Mixed Plate: My Fruschoppen Brings All the Boys to the Yard...

My fruschoppen brings all the boys to the yaaaaard... And they're like It's better than yours, damn right, it's better than yours... I could teach you, but I'd have to chaaaarge.  I don't think Kelis ever had that variation in mind when she did Milkshake a few million pop culture years ago, but that's what I had my brain singing as I was hauling pounds of sausage and bags of pretzels home with me, so that they could be unleashed on a hungry horde. Bavarian brunch anyone? I guarantee it'll bring all the boys (and girls) to the yard. 

Germany does breakfast Like A Boss - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Mixed Plate: The Wrath of Congee

Yo, all my Asian brothahs and sistahs from other mistahs -- are you ready to rumble?? Tiger Moms everywhere are ready to judge meals all over the world, and cast tired looks and furrowed eyebrows across tables at what's going to be served up for CNY! Chinese tradition would dictate you're busy fretting away over a traditional Lunar New Year meal coming up at the end of January, where we say farewell to the Year of the Snake and howdy to the Year of the Horse for 2014. It's a big deal, and it's an important time to gather with loved ones and welcome the new year properly, but I also get that it's stressful like any other holiday fraught with family and drama. I say... to hell with tradition -- invite all your non-judgy friends over, who love you just the way you are, not how many hours of piano practice you shirked as a kid, and serve up the new hotness that I am naming as the Next Big/Annoying Food Trend for 2014: Congee Brunch.

My submission to Food Fads of 2014: Congee Brunch - Photo by Wasabi Prime

OMG a Recipe: A Waffle-y Big Adventure

I blame the punchy buzz of morning coffee for doing a post mash-up about waffles and a 1995 Hugh Grant/Alan Rickman movie called An Awfully Big Adventure. It makes for a somewhat pun-ny post title, and maybe one could argue these Spiced Waffles with Greek Yogurt and Apple Compote have sweetness cut with a bit of tart sourness -- much like the movie -- but that would be really stretching relevancy, no? Meh... let's just continue on this waffle-y bad pun.

I waffle for homemade waffles - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I actually put together this breakfast combo a while back, when family was in town last spring. Call them vintage waffles. I meant to post the recipe sooner, but if you write a blog, you know how life happens, posts back up, and then you find yourself trying to make this stuff look freshy-fresh when you know you made this thing like, a year ago. But it doesn't mean it's bad, quite the contrary, as I was reminded I should make these again when there's a brunch needing to be had. I wanted to make an apple pie-inspired of waffle, substituting Greek yogurt for ice cream. You could make it more dessert-like and used whipped cream, but the goal behind this particular breakfast combination was to balance a little bit of health with treat-value. The waffles are made from whole wheat and oat flour; there's still eggs and butter in it, so it's not totally health-conscious, but I tried to keep the sugar content low, knowing it would be topped with fruit. I prefer using a Belgian waffle iron -- I love the big-toothed grid, leaving larger spots for other flavors to seep in -- but any ol' waffle iron would do. You could make these as pancakes, the conversion is included in the recipe below, but come on -- drag that waffle iron out. It's lonely. It needs to feel useful, no matter how much of a pain it is to clean. And that's the thing about waffles -- you make it in large batches, so that's why it's great to feed a small group you're entertaining on a Sunday.

The movie you shouldn't see while entertaining guests is the post's namesake -- An Awfully Big Adventure. I linked the preview if you want to get a peek, but let me assure you, the charming preview was the exact opposite of what the story was. It was marketed as a clever comedy, and I got roped in by the perennial charms of Alan Rickman. Frankly, I was a little scarred for life after seeing it. I know it was years ago when I rented it on Ye Olde VHS format, but to this day, I still have a little bit of a beef with this movie. It went from slightly melancholic British comedy to "whoa, things got super-dark, super-fast," leaving you with the feeling that maybe you should make some warm and toasty waffles with a comforting apple compote to calm your disturbed nerves. Or make a really stiff drink, repeat as necessary. It wasn't a bad movie, the performances were all very solid and the story was quite compelling, but dangit, I was expecting something sweet and got the equivalent of a punch in the face. But at least I got to use it as a play on words for a waffle post; build those bridges one carb at a time.

How breakfast feels like dessert - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Spiced Waffle Mix
Dry Ingredients:
1 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup oat flour (oatmeal ground up in food processor
to flour consistency)
2 tbsp sugar
1 ½ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp salt
2 tbsp pumpkin spice powder
Wet Ingredients:
2 cups water or milk
2 large eggs
6 tablespoons melted butter or vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract

This mix can be used for pancakes if you don’t have a waffle iron, just reduce the butter/oil amount to 4 tablespoons.

You can also mix the dry ingredients ahead of time to always have a pancake/waffle mix handy for future use, and then add the wet ingredients when you’re ready to prepare them.

