wendyvarro: Cure all

It's amazing how many dishes are improved by the addition of even just a little bit of salty, porky brilliance

The bacon sarnie, eh? Who doesn't love it? A few rashers sandwiched between pillowy-soft white bread with a splash of brown sauce or ketchup is the egalitarian, always-appropriate breakfast, lunch or anytime snack of choice for everyone from builders to bishops, students to secretaries of state. Even some of my vegetarian friends sigh nostalgically at the very thought.

It's such a shame, then, that this totemic treat, this purveyor of the porkily Proustian madeleine moment, is so often ruined by rubbish bacon. Introduce limp, insipid, Elastoplast-pink rashers to heat, and after a few minutes your frying pan resembles nothing so much as a stagnant pond of fat, salty liquid and sinister, white goo. Not very appetising, is it? I expect more of my bacon, and I suspect you do, too. And, for that, you've got to start with the pig.

Intensively reared pork is a profoundly miserable business. Pigs ? inherently intelligent, curious and social creatures ? languish in concrete misery, crammed together so tightly that their natural desire for company becomes instead a form of torture. Fighting and other abnormal behaviour is common. On top of this, the sorry creatures are pumped full of high-protein feeds, so they grow as rapidly as possible, thus reducing the time it takes to get them to slaughter.

The result is flabby, flavourless meat that is coaxed into "bacon" with a cocktail of preservatives and flavouring chemicals. When you buy cheap, imported bacon, you're more than likely tucking into meat that wouldn't meet the welfare standards of pork reared in this country, so at the very least I urge you to look for British pork carrying the RSPCA's Freedom Foods logo. And if you choose free-range or organic pork, you will be supporting an even higher level of animal welfare.

And beware of misleading words on packaging. "Outdoor bred" may lead you to think of pigs happily rooting away under oak trees, but it usually means meat from pigs that, though born outside, where they are kept until weaning, are then transferred to an indoor regime of varying nastiness. And as for terms such as "country" or "traditional", give me a break ? they are meaningless. For me, it's free-range, organic or no thanks, I'll have the hummus.

Perhaps you're curious about rearing your own pigs. I've had pigs for more than 10 years, and if you have the time and space, it's an enormously rewarding activity. A good place to start is the Soil Association's booklet, Pig Ignorant? A Soil Association Guide To Small Scale Pig Keeping. And if that's too large an undertaking, why not club together with friends to buy a whole butchered, bagged and labelled pig? Numberonepig.co.uk rears rare breeds such as British saddlebacks, lops, Gloucester old spots, large blacks, and Oxford sandy and blacks. Alternatively, go to britishpigs.org to find pedigree pork from small-scale, free-range producers in your area.

And once you've brought home the bacon (see today's first recipe for how to cure your own), savour every mouthful in soups, salads, pies and stews. When I'm working on a recipe and it's not quite "there" yet, it's astonishing how often the answer is a bit of bacon.

If you ever fancied having a go at home curing, this recipe is a great place to start. The cure intensifies the flavour of the meat and preserves it enough to keep in the fridge for up to a week. Once you've given this a go, you might want to try your hand at bacon belly ? take about 1kg of off-the-bone pork belly, cut it into 4cm strips, and cure it in the same way, but for 48 hours rather than overnight. Rinse off the cure and use it cut into chunks or diced, to add to sauces, stews or salads. Serves four.

4 large pork chops
2 tbsp sunflower oil or groundnut oil

For the cure
50g fine sea salt
25g caster sugar or soft brown sugar
3 bay leaves, finely shredded
12-16 juniper berries, crushed
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Combine all the ingredients for the cure and put them in a plastic container or nonreactive dish. Add the chops and rub lightly all over with the cure. Cover and leave it in the fridge for 12 hours (or up to 24 hours for extra-large or thick-cut pork chops, but no longer). Turn the chops once or twice during this time, if you can.

Rinse the chops and pat dry. You can cook them immediately, or keep them in the fridge for five to six days ? the flavour will continue to improve over time. They also freeze well.

