This should have peppers

I saw a short, annoying video about how to make shukshaka, which is a north african dish. The woman in the video had such irritating mannerisms that I'm not going to link to it. I'll just tell you about the food instead, which was just like this, but with bell peppers in the sauce. I have no peppers today and I don't have much else in the house either. This was quick and uses the kind of things that are left at the end of the week after I've eaten everything else, but before I go shopping.

1 onion
a generous amount of olive oil
a bunch of salt
lots of black pepper
some smoked paprika, maybe half a teaspoon?
a bay leaf
a sprig of rosemary

some garlic
1 /2 large can chopped tomatoes, or a whole small can if you have that.

a number of eggs

Pre heat the oven to 450.

Thinly slice the onion, and saute it in an oven safe skillet with the oil, salt, pepper, paprika and herbs. When the onions are a little brown and caramelized, chop up as many garlic cloves as you prefer. I used 2. Add those to the pan and let them cook for about a minute. Add the tomatoes, cover the pan and simmer for about 5 minutes. Taste for seasonings, give it a stir, and crack on some eggs. Mine is a 10 inch pan, and I used 4 eggs, but the number is up to you. Bake for 6 minutes, serve with some bread or something. If you put some greens on the plate, it will look a lot fancier.

notes:

1. Don't put the garlic in the pan at the beginning with the onions. It will just burn and taste bitter.
2. The original recipe says to saute some red bell peppers in with the onions, but I kinda like it this way. It's simple.
3. I made toast to go with it, but I bet it would be good over noodles too. Or rice.
4. When they come out of the oven, the whites will still be a little jiggly. If you like them that way, eat them at once, otherwise, let them stand for one minute. The sauce is so hot it will continue to cook the eggs for quite a while, just dish them up when they reach the stage you want.
5. In the summer when fresh tomatoes are cheaper, you could use those and I bet it would taste great. You might have to cook them a little longer before you add the eggs though.

I think the smoked paprika is key to making this recipe come out right, especially since there are no bell peppers in it. Smoked paprika is usually mildly spicy, but not cayenne level hot, and you can still distinctly taste the sweet pepper flavor too. You can be fairly generous without overpowering everything else in the dish. The smokiness of different batches varies somewhat, I've discovered, so you'll need to adjust the amount you use based on how much smoky flavor you want relative to how much spicy and how much bell pepper flavor. It's interesting stuff.

Nice Potato Salad

 

 
Not exactly a Nicoise salad, but still pretty nice. Har har. Moving right along...

I said I'd bring potato salad to Jej's picnic, and I'd had some little potato finger-food thingies that were 'nicoise inspired' which gave me this idea. Traditionally, Salad Nicoise has potatoes, green beans, olives, eggs, tuna and sometimes tomatoes on it. The hors d'oeuvres  were basically just tiny tuna-deviled potatoes with a green bean stabbed through the top and a sprinkle of "egg mimosa" which meant little crumbs of egg yolk to make it look fancy. The green bean was awkward to eat. But I liked the potato part, and as silly as it was, the green bean tasted really good. Still, what I wanted was potato salad, not tuna salad, so I came up with this.

1 lb tiny yellow potatoes
1/2 lb fresh green beans
a handful of parsley, chopped
a green onion, sliced fine
2 cold, hard boiled eggs, sliced
1/2 cup olives, coarsely chopped
zest of a lemon

dressing:

juice of a lemon, about 1/4 cup
2 T fish sauce
1 T sherry vinegar
1/3 cup olive oil
pepper
2 T minced fresh thyme

Mix all the dressing ingredients in a small jar and shake them up. Set aside.

Boil the potatoes whole until you can stick a fork through them. Drain them, then let them cool completely. Meanwhile blanch the green beans. To do this, bring a pot of water to a boil, then dump in the beans. Leave the beans in the water just until they turn translucent and bright green. Drain the beans then either dump them into a pot of ice water or run them under cold water until they are chilled.

When the potatoes are cold, cut them into bite sized bits. Cut the green beans on and angle to increase the area of cut surface (and to make them prettier). Put all the salad ingredients in a large bowl and toss with dressing. The orange things in the picture are nasturtium petals, they're just to make it look fancy.

Ok, this was a pretty good salad, but some things occurred to me later, namely

1. It would have been better if I'd roasted the bitty potatoes instead. I think little toasty parts would definitely add  a more complex and interesting flavor.

2. I might put in tiny red tomatoes. Both for color and because tomatoes.

3. Tuna in olive oil. Yes, the fish sauce is fine, but the fish itself is actually more important to the whole nicoise thing than just being a way to add a certain fishy something-something. I think partly it's texture, and partly because fish sauce is fermented, which gives a very different character to things.

4. It would look better if you just decorated the top with egg slices. The egg yolks get all smushed up if you stir them into the salad.

Bread and Eggs

  

  
Bread pudding is usually sweet. This is not. It makes a very good lunch.

stale bread- use about 2 cups, maybe a little more

3 oz grated cheese: gouda, cheddar, parmesan- use something nutty.