To make the waffles, sift all the dry ingredients together in one bowl. In a separate bowl, combine all the wet ingredients and mix thoroughly. Slowly drizzle the wet ingredients in with the dry, mixing until just incorporated – it’s OK if there’s a few lumps in the mix. Do not over mix or the waffles will be tough.

Spiced Apple Compote
3 small Granny Smith apples, skinned, cored and diced
4 tablespoons of butter
½ cup of sugar
2 tsp of vanilla extract
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp grated nutmeg

In a sauté pan, heat to medium high and melt butter. Add in the sugar and stir until the sugar melts down and begins to caramelize into a light brown. Add the diced apples and continue to stir, cooking down the apples, releasing most of their liquid and becoming soft and almost translucent. When the apples are fully cooked down, resembling the filling in an apple pie, add the vanilla extract, cinnamon and nutmeg, mixing well. Turn off the heat and serve compote immediately over waffles or pancakes, or refrigerate and reheat until ready to serve.

This is also good served with plain yogurt. You can serve the compote spooned over a dollop of Greek style yogurt, on top of the spiced waffle for a sweet breakfast.

UnRecipe: Pardon Moi, Monsieur

For all the Tastespotting/FoodGawker food porn bloggery perfection, cooking is a constantly evolving experiment. Nothing ever comes out perfect on the first try, there's always push and pull when you want to try something new, even if it's something simple. So, to heck with perfection, I wanted to share a work-in-progress dish I was playing around with: a Croque Monsieur casserole. Oh, and by the way, all those well-intentioned resolutions about eating healthy? Throw 'em out the window -- much like this dish, nobody's perfect.

Resolutions are for suckers! Wasabi's answer to clean, healthy living - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Croque Monsieur Casserole?? You're thinking, What-the-whaaaaat?! And also, Pass the Lipitor, this looks like a widowmaker. This was a large-scale attempt at putting the classic French comfort dish through the Brunch Casserole-ification Machine. Not unlike the cardboard box Transmogrifier that Calvin and Hobbes would use. When I go out to brunch, a Croque Monsieur is like the perfect meal -- slices of ham, sandwiched between slices of cheese and thick bread, grilled to crispness, topped with more cheese and a bechamel sauce, finished off under a broiler to make the melty top all crispy and caramelized. Heaven, right? There are variations of this, you can have the Madame variation with an egg, I've seen different meats used -- it was never a fancy, fussy dish, meant to be made with strict adherence to a recipe. Like a lot of comfort favorites, it was an inexpensive meal meant to use pantry staples and welcome interpretation. And interpret I did!

The many stages of a casserole-in-progress - Photos by Wasabi Prime

All the ingredients for a classic Croque Monsieur are breakfast-friendly and I thought it could translate into a casserole form, almost like a savory bread pudding, topped with a creamy sauce. I got a loaf of bread and sliced it down. I lightly toasted the slices to remove the moisture, but I think if I make this again, I'll leave it soft and spongey. I wanted it to really soak up an egg custard and drying the bread out means it needs a little extra time to drink up the liquid. I layered the slices in a casserole dish, slipping chunks of ham between the slices. When I make this again, I'll use thin slices of ham and maybe some turkey as well. The chunks are great, but I wanted even layering of meat between the slices and the chunk ham wasn't providing that consistently meaty bite.

Instead of Gruyere cheese, which is the typical choice, I had a spicy habanero-spiked white cheddar. For this early attempt, I just used what I had on-hand and I happened to have chunks of ham and a large wedge of spicy aged cheddar. What can I say, our kitchen is weird and I have an unholy love of Costco. The spice was a nice addition, as was the use of aged cheddar, so I think it's fine to let cheese be a bit of a wild card. The shuffled bread, meat, cheese combo was baked for about 15 minutes for the cheese to get melted and the bread to crisp a little, then a bechamel sauce was poured over the whole thing and the broiler got turned on to brown the top of the casserole. When it's served, the big charred center on a large baking dish isn't the prettiest thing in the world, but sliced into large ooey-gooey squares and served up on a plate, it's not so bad. Despite the in-progress status on this, the first attempt was still delicious. I just wanted to further improve on the texture of each bite and make the bread feel more custard-like, soaking up more of the egg and milk mixture before the slices are shuffled between the meat. I'm definitely looking forward to making this again, improvements considered, to give it that perfect Croque Monsieur experience, in an easy large-scale size for sharing over brunch, as I think this has the potential to be a real winner alongside a mimosa.

UnRecipe: Happy Brunch-Day to You

I don't know who invented the concept of brunch. It was likely some restauranteur who had a fondness for late Saturday nights and equally late Sunday morning breakfasts to cradle the hungover masses with copious amounts of greasy protein. Or maybe it was someone who just likes breakfast for every meal. I'm gonna have to go with option B.

