Labor Day part II

When you wake up on Labor Day (if you can even sleep the night before) you'll want to get right up and have a nutritious meal before you look in your Labor Day stocking and see what Lenny the Labor Day Union Rep brought you this year. Don't get excited, it's probably just paper work. Possibly a summons. 

meh. I mean I ate them. Still, meh.

This year, I made some nutritious olive oil and oat muffins that I derived from two muffin recipes by Mark "Muff Diggity*" Bittman. The only problem is that they kind of sucked, which I certainly don't blame on Mark "Mark in quotation marks**" Bittman, so please don't sue me, thanks! They tasted about like you would expect healthy oat and olive oil muffins to taste: edible. Which is the culinary equivalent of telling a girl you don't want to "do" that she has a nice personality.

Instead, I'm gonna recommend that you have eggs, toast and 10-15 pieces of bacon for Labor Day Breakfast, which is what I should have done in the first place. A quick note about bacon: bacon splatters and is one of the few food products that doesn't taste better when cooked shirtless, so don't be a hero.

Let's move on to an LDW appetizer: Labor Day Butter Bean Hummus (motto: just like hummus, but with different ingerdients)! We all know the story behind why butter bean hummus is always served at Labor Day Feasts, so I won't bore you with the details. Enjoy!

Note: this can also be used as a spread for a twist on a traditional Arbor Day sandwich.

Butter Bean Hummus

Slightly shittier hummus pic

Ingredients:

1 can butter beans, drained

1/4 to 1/3 cup olive oil, depending on the consistency you like***

small handful chopped parsley leaves

2 garlic cloves

big tbsp tandoori masala powder

1 tsp cumin

juice of 1/4 of a large lemon (or more)

salt to taste

tahini paste (optional)****

Instructions:

1. Blend. 

2. What? Fine. Put ingredients in a food processor and blend until blended, then eat it using pita chips as a dipping vessel and your hand(s) as a shovel to shovel it into your face hole.

*No one actually calls him that.

**No one actually calls him that, but they should.

*** I did mine closer to the consistency of a bean dip, with less oil than a silky hummus.

**** I don't really know how much tahini to use -- I didn't have any and the imaginary variety leaves something to be desired -- but if I had to guess, and I'm not very good at this, I'd guess about a quart. Or maybe a hectare. Whichever is more.

Maple Bacon Glazed Donuts

So this is awkward, but I'm not into the whole "throw some bacon on everything" scene*. Not exactly anyway.

Look, I'm a good person. I do a lot of volunteering (for blogs), I typically stab drifters only when provoked and I love bacon. My own dad, a fine citizen of the highest order, makes bacon everyday, so bacon as a food group has been deeply embedded in my brain/mouth/stomach for several decades.

But bacon just doesn't belong on everything. Get a hold of yourself, sit the fuck down and read the preceding sentence again if need be.

tex benedict

I never make time for breakfast.

Breakfast.

The one between brunch & last night's dinner. It lasts until 10:30. I mean, I eat breakfast (a little parfait here, a little granola there, waffles in the toaster, breakfast tacos in my mouth...). But I don't have a real one often enough. 

It's not that I don't have time. I have a shitload of time. Are you kidding? Machines and gadgets do almost everything for me, so I don't have to do any real work; it's ideal. *

And the stuff that the machines refuse to help with, I just have my servants do.** Like driving me around & typing this blog entry (asshole). I saw that. You're fired. Turn in your tuxedo and get the hell out of here.

But despite my abundance of convenience based spare time, I rarely have a proper sit-down breakfast.

When I do, it's exciting. And this was a good one. And filling. A take on eggs benedict, at least in the sense of stacking starch/meat/white sauce/poached egg. Represented here as tostada, breakfast hash, poblano cream, poached egg. A way-the-fuck out there re-imagining of eggs benedict, I guess.