3 or 4 eggs
1 1/2 cups milk
salt
pepper
butter
1/2 teaspoon minced rosemary
pinch each of lavender flowers & nutmeg, finely grated
1 heaping tablespoon flour

I have a 6 cup casserole I like to use for this. Butter the bread lightly and cut it up into 2 inch pieces. Put the bread in the dish and add the cheese. Poke the cheese around so it is distributed evenly among the bread pieces. Mix all the other ingredients thoroughly and pour them over the bread and cheese. Let the bread soak up the liquid for 5 minutes or so, then bake at 350 for about 40 minutes. If it still has liquid spots on top at that point, turn the oven off and let it sit in there another 15 minutes.

Points to consider:

1. Use only very good bread. Focaccia works well, partly because it already has lots of fat in it ( no need for buttering) and also because it traditionally has rosemary in it. Leftover baguette slices are also very tasty. Ciabatta would probably be fine, if chewy.
2. The amount of milk will vary depending on how dry your bread is. Baguettes need more milk than focaccia, because they're much crustier.
3. Crustier also means more soaking time required. Before you bake it, the bread should be pretty well moistened, but not dissolving, and there should still be just a little bit of liquid around the edges of the dish if you tilt it up.
4. You don't have to use real milk. Water & dry milk is just fine.


 The important thing is to keep it simple. This is not fancy food, it's just a bunch of very ordinary ingredients that happen to taste really good together. You could use any cheese and any bread, but you don't want to frill it up with too may things going on. Plain bread, rather than something full of seeds or nuts, white rather than wheat. I like a mix of either medium cheddar or gouda, and the stuff that comes out of the green can, although that's just because I'm lazy. You can grate your own parm if you want.

You could even skip the lavender & nutmeg, but I encourage you to try it. The rest of the ingredients can verge on boring, and depending on how lavish you feel about the butter, the dish can be quite rich. Nutmeg is complex and earthy but not overwhelming, and lavender is almost atringent, which balances the fat and cheese.

I've made this at least half a dozen times, and once I made it with about a cup each of sauteed broccoli and cauliflower in addition to the bread. If you want to try that version, brown an onion and some minced garlic along with the veggies. You'll also need to increase the amount of milk and eggs by about half. Just eyeball it, it'll be fine.

Feed a cold

  

  
Feed a cold, they say. Feed it what, they do not. I assumed that they probably didn't mean my regular 2 toast 2 fried egg breakfast, but a breakfast without toast and eggs would make me feel despondent. This is like salad lyonaise, but with way less fuss.

Arugula
a couple pieces of bacon
some leftover yam fries
a fried egg
vinaigrette

And a little toast of course, gotta have toast. Details:

Yam fries are easy. Peel a yam and cut it into sticks, toss with salt, pepper, and olive oil, then bake at 425 for half an hour. Turn the fries over, and bake another 20-30 minutes depending on how dark you like them. They keep really well in the fridge for using in salads and for snacks. Heat them up in the frying pan for this salad.

The vinaigrette I used is equal parts really cheap, rather sweet balsamic, and a pretty nice, highly acidic sherry vinegar, plus some decentish olive oil. Add a pinch each of salt & pepper, a good chunk of lemon rind, and bit of chopped fresh oregano, then shake everything up. It's better after about two or three days in the fridge.

Then you wake up with a cold, throw the bacon, fries and egg in a skillet, stack them up on a heap of arugula when they're as cooked as you want them, spoon on the vinaigrette and smash it all together.

You know, I looked at the original recipe and all I could think was Wow. Who the hell wants to do all that first thing in the morning? Not me, for sure.

I'll tell you about the baguettes next time.

more ballyhoo

Here's another recipe that got a lot of squawk in the food blogs a while ago. Everybody was all ooooh, you gotta make this fried rice, this is the best fried rice. It is good fried rice, but it didn't blow me away or anything. I'll probably make it again even, but not for breakfast. I'm just too damn hungry to fiddle around with it first thing in the morning.

  

The original recipe is here. It says to fry the ginger & garlic in the oil first, then fry the rice with the same oil. That probably makes a difference. There's onions in it too, but I didn't have onions. Oops, oh well. So I put in edamame for color which is actually pretty good. And soy sauce doesn't really amaze me or anything, so I used a dab of black bean sauce, which really helps.

1 cup cold rice
1 small clove garlic, minced
1 small slice ginger, minced
edamame - I used pre-cooked frozen, thawed out first.
1 egg
sesame oil and other oil for frying
salt
black bean sauce

Put about a tablespoon of cooking oil in a pan on medium high heat. When the oil is hot, dump in the rice and a pinch of salt and stir it around to break up the clumps and coat the rice with a little oil. Cover the pan and wait for there to be some brown bits on the rice. Stir it up, push it to the side of the skillet and add about another teaspoon of cooking oil plus a dash of sesame for flavor. Add the ginger & garlic bits and another pinch of salt, then fry until they're crispy.  Throw in the edamame and a little black bean sauce, stir everything up, and dump it onto a plate so you can fry an egg to go on top. Don't over fry the egg or you won't be able to stir the yolk into the rice.

