poached egg on biscuit, masa hashed browns

Woohoo!  It's April 3rd,  and it's snowing in Denver. And it's those big old honkin' flakes too, that I like the best. 

Lookie! There's a parking space. The art museum is just 1/2 a block away. It's Sunday so you could park for free. Oh, snap. Now it's taken. Too bad.

Know what this poached egg on the top reminds me of ↓?

It reminds me of a poached egg, you perv. How many times are you going to fall for that?

I'm still trapped in a masa harina enchantment. My intention was to grate a small potato but both the box grater and the plane grater are in the dishwasher and I didn't want to turn it off just to pull one out. There were still three mechanical options but I didn't want to mess up machines just for one tiny potato and plus I didn't want to over-process. So I thought, "What would I do if I were a real live campesino? I would make use of my mad knife-weilding skillz. That's what. Plus it has the advantage of controlling exactly the size of the potato bits produced. 

The potato bits are parboiled then drained with no concern at all for ridding excess water because masa harina will take an equal part of moisture anyway. Commercial chicken broth was added instead of water because there happened to be a carton already opened. Otherwise, any liquid would do. Even tomato sauce. 

Sweet onion is added to the potato, but no chile peppers this time in any of its myriad forms. I do not know why I omitted them, it seems quite unnatural to neglect them. 

I wonder how long this masa harina enthrallment is going to persist. Probably forever. 

Am I getting artsy or what? I poked that egg just for photography purposes. We food stylists do things like that. It imparts dynamism and action to an otherwise static photograph. 

Remember the biscuit has a strong Irish cheddar cheese and cocoa powder in it. Neither of those things come through very strongly if at all. I'm disappointed in that. Oh well, it was carelessly tossed together anyway.  

You know what? The other day at The Fort restaurant, the side for the bison I ordered was corn with little potato bits. It was adorned with a sprig of rosemary on top. The corn had absolutely nothing about it to recommend it. Nothing at all. It was as an afterthought. You could tell the corn was frozen, which isn't a bad thing, but I just expected better from such a well-known higher end restaurant. I could have done better myself, in fact, I do better myself for ordinary meals. Just a touch of masa harina would have improved the side of corn by a magnitude of order. And had the rosemary sprig been stripped and chopped and in the corn rather than on it then the side dish would have been improved half a magnitude of order. Do they need me to point these things out? Would they listen if I did? Should I charge them a consulting fee? This is what happens when the owner who was obsessive and wrote books on the subject of his obsession dies, and the restaurant passes to the daughter, who is knowledgeable, and who grew up in the business, but lacks the original obsession that would ensure that every single element is top. * whispers * The bread was good but second-rate too. These things make a difference. Maybe I should put this in the post for The Fort, but I had half a bottle of wine then and I only thought of it clearly just now.