Food for Thought: Niamh Shields

Bacon – you either like it, or you loathe it. You either have the occasional rasher to accompany your eggs in the morning, or you recoil at the very sight of the stuff. Then there is the award-winning food blogger Niamh Shields, who unashamedly loves, and revels, in all-things bacon. 

Bacon: The Cookbook is Shields’ attempt to widen our eyes and our bellies to the world of bacon. The self-published cookbook is the Irish food writer’s latest work; her first cookbook Comfort & Spice came out in 2011. Shields is best known for creating one of the first big food blogs – a pre-Instagram relic – known as ‘Eat Like a Girl’, back in 2007.

Shield’s culinary journey began in rural Southern Ireland. “I grew up on the southern tip of the coast of Ireland, in a place called Dungarvan. I was surrounded by farms and by potatoes,” she tells me from her flat in Tooting, London. “In my childhood, I was very creative and always making things. Cooking very much became a part of my creative oeuvre. I remember getting taught how to make toffee when I was 9, and it blew my mind!”

Shields initially pursued a degree in physiology and a Masters in technology at the University College Cork. “When I moved from Ireland to the UK, I shipped all my cookbooks and academic books with me. I think that tells you about me as a person,” she says. For years, Shields was unsure about how to start writing about food, thinking she had to be qualified. But, in 2007, feeling despondent about the lack of creativity in her job at the time, Eat Like a Girl was born. 

“There were only a handful of blogs back then,” she says, “nobody was reading them either. Still, it was a great place to start uploading my recipes, at least, for the sake of the 28 people.” I ask her about her brand and what inspired her to pick the name: “Well, it’s that permanent frustration I have. The stupid ideas people project onto women that we only eat salad. That’s nonsense! Everyone I know loves food. ‘Eat like a Girl’ means embracing this, celebrating it.” 

Finding inspiration for her recipes is as easy as breathing for Shields. “I cook in my sleep!” she says. “So, I usually wake up with ideas for recipes. This morning, for example, I woke up thinking I might make a Chinese-style roast pork belly. I then think, “what do I have in my kitchen?”. I made the pork chops and realised it needed something sour, as the pork is sweet. I’m always thinking about sweet, salty, sour, hot, depth.” For Shields, the recipe process is “driven by the flavours that I love, what I have and what I desire on that particular day.” 

Shields is not only a self-publisher but a real self-starter; whether it’s a blog or a book, her determination fizzes through the screen. We get talking about Bacon (released on the 22nd of December 2020), and she jokingly confesses, “if anyone tells you to publish a book in the middle of a pandemic and a constitutional crisis, say no way. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong.” 

The process of getting Bacon from printer to page sounds like a comedy of errors. The truck bringing the books from Italy broke down and didn’t come on time; once the truck was fixed there was news of a new Covid-19 variant, and so it was stuck in Calais. Calais was at a standstill due to Brexit and was stuck there for four days, it was then moved, but then the tail lift broke. Eventually – not without further storage-related complications – Shields received her books, and due to the Royal Mail being overwhelmed, she set up her own little 4 am’ post office. “It was exciting and fun and a nightmare all at once. I used to do Zumba at the gym, but I’ll tell you, lifting 15-kilo boxes of the book is fantastic exercise. Just not the ones you drop on your foot,” she laughs. Who would have thought that bringing home the bacon would prove so challenging.  

Bacon features over 80 recipes including; “Bacon Brunch” (bacon ricotta pancakes with maple apples and sage), “Bacon Bites” (beer-battered bacon with chipotle mayonnaise), “Comfort Food” (bacon mac & cheese), “Feeding Friends” (chicken, bacon and cider pie), and lastly and perhaps, most interestingly, “Bacon Sweets” (candied bacon fudge, bourbon bacon ice cream). Naturally, all washed down with a “Bacon Vodka Bloody Mary”. The book also recalls the history of bacon in Ireland, how to cure your own bacon in the traditional Irish way and an important section on the health issues surrounding nitrates in bacon. “At the end of the day, I am a scientist, and I wanted the chance to talk about nitrates to break it down for people so they can understand,” she tells me.  

We get onto the matter of her last supper, and she is quick to raise the topic of her gluten intolerance: “You see, if I don’t have the gluten side-effects, I want all things gluten.” I give her the gluten go-ahead, and she tells me she wants “LOADS” of lardo for her starter. “I’m going to have two eggs and lardo with shaved white truffle, and because I’m going to die soon, it’ll be fried in lots of butter. To drink, champagne! For my main, I’ll have tagliatelle ragu and lambrusco. For dessert, a lemon meringue pie and an éclair and a glass of sweet wine to accompany.” She adds: “However, I won’t be able to eat all these things, and I would like to leave on a social note. If I’m going to have this last meal, I’d like to share it with someone; I don’t want to be on my own.” 

It’s obvious that Shields, so buzzing with joie de vivre, loves nothing more than to gather a group of friends together and feed them with bacon till their bellies ache. She is exactly the sort of person I would love to polish off a bottle of wine with (or perhaps, in this case, a bottle of bacon vodka). 

Bacon: The Cookbook is available to order here.

Classic Bacon Jam from Bacon: The Cookbook
Makes: approx. 2 x 370ml (12½ fl oz) jars

Ingredients

500g (1lb, 2oz) smoked streaky bacon, finely sliced 
1 red onion, peeled and finely chopped 
3 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped 
50g (13⁄4 oz) brown sugar 
50ml (2fl oz) maple syrup 
50ml (2fl oz) cider vinegar 250ml (83⁄4 fl oz) freshly brewed coffee

Method

Sauté the bacon over a medium heat in a wide pot until starting to crisp and the fat starts to render out. Remove the bacon to a plate on the side. 

Fry the onion in the rendered bacon fat until starting to soften, about 8 minutes. Add the garlic and stir for a minute. Add the fried bacon to the onion and garlic with the remaining ingredients. Bring to the boil and reduce the heat to low. 

Don’t put a lid on the pan. Let it cook gently, stirring occasionally. The sugars will caramelise, so you want to make sure they don’t catch the bacon at the base of the pan and burn. If it looks like it is getting dry, add a little boiling water from the kettle, and continue to do this until you don’t need to anymore because you have a very tasty, shiny bacon jam. 

At this point you may want to blend the jam or you may want to keep it as it is. That is entirely up to you. 

I like to serve bacon jam with cheesy potato skins, sour cream and chives too. This keeps well in the fridge in an airtight container for up to a week (but it’s so divine it will disappear well before then).