Family Dinner with JP

Sometimes (all day every day) I think I'm much cooler than I actually am. So when I excitedly told Laura that I got heirloom beans, I genuinely expected a response along the lines of "Oooooh! What are those?!" or "Where on earth did you get those?!" Instead, I received a very mundane, unimpressed "From Rancho Gordo?" Because, as Laura pointed out, who else sells heirloom beans? Still, I was grateful when Laura lent me her Rancho Gordo Heirloom Beans cookbook. Beans - incredibly versatile, incredibly varied. For this adventure, I opted for some hearty soup to warm me up in the impending rainy snow of winter. This soup is really easy, though it requires the use of a stand or immersion blender. There are really three components at play that will be combined into the final served dish: the bean soup with chard; the croutons; and the poached egg. I've given a primer on poaching eggs before, but I will refresh your memory here. The...

The first time I ever had hash, I was in high school. I'd spent the night at my friend Rob Dentry's house, and in the morning his father made us corned beef hash. We smothered it in hot sauce, and I ate until my stomach hurt. It was one of the most delicious things I'd ever had, and I think some part of me wondered why, in a childhood where I grew up eating scrapple and Taylor Pork Roll and S.O.S. (chipped beef gravy), my family had deprived me of this delicious, salty, starchy vehicle for Crystal Hot Sauce. To be fair, everything can be turned into a viable vehicle for Crystal Hot Sauce. At any rate, years later, after the baptism of my godson, the lot of us went out to breakfast. This is where I first experienced corned beef hash in a non-cat food state. Giant chunks of tender but crisped corned beef (rustic), with a perfectly poached egg on top. This was the elevation of something I never knew could be elevated. It was only in the last year that I first came up...