More Fun Playing with Breakfast Food

What a difference quality eggs make! This post shows three recent breakfasts, all made with Kathy Breychak's incredible Blue Eggs.

Saturday June 14, I awoke to realize that we did not have a scrap of bread in the house. And I was hankering for some Blue Eggs for breakfast. So, how to make them? Matzoh Brei!

Of course, the only proper medium for frying Matzoh Brei is Onion Nyafat.



Soak matzoh in warm water, lightly beat eggs with salt and pepper and add to drained matzoh, let soak for as long as you can wait, then fry in hot Nyafat. Add salt after frying, and serve with a big glass of ice cold Organic milk or make an Egg Cream (I did, but didn't get a photo of it).



This Matzoh Brei is "pancake" style rather than "scrambled. I think it gets crispier when you let it sit rather than tossing it around incessantly. But there are times I scramble it.










Yum.

This past weekend, Bob and I enjoyed a number of treats from Cleveland's resident meat maven - Mister Brisket. On Friday, I learned that Mister B had scored some fresh Copper River King Salmon. And at a reasonable price, too (last week, it was well over $30 a pound, this week, it was well under $30).

And of course, once I trundled down to the store (2156 South Taylor Road, Cleveland Heights, OH 44118), I had to get some other goodies from them. So - I loaded up a half pound each of pastrami (best in Cleveland and maybe the world), corned beef, and turkey breast and a package of casing hotdogs.

Saturday morning - Pastrami & Eggs. Knowing how I intended to use it, Mister Brisket sliced the pastrami into thick slices. Add Blue Eggs and a hot pan and . . . magic!


Four Blue Eggs


Pastrami begins to render over a low flame




Now? Not yet.


Now? Yupper!


Lightly Beaten Eggs Poured Over the Meat

And, after a perfect flip:









We served it with Challah and Ghee (and yes, a little ketchup for me).

Sunday, it was the corned beef's turn:




Four Eggs to Start, Again



The Corned Beef was more thinly sliced, and didn't render as much fat as the pastrami had.







Another perfect breakfast. Thanks to Kathy Breychak and the gang at Mister Brisket for providing the ingredients for me to play with!

More Fun Playing With Breakfast

Last Saturday, knowing that we had an abundant supply of cooked rice in the fridge (a mixture of white medium grain and brown Basmati), I awoke craving a Rice Omlette a/k/a omurice, as depicted in the classic food movie Tampopo.

I had to improvise a little, since the quality of the DVD is pretty poor, so I had to guess as to the ingredients. I used some Indonesian Banana Sauce when sauteeing the rice (which looks amazingly like ketchup) and fried the rice in Onion Nyafat. I added some homemade Tabasco sauce to the ketchup I put on top of the omlette and a nice finishing salt.





I think that the most satisfying time to play with your food is breakfast-time!

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!