Some of my favorite meals are born out of leftovers.  There is just something so wonderful about taking extra food from a previous meal, investing a little effort and coming out with something entirely new.  This is especially true for brunch. Take for example, this dish:

 

Which was born from this dish: 

 

After Elianna and I had  finished helping the Homebrew Chef cooks one hell of a dinner. he graciously let us leave with some of the leftover ingredients. One of my favorite scores was a few pastrami duck breasts.  Sean had loving sous vide braised the duck is pastrami spices, giving them a great color and distinct pastrami flavor. The following morning, faced with eating a late breakfast, I decided to treat them just like I would leftover pastrami – it was time to make hash. Plus, it gave me the perfect opportunity to play with a new toy, Eli’s sausage grinder attachment for our Kitchenaid mixer.  I quickly boiled some potatoes, caramelized some onions, and pushed the whole thing though the mill. 

 

 

 

 

The total prep time was only a few minutes to boil the potatoes and prep the onions, but the payoff was huge  - since I was piggybacking on the hours of labor Sean has already invested in the duck.  I formed loose patties and browned them off in a pan.  As soon as the patties started to take on some color, the aroma of caramelized duck filled the kitchen.  I love that smell. 

 

  

 

To finish everything off, Eli toasted some English muffins and poached eggs.  Total time from start to eating: about thirty minutes.  Sure we could have made a hollandaise or a cream sauce, or perhaps snuck some wilted spinach in there, but that would have taken longer and dammit, we were hung-over, cranky and hungry.  I paired this dish with a strong cup of coffee, but Firestone Walker’s Double Barrel Ale would have been great too. 

 

  

 

 

Tags: brunch, duck, homebrew chef, pastrami

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 10:08 pm and is filed under Recipes, Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.