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Saturday morning SupperInStereo original! It was good, real good. To serve two, this is all you need:
- 2-3 Tbsp olive oil
- 1 medium sweet potato
- 1 medium onion
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1/2 tsp smoked paprika (chile powder also works)
- 3 Tbsp chopped, toasted pecans (optional, but awesome)
- 4 eggs
- Salt, Pepper to taste
For the (quick) Hollandaise Sauce:
- 1 egg yolk
- Splash of lemon juice
- Pinch of salt
- Pinch of smoked paprika (cayenne also works and is more standard, but we’re on a smoked paprika kick)
- 1/3 cup butter
Instructions:
- Heat oil over medium heat in a large frying pan.
- Grate sweet potato. Roughly chop onion. Mince garlic.
- Give garlic and onion a head start in the pan, cooking them until golden before adding the sweet potato.
- Cook until browned. Don’t stir too much or it won’t get crispy. About 20 minutes.
When sweet potato mix is almost done:
- Poach eggs (not sure about that link’s last recommendation, saran wrapping the eggs)
- Add toasted pecans to the sweet potato hash.
While eggs are cooking:
- Melt butter in small frying pan.
- Whisk egg yolk, salt, smoked paprika and lemon juice together until creamy.
- While whisking, slowly pour the melted butter into the mixture. It will thicken into a rich sauce.
Serve poached eggs on a bed of sweet potato hash. Generously (more than pictured above) drench plate in Hollandaise sauce. Eat.
Our fridge has been saddled with a bumper crop of fall ingredients the past week. We’ve spent the last few days eating nothing but vegetables. This weekend we did our best to polish off a stubborn batch of cabbage and leek soup that had been holed up in our fridge, refusing to disappear. Too much veg!
This morning I decided we needed a meal we could sink our teeth into. Something our guts could grab hold of and mull over. So this morning Hanne and I dragged our veg laden stomachs around the corner to Reservoir, our neighbourhood microbrewery and bistro that puts on a wicked brunch every Saturday and Sunday.
Reservoir serves no ordinary brunch. It’s both fancy and casual, a mashup of French bistro food and British pub grub, complete with mystery meat. It’s the kind of food that goes well with either a glass of wine or a house brewed stout.
On a Sunday morning Reservoir is packed with Franco and Anglo post bohemian hipsters, creative types with real jobs and accessory-babies that are as meticulously put together as they are. I think some of them even do their kids’ hair. Turnover is fast and you can get a seat fairly quickly, especially if you grab a couple stools at the bar like we did this morning.
We started off sharing a cream of mushroom soup topped with truffle oil. This guy says that restaurants use truffle oil only to charge more for their dishes, but at five bucks a dish I suspect Reservoir used truffle oil on this soup only because it tastes so good. The soup had a smooth creamy texture and the nutty aroma of butter browned in a pan. Most of the mushroom was pureed, but the morsels left behind were tightly packed flavour bombs. This, my friends, is the right way to start your Sunday:
It took Hanne and me a while to figure out what to order next. If there’s something weird like cow’s tongue or pig’s feet on the menu, it’s Hanne’s dish. Me? I tend to order food that makes a mockery of my choking arteries while on its way down to my gut. The problem today was that the weirdest dish up for grabs was also the biggest and fattiest piece of meat. We both spotted it as the waiter scooped one from the kitchen behind the bar and walked past us. Hanne called dibs and stole the beef cheek right out of my mouth. Because Hanne and I are plate swappers, we’re unable to select the same dish, so I tried to do Hanne one better. I ordered the blood sausage, which I knew had the potential to out-weird her order. Take that, beef cheeks!
BLOOD SAUSAGE
VS.
BEEF CHEEK(S)
The beef cheek was topped with a poached egg and came on a bed of pureed squash. The meat was braised, and the juice and fat had massaged the meat to perfect tenderness. I didn’t notice the poached egg, but Hanne let me clean the remaining squash and meat juice off her plate with the crisp, buttery bread that accompanied our meal. Hanne admitted the dish wasn’t all that weird, but she was happy nonetheless.
The blood sausage, on the other hand, was very weird. It was the first time I tried the dish and I’m happy I took the risk. It had a similar thick texture to liver, without the dry pastiness. The flavour reminded me of red wine. I’m not sure if it was flavoured with wine or not, but I can’t imagine anything else that would make blood taste so good. Its maroon colour reminded me more of a cooked beet than the gushy redness of blood I’m more familiar with. The flavour of the sausage was rich and heavy on the tongue, well complimented by the sweet carrots and snappy white radishes. The sausage casing was crispy and blackened, its charred flavour so good that I continued enjoying it even after considering that I might be chomping on the equivalent of scab. Delicious! No, seriously!
Don’t be turned off by Reservoir if blood sausage and beef cheek are too unusual for you. The menu changes every week, but there are always plenty of dishes with more everyday ingredients. On previous visits, I’ve enjoyed the two-egg dish, served with lard fumé, which is kind of like bacon but thicker, better-tasting and likely worse for you. You can also order the tomato and three cheese omelette or an apple and endive salad. The dish in the thumbnail at the top of this post is wild mushrooms with onion tempura and fresh mozzarella. I hope it’s still being served next time I visit Reservoir.
Check out the full menu below:
Saturday mornings, I like to play housewife. Instead of telling Carlo “make your own breakfast. You’re a grown man,” I get out of bed and cheerfully mix flour and baking powder together to make a weekend feast. Sometimes it’s muffins, but usually it’s pancakes because they come together so fast and cook quickly enough that my hunger doesn’t overwhelm my good intentions. When the food is ready, we douse our pancakes in maple syrup, sprinkle a little sugar on our lattes, and curl up in armchairs with our plates on our laps. It’s a good way to start a Saturday.
Last time I made these pancakes, I used whole wheat flour. This time I used all-purpose. It’s good both ways, but the whole wheat does make them a bit heavier. They’re very filling because of the oatmeal, which adds a rich creaminess that goes really well with tart grated Granny Smith apples.
1/2 cup flour
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 large egg, beaten
1 1/2 cups cooked oatmeal (I use instant oatmeal, but this would be great with rolled oats)
3/4 cup milk
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and grated
unsalted butter
Preheat a skillet on medium heat.
Mix together flour, salt and baking soda. Add wet ingredients and mix gently.
Melt a generous pat of butter onto the skillet and pour batter in 1/4-1/2 cup servings onto skillet. Allow to cook until bubbles show on one side, then flip and cook on the other side until both sides are golden. Flip pancakes onto a plate, cover with maple syrup, and relax.
*By the way, can you tell we just bought a new camera? You could if you looked at any of our earlier posts. It’s a Canon Powershot G7, and we loooove it. But now that we have no excuses about image quality, any ugly photos are entirely our own faults. I’d love to hear some food photo tips!*
