Tag: Eggs

Breakfast Sandwich from the Farmers' Market

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My kids and I enjoy eating bacon. We don't eat bacon very often but when we do, we delight in each strip. We've learned what we like and don't like in our bacon. We tried turkey bacon for a while but ultimately decided it was a . It didn't satisfy in the way real bacon does. We normally cook our bacon in the microwave in one of those special microwave bacon trays. It works well for making crispy bacon, but leaves the microwave polluted for a few hours which annoys my vegetarian wife.

During my 30th college re-union this summer, a friend told me about making bacon in the oven. After trying this a few times I don't want to make bacon any other way. Oven bacon is a hit with my kids and cleanup is easy. We cook the bacon in baking pan lined with aluminium foil. Once the bacon is done it's easy to remove and discard the oil and foil. Oil and foil?

Last summer I started buying cheeses from Brick Farm Market, purchased each Saturday at the Montgomery Farmers' Market. The Brick Farm Market creamy cheeses are brought in from the Hopewell area and nearby North Eastern producers. I often eat the cheeses straight while sipping an IPA. I also experimented with melting the cheese to make sandwiches using baguette's I bought at the Terra Momo Bread Company stand. The baguette's are made from a hard-wheat bread flour baked to a characteristically golden color. Its crusty on the outside and airy on the inside. Delicious!

This Saturday, while buying cheese I noticed that ... he also had bacon. We chatted about how much love cooking bacon in the oven and he mentioned he likes to use a bit of the bacon grease in an iron skillet to cook his eggs.

This past Sunday night I suddenly had the idea to combine all these things into a lunch sandwich. I had the bread, the cheese, the bacon and eggs. I cooked everything up but soon realized the egg would not travel well. I decided this would work better as a breakfast sandwich. I originally used organic eggs from ShopRite but wanted to source as much as possible from local businesses. So I added eggs from the Griggstown Farm to my Saturday morning market shopping list.

  • Baguette from Terra Momo
  • Cheese from Brick Farm Market
  • Sliced bacon from Brick Farm Market
  • Eggs from Griggstown Farm

Pre-heat oven to 400ºC and remove the cheese from the fridge. Let it sit out while you cook so it can warm up. This helps bring out the flavour of the cheese.

Line the baking pan with aluminium foil and layout the bacon strips on the foil. Don't crowd the strips. We don't want them to stick together while they cook. Be careful when lining the pan that you don't create a hole in the foil. When the oven has reached the proper temperature, put the baking pan in the center rack of the oven and cook for 18 minutes. I use the oven time so I don't forget and burn my bacon.

Remove the baking pan from the oven when the bacon is cooked. Do not discard the bacon grease. Drain some of the bacon grease into a skillet before discarding the foil. In the skillet, cook one egg over medium heat, on both sides until the yolk is cooked through but soft and the egg white is thoroughly cooked.1

Slice some of the cheese and place on one side of the bread. Toast in toaster oven until the cheese just starts to melt. Remove toasted bread from toaster oven and place bacon on top of the cheese. Then place the cooked egg on top of the bacon. Cover with the remaining slice. Enjoy with a fresh cup of coffee brewed with beans you Benfatto Coffee.

  1. There are many ways to cook an egg. I like my eggs sunny side up (also called runny side up), but most people prefer a fully cooked egg. ↩

Runny eggs, blood sausage and porridge

I'm Scottish! Yes, really. As Scottish as any American who doesn't speak Scottish Gaelic has no close family in Scotland and can't tell you where Hibredres Island are.

My mother's family can trace its roots back to the coasts of Scotland and France. According to my mother, my great-grandfather Francis McLaren, from whom I received my middle name, was a bag-pipe-playing Scot who wore a kilt. I guess it's no coincidence that my mother's family settled in the hilly areas of the Grenadines. A 23andme.com DNA test shows I am 43.9% Western European — mainly British (Scottish, Irish and Welsh), French, and Iberian. Yes, my family tree twists and turns in directions that my physical appearance won't reveal.