What do I think? It's fried rice for chrissakes! Of course it tastes good, it's po' folks food! I guess I just feel like it was another case of the fancy chef guy who has the tv spot or whatever being able to say 'Hey look! I can make normal food too!' and everybody else going 'No way man! That's amazing! You did that on tv!'

Like I said, I'll probably make this the next time the fridge is empty, but I feel rather impatient with the fuss about it. I kinda thought well duh, you put fried garlic and eggs on anything mostly, and it'll taste pretty darn good.

Migas

Migas is to the latin world what fried rice is to asians: a method of using up leftovers. I read that migas is just the word for crumbs, and while the dish is usually made with tortilla chips or fried stale tortillas, I had a cornbread muffin. I took the word crumbs literally, and rooted around in the fridge for whatever else I could find, and here is lunch.

Fried squash & cornbread migas

some roasted summer squash pieces
a stale cornbread muffin
some chives or scallions, minced
a bit of bell pepper, diced
an egg


Chop the muffin into 1" chunks, and fry them in a little oil or butter along with the squash and pepper bits until they're brown and the muffin is a bit crispy. Sprinkle in the onions or chives and a dash of salt & pepper, then crack an egg over the lot. Poke the egg around a bit so you have a nice mix of egg, bread and veggie bits. Salsa, yogurt & avocado are optional, but the avocado is especially nice.

Breakfast Sammie

   

   
Rosemary might be the most overused herb in Portland, but that might be because it's real tasty. And grows weedlike in these parts, except on my porch. I'm sure that's my fault- I repotted my rosemary kinda late in the spring and it never did snap back. Over the summer I realized how many things I usually put rosemary in because my poor little plant just sat there cowering in its pot and never gave me enough branches to cook with. Eventually I snuck down the block one evening and pulled a couple twigs off the behemoth rosemary growing in my neighbor's yard. They really add zazz to my eggs.

egg
rosemary
cheese
tomato
bread
mayo

I mince up the rosemary and sprinkle it over a fried egg with a pinch of salt. It's important to break the yolk just before you turn it over, or you'll have an explodingly messy sandwich. Cheese goes on the flipped egg. If you cut it evenly thin, it will have just slumped into melty ooze by the time the egg is done. You can toast the bread if you want to, for me it depends on how long ago I made it: more than a day or so and untoasted bread is less appealing. Mayo goes with tomato. That's one of those because-it-just-does things, in my book.

 

Probably not Gratin

  

  
I bought broccoli and cauliflower the other day, thinking that I was not eating enough vegetables. I like cauliflower naked pretty well, but raw broccoli is unpleasant to me- it's the texture. Sort of dry, and scrunchy, and then it falls apart into all these little bits that will poof out of your mouth if you aren't careful. Fortunately, I am happy to eat it cooked. Now that I'm a grown-up, the sulfurous stinkiness of cooked broccoli is not so repellant as it was when I was a kid, and cooking improves not only texture, but the ability of broccoli florets to accept flavoring agents. Like cheese.

1 1/2 cup broccoli florets
1cup cauliflower florets
1 medium onion, diced
1 clove crushed garlic
1 tsp fresh thyme
1tsp fresh oregano
1 head of fresh lavender buds
3 eggs
2 tablespoons cornmeal
1/3 cup water
a generous tablespoon of butter
1 cup grated cheese
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 350. Use a heavy oven safe skillet.

Mince the herbs. Beat the eggs, water, cornmeal and herbs in a bowl, and season with a little salt & pepper. Set it aside to let the cornmeal soak up some water.

Put a little butter or olive oil in the skillet, and saute the onions until they go transparent. Add the garlic and stir it around for about a minute, then add the florets and a dash of water to create steam and cover the pan. Stir it from time to time to keep it from over-browning, and when the cauliflower is tender, take it off the heat and let it cool down a bit.

Stir the cheese into the egg mix. Melt the butter and stir that in too, then pour the mix over the vegetables, and poke them around a bit to get the cheese evenly distributed. Bake for 20 minutes, the turn on the broiler, move the oven rack up and brown the top until you like the way it looks.

Thoughts:

While there is nothing fancy about this dish, and it is almost identical to the fritatta I made a while ago, I think I like this a little better. Again, it's all about texture. Cauliflower is more delicate than potatoes, and cooks faster, giving the finished product a lighter feel despite the added butter in the eggs. (You could probably skip the butter, but why?) I think the cornmeal may have something to do with it, but it's hard to say. I really just used it because I needed a binding agent and that's what I found in the cupboard. It did create a few crunchies around the edges, which was nice.

Almost any cheese would be good, I had cheddar. Visually, I like the orange cheese, but I think swiss or gruyere would taste more interesting.

Come to think of it, there is a fancy thing: the lavender. That's very important. Lavender has an astringent character which balances well with all the fat in the dish.

