Blanc Poubelle Bistro

Pardon my french. Last week I got riled because we can be a huge steaming pile of numbskulls. Too true.  We (excuse me while I paraphrase rip-off my own comments section) love people that make us sad, elect people that steal our money, buy stuff that is a complete fraud, and do the same things over and over expecting that this time the results will be different. Sadly after a little further research I found that we are sort of wired to do those things. Well, Duh! With all due respect to the scientists in the crowd we also can over come those things if we work at them. Your body wants to be fat. If your male your body wants to spread your genetic material to as many places as possible (never sit on my couch without putting down a towel first). If you're a woman once a month your body messes with all kinds of regular chemical processes and can make you sick to boot. Yet the world is full of thin people, there are millions upon millions of faithful men ( as my couch will attest, thank god for Scottish guard), and pretty much every woman I have ever know does not turn into a raging basket case once a month. We beat our biology all the time and with the right kind of effort we can fix our bad thinking, we can admit we're wrong, we can understand risk, calculate probability correctly, embrace new facts, if only we push hard. I do mean hard, it's hard to be thin, it's hard not to sleep with everyone you can, it's hard not to be cranky when your body is flooding your brain with hormones while also making you sick. No one said it was going to be easy.

Because learning has its' ups and downs...

... But you have to wonder about who decided that taking that picture was a better idea than removing the kid from  a bowl of sewage. Ahh internet, you expose the Duh! At our very core. That's why we're going to start with food. Good food is about good cooking. Good cooking is all about methods, it is not about expensive ingredients. Throw a filet mignon into a pot of boiling water and you can eat it but it is going to suck. Pan fry a rack of ribs and you can eat it but it is going to suck. Bake Dover sole without adding fat and you and you can eat it but it is going to suck.  Well, we're going to take some cheap ingredients and make ourselves gourmet breakfast.

Why it's almost not food at all.

You have three basic possible problems when you cook meat. 1) You paid a lot of money for lean and tender. Lean and tender doesn't like too much heat or you get dry and tough. This defeats the purpose of spending the big bucks in the first place. 2) You paid less money for tough and fatty. Tough and fatty needs plenty of alone time with the heat, gentle wet heat, or they stubbornly stay tough and fatty. This defeats the point of trying to save money because suck never makes anyones day. 3) You paid a moderate amount of money for lean and tough. Now you need to use the right prep methods on top of using just the exact right amount of heat or you get Scottish/Irish food and a leg up on trying to stay thin.

Spam is none of the above. It is very fatty which is good for flavor but is very tender because it has been pre-chewed by a machine. Pre-chewed is not appetizing as anyone that has thrown-up instinctively knows.

What? Did you think I would show a picture of vomit?

So moving forward the first thing we need to do is think of a way to restore texture to our pseudo-food. Put your cast iron skillet on medium heat. Take 2 cans of spam. Cut one 12 once slab into 12 1 once slices. Take the other slab and cut it into a 1/4 inch dice. Start with the slices, cook them over medium heat five minutes to a side until they are well browned on both sides. Set aside, don't worry, the stuff is junk. Reheating it won't hurt it. (Note: if you start the slices before the pan is hot the spam will render enough oil to make greasing the pan unnecessary.).) Now check the pan. If it looks dry toss in a couple of tablespoons of butter. Mmm butter! Now crisp up the diced spam. Once the spam is well on its' way to golden brown add a finely chopped onion. When the onion starts to caramelize add another tablespoon of butter. Mmm butter! Then add 2 tablespoons of flour. Stir. You are making a roux. Give it 2 or 3 minutes so the raw flour taste cooks off, then add a cup of whole milk, 2 or 3 shakes of tabasco, and maybe a little chicken broth or water if the sauce looks too gummy. Now you need a base to build a meal.

Grit cakes, if you didn't translate the title you should have realized by now that I am going all Nascar/ white trash on your butts. (White trash is a derogatory term that is not endorsed by the management of this blog).

Make a mess of grits. Actually do this the day before. Follow the directions on the box. Use chicken stock if you are a foodie, use milk if you are a southerner, or use water if you are boring. Eat some of the grits for supper.( a little read sauce, a little parmesan, just call it polenta instead of grits) Take the left-overs, add 8 ounces of shredded jack cheese and 2 tablespoons full of sniped chive. Mix, then spread everything in the bottom of a 13x9 pan. Cover with plastic wrap. Then weigh it down by inserting another pan. Put the whole thing in the fridge.

The next day you will find you can cut and remove slices of the grits aka grit cakes. Dip them in flour, dip them in egg, dip them in seasoned flour (salt, pepper, cayenne). Pan fry them in butter. While they are pan frying paint your browned spam with honey or maple syrup, or molasses, or just dust them in brown sugar. Broil until they just bubble. 1 or 2 minutes. Place a cake on a plate, add a slice of spam, and spoon some of the spam sauce over top. You'll have...

Oh yeah, I almost forgot the egg.

Over very easy would be good, but if you have one of those poaching things that makes perfectly shaped poached eggs that would be even better. More chives or some parsley is also a nice touch, but I was thinking upscale meal with downscale ingredient so how about topping with a quick saute of...

...Leeks. That's the beauty of vegtables. If you eat them in season they are always poor people food because they are always cheap. Poor people have no troubles eating if it's warm and they have access to land and water. Each serving of my gourmet breakfast costs about a $1.50. Dish it up in a fancy restaurant by a celebrity chef who knows to call the grits "grilled polenta," the spam "force meat" and you have yourself a $15 dollar entree.

You're only stupid if you impress yourself by its' cost and not by its' taste... and it will taste good.