Let's start with the ingredients:
Milk, 2 large russet potatoes, white bread, 8 ounces brie, 8 slices of bacon, 6 eggs, vanilla extract, nutmeg, cinnamon, canola oil, butter, salt and pepper and optional maple syrup. Already these sound like all the necessary ingredients for a tasty breakfast, but the thought that somehow they would all end up on the same sandwich blew my mind!
First came the most labor intensive part of the whole process-- making my own hash browns. I peeled both potatoes, put them in a pot of cold water and brought that pot to a boil.
Once the water was boiling I reduced the heat and let the potatoes simmer for 5 minutes before turning off the heat and letting them sit undisturbed for 15-20 minutes.
While this was going on I whipped up (literally) a dipping mixture that was clearly intended for making French toast. The recipe called for 1 cup of milk, 2 eggs, 1 tsp. vanilla extract and a pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg. I had some heavy cream that I've been meaning to use, so I went with that instead of milk. Also, my "pinch" of cinnamon got a little out of control, but I wasn't worried as cinnamon french toast is tasty!
Once this was mixed I put it in the fridge to hang out until I was ready for it (I also used this down time to remove the rind from the brie and cut it into slices). Then it was back to making hash browns. Once the potatoes had finished sitting in the water I rinsed them with cold water and was supposed to wait for them to fully cool, but I'm not the most patient person in the world, so after a cursory rinse with cold water I barrelled on to the next step-- grating the potatoes with the large side of my box grater.
Not letting the potatoes cool fully came back to haunt me here as I grated towards the center of the potatoes and found them to be increasingly hot. No problem, I would just re-rinse with cold water when it got too hot to handle (I'll leave out any cheesy reference to playing hot potato).
I didn't end up using all of both potatoes because I deemed my pile of potato shavings to be pretty massive well before I had finished grating both potatoes (after all, there are only two of us). So when I felt like I had a good amount I put an even layer in the bottom of my skillet (where I had been heating 4 Tbsp of oil-- I was using vegetable instead of canola).
I was instructed to let this cook for 5 minutes on one side (or until browned) and then flip the whole thing with a wide spatula. Well, that didn't happen. Despite explicit instructions to not disturb the potatoes while cooking I made quite a mess of flipping the potatoes and ended up with several different clumps of potatoes rather than one big potato pancake. Oh well, as long as all the clumps were browned on both sides I felt OK.
Next came cooking the bacon. Nothing special to note here, just fry it up and drain it on a paper towel.
This was followed by frying 4 eggs. I opted to drain the pan of the bacon grease prior to cooking the eggs and to use a spritz of cooking spray to make sure the eggs didn't stick to the pan. At this point I had concluded that making 2 sandwiches for each of us would be WAY too much food, so I decided to cut back to three, meaning I fried 3 eggs instead of 4.
Next up I retrieved the dipping mixture from the fridge and re-whisked it to make sure the cinnamon and nutmeg were evenly distributed. I think we can all see where this is headed. I dipped one slice of bread at a time in the dipping mixture and fried it up in the frying pan (that had been primed with butter prior to). Once both sides were nicely browned I would remove the bread and move on to the next piece until I had 6 slices of fully executed French toast.
Now it was time to build the sandwiches!
First came three slices of french toast with 1 ounce of brie spread evenly on each slice (although I think this layer really equated to more than an ounce each).
This was followed by the hash browns...
... the eggs...
... the bacon...
... the rest of the brie...
and the remaining French toast slices! Eek! So much food! Into the pan each sandwich went for one more quick fry to help melt the brie (but not so long as to burn the French toast). And so, one and a half hours of labor intensive cooking later, the sandwiches were ready for consumption!
Taste Review:
Perhaps one of my favorite kitchen aromas is that of cooking cinnamon, which is exactly the aroma given off by this sandwich. Yum! Biting into the sandwich the first thing I really tasted was the bacon, mostly because it's so salty, but the more I chewed the more the other flavors started to make their presence known. I guess the best way to describe this is telling you to think of what it would taste like if you took a bite of all of your breakfast at once and added a slice of brie cheese.
I was worried that using French toast as the bread would mean that the sandwich didn't have a crunch to it at all, but the fried potatoes and, more notably, the bacon both provided a crunchy element to contrast the soft eggs, cheese and bread (if the potatoes had been even crunchier that would've been great). I also worried about the French toast being the lone sweet element to the sandwich-- would the sandwich taste too sweet despite the savory ingredients? No. The savory ingredients are actually really salty, so the French toast was noticeable, but was just the right level of sweet (and the hint of vanilla was just perfect). The recipe suggests optional maple syrup on the side and I tried it on one bite, but that did make things too sweet. Colin opted for some ketchup and was pleased with that decision.
I also wasn't sure about the decision to use a milder cheese for this sandwich. With the number of different flavors going on I was wondering if something like Gruyere might have been more appropriate. But really, the level of sharpness provided via the salty ingredients would've been too intense with a sharp cheese. The brie was a good choice because it was just strong enough-- something like mozzarella would've been too weak and Gruyere would've been too strong. The only change I might've made would've been to get a creamier brie instead of the buttery brie (but alas that was $4 more per pound and I'm cheap) because after eating the sandwich for awhile you do start to get a little overwhelmed by the brie (that could've been because I opted to take the bacon off of my sandwiches and that had been part of what balanced the brie out).
This really is everything you could want in a brunch distilled into one sandwich. If you don't drop dead from a heart attack immediately after eating one then you'll be one happy camper!
FINAL RESULTS:
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Sandwich:
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Brunch Grilled Cheese
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Gooey-ness:
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2.5
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Aroma:
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4
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Appearance:
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Over stuffed, but ultimately has very bland colors.
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Taste:
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A- |
This would've been an A, but I took some points off for how labor intensive it was. A good way to avoid that in the future would be to not make your own hash browns. I could've saved some time by just using frozen.
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