As I was cooking this, I couldn't figure out what it is that makes something 'au gratin' as opposed to any other thing made in the oven. So I looked it up, and apparently, to be au gratin the dish should have a crust baked onto it, preferably made of buttered breadcrumbs. There are no crumbs here, so this is not gratin, unless you take the secondary accepted definition of a baked dish with cheese, which cheese forms a browned crust on top. That makes most recipes for mac and cheese fall under one or the other of these definitions.

Elbows Au Gratin sounds revoltingly twee.
 

Frittata

   
  

  
I think that my love of potatoes is stymied by the fact that they take more than 2 seconds to cook. The other things I am culinarily obsessed with are sort of instant food- cheese, obviously. Eggs, which will be ready to eat if you just glare at them on a particularly warm morning. Bread counts, because even though it takes me 4 hours to make a loaf of bread, once it's done, for the rest of the week all I have to do is cut a piece off and, at most, drop it in the toaster. I have a better relationship with fruits than vegetables for the same reason. If you want to eat an apple, you just bite it. There's plenty of stuff you could do to it first, but that's all pretty much optional.

On the other hand, a potato is fundamentally an ingredient. No matter what, you have to make some substantial alterations to a potato before it's good to eat. Then once you've gone to the effort of dinking around with your spuds, usually what you end up with is a dish that is supposed to go with some other thing that you still have to make. I'm sort of creeping up on some solutions to my longing for potatoes. This is one that was worth repeating.

about 1 1/2 lb little potatoes, sliced thin
1 medium onion, sliced
about 1 cup broccoli florets, cut small
oil for frying

3 eggs
1 T flour
about 1/3 cup water
1 or 2 T olive oil
salt & pepper

about 4 oz feta, crumbled or finely cubed.

a few little tomatoes

Pre-heat the oven to 375.


Fry the onions over medium heat in a heavy bottomed skillet with a pinch of salt and a little oil. When the onions are starting to brown, add the potatoes. Stir them around a bit, add a couple tablespoons of water, and cover the pan. Turn the potatoes gently with a spatula every 2 or 3 minutes until they're about 3/4 done, then stir in the broccoli and cover again.

Mix the eggs, flour, oil, and salt & pepper in a bowl. Once the flour is well incorporated, stir in the cheese. By this time, the broccoli will have turned bright green, and you can pour the egg mix into the skillet. Poke the potatoes around a tiny bit to get the eggs & feta evenly distributed, then drop the tomatoes on top.

Finish by baking for about 20-30 minutes, depending on your oven and how cold your eggs were.

pointers:

1. Start by slicing the potatoes into a bowl of water. It will keep them from going brown.
2. Don't use reduced fat cheese. Bleck.
3. I used my enameled skillet for this because even though I love my cast iron pans, I learned back when I made bacon bread that iron can discolor onions. It made them turn a dark, inky, blue-green. Didn't affect the taste, but it looked very strange. It could be a reaction between the pan and the sulfur compounds in the onions, but  that's just a wild guess... Stainless steel would probably be fine.

I remember making frittata back at the deli. They never put anything except potatoes and onions in it, and I always thought it was the boringest thing on earth. I think it would be good with a little sausage and some peppers, with some other cheese, or you could keep the feta and put in olives and beets. I'll have to try the beet thing later, once I see some at the market that don't cost an arm and a leg.

Excuse to eat Hollandaise

 

Don't worry, I'm not going to pretend that I made my own crabcakes. I bet I could, but not for breakfast, or at any rate, not on the day I wanted to eat them. I did make the crumpets, but I did that last night, so all I did this morning was make everything hot and assemble the sauce. And anyway, you can buy perfectly good crumpets or english muffins. I just happen to like my recipe.

Hollandaise is lots easier to make than you might think. Certainly it it easy enough that it should never cross your mind to buy it in a can. I've seen it in the store, and it scares me. Once you read the instructions for making it, it ought to become perfectly clear that Hollandaise is a substance which was never intended to be shelf-stable.

Hollandaise Sauce

For each person you will need:

1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon cold water (or milk, or cream, or half and half. My half and half had gone off, so I used water, and it was just fine)
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, more or less
a sprinkle of salt and a dash of cayenne

Put the egg yolks and the water in the top of a double boiler and whisk them together. Drop in the butter, and keep stirring gently as the water underneath heats up. Whisk faster as the sauce thickens, and when it is is about as thick as very soft butter, remove the top of the boiler from the heat and slowly whisk in the lemon juice. Add a dash of salt & cayenne, and that's it! It all takes less than 5 minutes.

The amount of lemon you put in is up to you. I like mine quite tart and lemony, so I put in a lot. There is lots of butter in this recipe, and the acid balances out the fat. If your sauce gets too thick, you can rescue it in one of 2 ways: Whisk in a couple teaspoons of hot water, or another little pat of butter (guess which one I did). If your sauce is too thin, as it was the time I made this at Jej's house, let the sauce cool, and whisk in a tablespoon of the egg white. Return it to the double boiler and keep whisking until the sauce thickens. Admittedly, this will give a slightly more pronounced egg flavor to the sauce, but I don't mind that. You're just going to put it on eggs anyway, right?

