Breakfast for Dinner

This week I am a bachelor. The wife has travelled East for Spring Break to visit her 95 year old mother.

So, what does a bachelor do? He cooks.

But cooking for one can be so dull and unexciting. After all, who is there to applaud?

This afternoon I decided to make a simple dish and size it down to one dinner and a little bit of leftovers for a later lunch. Better yet, the dish will use some leftovers from before Nancy left, sweet Italian sausage links.

I shopped and then I gathered ingredients.

Ingredients

1 link sweet Italian sausage, cooked and sliced in rings

1 large white mushroom, sliced

1/2 yellow onion, sliced in half rings

1/4 cup minced parsley

1/3 cup shredded mild cheddar jack cheese

three eggs

2 Tablespoons milk

2 Tablespoons EVOO

salt and pepper to taste

Method

Heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Add a large pinch of salt and a small pinch of pepper to the eggs and whisk with a fork. Add the milk and whisk until blended

Add the cheese and parsley and whisk once more.

In a oven safe, non stick skillet, saute the mushrooms and onions until soft and beginning to brown. Add a pinch of salt and pepper and the cooked sausage rings. Continue to saute until all ingredients are well heated.

Whisk the egg mixture and add it to the skillet.

Use a wooden spoon to mix the cooking egg and the skillet contents. Swirl the skillet to even the ingredients and place the skillet on the middle rack of the heated oven. Bake 15 to 18 minutes, until the frittata is firm, hot, and sliceable.

Serve with salsa to garnish and a side of home fries, tots, or other potatoes.

Walleye Chowder

Walleye are native to the Ozarks and back in the day were called jack salmon for reasons beyond understanding. When the Corps of Engineers dammed the White, Ouachita, and Little Red rivers for flood control and electrical generation, they also created wonderful fisheries in which walleye have thrived. To keep the populations  at catchable levels Arkansas stocks the lakes to supplement any natural reproduction.

For those of us who both fish and cook, these facts create a wonderful opportunity to prepare fresh fish of the highest quality. Not that you have to catch fish yourself to enjoy this chowder recipe. You can substitute halibut, cod, hake, or any firm white fish other than tilapia. Don't you dare use tilapia for anything.

Ingredients

1 pound walleye filets, chunked into 2" cubes

1 pound golden potatoes with skin on, sliced in 1/4 inch half moons

White parts of 1 leek, sliced in half rings

1 onion, diced

1 large garlic clove, minced

1 small carrot, shredded

2 slices bacon, cut into 1/2 inch julienne

1 8 oz. bottle clam juice

1 rounded Tablespoon flour

1 cup half and half

1 cup of cream

2 teaspoons Old Bay seasoning

2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves

salt and pepper to taste

sriracha to taste

1 Tablespoon EVOO

Method

Brown the bacon slices in the bottom of a dutch oven in the oil.

Remove and reserve the bacon.

Gently saute the onion, carrot, and leeks in the residual fat.

Add the spices and flour and continue to cook for 1 minute while stirring.

Add the garlic and cook while stirring another minute.

Add the clam juice and use it to deglaze the pot.

Add the bacon back to the pot.

Add the half and half, the cream, and the potatoes and simmer until the dary taste has disappeared and the potatoes are done, and the soup has thickened.

Add the fish and cook with minimal stirring until the fish is done through.

Serve with fresh baked bread and  pan roasted asparagus.