sunday brunch: egg/pancetta/tomato/parmesan

eggs_pancetta_tomato

Once again it was a Sunday morning, or rather a Sunday afternoon, and we knew, because of other commitments, we would not be able to enjoy a lunch, however late, because of other commitments.  Also once again, the solution looked pretty much like ‘brunch’, very much like the one I had come up with four months ago.  I had some of the same parameters then, including a discovery in the refrigerator of an opened package of some cured meat, but this time I also had a little bit of ‘salad’ on hand.

The description which follows largely repeats the one I published last February.

  • I started by lightly buttering a large-ish, cured steel pan and placing in it a layer of a few ounces of thinly-sliced Colameco’s pancetta from Whole Foods. I broke 6 eggs from (3 from Millport Dairy, and 3 from Tamarack Hollow Farm) on top of the meat, fried them slowly until the whites had not quite become solid, seasoned them and poured over them a bit of improvised tomato sauce (quartered cherry tomatoes from Norwich Meadows Farm, softened in a bit of olive oil where I had warmed some thinly-sliced organic garlic from Trader Joe’s, then seasoned and sprinkled with chopped rosemary from Phillips Farm).   The eggs were sprinkled with chopped herbs, lovage from Keith’s Farm, parsley from Tamarack Hollow Farm, and thyme from Eckerton Hill. I finished them with a sprinkling of grated Parmesan cheese and served them on a plate with arugula from Eataly (dressed with good olive oil, white balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper), and toasted slices of whole wheat (‘Integrale’) bread from Eataly.
  • the music was various anonymous early Gregorian chants, sung by the canons regular of the Praemonstratensian order of St. Michael’s Abbey in Silverado, California, whose cantor, talking about their latest album, describes them as  “the most Catholic things I could get my hands on.” (this old atheist has both a significant family connection to the Norbertines in De Pere, Wisconsin, and a personal tender-age performance history which included Gregorian chant)