If you want to replicate the breakfast in the picture, here is a rough outline-

5 mushrooms
6 frozen asparagus spears
a sprig of fresh rosemary, optional but very tasty
1 frozen crabcake
1 crumpet
a poached egg
1 serving of hollandaise as described above

Slice the mushrooms and break the asparagus into 1-2 inch bits. Butter a heavy skillet and turn the heat up to about medium. Put in the mushrooms, rosemary, and asparagus in a single layer. My skillet is pretty big, so there was room for the crabcake at the same time. Cover the pan. After a few minutes, turn everything over to brown the other sides.

Start a small pot of water to poach the egg.

Assemble the hollandaise. If it gets finished before everything else is ready to go, don't panic. Take it off the heat and cover it up until you want it.

Drop the crumpet in the toaster. Poach the egg. Stack everything up, warm up the hollandaise over hot water if needed, and drizzle over the plate.  For extra Ta-Da! factor, mince up a pinch of fresh rosemary and sprinkle on top. Also a little black pepper, if you like.

Brussels Sprouts Breakfast

Sometimes, the idea of a good breakfast is the only thing that gets me out of bed in the winter. I've discussed the peculiar virtue of breakfast many times already, so I'll just say that this iteration did it's magic especially well. For those of you who do not feel that brassicas at breakfast have any appeal, I encourage you to have eggs and grilled sprouts for dinner.

The last time I bought brussels sprouts, I got a huge branch of them at TJ's and it was more than I needed at the time. So I cooked them and froze them. I've had bad luck with frozen sprouts before, and I was a bit anxious about doing that, but they defrosted just fine. The key difference I think, is that before I had used sprouts that had been frozen fresh, which caused their cooking behavior to be a trifle unsatisfactory. This time I fully prepared my sprouts and then froze them, and they thawed out perfectly. Here's what I did:

Rinse and halve 2 pounds of brussels sprouts and put them in a microwaveable dish with a lid. Put 3 or 4 tablespoons of water in the dish to create steam, add a fair amount of butter, salt and pepper, and microwave in 3 minute increments until they're done. After about 6 minutes, stir in about 1/2 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice, which is mostly nutmeg, ginger, gloves and maybe cinnamon. 'Done' is a matter of taste. Early in the season when sprouts tend to be very tender and mild tasting, I only cook them until they're bright green and slightly translucent. Later on, they tend to be tougher and more bitter, and I like to cook them until they are very soft and are a more olive green color. These were some of the latter. If you freeze them, they may take a few days to thaw in the fridge.

This morning I remembered that I had cremini mushrooms. I grilled some of those in butter, then browned the sprouts in the pan. When the sprouts looked good, I scrambled up some eggs to go with- a few of my sprouts and shrooms got into the eggs, but that's fine. The trick with mushrooms is not to stir them around when they're browning, or they'll get sorta squishy. Just put plenty of butter in the pan, get it medium hot, put in the shrooms, and leave them alone. Once you can see them curling up, flip them over once and do the other side.

Does anybody but me feel that it's totally fancier to have two different kinds of jam for your toast?

Egg Buns!!!

I've been thinking about this for months. Brioche rolls with an egg baked inside, plus bacon cheese & chives. The concept is good, but my egg installation technique is a little faulty. I think I need to use a slightly less delicate dough, to offset the added moisture of the egg in the roll. Also, as you can see from the picture,the amount of roll to egg and cheese is pretty disproportionate.

I used the same recipe for the bread as I used back in February to make king cake, minus the spices & vanilla. Once the dough was made, I cut it up into 8 or 9 pieces, flattened out the portions and put them in small bowls so that when I put in the eggs, they wouldn't just run off. Then I sprinkled on some bacon, cheese, and chives, and pinched them closed. I had the oven pre-heated to 400, and the baking sheet heating in there with it. When I'd got about buns assembled, I carefully rolled them out of their bowls onto the hot cookie sheet and baked them for 19 minutes. Which was just about enough time to knead down the other half of the dough and assemble the second batch of rolls.


I was hoping that the dough would insulate the eggs and keep them from overcooking, but as it turns out, the bready part kind of took over. I couldn't get a whole egg to go in there properly, so in the second batch, I just put in the yolks and cheese with about a spoonful of white, but maybe if I used small eggs, the things would turn out a little better. Fortunately, the brioche is a nice tasty recipe, and the roll part was very good with jam.

So, why today? I blame it on IKEA and bad knees. I work all day on Sundays, and lately it seems like every time I do that, I end up wide awake at 4 o'clock in the morning with aching joints. Maybe I just need to buy new shoes, those concrete floors are mighty unyielding.

On the other hand, there is a world of difference between setting the alarm to go off before sunrise, and getting up at 4:15 just because you can. I got to see the crescent moon at five this morning, and had my egg bun for breakfast before 9. Of course, none of it would have happened if I hadn't rolled over and thought "Well, shoot, I forgot to go buy eggs at QFC while they're 99 cents a dozen...I could just go get them now...they are open 24 hours..."

