The BLT

Ingredients

• 8 rashers of streaky bacon
• 4 slices of good white bread
• 2 large ripe tomatoes, thickly sliced
• crisp iceberg or baby gem leaves
• 4 tbsp mayonnaise
• black pepper

Method

1. Cook the bacon flat and crisp

   Lay the rashers flat in a cold pan and bring the heat up slowly so the fat renders before the meat tightens. Crisp enough to shatter, because limp bacon slides out of the sandwich on the first bite.

   10 min

2. Salt the tomatoes

   Slice the tomatoes thickly, lay them on kitchen paper and salt them. Salt draws out the water that would otherwise soak straight into the bread, and it makes them taste of far more.

   5 min

3. Mayonnaise to the edges

   Toast the bread and spread mayonnaise right to the crusts on both slices. It is not only a condiment here — it waterproofs the bread against the tomato.

4. Build in the right order

   Lettuce against the bottom slice, then bacon, then tomato, then more lettuce and the top. The lettuce top and bottom is the classic trick: it keeps the wet tomato from ever touching bread.

5. Press and cut

   Press gently, cut on the diagonal, and eat immediately. Every minute it sits costs you crunch.