How's this sound?
1 "Banger" sausage, squeezed from its casing, fried and crumbled
2 strips of applewood-smoked bacon, likewise
1 nice red potato, cubed small and fried up
1 red cherry pepper (alas, no firecracker, but flavorful)
1 skinny red pepper, also mildish
Chives to suit.
Three good-sized golden-yolked eggs, from chickens that had a chance to eat weeds and bugs along with their chickenfeed. Scrambled.
It works for me. Nicely smoky and complex. One might sprinkle some manner of cheese on it -- even Parmesan would work. I could've stood some heat from the peppers; a little Serrano instead of one of the other two would not have been remiss. The long-departed (and much-missed) hippy-dippy grocery chain had a line on locally-grown cherry peppers of consistent and delightful heat, but the ones from our corner grocer are highly variable in hotness. On the other hand, they have them at all, and in the middle of February, yet!
Sounds good enough I was motivated to stop skipping breakfast and go get my own :-)
ReplyDeleteGood for you to find real eggs. My wife is a real taste conscious person, and used to eat eggs and love them. For the last couple of years, she has lost her love of them. She just found out that they started to add some kind of soy protein to the food of the egg production hens in the country. She tasted it, without knowing it, and she doesn't like soy. I have not investigated, but suspect that the PETA types possibly made it so that animal based protein could not be used in their feed. I don't know, but it doesn't matter. Now days, the chickens you buy in the store don't even have time to know that they are chickens before they are butchered. I have a hometown butcher shop that gets real chickens from real farmers, and the difference is more than you would even think. Costly, for sure, but worth every cent. However, for the family of 6 on a tight budget, a ten pound bag of chicken quarters for 5.90$ is obviously the only way to go. Factory farms have made food affordable for nearly everyone, but at the cost of taste.
ReplyDeleteI marvel at the gold orange hue of my chicken's eggs versus the shallow yellow tones of store bought. Even the good ones aren't very good. It even seems like there's a texture difference. Especially in a over medium or poached one. Now I just need a good source for bangers.
ReplyDeleteDang, you had me at apple bacon (actually - any bacon will do!). Eyes glazed over and did an involuntary Homer Simpson sigh. The rest sounds really good too, free range eggs are da bomb !!
ReplyDeleteAdd some mushrooms and a tomato (and maybe a slice of blood sausage, no idea if you can get that in the US) and you'd have pretty much a full fry-up.
ReplyDeleteOK, I just have to ask - what are "banger" sausages?
ReplyDeleteMerle
"Bangers" are flavorful pork sausages, most often seen in the British treat bangers and mash. Cheap ones tended to pop when fried up, sometimes loudly! They are smoky rather than hot, with a lot of "meaty" flavor, what the high-end types call "umami." They haven't the thyme-sharpness of some U. S. sausage.
ReplyDeleteI usually cook them in a little water, under a loose-fitting lid. I try to keep about 1/4" to 3/8", just boiling. You can fry them instead but it's trickier to get right. Which is one reason why I cheated for this breakfast hash and squoze it out instead.
OK, thanks. I need to look into this & see if they are available locally. :)
ReplyDelete