Be sure to season each layer as you build up the casserole. Seasonings: Salt and pepper enhance the flavor of the dish.Butter: A generous amount of butter distributed on each layer of potatoes adds richness.You'll sprinkle flour over each layer of potatoes so the sauce thickens evenly. Flour: All-purpose flour helps thicken the sauce as the scalloped potatoes bake.Onion: Choose a medium sized yellow or white onion to add savory flavor to the scalloped potatoes.Yukon Gold potatoes aren't as starchy, and will hold their shape better as they cook. Russet potatoes will add their starchiness to the dish as they cook, helping the sauce thicken. Some home cooks use starchy russet potatoes and others prefer all-purpose Yukon Gold potatoes – either kind works well but there are differences in the outcome. Potatoes: Use your choice of potatoes for this recipe.But snapping images of my plate of food is an option, and one I can opt out of when zen-time beckons. Will I ever take my camera out again? Sure – I haven’t gone Luddite. Well, we’re all a bit different, aren’t we? But, as a suggestion, maybe one step we can take in the right direction is to put down our cameras and smartphones every so often and enjoy eating as an experience and not as a photo op. Scrapple, steak, Spaghetti-Os, whatever – find your eating zen, and everything is delicious. And in this state of eating, when the senses are present and willing, it all tastes amazing. I had reached my place of zen, and nothing else mattered. So there I was, enjoying every blessed forkful as if it were dry-aged steak served medium rare. That’s a pretty cool magic trick in my book. Cooked properly, you get a crispy outside, a soft and slightly creamy middle, and it all tastes like pork. The way I look at it, don’t think about what scrapple is – think about what scrapple does. But now that I’ve gotten the news, I really do like the stuff. My folks didn’t serve it at home when I was growing up. Are you game? Yes? Cool.Īdmittedly, I was late to the scrapple party. And it might get a little weird for some of you. But it’s the scrapple that I want to discuss. The potatoes and toast played their starchy and carb-y roles, respectively. They looked like puffy half-moons – the kind I make at home. I watched the cook as he made omelettes that were not in the classic French tri-fold style. My breakfast order was for one of the daily special omelettes with cheese and asparagus, along with home fries and toast. It was a gray Saturday morning of no particular importance, and yet I wanted to be present to it all and not distantly observing from behind a camera. There’s something very American about sitting at a counter for breakfast, coffee within grasp, while local news on the TV provides background noise. You can’t really hide in a place like this. You can sit at one end of the counter and almost shake the hand of someone sitting at a table on the opposite end. The Cracked Egg Cafe is small, with a counter and about four tables. Truth #3: if you’re not feeling it, regardless of your endeavor, the result will suffer. Another truth: really bad pictures can ruin even the best writing accompaniment. Truth is, you can also do a good job painting the picture with words. But in order to give your 21st Century audience as close to a full experience as possible, you have to document it all with pics (and video, too). That feeling has never completely gone away. To this day, I still think it’s a little weird to snap images of a plate of food. I parked in front of the almost-missed Cracked Egg Cafe, got out of the car…and that’s when my feet came to a halt. But I had my trusty little digital camera with me, ready to gather some new material for a triumphant return to old-school blogging. It had been some time since I had gone out on a food adventure that didn’t involve a real deadline. If you did attend, I hope you had a lovely time and I have no ill will towards you.Įver get frozen by indecision? Your feet plant themselves and refuse to budge until you figure things out? By the way, how was the LBI Shellfish Soiree from three years ago? Yes, I’m pretty sick of seeing that post. But you’ll see (or should I say read) why in a moment. So here I am, getting the band back together so to speak, and I present to you a brand-new post…with no pictures.
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