To cook the chops, heat the oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat and fry them fairly gently for six minutes a side, until cooked through. (Alternatively, brush them lightly with the oil and grill.) Season with pepper (they'll be salty enough from the cure) and serve with mashed potato and wilted greens.

Bacon and cabbage soup

This simple soup illustrates perfectly how even a few rashers of bacon can elevate a few simple ingredients into a highly satisfying meal. Serves four to six.

For the croutons
4 tbsps olive oil
2-3 slices slightly stale white bread, crusts cut off and cut into 2cm cubes
For the soup
1 tbsp olive oil
6-8 rashers unsmoked streaky bacon (about 250g), cut into 1cm strips
1 onion, peeled and finely diced
1 tsp thyme leaves, roughly chopped
1 bay leaf
500g floury potatoes, peeled and cut into 1.5cm dice
1 carrot, cut into 1cm dice
1 celery stick, cut into 1cm dice
2 garlic cloves, minced
1.4 litres chicken or vegetable stock
Freshly ground black pepper
A few grinds of nutmeg
About 120g cabbage or spring greens, finely shredded
3 tbsp finely chopped parsley leaves
Salt

First make the croutons. Warm the oil in a frying pan over a medium-high heat and fry the cubes of bread until golden on all sides. Drain on kitchen paper and set aside.

Now turn your attention to the soup. Warm the oil in a saucepan over a medium-high heat and cook the bacon strips until just crisp. Remove from the pan and set aside on kitchen paper to drain. Turn the heat down to medium-low, add the onion, thyme and bay leaf, and saut� gently, stirring from time to time, until the onions are very soft, about 10 minutes. Tip in the potatoes, carrot and celery, and fry gently for another five minutes. Add the garlic and fry for a further minute.

Return the bacon to the pan, pour in the stock, season with black pepper and nutmeg, bring to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes. Add the cabbage or greens, and simmer for a further five minutes, until the cabbage is tender. Stir in the parsley, taste and add salt only if necessary (the bacon may well be salty enough to season the soup). Serve with the croutons scattered on top.

Bacon and cheddar strata

A strata is a sort of savoury bread-and-butter pudding. Here, layers of cheese and bacon turn this into an easy and satisfying supper when served with a crisp, green salad. Serves six.

6 large eggs
500ml whole milk
250ml double cream
3 tbsp Dijon mustard
� tsp freshly grated nutmeg
2 tbsp finely chopped parsley
1 tsp salt
� tsp black pepper
About 500g slightly stale sourdough bread, cut into 2.5cm cubes
40g butter
250g slab bacon, cut into 1cm cubes, or 250g back bacon rashers, cut into 2cm strips
3-4 leeks, white and pale green part only (about 300g), finely sliced
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
250g baby spinach
250g cheddar, grated
In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, cream, mustard, nutmeg, parsley, salt and pepper. Add the bread, stir gently and leave to soak while you get on with the rest.

Warm half the butter in a large frying pan over medium heat and saut� the bacon until it begins to crisp up. Transfer to a plate. Add the remaining butter to the pan, reduce the heat to medium-low and saut� the leeks with the thyme until the leeks are soft and translucent. Add the spinach and stir until wilted. Return the bacon to the pan and stir.

Butter a large gratin or casserole dish. Layer a third of the bread cubes in the base, top with a third of the bacon and spinach mixture, and sprinkle over a third of the cheese. Repeat this layering twice more, ending with a top layer of cheese. Pour over any custard mixture that's left in the bowl, cover with clingfilm and leave in the fridge to soak for at least four hours and up to 24.

Half an hour before you want to start cooking, remove the strata from the fridge to bring it up to room temperature. Heat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Bake the strata, uncovered, around 40-50 minutes, until puffed up, golden brown and cooked through. Let it stand for five minutes before serving.

Learn new skills on a four-day River Cottage cookery courses; go to rivercottage.net for details.