Sunday Breakfast

What, YOUR Sunday morning breakfasts don't look like this? Why not? Haha... I know, I go a little off the deep end when it comes to plating my meals sometimes, but hey, I like pretty food!

One of my favorite things to do is make breakfast on the weekends. I absolutely love eggs and potatoes and I just think starting the day off with a hot delicious breakfast is a great thing. You literally don't get hungry again until the evening when it's time to eat dinner. (If you know me personally, then you know dinner time in our house is always around 9 or 10pm). I also think that the potato's most perfect match is hot sauce. Just ask my co-workers, who have dubbed me "hot sauce" due to the aroma that wafts over the cubicles some mornings.

Now this breakfast may look difficult, but it's really not. It takes some patience and some time, but if you're looking for a little fun in preparing your breakfast, then here's what ya do:

Start by chopping up your ingredients. In this case, that would be half a large onion, 4 cloves of garlic (I LAUGH at recipes that only call for 1 clove of garlic), 1 red bell pepper and 1 red jalapeno pepper (green for both would work just as well).

Next, heat a large pan over medium heat. Add a couple tablespoons of olive oil and add your onions. Then, sprinkle your chopped garlic over the top of the onions and let them sit there for a few minutes. This allows them to begin to cook without browning too fast. After the onions have begun to soften, stir them up and add the bell and jalapeno peppers. Cook for a few more minutes, then remove from the heat. This will give you some time to concentrate on shredding up your potatoes with your mandolin.

If you don't have a mandolin, you would need to spend the time to cut the potatoes into thin matchsticks. I highly recommend purchasing a mandolin. Especially if you like making hashbrowns, stir-fry veggies or really pretty salads with lots of sliced up veggies.

Once the potatoes are in their shredded form, it's time to add them to the pan.

Heat the onion and pepper mixture back up to medium heat and add some more olive oil on top so the potatoes have plenty of lubrication for the cooking process. Now add your shredded potatoes and incorporate them into the onion/pepper mixture completely. Season with fresh ground sea salt and black pepper.

As the potatoes cook over medium heat, grab your favorite spatula. (Come on, you know you have a favorite.) After the potatoes have browned for a few minutes, you're going to have to put that spatula to work at scraping up the potatoes from the pan and toss them up. You'll do this every five minutes or so until the potatoes are fork tendor and browned for the most part. They're not going to be crispy like the kind you deep fry. No, these are going to have flavor and a couple different textures. It's called real food. They should be soft in places and crunchy in the places that have browned. The peppers and onions will almost have a soft and buttery texture and they are oh so important to this dish.

Now it's time to shred up some cheese. I went with a mixture of mozzarella and sharp cheddar this time because I already had some mozzarella shredded. I also happened to have some leftover cooked sausage patties from yesterday's breakfast, so I chopped those up and nuked them in the microwave for a minute as well. Last but not least, fry up an egg seasoned of course with salt and pepper. Now folks, it's time to plate.

On a plain plate, pile about a cup of your hashbrowns in the middle of the plate. Top with some shredded cheese and sprinkle some cooked sausage over the mound of hashbrowns. Gently lay your fried egg on top of it all. Now for the finishing touch, get a squeeze bottle filled with Frank's hot sauce (or your favorite hot sauce) and squeeze a swirl of hot sauce around the plate. That's it! I hope you enjoy making and eating this recipe as much as I do. See you at dinner!