Stick a candle in this mofo and make a brunchy birthday wish! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I'm all for any meal that justifies cake (or coffee cake) as a main course and allows for alcoholic beverages before noon without judge-y stares. It's also a nice way to celebrate someone's birthday. A while back we had a little brunch gathering at the house. It's tricky to get people together, lives are busy and a lot of our friends have young children or new babies, so the days of late-night wine-ing and dining aren't necessarily over, just a little harder to put on the books. So instead of evening gatherings, we do the dine and wine in the morning, under the socially acceptible umbrella of brunch. Mimosas for my homies!

Another nice thing about brunch is it widens the margin for what to serve. Sure, there's the typical eggs n' bacon offerings, but I've done chicken and waffle brunches, and gone the Hawaiian route to locomoco-it with eggs, rice, hamburger and gravy. There's nothing that's off limits, and when in doubt, the old adage of throwing a fried egg on something will convince crowds it's breakfast-acceptible. Brunch is like a bright, wide, delicious future waiting to happen. And so I made pulled pork BBQ over corn fritters for a birthday brunch gathering. And yes, I Put a Bird's Egg on It. Twice. With the lid off.

Pulled pork with pancakes - the only reason to wake up early in the morning - Photos by Wasabi Prime

If you've been following the blog, you of course realize I was inspired by the BBQ pork pancakes from Hogshack in Richmond, BC. It wasn't convenient for me to drive several hours north and leave the USA, so I just paid them homage by this brunch and recommended friends to check them out the next time they're visiting the Great North. As for the birthday cake, it was a coffee cake baked from the Grand Central Bakery cookbook, probably one of my favorite collection of recipes that will totally rock your socks off. I recommend folks picking up this book. I would have included the recipe for the pulled pork and corn cakes, but everything was sort of modified, just due to some dietary needs of guests. I'm trying to learn how to cook with less sugar and salt, finding different ways of seasoning food and just being more conscious of ingredients that have any kind of pre-preparation, which often has a lot of hidden sodium for preservation purposes. I know it sounds really restrictive, keeping salt, sugar and carbohydrates in check, but I do think it's a good exercise to think about food and seasonings as wholly as possible. It doesn't stop  me from enjoying salty, sugary goods now and then, but this meal was a good way to think simply, but not feel like anyone was missing out. That's a good way to ensure many more birthdays and brunches to come.

UnRecipe: Lazy Sunday of Lazy Chicken and Waffles

Whew. Another Christmas come and gone. It feels like tornado came and went; a storm of energy and fury, and then... nothing. But of course, plenty of leftovers and several more days of downtime to throw together creative ways to not eat the same things twice. Result? Chicken and waffles.

Cheater, cheater, chicken n' waffle eater - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I never grew up eating chicken and waffles and was somewhat confounded at the idea of the combination the first time I'd heard of it. But it's kind of awesome, with the mix of crispy, savory-sweet deliciousness. My at-home version was a waffle batter made up of whole wheat and oatmeal flours mixed with a bunch of pumpkin pie spice, hence it's darker color. Combined with the maple syrup, it makes for a richer flavor. And don't skimp on the maple syrup. The Mrs. Butterworths stuff is not, in fact, maple syrup, just a caramel-dyed plastic tube of corn syrup goo. I was raised on the corn syrup goo for so many years, and when I finally had the real stuff, I felt like a light from the heavens shined down upon me and slapped me upside the head and said, Stop buying that crap, Wasabi. Thanks, heavenly light. Duly noted.

The chicken, however, was a total cheat. It was just torn up leftovers from a store-bought fried chicken. Boo, right? Ain't no shame in not wanting your kitchen to smell like a fast food restaurant, coated in a light spray of fry oil. When I have leftover chicken, it tends to wind up in things like chicken salads and this was just a different way of enjoying it outside of the household norm. Most cold chicken tends to mysteriously disappear from the fridge, as Mr. Wasabi just snags pieces of it and eats it as-is. Yet another ritual of comfort food eating I have yet to appreciate -- cold chicken or pizza. I appreciate that it's a well-loved appreciation likely honed during college, I just have yet to acquire a taste for it. And I know I'll never look as good as Nigella Lawson when she does it during the closing credits of her cooking shows. That biyotch makes anything look good, even digging around the fridge in your jammies at midnight with a cold turkey leg wedged into your mouth.

Adding a bit o' spice to waffles - Photos by Wasabi Prime

It was nice to use the waffle iron again -- we so rarely do, so it's a treat to bust it out. This applicance was a windfall from a friend who had an extra one after her wedding. It's a Belgium waffle maker, so it makes those big, beautifully puffy waffles with the hefty divots. Although I like a bit of crunch to my waffles, so I'll make the waffles and then put them in either the toaster oven or whole batch in the oven for extra crisp time. At some point, I'll have to see about making a savory waffle, maybe doing a ham and cheese sandwich between fluffy bread, pressing it in the waffle iron and creating a strange waffle/panini hybrid. It sounds more like a hangover special, but whatever, I'll take my carbs however I can have 'em.

