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by Emily

Smoky-Sweet Autumn Breakfast Hash

Rise and shine! It’s November and it’s time to start eating some hearty, wholesome meals.

This weekend I was bored of my typical post-Saturday-morning-gym egg-and-vegetable scrambles so I decided to change it up a bit and really embrace some fall produce. If you don’t have butternut squash readily available, you could definitely use sweet potatoes instead, for a more traditional hash. I really want you to use good sausage in this – none of that frozen Jimmy Dean breakfast patty stuff. I used an all-natural chicken-apple-gouda sausage from the local grocer.

Smoky-Sweet Autumn Breakfast Hash

Rustic: Officially Jumped the Shark

We are in the age of rustic: girls with long, ratty hair and boys in shaggy beards. We are not polished. We are not all like Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. Food has followed in the trend. Turn to any cooking show and the chef will surely praise her rustic pasta dish or rustic roast chicken. Nothing is refined. Everything has an air of ease. Unfussy is modern. The word rustic is used to sell. And just like hipster, it’s been used so much that it’s starting to not mean a thing.

This sign in front of the DC bar Asylum exemplifies my point. Hash was never a dish put together with great care or excruciating detail. It’s a dish brought forth from the humble potato. And there’s absolutely no need for the word rustic to proceed the word hash. Hash is rustic. And rustic has jumped the shark.

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by gansie

The Lovely Bits

I sat there on the floor. Five rows of bookshelves mocking my single request. I wanted to make a cabbage and potato hash. I pulled four books. One had a hash recipe, but not what I wanted.

The night before I ate dinner at my friend, and fellow food writer, Scott‘s place. He follows recipes. He really follows recipes. Like doesn’t take this from that recipe, and this from that other recipe, and this from that imagination. His secret: good cookbooks.

I also think I own pretty good cookbooks, it just depends on the order. I have something in mind and then turn to a cookbook hoping to find the recipe. I invariably don’t. Then turn to the internet. Mis-match a few different recipes, throwing in some creativity, and usually figure out how to make it work. To get the best use out of cookbooks, you have to start at the recipe. A good recipe. Then buy ingredients. Or that’s what Scott thinks.

I borrowed his Indian cookbook, from which he made a few dishes for a Sunday night rooftop dinner. I’ve pledged to follow one of those recipes. Perfectly.

Until then. I kinda screwed up a hash.