I licked the plate, smashed it on the ground in approval, had the staff pick up after me, tuck me into bed & then a solid 7 hour nap before polo in the evening. On youtube.

Note: I made this with a grilled corn relish in between the egg and hash. It was tasty, sweet from the corn & colorful. Also completely superfluous. I made it for something else and needed to get rid of it. It's an ear of grilled corn, a couple tbsp picante sauce and about a tbsp of cotija cheese.

Tex Benedict

(1)

for the tostada:

2 tostadas from fiesta (which you have to re-heat in the oven) or 2 fried tortillas (fry a tortilla in 1/2 inch of oil until crispy, drain on paper towel, repeat)

the hash:

1/4 lb breakfast sausage, crumbled

1 small potato

1 piece of bacon, cut into small pieces

about 1/8 of an onion. You heard me right, 1/8.

Tbsp bacon grease that you should be keeping in your fridge

spices: chili powder, cumin, mexican oregano

poblano cream (adapted from Steven Pyles Ancho Cream:

grilled or roasted poblano

couple tbsp milk

1/3 - 1/2 cup mexican sour cream or regular sour cream.

In a skillet, cook the all of the hash ingredients on medium-ish until brown and cooked through. 15 minutes or so. Try not to flip it so much, so it'll get a nice crust. Also, bacon cooks s,lower, so nuking the pieces for 30 seconds, to give it a head start, is a good idea.

Blend the milk & poblano in a food processor*** until smooth. It takes a couple of minutes.

Press poblano-milk mixture through a fine strainer or sieve into the cream. 

Fold the milk & poblano mixture into the cream. The cream is runny & you want it to kinda stay that way-- mix it together gently, so you don't add more air to the mixture.

When this is done and you have warmed tostadas, poach your egg.

Layer thusly: tostada, hash, poblano cream, tostada, hash, poblano cream, poached egg. Garnish as if it was your last day on earth. Go to town.

*They even keep me entertained 100% of the time I'm awake. Me bored -- the stimulus my mind gets when I'm bored as shit -- would have been the most exciting day in someone's life in the 1700's. I do not envy you, forefather.

**that's right: servants. It's like downton fuckin' abbey in my apartment.

***I have one of these, which changed my life.

pinche!ladas

shoulda stopped right here...

Enchiladas are just... they’re a bit much. They’re too saucy and so cheesy. Sloppy. They leave nothing to the imagination. At the food halloween party, enchiladas is always dressed as a hookery hookery prostitute. You'll never find a husband that way, enchiladas. Enchiladas are inhibiting. You can't eat enchiladas and then get on an airplane. People will think there’s a bomb on the plane. 

I mean, enchiladas don't taste horrible, but the lack of visual appeal doesn't help. So, having expressed a disdain for enchiladas, obviously I decided to make & photograph & then eat some. I don't know why I make stuff I don't really like sometimes, it just happens so fast. 

Enchi...(groan)...ladas.

I'm not gonna blow sunshine up your ass. This wasn't that good. If it didn't outright suck, it was teetering dangerously close to the county line dividing Sucky and Lower End of OK counties.* Sheriff's not gonna like that. 

Unimpressive meals happen. That’s the way it goes sometimes. You’re gonna eat like three times a day for roughly the rest of your life. Odds are great some of it is gonna just really suck. Look on the bright side-- we need some lousy stuff to make the good stuff good. Otherwise we’re taste communists, and that’s un-american. So dust off your spork. Eat some disgusting slop. And enjoy it damnit. Your next meal will probably be an improvement.

note- I've had the idea in my head for awhile of making quick enchiladas with delimex taquitos and canned enchilada sauce. i ended up making my own taquitos/flautas, and using leftover sauce from this. 

pinche!ladas

(serves hopefully just you)

for taquitos (6)-

1/2 lb ground turkey

2 pieces of bacon

2 tbsp canned corn

1/4 onion chopped

a tomato, chopped

garlic clove, chopped

oregano leaves, chopped

cumin

salt

chili powder

6 corn tortillas

cheddar jack cheese

for enchiladas-

leftover chili sauce or canned enchilada sauce, taquitos

preheat oven to 350

cook the bacon in a skillet, set aside and crumble.

