breakfast – The Snack Review

A New York City Summer Breakfast

Good afternoon. Happy Holy Mother of Ice Cream It’s August 6th Already??.

As a person who’s fine with m&m’s to start my day, I’m calling this one a stroke of breakfast inspiration. I had the peaches, and we’ve got the corner bagel shop. And then I suddenly remembered our visit to a Portland farmers market a few years back, when we got to try Tastebud’s famous peach slices with honey cream cheese on a sea salt bagel. Actually, the Internet told me just now that’s what it was. All I remembered this morning was the peaches and cream cheese and bagel. This was my first try.

Immediately upon my first bite my brain screamed out what I’d forgotten: “Honey! Salt!” So I finished this one, and tried again for my second half, drizzling a bit of honey and a shaking a few cracks at the salt grinder over it. Pretty darn good. Sadly, my California loved ones, this isn’t something that can be replicated with good results for you because, as the New York Times recently decreed, good bagels just never made it out west. It’s not new knowledge: bagels in New York are superior, sure. But they’re also just so much more plentiful here, so it’s easy enough to run out and buy just the one you want for your breakfast that day. I’d never be able to do that in LA. We’re talking about a geographic inequity in fair bagel access. And that’s before considering the fact that fresh New York City bagels are also far better (crunchier on the outside, softer on the insides) than a sleeve of more expensive and less satisfying bagels from the Ralphs. Though I do miss Ralphs. Scratch that. I miss shopping carts. No that’s not quite it either. I miss throwing my groceries in the trunk of my car and zooming home. That’s it.

I also found a photo Kevin snapped from our Portland farmers market trip. If I remember correctly, Tastebud’s bagels were smaller, denser, more compact, like Montreal-style rounds. But it seemed not to matter so much this morning.

So, while the stone fruit is still plentiful, I suggest whipping this snack up for yourself, wherever you may be, as long as where you are isn’t California.

Basil Pesto Baked Eggs

It’s tough for me to dream up dishes with a blank slate. But give me a few swipes through Instagram or the passing suggestion of a few flavors and I can fall into a dish really quickly.

That’s what happened here after I was paging through Janice Cole’s “The Chicken and the Egg.” She’s got a recipe for baked eggs with goat cheese and mint pesto. It’s a lovely looking dish that she puts in a salad plate-sized shallow ramekin (its technical name, anyone?). Toasted bread topped with goat cheese and a bit of pesto with a raw egg settled atop it all, then baked.

That bit of inspiration was good enough for me. I’d just packed an old kimchi jar full of pesto I made to salvage some basil before it went bad. I didn’t use a recipe and apparently was in the throes of a garlic frenzy while I was whirring it up so the pesto, which thanks to our crazy old fridge is so strong it’s now frozen into a sliceable paste, is like a punch to the mouth. (I love it.) I had plain yogurt. And where she called for hazelnuts to sprinkle over the top of it I had raw walnuts. The other big difference is that my ramekins were much smaller in width and much deeper. They’re probably about three inches tall, so I the dish became a savory bread pudding of sorts. Non-stick spray inside the ramekin, toasted slices of sourdough, a dollop each of yogurt and pesto, then another layer of everything all over again before I topped it with the two eggs, gave it some salt and pepper and threw the chopped walnuts over it. 350 in the oven for about 20 minutes.

That centered yolk was perfectly done, but the top right one? As firm as an Easter egg’s. I need to do more troubleshooting, but I’m not sure, given the dimensions of the ramekin, if it’s even possible to get around the unevenness. Still, I loved it. It was a crazy hearty meal. And certainly adorable, which as everyone knows is half the battle.

Chinese Oatmeal-Jook

Call it desperation or a flash of inspiration, but the other day, with a real hankering for a filling breakfast that wasn’t eggs, I took out my steel cut oats and tried my darndest to turn them into jook.

I cooked the oats according to the instructions, boiling two cups of water and stirring in half a cup of McCann’s until smooth before bringing down the heat and cooking on low for half an hour. Except before turning it down to simmer I added a little splash of soy sauce, sesame oil and minced garlic. I sauteed mushrooms, chopped up some green onions, and threw them on top of the oatmeal when it was done, along with some ichimi togarashi and furikake. That was it.

Friends, it was fine. It was not going to taste bad–though oatmeal, and especially steel cut does have a particular flavor that might have interfered with the soy sauce and sesame oil. I might try something with less body like Quaker’s. It was not revelatory. And it was sure quicker than making a pot of jook.

But on my last few bites it hit me. What I really wanted was some Chinese porridge.