Got leftover steaks and baked potatoes from last night’s dinner? Turn them into breakfast GOLD by making an easy, delicious hash.

Here’s the how to: Chop potatoes and steak (or chicken, pork chop, meat loaf, whatev) into roughly equal size cubes (1/2 inch-ish). Chop a couple shallots or onions finely. If you’re like me, then for some odd reason your leftovers also fortuitously include a ziploc containing 5 cooked bacon slices and you should definitely chop those up as well. If you’re lucky enough to own a vegetable, like a bell pepper or broccoli or something, well then your fridge is better stocked than mine. Go ahead and pat yourself on the back, then give that the chop chop as well.

Heat some butter (or lard, duck fat, olive oil, whatev) in a large saute pan over high heat. Add the potatoes- those should get crispy so they need to cook the longest. If you have some hard vegetable like broccoli then throw that in with the potatoes. Season with salt and pepper. Toss or stir to brown the potatoes on multiple sides. When you’ve got some nice browning on at least a couple of sides, add the shallots (and your softer vegetable if you’re using one: I’m talking bell pepper or zucchini-type stuff) and cook another couple minutes until the shallots soften but not so long that they brown. Add the meat(s) and cook just until heated through, tossing or stirring, a couple minutes. Check the seasoning and adjust. If you really want to clog your family’s arteries, fry some eggs and put ‘em over the top. What the hell. You only live once.

I like to eat this with some Greek yogurt mixed in, but then again, I’m weird like that.

My last couple posts have been kind of weird and gross! As individual posts, they are OK, as a gestalt, notsomuch. I’m pleased to say that things are looking up for everyone, as I have something that is decidedly NOT gross and in fact  SUPER delicious- a recipe for Pancake Ice Cream with Bacon Candy.

I put this beloved recipe up as a guest post on Thursday Night Smackdown, which is known for its witty proprietress Michelle, who swears like a stevedore. Ergo, don’t be surprised if I seem a little grittier over there. Or funnier. I think I tried harder to be funny because she’s really funny and I wanted to impress her, and you. Hopefully it worked. If not, just think about the bacon candy some more. Bacon. Plus candy. Bacon candy!

No words needed. Maybe just a heavy gagging sound. Or the sound of me choking on my own vomit.

UPDATE: as a commenter noted this is not a real product, but a ThinkGeek.com April Fool’s joke. Real or fake, it’s still gag-worthy.

I have been really busy lately, but one of the bright spots of my recent days was making this cornbread and then eating it all.

Cornbread can be too sweet or too mealy or too dry or too boring, but this cornbread is none of those things. I’m guessing it’s largely because of the copious amounts of bacon and bacon grease that go into it, but there could be other reasons. I like it warm out of the oven or lightly toasted. With all the fat in it, even I don’t need to put butter on it… and that’s saying quite a lot since I like to put butter on EVERYTHING. But it’s not solely enhanced by the pig products- it’s rounded out with caramelized onions and a measure of parmesan cheese just for the heck of it. So swine up your cornbread- one bite and you will wonder why you have spent all these years eating stupid regular non-porked cornbread.

Props to my friend Rodney for the bones of the recipe, who wants to try this with pork sausage instead of bacon and turn it into stuffing, which makes me ask, great, what time should I be there for dinner, pal?

Swinetastic Cornbread

Ingredients:

• ½ lb. thick cut bacon or pancetta, cut in small squares
• 1 yellow onion, sliced thinly
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 tblsp baking powder
• ½ tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• ¾ cup sour cream or plain yogurt
• ½ cup milk or buttermilk
• 1 egg
• ¼ cup bacon grease (liquid) + more for greasing the pan and cooking the onions
• ½ cup grated or shaved parmigiano

Method:

• Cook bacon over medium heat until brown and crispy. Remove to paper towels with slotted spoon and set aside.
• Pour out all but about 2 tsp of bacon grease and reserve for later. Turn heat to low and add onions. Season with salt and cook, stirring often, until onions are caramelized, about 20-30 minutes. Remove and set aside.
• Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a loaf pan or square 9×9 pan with extra bacon grease.
• Mix together flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and soda, salt, and parmesan in a bowl.
• In a separate bowl, mix sour cream or yogurt, buttermilk, and egg.
• Mix together dry and wet ingredients, being careful not to overmix. Add liquid bacon grease and stir to combine.
• Gently stir in cheese, bacon, and onions. Pour into prepared pan and bake 45 minutes to an hour, until a toothpick comes out clean.
• Serve warm or let cool and toast lightly before serving.

My friend Lori raved about a french toast panini she had at a restaurant in the Hamptons,  called the Elvis. She described it as “2 slices of french toast peanut butter and bananas inside, smooshed together in a panini press.” I was sold on the idea and offered to try and recreate it, with a few twists of course.

