The Perfect BLT

The quintessential summer lunch food... It's not summer... It's cold and rainy and dreary and not at all the season for BLTs. But in the modern world who needs to follow to strictures of our parents that said you can only have chili in the winter and potato salad in the summer.

I'm ready for warmer weather. I feel as if I've spent the last four months in a frozen state. Don't get me wrong, I love winter and snow and cold weather. But when it's bone chilling cold and it isn't snowing, it's time for spring.


 I wanted to jazz up the traditional BLT a little bit. But I also didn't want to get too far away from the traditional as Mike is a purist when it comes to his BLTs. So his was made the traditional way and to jazz up my own, I added avocado slices. Let me just tell you I will never, I repeat, NEVER, eat a BLT without avocado ever again. The creaminess of ripe avocado balanced with the other ingredients so well, it was amazing!

For a side dish, I wanted something light and healthy to balance well with the BLT, not the usual potato or pasta salad. A quick Internet search brought up the idea of a citrus-y fruit salad to "balance the saltiness and grease of the bacon". Sounded good to me.


Perfect BLTs with Fruit Salad
 (for two)

6 strips good bacon
4 slices good white bread
1 ripe beefsteak tomato, sliced thick
one handful of lettuce, your favourite
half ripe avocado, sliced
mayonnaise

Cook the bacon.

I use the Alton Brown method of cooking bacon. The method is placing a cooling rack over a cookie sheet and placing the strips of bacon on the cookie sheet. You then bake the bacon at 375 for about 10-15 minutes or until the bacon is cooked to your liking.

I love this method. Not only is the bacon not swimming in its own grease while cooking but it also minimizes the smoke created by cooking bacon. As I have said before, tiny kitchen, no windows, no vent, equals fire alarm going off whenever there is smoke in the kitchen. And nothing says heart stopping like a fire alarm going off in a quiet, tiny space. I digress. 

While bacon is cooking, slice your tomato and avocado and gather up the lettuce and mayo. You are going to want to assemble the sandwiches as soon as the bacon is done cooking so that everything doesn't get cold.

I also used this time to assemble my fruit salad. I used the fruit that I had in the house at the time.

1 apple, diced
1 grapefruit
a handful of strawberries, diced
a handful of blackberries

Mix together well. I also added a pinch of sugar just to slightly sweeten the grapefruit juices.

Anyway, before the bacon is done, toast the bread slices. I don't have a toaster (they take up valuable counter space) so I use a griddle pan with the teensiest amount of butter on the pan just to get the bread slices to brown a little.

When bacon is done, remove it from the oven. Assemble the sandwich... Spread mayonnaise on each slice of bread. Then add the lettuce on top of the mayo. (I do this so that the lettuce pieces stick to the mayo and don't fall out of the sandwich later.) Top the lettuce with tomato and top the tomato with the bacon.

 I fold each slice of bacon in half like a slight V shape and layer two slices vertically and one slice horizontally so that there is equal bacon coverage on the sandwich. Now, on the other half of the bread, place the avocado slices evenly over the mayo and then place that on top of the rest of the sandwich. With a sharp knife, carefully slice sandwich in half. I say carefully because you don't want to lose anything out of the sandwich and you don't want to squish it.

Serve immediately with a large scoop of fruit salad.