Mr. Hawthorne was watching Sunny Anderson
on Food Network the other day
and saw her making
Bacon and Sage Potato Pancakes.
We both agreed that they looked
and sounded pretty good,
so I printed out the recipe
and held on to it until this morning,
when he actually made the pancakes.
(Note: I'm not holding on to the recipe anymore.)
When I came back in from picking the sage,
Mr. Hawthorne, being uncharacteristically cooperative,
had thoughtfully
created his mise en place
for me to photograph,
even though he can't remember the name or pronounce it.
And he always bitches about it
when I say, "Wait, wait, wait, lemme take a picture!"
I guess I've finally worn him down.
I'm good at that.
Now, Sunny Anderson is not one of my favorite
Food Network people.
(I can't call them chefs.
I refuse to call them stars.
I could settle for "annoying personalities."
Yeah, that works for me.)
And Sunny Anderson is like a black Rachael Ray.
While she's cooking/prepping/whatever,
she starts telling one of those annoying, grating, and stupid stories
that the suits at Food Network encourage them to do -
something that has utterly nothing to do with what they're doing
and just serves as filler to take up dead air time.
Filler does not work in a crab cakes.
And it certainly doesn't work in cooking shows.
We don't want to hear your cutesy, boring-ass,
contrived meanderings.
I'm watching a cooking show.
I'd like to learn about cooking.
I don't want to hear about your Brother Bubba.
I don't want to hear about your Gramma Dicey or your Gramma Lorraine.
I don't want to hear about your Uncle Bill
and whatever Aunt it was that cried over flowers. (ETA: It was Aunt PEGGY!)
I don't want to hear about the time you were at whatever island in
the Caribbean at your friend's parents' house and passed
out in your plate at dinner.
Oh wait, Sandy.
I do want to hear about that.
But, you get my drift.
But Food Network ain't gonna deliver.
No way.
No how.
Plus, Sunny has started making words up
like Rachael does.
I forget the actual word,
but she was doing a Mexican based meal
and she combined two words stupidly
(something like tacosagna, I think)
for her combo,
then harped upon the cuteness of her "word,"
telling us the origins,
and "Get it? Get it?"
Yeah, we get it, Sunny.
Now get off my TV.
But Kermit (Bob Tuschman)
and Medusa (Suzy Fogelson) like this crap.
Apparently, they think it's cutting edge entertainment.
It is not.
Back to breakfast.
Mr. Hawthorne was happily preparing Sunny's potato pancakes
this morning, carefully adhering to the printed-out recipe,
when he pointed out to me,
"Did you know the difficulty level of this dish
is intermediate?"
Check out the recipe and see for yourself.
Intermediate?!!???
You grate, you mix, you fry.
Sounds damn simple to me.
But then, if you're Sunny,
simple things might not appear so simple at times.
He's halving the recipe, by the way.
Good thinking, Mr. Hawthorne.
First he grated only 2 potatoes.
Then he grated in about 1/3 of the red onion.
And he pressed two garlic cloves into the mix.
Looking good.
He fried up two slices of bacon.
And squeezed the moisture out of the potato mixture.
I like this shot of his chopping the sage leaves.
Well, actually, no.
I like this shot of ME,
shooting the picture
and being reflected in the knife.
Salt and pepper and sage leaves went into the mix.
Two tablespoons of flour went in.
Action shot!
Mr. Hawthorne chops up the bacon.
Bacon and the egg get added.
A quick toss to mix all together.
Mr. Hawthorne used a cast iron skillet,
heated his oil,
and I added in some extra sage leaves
because I happen to like fried sage leaves.
Then the potato patties went in.
Remember, never crowd your pan when frying.
Crowding will lower the temperature of the oil
and whatever you're frying will not brown nicely.
Fry about two minutes on each side,
or until nicely browned,
then drain on paper towels.
Doesn't this look good?
Isn't this pretty?
I was really excited about these.
Now for the all-important taste test.
The fried sage is herby and quite tasty.
The potato pancake sucked.
I never thought I'd say this,
but the bacon really detracted from the pancake.
You'd be better served by just frying up the bacon
and serving it on the side.
And the pancake was not good.
Too much filler.
Not enough crunch.
Mr. Hawthorne was disappointed.
I was too.
Then he said something that made us both feel a little better:
"Tomorrow morning,
I'll make my potato pancakes."
Ah ...
Tomorrow is another day.
And it looks like it'll get off to a wonderful start.
I quartered and halved two onions
and put a whole head of garlic
in my crock pot.
I put in the meat on top
and salted and peppered both sides.
I added in a can of beef broth - low sodium.
And a small can of tomato sauce.
About one cup of red wine.
Then a glass or 5 for the cook.
After about 4 hours on low,
I added carrots, celery, potatoes,
and sweet potatoes.
And gosh golly does this ever smell wonderful.
The wine really gives it a boost.
After 4 more hours,
the meat is falling off the bone,
except there weren't any bones,
so I'll just say it's really, really tender.
My plate with the meat, celery, carrot, onion, potato
and the one leftover cornbread muffin
from Thursday dinner.
The sauce is particularly good -
very rich and the addition of the wine
takes it to another level.
You could cut the incredibly tender meat with a fork
and it was bursting with flavor.
The potatoes had soaked up the flavors of the sauce
and really didn't need any butter,
but of course I added some because what's a potato without butter,
I ask you.
The celery was a nice light taste that
was a nice addition to the rest of the meal.
Cornbread is always a winner.
And cooked carrots,
mashed with some butter is just sublime.
You can squeeze the garlic right out of the skin
and baked/cooked garlic is a wonderfully sweet puree.
The nice thing about these crock pot meals
is that you can get rid of lots of leftovers in the fridge.
After everything had cooked,
I found a container of butter beans from the other night
so I added that in.
And after a meal or two of this,
we'll doctor it up and make a soup
by adding more tomato sauce,
possibly more beef stock,
more veggies
(peas, squash, zucchini come to mind),
and Mr. Hawthorne likes to add pasta to it.
Toast some buttered slices of a nice baguette
(or brickette, as Mr. Hawthorne refers to it)
and you won't know you're eating leftovers.
You'll have a whole new delicious meal.
