Posted: Oct 14, 07
11:11am
Last night I made fried chicken, collards, and cornbread. I had about 2-3 cups of leftover collards and one large piece of cornbread. This morning I made a version of eggs benedict with those leftovers, Before you recoil in shock, let me explain:
Step 1. Puree the collards (they were done with bacon, onion, brown sugar, a cup of homemade chicken-stock and a tsp of smoke flavoring in a pot the night before.) Set aside for later.
Step 2. Heat oven to 375 and layout strips of bacon on a cookie sheet with raised sides Bake the bacon till crisp, set-aside, reserve drippings in your jar (all southerners do this, we use the drippings for a myriad of other things). What remains on the sheet will keep our potato-collard cakes from sticking.
Step 3. I cheated and used store bought instant cheesey mashed potatos. prepared as directed, stirred in my collard puree (about a cup), and once it set pressed out 4 mashed potato patties on my cookie sheet, put them under the broiler for 10 min.
Step 4. Whipped up eggs and made omelets with slices of provolone cheese.
Step 5. Sliced the leftover cornbread into 4 thin slices.
Step 6. Plated the cornbread, bacon, omelets.
Step 7. Separated 3 eggs, whites into a mixing bowl, yolks into the processor. Whipped the yolks briefly. In the 4-cup pyrex measuring cup I made my instant mashed potato's (now clean again) I melted one stick of butter, heating till foaming. Turn on the processor, add juice from one lemon or lime (I have both growing in back yard) and a pinch of salt. Slowly dribble your butter down the tube into the spinning processor. This is a foolproof method of making Hollandaise. You can add 1/2 the butter warm, and chill the other half to add at the end to make your sauce thicken quicker.
Step 8. Add Splenda or sugar to your eggwhites, along with anything else you can squeeze out of your lemon or lime. Beat with mixer on high speed till you have a merangue.
Step 9. Plate your potato cakes, drizzle omlet and potatos with hollandaise and top the omelet with your merangue.
You could use leftover mashed potatos if you have any, biscuits, english muffins, bagels, etc. I started to make purple hull peas w/ snaps last night but it was an after thought and I didn't feel like it. Purple hulls or other leftover veggie might mix well with some mashed potatos too! Poached eggs are the usual for a benedict, but I didn't want to clean the pot after. My cephalon skillet's easier.
The hollaindaise and merangue add this a fresh zing to this rich and heavy "field hand" breakfast.
Waste not want not . . .
