THE KING OF THE NORTH

 
Falling in love with bagnet happens like this: a glowing cauldron with oil on a rolling boil that can skin you alive is tended by a man using an enormous makeshift sieve from a piece of wood and the face of a broken electric fan. The smell is ethereal, the smoke promising of good and delicious things.

Inside the cauldron are massive chunks of pork. The skin crackling, deep fried after a patient sting of hanging and drying. This is pork the way it should be consumed. As it is. Bellycut. 

The bottom part is probably bad for you. The flesh rich and moist, only to give way to the top part, which is the complete defection of everything healthy in the world.  

It is solid fat. Soft, mellow, oozing like a savory custard. Then there is the crackling: the skin aureate, immaculately crispy. The most agreeable vow of heart attack.

  
   

Bagnet is perhaps nothing that the doctor would recommend. But I would. No trip to Ilocos is complete without it. 

Getting addicted will ruin everything in your life, yes. But as with anything, taking too many precautions is equally dangerous.

Life is too short to not stuff your face with bagnet. Go ahead. Live a little.