Pork puddin' smothered with fried eggs
Fried eggs with pork puddin’ and braised green beans.
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Shopping, none.
Pork “pudding” is very similar to scrapple, except that it doesn’t have any grain in it. Both contain odd bits of the pig. But scrapple typically is bound together with corn meal.
We get our pork puddin’ delivered from our dairy, South Mountain Creamery, which sources it from local farmers in western Maryland. I like it as a change from bacon or breakfast sausage, especially because it means I am helping to consume the whole animal–jowels and snout and ears and all.
The puddin’ arrives in a small brick. To prepare it for breakfast, I cut a thick slice and fry it fairly aggressively on both sides to develop a crust, which helps hold it together. Flipping the puddin’ is not especially easy in a skillet, even with an offset spatula. So what I’ve taken to doing lately is frying the puddin’ on our “comal” imported from Mexico. The comal is simply a flat, round, cast-iron griddle with a handle. In Mexico it is used to fry tortillas.
While the puddin’ is frying in some bacon grease, I cover it with a pot lid to conserve the heat. When the puddin’ is done, it makes way for eggs, which fry up quickly.
The beans you see on the plate were harvested in the garden recently and braised three hours with tomatoes, onion and fennel seed. They are good reheated any time of day.
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.
Thanks for the braised green beans recipe. Out of all the meals of the day, I get SO bored with breakfast especially when eggs are involved. Sometimes I’ll eat leftover dinner before I break open an egg. Puddin’ sounds great – I’ll have to search for some.