo's bacon bar." It is made with applewood-smoked bacon surrounded by milk chocolate. How they came up with this is beyond me. You can't dip bacon in chocolate. It's against the laws of nature. It should be illegal. And it's kind of expensive, actually.

But I had to try it. So I bought it, and I brought it home, and in the dark of the kitchen, with the windows closed and a bag over my head, I opened the bar, and took a bite.

It was amazing. It made me kind of nauseous, but it was amazing.

The bacon fat married in a deeply disturbing way with the chocolate to create the culinary equivalent of sex with your boyfriend's best friend. I don't think there's a human on earth that could get through an entire bar by him or herself, but you should at least give it a try, once, while you're young and it can't ruin your political career.

I've even designed a super-trendy dessert around it:

BACON CHOCOLATE BAR ICE CREAM PARFAIT

1 bacon chocolate bar, broken into attractively messy pieces
1 pint artisanal vanilla ice cream (I said artisanal)
2-3 tablespoons pomegranate glaze
Grape Nuts (you heard me)

Layer ice cream, bacon bar pieces and Grape Nuts in a fancy parfait glass. Drizzle with pomegranate glaze. I promise it's fabulous. In a Fellini sort of way.