mix everything except the tomato, oregano, tortillas and cheese & then brown the mixture in the bacon fat over medium heat.

once it starts to brown add the tomato and oregano and turn the heat up. i like it to get some crispiness.** maybe 12-15 minutes total (including initial browning).

make sure your tortillas are warmed so they're pliable and make sure not to dry them out getting them warmed (try to get ones that are still warm from being cooked and use 'em while still warm if you can). spread some meat mixture in a tortilla. top with a little cheese and roll it up. place it in a greased pan. repeat until the mixture is gone. you could use less meat in each and roll them thinner which mean more tortillas. mine were pretty thick & I'd them thinner ti have as taquitos. spray the tops of the taquitos with olive oil cooking spray.

bake for around 40 minutes at 350

now, that's taquitos. you can store eat or freeze these (which, these were good). or do this the next day:

put two cold taquitos in a big ramekin. top with chili sauce and cheese. bake until sauce is bubbly and cheese is browning. garnish with cotija.

you look awful enchiladas. get it together

even the beer isn't helping

*not entirely true. the taquitos were decent. Also, Hahaha!! Suck it! You're reading a recipe that the author admits is crap. Why would you do that to yourself? 

** so this meat mixture was an odd pairing of stuff i needed to use. and really tasty in a weird way. the bacon kinda takes over a little bit

cooked bacon

I hate it when someone walks into my office and goes, “oh, I see somebody’s really busy…”

Look. Just because I’m looking at pictures of hoboes on google images or memorizing Michael Rapaport’s imdb (try me asshole) doesn’t mean I’m not busy. OK, maybe it does. But it doesn’t mean I don’t have anything better I should be doing, jerk.

Anyhoo, here’s me trying to look busy.

cooked bacon
ingredient:

some bacon

take out a pan.

be a man*.

fry some fucking bacon.

I shouldn't have to explain this.

yup, I used this pic twice. you're reading a blog on how to cook bacon. who's the bigger idiot?

*or at least put on some goddamn pants.

migas tacos

Do we really need a recipe for a breakfast taco? You can scramble eggs, right? Or at least get your butler to do it. If you don't like the way your butler does it, or if your butler's a dick & "doesn't do breakfast tacos" you can ask a guidance counselor or librarian or really any trusted adult to do it for you. Of course you need flour tortillas too. But that's basically it: tortilla, eggs, other stuff.

Migas are another texas fave. Like a deconstructed b-fast taco, but with the tortilla (fried corn tortilla strips or tortilla chips) mixed in. Inspired by a taco at a popular east dallas joint, I decided to make my own migas taco. Thought about tipping the cap to huevos rancheros with some ranchero sauce, but decided to keep it simple (be lazy). And given that I did not do the ranchero thing, I haven't a clue why I needed to share.

migas breakfast tacos


(serves you)

needs:
2 eggs
2 warmed tortillas
cilantro, chopped
jalapeno, chopped
cooked bacon 1or 2 slices, chopped
small handful of tortilla chips, lightly crushed
hot sauce (rooster baby)
cotija cheese for garnish

beat the eggs in a bowl.

add cilantro, bacon, tortilla chips & jalapenos.

add some oil to a pan on med low-ish.

cook the egg mixture like scrambled eggs. seriously? you'll figure it out. Like 2-3 minutes.

serve on warmed tortillas. garnish with hot sauce, lime wedges & crumbled cotija.

Would be incredible with a layer of refried black beans slathered onto the tortilla. Just sayin'. You could also add the cilantro last, but I saw them cook it into the eggs at this place and their breakfast tacos are the best, so that's how I do it now. Sorry, other place I mentioned (wamps).

Get the hell into my goddamn mouth.