Mixed Plate: Eggs-actly the Book You've Been Waiting For

There's a Sriracha-themed cookbook, there's likely more than one bacon cookbook, so it was only a matter of time before someone not only did an all-egg cookbook, but one that took advantage of the meme-riff on Portlandia's "Put a Bird on it" skit. I give you, Lara Ferroni's "Put an Egg On It."

Pasta carbonara "nests" inspired by Lara Ferroni's new book - Photo by Wasabi Prime

UnRecipe: My Dinner With Cthulhu

It starts out simple enough, a basic craving for a basic dish... sear up some steak, fry a few eggs, an ad hoc hash of whatever vegetables are around... and then it gets weird. Downright Lovecraftian. And before you know it, a humble breakfast-for-dinner meal has a science fiction Chimera of your worst nightmares showing up on your plate, a culmination of humanity's anxious energy, a fear of the unknown... Hold fast, kids, you're Cookin' with Cthulhu.

Baked eggs with hash, before a mythological beast crashes the meal - Photo by Wasabi Prime

The desire to make steak, eggs and hash wasn't some culinary ritual to call up H.P. Lovecraft's creature of the eponymous story, Call of Cthulhu. It just sort of  happened on a quick plating of leftovers, and I'm saving that photo for last because it's freaky-deaky, and I don't want it to ruin the telling of a genuinely tasty breakfast hash. Honestly, who wants some skeevy tentacle-faced winged leviathan muscling-in on your quiet meal at home? I'm pretty sure he wouldn't say "please" when asking for seconds. He'd just pulverize your sanity and leave you an empty husk of a human being while he threw on extra dashes of Sriracha on your serving of Brinner. He'd probably watch all your DVR-ed episodes of Glee and just delete everything before you saw them. He'd even drink all the OJ and just leave one swallow in the carton before slinking off back to R'lyeh like a total d-bag. Thanks for nothing, Cthulhu.

Brinner done right - with steak and bad-ass hash - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I just wanted to make a Bad-Ass Breakfast Hash. Yes, that's a thing. It's a delicious thing. The CSA had a lot to do with it, providing a bevvy of veggies to play with, but I found a nice combination of produce that makes for a delicious and colorful hash. I like to start building the perfect Bad-Ass Breakfast Hash with the perfect bad-ass base, which is of course: Bacon. A couple of slices rendered in a large pan on a burner set to medium-low. Get all that delicious swiny fat pulled out, it's liquid cooking gold. Remove the crispy slices and set aside, they'll get thrown back in later if you don't just eat them as you cook, which is totally understandable if you do. Toss in some diced red potatoes with the skin still on, let them get a nice browning with the bacon fat. Start building flavor with diced onions and let them sweat and slowly caramelize. The next vegetables are as much for color as they are for flavor -- bell peppers (red and yellow are best, as they're sweeter) and the chopped stalks of rainbow chard. You'll throw in the green leaves of the chard later, but the stalks are edible, they need extra cook time to get tender, and their color stays for the most part. It kind of reminds me of cooking rhubarb; you don't keep the intense color, but it won't brown, instead mellowing to a pastel color. I get a lot of crap for cooking Brown Food, and while there's some brown/neutral tones in this hash, the peppers and chard keep it pretty. Adding the chopped greens of the chard towards the end, just to wilt, keeps the hash  looking fresh. A nice addition for keeping the flavor bright is finely-chopped preserved lemon rind -- I know, not a super common ingredient, but if you feel the hankering to jar up some excess lemon with a ton of salt, just check out the We Can Portlandia That post about pickling everything. I have to say, I'm addicted to the use of preserved lemon rind. I don't always have fresh citrus to zest, but a jar of salted lemons is mightily convenient for these UnRecipe MacGyver meals that  often come together with little planning or grocery shopping.

The hash that makes you hollaback fo' more - Photos by Wasabi Prime

You can't have steak and eggs without steak, of course. I used a flank steak. It's one of my favorite cuts, just because it's got a nice flavor and there's never a doubt over which direction the grain of the meat goes. As long as you're slicing across the lines of the grain, you will not get a tough bite. Getting a nice sear in a pan, ideally in the rendered bacon fat, is a good start. You just want to cook it rare and it will continue to steam a little, wrapped in foil, resting while the hash is getting cooked. You could skip the steak altogether, just going with eggs and bad-ass breakfast hash, but I had a hankering for red meat. When the hash was done, I sliced up the end cuts of the flank and tossed that into the hash, just because I could.The center rare part of the steak was saved for thin slices to go with the finished eggs and hash. I cracked eggs into ramekins of hash, baked in the oven. It's kind of like a mix between poached and fried eggs; still runny but sunny-side up with the yolk staring at you. If there's any crisps of bacon left, sprinkle as a garnish.