Damn! That's tasty!

Ever seen that stuff at Denny's called "hot bacon dressing"? It's creepy shit. Don't eat it. But once upon a time, it was descended from this: Salad Lyonaise. Remember my Rule of Salad! If it ain't something you'd eat naked, don't put it in! Eat the naked ingredient, I mean. I don't care what you eat without your clothes on, really, it's none of my business.

For each serving-
1 or 2 pieces of good quality bacon. Or pancetta; I had bacon.
a tablespoon minced shallot, or other mild onion
a teaspoon of dijon mustard, either fine or whole grain.
a tablespoon of sherry vinegar.
a poached egg
a little pepper and maybe some olive oil
a handful of bitter mixed greens. I used some bag o somthin-or-other from TJ's, it's got frisee in it.

Have the greens ready in a mixing bowl. Put on a pan of water to simmer for the eggs. Don't forget to salt it a bit.

Cut the bacon up into 1/2 inch pieces and fry them until they're crispy. Bacon can be fattier than pancetta, in either case, once it's rendered out, pour off all but about a teaspoon of fat per serving, and then put the onions in to brown with the bacon. Add enough olive oil to get the onions well coated. Seriously, does it really need bacon fat as well as olive oil?! Oh yeah baby.

Keep the heat turned down low enough that the brown bits in the pan don't become black bits. When the onions are thoroughly done, put the eggs in to poach. In a little bowl, mix up the vinegar and mustard. As soon as the egg yolks have filmed over, get them off the heat and drain them a bit. Quickly throw the vinegar and mustard into the hot bacon pan. The liquid will get all the caramelization off the pan in about 10 seconds. Don't be afraid to throw in a bit more vinegar if you need to. Pour the hot dressing over the greens and toss them up, divide into servings and top each serving with a warm egg.

Everybody gets to add their own pepper, if they want it, then smash the egg into their salad. I licked my plate.

I'm Martha Stewart, Bitch!

...but really, I did use a recipe out of her pie book. It even looks like it worked. It seems to have worked so well that I'm still suspicious. I don't even know why I fixated on this recipe, maybe because to me, it looked like an impossible pie. I'd used the crust recipe before, here it is:

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 sticks butter
3 T sugar
2 egg yolks
1/2 tsp salt
4 T very cold water

Cut the flour, sugar, salt and sugar together until the biggest butter globs are about the size of rice grains. I mix the water with the egg yolks before adding it to the flour, but it's not crucial. Don't over-work the wet dough! Just smash it together enough to get it all evenly combined. There's enough butter in it to make it act just like play-doh. This makes enough pastry for a 2-crusted 11 inch pie. I only have an 8 inch pan, so I've got some extra. You can make the dough ahead of time and chill it until you need to use it, if you want.

Ok, well and good. But the filling sounded too simple to be true. It goes like this:

2 lemons
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 eggs and 1 egg white

Cut one lemon into paper thin slices, rind and all. Cut the rind and pith off the other lemon, and slice it as thin as you can. Toss the lemons with the sugar and cover, leave it in the fridge for about 24 hours. The next day, preheat the oven to 450. Roll out your crust, beat the eggs and mix them with the lemons & sugar, and pour it into the pie shell.  Weird, huh? There's no fat or starch in the filling, it's all about the eggs.

I can't say I had high hopes about this. I was sure the filling would do something awful. But it seems to have set up, unlike many other pies I have attempted in the past. I will say though, that you need to use a mandoline to prep the lemon with the rind on it. Don't try to make pretty slices, nobody will see it anyway. The idea is for the long period of soaking in their own juice to de-bitter the rinds. A good sharp knife is fine for the other lemon.

Top it with another round of crust. I cut the slashes in the crust before putting it on the pie, the filling is totally liquid so if you want decorative cuts you gotta do it first. Bake at 450 for 15 minutes, turn down the heat to 375 and cook for another half hour. I lay a sheet of tinfoil over mine after the first 15 min because this crust recipe tends to get burn-y faster than crusts without added sugar.


It's like a big lemon bar, with a little texture. Next time, I'm gonna add some herbs. I bet lavender flowers, or rosemary, or mint would be pretty good.  Maybe even oregano.

Avocado Tomato Scramble with Pepper Jack

People come in 2 sorts. Not male and female, not type a and type b, not even smart people and stupid people. Not Replublicrats and Demoplicans. All of these things diminish next to the true, essential divide.

There are Breakfast People and there is everybody else.

I don't mean people who do eat breakfast and people who do not- there are individuals who, in their heart of hearts, are indeed breakfast people but through misfortune or personal disorganization do not get to enjoy it very often. And then there are those strange beings who are aware of the need for fueling their bodies before the rigors of the day, and thus virtuously but indifferently consume food first thing in the morning.