Looking at the week, I see one more holiday hoop to jump through -- New Years. We're keeping it local, as in our living room, likely with all three Lord of the Rings movies back-to-back. Maybe by the time the walls of Helms Deep are being stormed by the angry horde, we'll be chowing down on some ham and cheese waffle/paninis.

FoodTrek/UnRecipe: Going Out and Staying In

It can be tricky to balance the Going Out vs Staying In argument when it comes to dining. We all want to be mindful of our pocketbook, but not only is it nice to not have to cook or clean up after a meal, it's important to be supportive of the restaurant industry that continues to inspire us in our own home kitchens. Often times, visiting a restaurant during their non-peak hours is the best way to experience their menu at a lower cost, as well as a lesser hassle of getting a table. Recently we revisited one of our favorite spots in the rare light of day, Bellevue's Barrio, to give their new brunch menu a try. I enjoyed one of their dishes so much that I made a simpler at-home version, so that even when I'm having a meal in, it can still feel like going out.

Morning powered by COFFEE - photo by Wasabi Prime

I have several friends who believe breakfast is truly the perfect meal, and I'm inclined to go with that sentiment. It's the one meal where you have the option to go sweet or savory, and the ingredients are fairly consistent, so it's never a surprise over what you'll get. Plus when it comes to brunch, who doesn't love an excuse to tie one on before noon with a mimosa or a bloody mary? Barrio's take on brunch is a nice change from the typical eggs, toast, and hash, offering Mexican influenced dishes that still work with what El Norte Americano expectations for breakfast would be. Their brunch menu isn't too different from their regular menu, offering things like enchiladas and an egg-topped version of their chilaquiles, but they also offer a Mexican style French toast, and a chorizo bacon and egg torta, a hearty panini-like sandwich. Even their more standard breakfast fare like steak and eggs or biscuits and gravy still have a South of the Border twist, adding chiles and spices.

Brunch at Barrio - the right way to start the day. Photos by Wasabi Prime

The Barrio brunch experience was om-nom-nom-approved, combining savory, slow-cooked, rich flavors, anointed with the crown of fried eggy goodness. I was so pleased with the pork and chiliquiles experience of Barrio, that I knew I needed to capture this edible lightning in a bottle. ZAP!

I took a cue from a night when we made tacos -- let's face it, you always wind up with more tortillas than you need. Chilaquiles is the ideal dish for this situation. Traditionally they are cut into wedges, fried, and then tossed with a red enchilada sauce. They're served with some queso fresco and chopped meat, a great dish to incorporate the odd leftover bits hanging about. The tacos we had were pretty simple -- pork seasoned with adobo powder, seared and sliced thin, layered on a small corn tortilla with some sliced radish, fresh cilantro, and a dash of lime. The remaining ingredients from this meal worked perfectly for the at-home version of Barrio's chilaquiles inspiration dish.

Tacos are the first step towards chilaquiles - Photo by Wasabi Prime

This had UnRecipe written all over it -- extra stuff loitering in the fridge, no clear recipe to start from, and memories of a tasty brunch still lingering in my head. Well, it was either UnRecipe or Big Hot Mess, but I remained optimistic and just threw things together, hoping for the best. I'm not a fan of frying, what with the ozone layer of grease that inevitably gets left in the kitchen, so I chopped a dozen or so small corn tortillas up into little triangles, drizzled with canola oil, and baked them in the oven. Once they were browned and crispy, they were tossed and coated with a store-bought can of enchilada sauce. Certainly nowhere near the roasted richness of Barrio's sauce, I was just stricken with a wicked case of Instant Gratification.

Chopped bits of the adobo pork were mixed in, a sprinkling of sliced fresh radish and crumbled cheese were added, and a hefty showering of fresh cilantro. I made up a parody version of Beyonce's "Single Ladies" and kept mumbling, "If you liked it, then you shoulda put an egg on it," while I fried an egg and placed it atop the towering mountain of saucy tortillas. Is that too much crazy information about how my mind wanders when I cook? Maybe, but I thought it was a pretty funny song. I promise I wasn't dancing around the kitchen with any hot skillets.

Chilaquiles speak the universal language of leftovers - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Chilaquiles the Wasabi Way was a delicious, too-impatient-to-go-out dish that would easily work as a dinner option. The baked tortillas soaked up the sauce nicely, and the mix of fresh raw vegetables and herbs mixed with the cooked ingredients made for a satisfying mix of textures and flavors. This was a pleasant way of finding a balance between going out to eat and staying in, plus another resourceful way of using up everything in the refrigerator, since I'm such a weird freak about not letting anything go to waste.