Sunny, runny egg yolk, is there nothing better in the world? - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Despite all the Lovecraft pre-func on this post, it really wasn't until we had Brinner leftovers of steak, eggs and bad-ass breakfast hash that Cthulhu made an appearance. A lame attempt at being artsy, fanning out the reheated steak slices before topping everything with a couple of fried eggs had us staring right into the Face of Madness, before it was devoured by the Mouth of Madness. Such is the pitfall of our love of putting eggs on... well, everything. Call it Cthulhu, call it Dr. Zoidberg from Futurama, call it whatever you like. We just started into its terrifyingly mad sunny-side-up face and devoured the devourer of souls because dang, we were hungry.

Let's be honest, if this were the first photo, you'd have stopped reading the post - Food photo by Wasabi Prime





UnRecipe: At Home With the Lazy Cook

I like to imagine that if I had my own TV cooking show, it would be me, in my jammies, rummaging through the fridge and pantry, and just literally throwing together haphazard meals. And the opening credits would read: At Home With the Lazy Cook. It would probably be written in Crayon. With some of the letters written backwards.

At Home with the Lazy Cook presents... Brinner - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Not that the food on my pretend cooking show would be bad. It would just be very fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-styled meals. Cooking without a net, as it were. Take for instance a recent Sunday dinner. Too busy to really go grocery shopping that week and on the tail-end dregs of our CSA delivery, I looked in the fridge and saw we had some thawed phyllo dough, a package of chopped spinach, goat cheese, and eggs. Sure, it doesn't fill anyone with a sense of culinary wonderment, but for something basic that's quick to prepare, it sure looked like Brinner to me. (Brinner = Breakfast for Dinner, get it? Thanks, Scrubs)

Brinner and a movie - Tron 2 = nostalgic and weird - Photos by Wasabi Prime

And so became the Sunday night casserole of eggs, cheese and spinach,with a phyllo crust, topped with more phyllo sheets. It was like an odd combination of spanokopita and a frittata, but gosh darnit, it worked. It kind of looked like a casserole that took a running leap through a pane of glass, as the phyllo crisps up nicely and just gets... well, shard-like. And we ate this, much to Indy's pleading stares as we finally saw Tron 2: Legacy. I think we were the last people in the First World to watch this movie that everyone was going nuts over, like, a million years ago. It was very pretty and looked like a world without dust, needing constant applications of Windex, and somewhere between all its heavily-dressed scenery, there was a plot. But if you asked me now what it's about, I couldn't tell you beyond the fact that Computer Generated Jeff Bridges skeeved me out. It did make me want to watch the original, which I loved for nostalgia's sake. My nostalgia also made me hungry for salty snacks so I mixed popcorn and rice crackers to make our movie night complete.

A Wasabi's work is never done -- what I'm doing when I'm not being lazy - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I don't want to make it sound like I'm The Lazy Cook out of pure sinful sloth. I commit way better sins than that - and how! I just didn't want to fuss in the kitchen anymore, as I'd already done some projects like pickling beets and making the latest supply of chicken stock. Making stock is like a two-day event for me. It takes time to let the ingredients simmer away, and a nuclear half-life to get it to cool down enough to put it in containers. At the risk of angering food safety inspectors, I let the stockpot cool overnight before portioning it out into the small army of yogurt containers I hoard, er, collect. The Mister hates that we have not some, but ALL of the yogurt containers. Like, in the known universe. I wait until they pile up and that's the Bat Signal that it's time to make another batch of stock. The holidays left me rich in chicken and turkey bones, along with a huge bag of vegetable and herb cuttings that I store in the freezer. When I can't put real food into the freezer because it looks like a compostable ice age in there, that's also an indication to get cooking on some stock. In a way, this feeds into my Lazy Cook mentality, as I always have a supply of stock at the ready, no need to hit the store. I tend to defrost one container a week, using it to deglaze pans, make quick sauces, or when I'm feeling the Lazybones Feeling come on, I'll make soup. Soup is the ultimate lazy dish, as you can throw in as many or as few ingredients as you have, but it's also deceptively lazy, as when you make your own stock, it's got a richness that you can't find in most store bought products. You feel like you're treating yourself to something really good, when you just threw some odd bits together into a bubbling pot of flavored chicken water. For a Lazy Cook, making your own stock is worth the fuss, because you can bank more time to be lazy later on. Makes sense, right? 

UnRecipe: Put a Bird's Egg On It

The Portlandia "Put a Bird On It" meme has certainly seen a lot of mileage, but I'd like to start a new, more delicious meme of Put a Bird's Egg On It. Seriously. It just makes food better. See...?

If you liked it then you shoulda put an egg on it - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Truthfully, I welcome any excuse to make pasta carbonara. I rather like saying "pasta carbonara" because it sounds far superior to "eggs n' bacon with noodles." Italians do scrappy leftovers with style, si? I actually made this heaping dish of happiness a while back, using some farm fresh eggs with ridiculously bright yellow yolks. If you ever have the opportunity to get a hold of fresh eggs, do so -- you'll notice the richness of the flavor and just the look of the yolks are eye-popping. Sunshine-yellow, creamy yolk-y goodness. Not that you can't enjoy this dish with grocery store eggs, but yowza, that color. Too pretty, right?

