Saturday, October 1, 2011

Sheepishly Returning to FFWD: Deconstructed (perhaps unconstructed?) BLT with Egg

It's been about 6 months since I've done a blog post.  I have cooked some of the recipes, but I became overwhelmed with work and everything.  And then I went to India.  And now I'm back to work.  Anyway, I really missed doing FFWD, and would follow along on Facebook, etc., so I'm excited to jump back in!

On to the dish:

I know that bacon is having its cultural moment right now, but I have to say I'm one of those people who loves it.  Thus, Deconstructed BLT with Egg sounded fantastic.  Well, it did until I saw that the egg is hard-boiled.  Sigh.  I have tried so hard to like hard-boiled eggs, and it's just not happening.  Between that and brussels sprouts, I've got my two food nemeses (and cottage cheese, but I've never tried to like that one).  Then, I read it and see it has fresh tomato in it.  Yay for me because I've got tomatoes from my garden.  Boo for me because the husband-man doesn't like fresh tomatoes. Nevertheless, I soldiered on because we both love everything else in the recipe--arugula, bacon, bread.

So I made 2 salads that were incomplete, or shall I say, Unconstructed: 1 without the fresh tomatoes and 1 without the egg.

Salad minus egg: the not as good one

Salad minus fresh tomatoes: the not as pretty one
Overall, I liked the salad, though I could see how the egg really, really makes it.  I can see how the texture (especially that slight creaminess of the yolk) would add a nice counterpoint to the varying levels of crunch in everything else.  The fresh-tomato-less salad still had that nice acid from the sun-dried tomatoes, and mostly suffered, I believe, from the loss of aesthetic beauty the bright red provides (and don't tomatoes just look scrumptiously good for you?)

In any case, it still got a thumbs up and almost, almost made me want to try to like hard-boiled eggs again.

Sadly, no wine pairing.  We had gone out to a birthday party at which I'd had a massive martini that I didn't even finish--you know the kind of place, the one with super-cheap drinks that are unexpectedly huge (I should've had a beer).  Still being on anti-malarial stuff has greatly affected my alcohol tolerance (sadly) and so I am somewhat surprised I was able to assemble said salad, much less take photos of it.  If I'd had wine, too, I'm not sure what would've happened.

Oh, and we served it with next week's Olive-Olive Cornish Hens, but we'll save that for next week!

8 comments:

  1. Welcome back! A trip to India sounds like a worthwhile distraction from blogging, I'd have to say. Both salads look lovely.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Glad to see you back!
    India sounds like quite the trip.
    Very curious about the Cornish hens. I have never worked with them, so not quite sure what to expect.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nice to see you back! I am a couple days behind and will be making this for dinner tomorrow night, also with garden tomatoes.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Welcome back! Wow! India, how exciting. We liked this salad but that's about all I can say about it:)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Glad you're back. It sounds like you've had some great adventures which you were away from FFwD.
    Nice job on the welcome back salad. I saw that several people used runny poached eggs on the salad. Maybe you'd like that better? I'm with you on the cottage cheese. I can't even look at it. However, I've come to love Brussels sprouts in my adulthood. They were banned from my childhood (my parents made a pact, they both despised them).

    ReplyDelete
  6. I was glad that I tried it out for yesterday's lunch and I love it and I love the soft egg yolk too !

    ReplyDelete
  7. Both salads look good and while I'm all for trying new things, I say don't eat what you really don't like! And I'm impressed you cooked while drinking: I'd be snoring on the counter.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thanks everyone! It's so nice to see the familiar names as well as some new ones! I LOVE the idea of the poached egg with the runny yolk and had briefly thought of it while I was writing this post. I can even see toasting an entire slice of a baguette in the bacon fat and placing the egg on top of that so it catches some of the yolk. Mmmmm....

    ReplyDelete