True Breakfast People know that breakfast is the essential meal. We allow extra time in the mornings, not to shower or do our hair and makeup, but to have breakfast. Indeed, grooming habits will be discarded long before breakfast will be skipped. Breakfast is an end unto itself, a thing that nourishes the body and enlightens the soul, it is not merely a tool in the quest to prevent the spiritual and corporeal selves from parting company.

Breakfast people understand the fundamental connection between good meals and personal wellbeing. The substance of each breakfast is highly variable, but the purpose is unchanging: Breakfast is the first hopeful act of the day. Getting out of bed is frequently thankless enough, and getting dressed, especially for those of us who must wear an imbecillic corporate logo emblazoned on our person, is a trial to the spirit. How anyone can then face a commute to work in adverse weather without a short period of self-determination and composed enjoyment surpasses my understanding.

Beyond simple, gustatory pleasure, (which should never be discounted) food is many things. It is social glue, it is love, and commerce, it is personal liberty and creative expression. But beyond all those high minded niceties, we Breakfast People eat in the morning simply because a proper breakfast changes our state of being. In its most basic application, breakfast transforms me from a nihilistic grump into a more rational, serene, version of myself. More complex breakfast experiences will cause me to regain my enthusiasm and curiosity about the world in general, and this can only be a good thing. I'm sure the functional eaters out there would pooh-pooh and say "it's just yer glucose level shooting up, ya big sap!" and I'm sure they're right. But if a difference in my blood glucose level can so alter my sense of self and my ability to interact with my species, then I say that the meal that facilitates that change is worthy of the highest respect.

I have no recipe to share today, the picture and the title are it. And thank you very much to the nice man at the Kettleman Bagels downtown for the sack of free day-old bagels. You have saved me the trouble of making bread for a whole week.

Paean to Eggs

I eat lots of eggs. They are magical, I am convinced. They go in sweets and in main dishes, they enable the existence of cake, and custard, and pudding, and quiche. And breakfast wouldn't be breakfast without them. Pancakes, waffles, omelettes, french toast, scrambled eggs, plain and fancy, eggs Benedict, over-easy, poached or fried. Eggs at easter. Eggs go in every kind of traditional cooking that I know of. Egg-drop soup. Pickled eggs, millions of kinds. Well maybe not millions, my hyperbole is getting away with me.

I know I've had plenty of entries about breakfast, but I do worship at the temple of the first meal of the day. There was my brussels sprout scramble recently, there was the spinach stew with poached eggs a while back, a generic breakfast entry in august, and then, because breakfast at breakfast time is not enough, there was breakfast for dinner, and then pesto on pancakes for regular breakfast. Eggs are a good start for everything.

So here are a few pictures to share my love of all things egg, and in particular, Breakfast.







Fried eggs on toast. Can't beat it. Lotsa butter on home made bread, salt, pepper. Don't ask me why the picture keeps loading up sideways. It's really bugging me.




Breakfast BLT. The traditional, plus a fried egg.











Hard-boiled.







And the one I'm most fond of, breakfast by the seat of the pants. I forgot to eat my PBJ one afternoon; I thought it had a reproachful look the next morning. Kinda like "Hey dummy. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle."


PBJ French toast.

1 stale PBJ

1 egg
1/4 cup vanilla soy milk
1 tsp brown sugar
teensy pinch salt
dash of vanilla
pinch of pumkin pie spice

Mix all the batter ingredients well and soak the PBJ until it's good and soggy. Fry at medium low until it had developed a golden color, flop, continue to cook until it had poofed up slightly in the center. If you like it pretty moist and custardy,(I do) take it out immediately. If you gotta have it done through, turn off the heat and leave it in the pan a minute longer. I ate mine with extra jam, a pear, and a scoop of yogurt.

Brussels sprouts for breakfast indeed!

This weekend I got some brussels sprouts at market and made up a mess of my favorite sprouts and squash dish. It made more than I anticipated, and in order not to get bored of it, I came up with this.

Sprouts & Squash

1 large stalk brussels sprouts
1 largeish butternut squash
olive oil
salt & pepper
pumpkin pie spice
butter
honey or maple syrup

Peel & cube the squash, toss in olive oil and a liberal shake of salt & pepper and bake at 375 until tender. A few brown bits is good, but not required. When the squash is done, halve the sprouts and put them in a lidded pot with about 1/2 cup water and a couple tablespoons of butter, and a pinch of pie spice. Steam them until the sprouts are bright green & tender, stirring occasionally to make sure they cook evenly. When they're done, add the squash and a tablespoon or 2 of honey or syrup to taste. Very easy.

The stuff in the picture is an egg scramble with the squash as prepared above, with a little bit of leftover red bell pepper and some sheep milk gouda. Brown the pepper & sprouts in a bit of butter first, then throw in the eggs. When they're about done ( it'll only take a sec) remove from heat, top with cheese and cover until the cheese has melted. Sprinkle with a pinch of fresh rosemary if you like it.

I'm Asian, Part 2

I remember dad making some stuff like this, also liking an iteration of it while living in Taiwan. It's supposed to be a side dish, I think, but it makes a good snack.

