Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Slowly but surely

Breakfast Pie - The Outline

Jobs aren't all that easy to find these days. No doubt - I love my job. I love having my job. It is, however, a huge, HUGE time sink, something I did not realize until I actually started working. I sleep, eat, and go to work. That's what I do - that's pretty much it. Ok, so that's an exaggeration but honestly there's not too much time left in my schedule for food blogging. Nevertheless, I don't want to completely ignore this project. I have been working towards finishing my breakfast pie recipe. Here's the skeleton I'm working off of - hopefully the actual recipe will follow in short order:

Crust:
Gotta be flaky and rich - I want this crust to have some balls, maybe go with animal lard instead of cold butter. thicker grade of flour? maltier definitely. Savory to blend with the shredded cheddar that's incorporated

Layer 1: Home Fries
Simple. red bliss potatoes fried hard - country-style in a skillet with butter, spice (cayenne powder, onion powder, oregano, salt, fresh black pepper) and bacon fat. This layer also provides substantial carbs - no need for other starchy layer (i.e. waffle layer or pancake layer - possibly for an alternate "sweet breakfast" pie).

Layer 2: Eggs
Essential to the meatiness of the dish - the eggs are scrambled with LIGHT cheese (shredded - probably moderately sharp yellow cheddar) added are sauteed peppers and onions. black pepper.

The top: Bacon
We want thick cut, applewood smoked or equivalent. woven in a cold skillet, cooked by slow-heat method. Once it starts to sizzle, (carefully) flip it, let it sizzle a bit more. Doesn't have to be (in fact shouldn't be) finished when you take it off the heat. You want it to be a little pliable so you can fit it to the top of the pie, and it will finish during the last step of cooking the pie.

Baking this fucker: Multi-step process
We want to first bake the crust alone - just underdone. then we add the cream filling, the good shit. Warm it up, low heat, 10-15 minutes (adjust to higher temperature, so the crust finishes properly when we crank up the convection). Final
bake: Finishing the crust and the bacon - convection bake on med-high temp (tbd) until edge golden brown and bacon crispy. The trick will be getting those to happen at the same time. Maybe get them both pretty close to done before the final bake, then just kind of use the convection step to put on the finishing touches - not doing all that much heavy lifting.

Diet Pie
I was thinking about ways to lighten this pie up a bit - might be kinda hard to eat as-is. Maybe go for a light and flaky crust - still savory and malty, but not as dense. Homefries are easy - just cook them in olive oil. You're not going to get them to be any lower in carbs. I guess you could also just put down fewer of them. Eggs: Couple ways to hit this. Scrambled egg whites is an option - straight protein. No fat, no cholesterol, also no color and funky flavor (mmmmm albumin). Another option is half-yolk. I like this alternative, just de-yolk every other egg you crack, and it it's an odd number go with fewer yolks than more yolks. unless it looks funny, then add the other yolk. For the top layer use a thin-cut, low sodium bacon. Will be a little tougher to work with, because that stuff can get mighty brittle when it crisps up, but definitely worth it - it will definitely take down the caloric footprint of this pie by a significant margin (not to mention the saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium).
Word up.


UPDATE:
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So I just re-read the above recipe skeleton. Sorry if it's confusing or hard to follow - these are actually just notes I took down one day at work, so they weren't really intended for publishing. Bottom line, if something seems weird or confusing, wait for the real recipe to come out.