While my grandfather's family is primarily French, my grandmother's family is Scottish with some "native" American. I feel that when US Americans think about the phrase Native American, they think only of North America, but I'm being more inclusive here. My great-grandfather married her and begat (I'm getting all biblical ) a daughter who married my grandfather. They begat my mother, who married my predominantly African father (who has a bit of Dutch ) and begat me.

Holly’s Whole Grain Oatmeal
Holly’s Whole Grain Oatmeal

But this blog post isn't about genealogy. It's about breakfast, a Full Scottish or Full English breakfast. While researching my ancestry, I learned much about Scotland, especially Scottish breakfast. I spent a bit of time with my maternal grandparents when I was a child. My grandmother always insisted on eating a hearty breakfast, perhaps because of her heritage. For my grandmother, breakfast was fried fish, fried ",fungi", fresh-baked bread with a slathering of salted butter, and a large enamel mug of hot cocoa1 or café au lait2.

Full Irish Breakfast
Full Irish Breakfast

Sometimes we had fried black pudding. What's black pudding? The ingredients sound revolting: pigs' blood, fat, oats, barley, and spices, all stuffed in a length of intestine. The island version will have rice instead of oats and barley. I loved black pudding growing up. Sweet, crunchy and fried. Oh yeah!

Anyway, a few years ago, I felt nostalgic for the homeland and started to look for places that served black pudding. My search led me to The Blue Rooster in Cranbury, where I've had a Father's Day breakfast every year for the last three years. The Blue Rooster has a Full Irish Breakfast on the menu. Full is a word used to convey completeness, but a Full Irish Breakfast also makes the diner feel full. The Rooster's version is black pudding, white pudding, sausage ( banger in the vernacular of the UK ), tomato, baked beans, ham, toast, sautéed mushrooms, and two eggs over easy. Wow!

Full Irish Breakfast

It's a hearty breakfast, but since I limit myself to the once-a-year trip for Father's Day, I'm not worried. Much!

According to my research a Full Scottish Breakfast is:

  • Half a tomato, broiled with cheese on top
  • A rasher of bacon, which in the UK is more like thinly sliced ham
  • Potato, or tattie, scone (rhymes with gone)
  • Link sausage or banger
  • Sautéed mushrooms
  • Baked beans (yes, for breakfast)
  • One egg, fixed any way you like
  • Black pudding (which is anything but a dark chocolate dessert)
  • A bowl of porridge (oatmeal)
  • Toast

For lunch today3 I added some elements of a full Scottish breakfast (scones and oatmeal) to the Rooster's Full Irish Breakfast. I didn't have access to a tattie, so I settled for an American scone.

Scones with butter
Scones with butter

According to my research, porridge is different from the oatmeal eaten in the USA:

Scottish oatmeal is smoother than your typical Quaker Oats. Start with a pat of butter and a splash of milk, then toss in some golden currants (like raisins, but not) and a generous spoonful of light brown Demerara sugar, and you're ready to begin the day the way Scots have for centuries.

I settled for a tiny cup of Holly's Whole Grain Oatmeal from the menu. When I explained what I was trying to do to our server, she served my oatmeal with brown sugar and blueberries on the side. I added a scone and was ready for my adventure.

Brown sugar and blue berries.
Brown sugar and blue berries.

I took a swig from my mug of French Press coffee and dug in. Slowly but surely, I ate everything on my plate, just like my grandmother had taught me. As I said before, by "full", the Scots mean "complete," but full is what I felt when you finished the last bite of that scone. After completing the meal, I was sure I no longer wanted dinner. I wanted two Lipitor and a nap. I skipped the Lipitor4 but around 2 PM I dozed off watching the kids play on the Nintendo. I can't wait for next Father's Day.

  1. Not to be confused with that disgusting sweet shit Americans call hot chocolate. Yuck! ↩
  2. My grandmother always used hot milk and brewed her coffee on the stove. Strong stuff. ↩
  3. We've had some problems scheduling Father's Day breakfast this year. ↩
  4. I have high cholesterol but take my Lipitor in the morning with breakfast. ↩