spiced fried potato, jumbo eggs sunny side up, bacon

Dinner tonight is this Idaho potato. 

It was stabbed all the way through multiple times to let out steam and dehydrate as it cooks in the microwave until almost done. 

So they had better be good. They need help. Tons of butter or sauce, or soup, something wet. Or fried to crispy and dipped in sauce. This is a run through the spice cabinet the result amounts to American curry. My favorite things. Very heavy doses.

 It has both bacon fat and butter. All of the remnant bacon in the pan is recovered. 

This is a different pan on another burner.

chocolate soufflé, applewood bacon

Double yolk. This is a good omen for the project ahead. But this is a bad omen for the project ahead because this time it's all about the whites for merengue.

I used all six yolks imagining that will add body, but this must be merengue with scant cocoa powder, a mere 1 teaspoon, and then the deep chocolate comes from sauce poured over. All those yolks did add body, too much, and they ruined it. 

On the other hand this is five jumbo eggs, I left some in the bowl and some on the plate, so maybe three jumbo eggs consumed and that's something. 

Maybe a recipe would be a good idea at least to check. 

Not recommended

Fail. 

Grits with cheese and jalapeño, fried egg and thick cut applewood bacon

Bacon and eggs with beans and Swiss chard

Bacon from nearby Tony's Market is very very good (two verys to emphasize how very good it is). Hickory smoked or something like that. 

The bacon is in the beans too in place of smoked ham hock. All the fat from frying the bacon is left in the pot. I used a pressure pot to cook dry beans and that is a little bit tricky. The timing depends both on the type of bean and the size. Anasazi beans will cook much more quickly than pinto beans or red kidney beans and small beans like these little white ones and small black beans cook faster. It takes a bit of trial and error. The error is shown by blown out beans. They explode inside the pot when the pressure is too high. High is 15 LBS pressure and half high is 7 LBS pressure. Best to cook at half pressure and underestimate cooking time. That way you can release the pressure and open the pot to check, and determine by that how much more time is required.  You can release pressure quickly by spraying the whole pot with water, top, sides, bottom everything. The pressure indicator sucks back down inside almost immediately allowing  you to open it right up and check on doneness. Then back on the heat to half pressure to finish now that you have a clear idea how much time is required for your specific bean. 

I did not do that this time. I thought I had the time down already, as a result these beans are overly soft but I like them anyway.

There is no acid in the cooking liquid. Acid makes beans form a hardened surface that does not allow them to cook to even softness, but there are a lot of regular spices. Bay leaf, cumin, coriander. I forget all I put in there, probably chile flakes. Onion and garlic. 

Then taste-tested. At the end I decided they need sugar. And that makes a huge difference. It takes the beans from blah to delightful. They are! These beans are delightful due to the sugar added at the end. 

Swiss chard is cooked in the bean liquid separately. Another pressure session without the beans. This time I decided to cook the stems as well. I just chopped the Swiss chard crosswise across the stem, never minding about removing the stem as usual. And I am glad I did that. I will do it that way for now on. I like the stems for variety.

I over-pressurecooked the chard as well. It nearly disappeared to mush. But, Man is it good. When I perfect this technique I will be bean and chard unstoppable. I like it with everything. I recommend it. I recommend pressure-cooked beans with sugar added and Swiss chard cut with stems included. The whole thing is fantastic.

Then when the egg yolk blends with the beans it adds depth, umami, that is quite extraordinary. A tortilla, toast, hashed brown potato or rice, what have you, would round out the the whole thing  as a restaurant presentation. As it is, this is a wonderfully fast breakfast whipped up quickly due to the beans being leftover and merely reheated. Done in the microwave right on the plate heats the plate too and that keeps the whole thing heated throughout the meal to the very last molecule. I licked my plate like a dog, because I don't care, I am a dog. 

Raisin bread for bacon and egg breakfast with bean polenta

This dough is incredibly easy to make. Brown sugar caused the yeast to take off like a rocket. It is made with milk and brown sugar.

Eunice, I TOLD you keep that rabbit out of the house.

Kidding. They're raisins.

I forgot to add egg to the dough batter so it is brushed on now while the dough is still flattened.

The size of my pan determines the size of the dough.

Dry Anasazi beans (my current favorite) milled to powder in coffee mill, microwaved in 2X water with favorite flavorings,garlic, chile powder, butter. Stirred at least three times between pulses to avoid the powder clumping as it rapidly absorbs water.

Bacon, eggs, toast

Dreams of my father.

Did I just now say dreams? I meant to say breakfast of my father. This is the breakfast my father ate some twenty years straight. And then there came a sudden change of heart, and a disruption with no clear path forward. The antagonism against fried food generally, the disparaging remarks relating to my mother's upbringing and her national background, the people who taught her, my mother's enduring loyalty as cook for my father and her cooking skills persisted for decades that followed. The disruptive change of heart, it was indeed heart-related, developed into an ongoing marital strain. He tried his own hand at cooking and failed. From my point of view he failed. He never did manage much of anything edible on his own, and he never did seem to grasp the basics of what is going on. That is what I saw. They lived and died in an age of convenience food, an entirely industrialized commercialized world with near zero relation nor connection to the sources of their food. Nearly nothing they ate was composed of primary ingredients. This breakfast is as close as they would ever get. Their bread of course mass produced. The process considered too mysterious and troublesome and time consuming to take on.

Gnocchi, bacon, egg breakfast

I put a small amount of butter in the potato for flavor and that was a mistake. I didn't think that would demand more flour, and the point is to use as little flour as possible.

These gnocchi are light and tender as can be. They are so delicate that it makes impressing marks on them a bit difficult. They tend to smash rather than roll. I do not have the knack for this. The idea is to create ridges for sauce to adhere.

Generous olive oil keeps the gnocchi from sticking.

I used a regular skillet, not a non-stick skillet. My gnocchi stuck to the frying pan. It was loosened with a splash of white wine and it came right off. The same pan the bacon was fried, the bacon grease poured out with the bits remaining. All that was picked up by the wine. Wine and butter makes a better sauce than wine and olive oil. But there you go. Sage is added here. 

These light delicate pillows of potato and egg are wonderful. It is a nice changed from hashed browned potatoes. And there is still some left. Only half is plated. That's one half a potato up there at the top.