Angels on Horseback

There's a smell that hits you when bacon meets a hot grill, and it fills the kitchen in a way that makes people drift in from other rooms. Add an oyster to the middle of that bacon, and you've got something that smells of the coast and the smokehouse at once. Salt on salt. It shouldn't work, but it does, and it has done since the Victorians served it as the final savoury before the port and cigars came out.

Angels on Horseback belong to the cold months, when oysters are at their best and the evenings have the sort of chill that calls for something rich and quick and slightly indulgent before you sit down to the main event. They're a dinner party dish in the truest sense: ten minutes of work, twelve small mouthfuls, and the kind of quiet showing off that looks like you haven't tried at all.

The trick is in the sourcing. Good oysters, good bacon, good bread. Everything else is just assembly and heat. I made these last November for four people, and I wrote it down in the notebook: "angels, toast, cold white wine, nobody spoke for thirty seconds." That's the effect you're after.

A recipe is a conversation, not a contract. If the oysters at the fishmonger look tired, walk away and make Devils on Horseback with prunes instead. The market decides. But when the oysters are bright and clean and smell of nothing but the sea, this is the thing to do with them.