Playing With Leftovers to Make Breakfast

Bob and I recently catered a dinner for 150 people in Cincinnati Ohio. This followed up on our end-of-September romp with Surreal food at the Cleveland gathering. Complete report and photos of Cleveland food. As I noted in my post describing that dinner, after service, most of the leftovers were thrown out, which is required by safety rules. Bob and I cooled and took some of the leftovers home, however, since that would not put anyone else at risk!

One item that came home with us was the rolled, stuffed bread Bob had made. He made 4 meat and 2 cheese varieties, and they were very well received:



I stuck with the two cheese breads - Cheddar Cheese (which I've been eating for breakfast at the office) and Mozzarella with Garden Tomato.

This past weekend, I was inspired by a dish my mother used to make for my father when I was a kid. She'd have gladly made it for all of us, but since it contained - horrors - chopped liver, she never got any takers other than Dad. Basically, it was a savory French Toast - two slices of bread drenched in beaten egg, then slathered on one side each with chopped liver, then put together like a sandwich and fried in Onion Nyafat.

The fabulous smell of the sandwich frying would fill the house and make us all hungry enough to try it - but we kids never liked it (that liver thing, I guess), and we went "yuck" after the smallest taste. After a few times, we realized that no matter how good it smelled - we hated the liver flavor of this dish!

As an aside, I consider Onion Nyafat a crucial part of any Jewish cook's pantry, even though it is fast disappearing.




We never had "neutral" Nyafat in my house - what would be the point? Onion Nyafat is sort like Kosher Lard - it lends taste and texture to anything fried in it. Nyafat is an essential ingredient to proper Matzoh Brei, for example. I used to use Nyafat to fry fried rice, before I learned to love pork fat. Moreover, when I was kid, Nyafat came in a pint sized jar. As time has passed, the jar has shrunk - first to 12 ounces, now, as you can see, to a a measly 10.5 ounces. And it is darn hard to find these days. I hope it doesn't disappear entirely in the current anti-hydrogenated fat mania. However, I digress.

Saturday morning I decided to try a savory French Toast (inspired by Mom's liver sandwich) using Bob's leftover Mozzerella Tomato Bread. I soaked several pieces of the bread in beaten egg, to which I had added salt, pepper, Hot New Mexican powder, and a pinch of the fabulous dried Oregano I got from Heather's Heat & Flavor, which adds an intense "garden-ness" to anything it is added to. I fried the slices in Onion Nyafat. I added a little butter at the table to any parts of the dish that were a little dry.

The slices came out looking like this:






Positively yummy. Nothing like playing with yesterday's leftovers to make tomorrow's breakfast food!