Bacon cubons and crab apple sauce

Serves 1

(Jason Lowe)

The term "cubons" is a sort of cross between cubes and lardons, as I'm rather fond of cutting my chunks of bacon into squares! You will need to buy a piece of smoked or unsmoked unsliced bacon for this, so it's probably best to order it in advance from your butcher.

There have been quite a few crab apples around during the latter part of the season, so I took the opportunity to make up lots of this sauce and then put it in the freezer. If you can't get hold of crab apples, you can always make the purée with Bramley apples.

All you have to do is take about 150g crab apples and simmer them with a tablespoon of caster sugar for about 15 minutes.

300-400g piece of streaky smoked or unsmoked unsliced bacon
Vegetable or corn oil for deep frying
100-150g or so of crab apple or Bramley apple sauce (see above)

Put the piece of bacon in a saucepan, cover with water and bring to the boil then drain off the water and add some fresh cold water.

Bring to the boil and simmer for about an hour or so until the meat is very tender. Either leave to cool in the liquid or remove and leave to cool on a plate. Once cool cut the bacon into 2cm cubes.

Preheat about 8cm of oil to 160-180C in a large thick-bottomed saucepan or electric deep fat fryer.

Deep fry the bacon cubons for 3-4 minutes, turning the pieces with a slotted spoon while they are cooking, until crisp then transfer on to some kitchen paper.

Spoon blobs of apple sauce on to a serving dish, skewer the bacon cubons and place on the apple.