As you can tell, I'm all over the place on these posts in terms of when dishes were made -- the eggs were originally from Once in a Blue Moon Farm, out on Orcas Island, when we made our late spring trek out there. Even as hard-boiled eggs, they were delicious, enjoyed with some cured meat and fresh bread from the local bakery. Not that it's news to anyone, but the simplest high-quality ingredients can be all you need for a really good meal. And it doesn't need a lot of prep time. In the case of hard boiled eggs with some meat and cheese, the most amount of time spent is getting the water to boil, and that's plenty of time to slice up some things and pour yourself a glass of wine. You'll be on glass number two by the time the eggs are done.

Thanks for the nomz, chickens - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Another simple, but tried-and-true meal of enjoyment is, of course, Brinner. Breakfast for Dinner, as coined by the TV show, Scrubs. Maybe this term existed before, but no one relished it quite like the character Turk, who would celebrate with glee when his girl would make it. Maybe it's a guy thing. Or maybe it's the fact that there's a reason breakfast is the one meal that diners and greasy spoon restaurants serve it at all hours -- it just tastes really good. I had made a skillet hash of cubed ham, sweet potatoes, onions and whatever else we had in the crisper, cooked some bacon in the oven, and served it all up with fried eggs on top. All around 6pm on a Sunday night. It's kind of a lazy night. You know you have to go to work the next day and for most people, breakfast is really celebrated on the weekends, since you actually have the luxury of time to either make it or go out for a nice sit-down meal. So having fried eggs with hash for dinner is a nice way of saying, break the rules and enjoy the simple things. All thanks to putting a bird's egg on it.

Sunday Brinner - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Mixed Plate: Coffee and Brinner on a Midwinter's Night

Breakfast for Dinner equals...Brinner. It's a fact. It's like New Math, it's so factual. And I highly recommend it. You  know what else I recommend? Someone else making it. On a particularly brisk winter's night (and by brisk I mean freakin' freezing), Mr. Wasabi rolled up his sleeves and cooked up a simple, but elegant dinner of pancakes, bacon and eggs. Brinner, it's what's for Dinner.

Baby, it's oh-so-cold outside - Photo by Wasabi Prime

We were chillin' like a villain with Bob Dylan, it was so cold. The icicles were forming on the trees and it's a nice change of pace from complicated festive meals to have something as simple as eggs n' bacon for dinner. I first heard about Brinner from the television series Scrubs, and I don't know if they made it up, but it's a pretty good idea. Honestly, when does a nice hearty breakfast not totally hit the spot? There's a reason why Dennys serves their Grand Slams twenty four-seven. And it's not complicated because you figure, most kitchens will likely have the basics -- eggs and milk, along with the core baking ingredients like flour and baking soda. Or just a big box of Bisquick you bought on your last Costco trip thinking, "Oh yeah, I'll go through this." So what if the box is stamped "good until 2005." It's dry goods. It's probably fine...?

Mr. Wasabi has ample poms and brinner-making talents - Photos by Wasabi Prime

For the rest of us who don't have the giant monolith of Bisquick, you can find a basic pancake batter mix online; I recommend hitting up the usual suspects like Epicurious.com. I'm not even going to try and guess where the recipes came from, since Mr. Wasabi was the ringleader behind this meal and I was extremely grateful for that. When you're cooking almost every meal, it's such a nice thing to have someone prepare something for you. Plus it really was flippin' cold outside, so hot pancakes sounded incredibly good, especially when they've got a hearty sear from bacon fat! Apparently Brock reserved the pan drippings after cooking the bacon and didn't waste a delicious drop.

Turkish coffee is less of a Caf-Pow, and more of a Caf-KO - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Breakfast and/or Brinner is not complete without coffee. We've been fawning over our latest new addition to the kitchen gadget gang -- a pretty brass Turkish coffee mill from -- of all places -- the land of Turkey. Our friend Ms. SJBe returned from her latest global jaunt and returned with spices and all the jewels of Araby. Well, maybe not that exactly, but I'm doubtless she joined the ranks of most holiday travelers who got jiggy with TSA folks at the airports. To that, all I can say is, I hope they at least buy you dinner before the rubber gloves come on.

Turkish coffee is particularly nice if you're not a big coffee drinker but a big legalized stimulant fan. It's so sweet, it's really like a dessert drink, and the stuff is literally rocket fuel, packing the punch of a steel fist, but in a velvet glove. It's sparingly served in a small demitasse cup, like a shot of espresso. A bit like the analog version of espresso, except instead of the java jolt being extracted through steam, Turkish coffee is superfine grounds percolating in hot water just like regular coffee, but the grounds are allowed to settle before drinking. I don't have the method down-pat, as Mr. Wasabi makes it, but you can peek here to see how people on WikiHow make it. The intake method of Turkish coffee lends itself more to slow, relaxed sipping and not shotgunning the little cup back like a Roman fratboy, otherwise you'll get a mouthful of superfine coffee sludge. We can learn a lot from the Turks. Sit with your supercharged, supersweetened coffee. Enjoy. And then wait patiently for the caffeine to let your mind part the fabric of time, space and dimension.

It's still cold and Indy still begs for Brinner - Photos by Wasabi Prime