This is a pretty heavy dish, obviously- sweet and filling. It’s definitely more of a Sunday brunch than a 7 AM weekday kind of thing. Mostly because you’ll go into a food coma after eating it and might need to lie down.

While I thought it sounded good as is, I has a vision that using cinnamon bread for the french toast would kick it into the next level. It’s best to use thin slices of the cinnamon bread for the best ratio of bread to filling. The sweetness begged for a salinated cured pork product so I served it with salty, thick-cut bacon. Elvis may have left the building, but he left behind some damn fine French toast.

French Toast a la Elvis

serves 6.

Ingredients:

• 6 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk (can use some or all buttermilk if desired)
• pinch salt
• 1 loaf cinnamon swirl bread, sliced into 12 pieces
• crunchy peanut butter to taste, about 10 tablespoons total
• 3 bananas, sliced in rounds about 1/8 inch thick
• butter and non-stick spray for cooking

Method:

• Whisk eggs and milk together.
• Heat large non-stick skillet over medium heat. Add about 1 tsp butter.
• Dip bread in egg mixture and cook on both sides until lightly browned. Repeat until all bread has been cooked. You will have to add more butter for each batch.
• Lay french toast on a tray. Spread about 1 Tblsp peanut butter on each piece of bread. Lay 1/2 banana’s worth of rounds on top of 1/2 the french toast and sandwich with a peanut buttered one.
• Heat a panini press and spray with nonstick spray. Cook sandwiches until browned and peanut butter is a little melty.*
• Serve immediately with salty bacon.

* If you don’t have a panini press, you can make these sandwiches and then put them, assembled, in a non stick pan. Weigh them down with something heavy so they get smooshed and browned.

Look! It’s another bacon thing that’s not food-related: bacon luggage tags!

And with this, I am officially DONE with bacon-everything except for, of course, the actual eatin’ kind of bacon. That kind is still OK. But please stop already with the bandaids, the air freshener, and yes, the luggage tags. It’s old. It’s over. Move on to pork rinds or something.

Here you go: I made you a Venn diagram to express my position more clearly.

This recession/depression business is really starting to get me down! In light of that I wanted to share a recipe with you that’s triply good for these dark, dank economic times. Why triply? First of all, people in the South traditionally eat Hoppin’ John on New Year’s to bring prosperity and good fortune. Second, the ingredients are really cheap, so it’s easy on the wallet. Third, it packs a nutritional wallop of protein, folates, carbs, and more, so you won’t have to eat again for awhile.

I was looking for recipes involving black-eyed peas, and Hoppin’ John is the one that most intrigued me. I’ll admit, it’s totally, completely, 100% because of the name.  All of the recipes I found involved crazy time-consuming things like soaking the peas overnight and procuring ham hocks and what have you, but I was like “I want my dinner NOW, dammit!” So this is the corner-cutting, lazy-ass version I came up with to maximize deliciousness and minimize time and effort.

As to the name, a bunch of people have different theories about the name that seem highly farfetched, so I’ve decided just to go with it and not wonder too much. Confusingly there’s talk of making the leftovers into pancakes and calling it called Skippin’ Jenny or some such nonsense but I can’t even get into that.

Lazy Man’s Hoppin’ John
This is good with a side of wilted kale or collards, and should be served with Frank’s Red Hot sauce on the side for those who like the extra heat. Serves 4.

Ingredients:

• 5 slices smoky bacon, chopped in small pieces
• 1 small onion, chopped finely
• 1 small red pepper, chopped into 1/4 inch squares
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped finely
• 2 cups cooked rice
• 1-15 ounce can black eyed peas, drained and rinsed
• 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
• 1/4 teaspoon Worcestershire
• salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper to taste

Method:

• Put bacon in medium-sized saucepan, and cook until crispy over medium het.
• Add onion, pepper, and garlic and cook 3-5 minutes, until vegetables are soft but still vibrant.
• Add rice, black-eyed peas, dry mustard, and Worcestershire sauce.
• Cook for 5 minutes, stirring to combine. Taste and add salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste.
• Stir and cook another 10 minutes. Taste, adjust seasoning, and serve immediately.

The other day I threw out a status update asking what to make for dinner, and my friend Sarah from San Diego suggested that a chilly winter’s night merited a warm bowl of spaghetti carbonara. (I know what you’re thinking, chilly winter’s night in San Diego? But let’s move on.) I immediately glommed onto the idea and started trolling the internets for the skinny (fatty?) on the best carbonara recipes out there. I was thinking bacon, cream, eggs, you know, the basics. Figure out the best balance and method and get to some good eating.