Tofu, whatever style you like most for just eating, cubed

In a small bowl, mix the following, all minced pretty small-

thousand-year-old egg (peedan)
several types of hot pepper, both red and green
green onion, chives are what I had
cilantro
enough soysauce, vinegar, and sesame oil to cover the other ingredients

muddle everything together and pour over the tofu.

also good in addition or as substitutes are: grated ginger, fresh crushed garlic, chili sauce or sriracha, oyster flavored sauce, char siu, finely minced yellow onion, asian style pickles...

you get the idea.

I'm Asian! What D'you Want!?!

"If you want to be Chinese, you have to eat the nasty stuff."
So says Chow Yun Fat's character to the neophyte, in the movie The Corruptor. Well, in that case Mr. Chow, I got my bona-fides right here. The thing that divides the white from the yellow is not a line, it's a preserved duck egg. One of these stinky little green and brown babies and you'll have enough gosh-darned authentic chinese kung-fu to whoop the ass out of a whole reel full of John Woo villains. No hair on the chest though. Chinese guys don't do that. I guess we're more closely related to whales and manatees than everyone else.

Moving on.


Sushi rice rolls with some fishy seasoning mix I got at Fubonn, served with fresh young coconut and preserved duck egg, aka "peedan." I do wish I'd had some pickled ginger though.

Take a cup of sushi rice and rinse it well. Drain, add about 1 3/4 c. water back to the pot and cook as you would ordinary rice. When it's done, mix 2 T cider or rice vinegar with a dash of salt and a heaping teaspoon of brown sugar, then toss it gently into the rice using a fork so you don't make the rice grains just turn into mush. Let it cool enough to handle, and roll about a cup in a sheet of toasted nori. Slice the roll with a wet knife (keeps the blade from sticking) and dunk the ends of the rolls in the seasoning mix.

Here's what I used. It's crunchy, fishy, sweet and salty. I am having a hard time not eating it straight out of the can.

Thats about it. I had a hangover yesterday, so I got a young coconut at the grocery store- coconut water has lots of potassium in it. The texture of the coconut meat is kinda weird, a little fleshy or something, but it's got nothing on peedan. I think the ones I got were a bit dehydrated, the yolks should be runny.

But what do they taste like? Um...sulphur? Rubber? Like something somebody dared you to eat? They're chemically cooked in lye... And the package declares, not at all reassuringly, that they are "lead free"- Gosh, I hope so.


And one last reason to love the preserved duck egg: 110% of your daily cholesterol intake.

Um, yes. I know, it's not a John Woo movie. Stupid joke. Sigh.

Neon Food! With Minty Pea Sauce!

Yes, the real reason for this post is that the phrase "minty pea sauce" makes me snicker. And I saw a picture of these pickled eggs in the paper and had to try it. Not my most inspired moment of food styling, I have to say, but hey, it is eye-catching.

I love food that appears to have an unnatural color. Mostly, if it looks unnatural, it is. Especially if its blue. (I failed to grow any borage this year, so I have no blue food, but next year...) However: this here picture shows all 100% natural coloration. And it really is all that bright, no foolin.

Remember the beets from last week? I made beet pickles, and dropped some boiled (shelled) eggs in the extra pickle juice. It makes 'em taste like devilled eggs, but the pink part is what has the pickle-y flavor.

The recipes for the yogurt and the chutney can be found on my facebook pages and the rest goes like this:

Lazy Curry Chicken

2 or 3 chicken breast tenders
1/4 turmeric
1/2 tsp curry powder, I recommend hot
salt & pepper
olive oil

If you use frozen tenders, just throw them in a bowl and coat them with the marinade, and leave them in the fridge a couple days. Turn them once or twice to get them well coated with the seasonings, and wait'll they thaw. When you're ready to use them, put a dab of oil in a pan heated to medium. Put the tenders in with any marinade/juices and cover. Cook for 3-4 minutes, flip, turn heat off, cover, ignore until the rest of the meal is done. This method works for me because 1) I use a heavy skillet and 2) I use an electric stove which takes a minute to cool down.

Bright Yellow Pilaf

1/2 cup white rice
1/2 cup red lentils
pat of butter
broth concentrate
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp paprika


Rinse rice & lentils well, add 1 1/2 c. water and the other stuff and cook as you usually would. This method makes the lentils disintegrate, if you want them to stay whole, cook the rice about halfway then stir in the lentils.

and....dun dun DUN!

Minty Pea Sauce!

It isn't really that exciting, sorry. Microwave 1/2 cup frozen peas with 1/3 cup water just barely until they are bright green and tender. Put them in a blender or mini food processor with 4 mint leaves and grind the bajeebus outta them. Add the tiniest pinch of salt. This isn't to make it taste salty, it just makes it taste more interesting. Truly, it works. The sauce will still taste sweet and have a cooling sensation, but it won't be flat and blah. This stuff is actually great with the yogurt.

Here's the eggs again, just because they look neato. Oh and those bright orange things in the other picture are nasturtium petals... They were just..orange, ok?