As you know, the internets are MAGICAL and I was quite surprised to learn that carbonara has a lot of rules, and a fair number of people have intense and even acrimonious feelings about these rules. The number one rule is: YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO USE CREAM, not even one drop, how could you even THINK of ruining your carbonara with cream, do you have no sense at all YOU A**HOLE?!?!?! Now, I’m only type-shouting and degrading you to reflect the aggregate loathing of bloggers and commenters alike, who rally loudly against abuses of the term “carbonara” to describe these allegedly nefarious and horrifying excuses for a pasta recipe. Examples:

From tommy:eats: “Here in the states, you see a lot of “light cream sauce” when describing carbonara.  That’s not carbonara.  I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s not good.  I often say that can judge an Italian restaurant by its description of carbonara:  if I see “cream”, I know I don’t have to bother trying the place.”

From a commenter on Il Forno: “First and fore most – NO CREAM. If you like cream then go and cook yourself a TV dinner or something and don’t pretend to like Italian food.” (sic)

Wow. Harsh. I could go on, for days in fact, but you get the picture. So, well, there I am feeling pretty sheepish with my crazy ideas about cream in carbonara. And then come all of the other issues piling on, the more I keep reading. Like, no bacon, it has to be pancetta or better yet, guanciale (that would be, cured hog cheeks). No peas. No onions. No wine. No garlic. No pasta shapes other than spaghetti. If you make any of these egregious missteps then you had BETTER not be callin’ your nasty ol’ slop heap carbonara. (People are really serious about this.)

So I did what any curious, self-respecting, reasonably hungry person who doesn’t balk at eating two multi-thousand calorie meals in the span of 8 hours would do: I made a very authentic and “real” carbonara for lunch, and then I made my verions of fake, bastard, I’m-a-bad-person carbonara for dinner. Personally, I wouldn’t turn either of these dishes down, but I will agree that the purist version was more exciting and ultimately more satisfying, albeit a pretty hearty (heavy?) meal. As Ross described it, “it’s like eating a rich, salty, delicious bowl of pasta, and a pork chop, simultaneously.” Good enough for me.

Spaghetti Carbonara
makes 2 servings.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 pound spaghetti
• 4 oz. guanciale (use pancetta if you MUST)
• 2 whole eggs
• salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1/2 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano

Method:

• Put pasta water on to boil. Meanwhile, chop guanciale into small pieces and cook in a large saucepan over medium high heat until brown and crisp. Turn off heat and leave on stovetop as is.
• Separate one egg and reserve yolk. Thoroughly whisk 1 whole egg and 1 egg white with a liberal amount of salt and pepper in a bowl. Add the parmigiano and whisk together.
• Add pasta to boiling water and cook until done. When the pasta has about a minute left on the timer, turn the guanciale pan back on high heat just until it starts sizzling again (which, conveniently, should take about a minute.)
• Using tongs, carefully transfer the spaghetti into the guanciale pan along with about 1/4 cup of the pasta water. (You could also drain the pasta and reserve some of the pasta water, but that would dirty out more dishes, so… I go with the tongs.) Turn off the heat and use the tongs to toss the pasta and guanciale.
• Slowly poor the egg/cheese mix in, tossing furiously with the tongs so the eggs don’t cook too much. When fully combined, add the yolk and mix thoroughly one more time.
• Remove to 2 (preferably warm) serving bowls, garnish with extra parmigiano, and consume immediately.

Not Carbonara: Pasta with Eggs, Pecorino, and Pancetta
I didn’t call it carbonara so please don’t beat me up. Serves 2.

Ingredients:

• 3 oz. pancetta, cut in 1/4 inch wide strips
• 1 small clove garlic, finely chopped
• 2 shallots, finely chopped
• 3 Tblsp white wine
• 1/3 cup cream
• salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1 egg + 1 yolk
• 1/2 cup grated pecorino (can substitute grated parmigiano)

Method:

• Cook pancetta over medium heat until browned. Drain on paper towels. Remove all but about 1 Tblsp of the fat.
• Add the shallots and garlic and cook a few minutes, until translucent but not browned.
• Add the wine and swirl in the pan to deglaze 1-2 minutes. Add the cream, salt, and pepper and bring to a boil. Turn off the heat.
• Meanwhile, cook the pasta (I used something called campanelle, which look like bells and had lots of good sauce-holding ridges.)
• While waiting for the pasta to boil, crack the eggs into a bowl and whisk well to mix. Add the pecorino and mix. Set aside.
• Drain the pasta and set aside. Reheat cream just until it simmers. Turn off the heat. Whisk a little bit of the warm cream into the eggs, then a little more, then a little more. Combine all together in the pan (still with the heat off) and add the pasta and pancetta and mix furiously. If the sauce is too thin, turn the heat on medium low to reduce without letting it out and out boil.
• Serve immediately.
• If you wish, you can add frozen peas with the cream in the first section.