January roundup

I fully intended to publish this post about 2 weeks ago - I had the photos lined up and prepped and everything, so I could have it on here before I left for my trip to England (more on that later). But, once again, I ran out of time.

I'm posting it now so we can get caught up to the present and then move on to current happenings. So - notable items from the rest of January:

I've been eating some variation of this a lot lately: heat some oil in a skillet, saute some chopped salami and pepper, throw in some greens to wilt, then clear a space and crack in an egg or two. Serve with a piece of toast and you've got a complete meal in a very short time. Works for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. (Miss B won't touch this with a bargepole, but DP has warmed to it after seeing me eat it several times.)

I didn't finish undecorating the Christmas tree until January 22. This is a new record in slackness. I blame going on a beach vacation in the second week of January, which never happens to me in the northern hemisphere.

Aforementioned beach vacation: sand castle construction underway. To say nothing of the stunning natural landscape that is Jervis Bay, just doing its thing in the background.

One of my goals this year is to develop my cake-decorating skills - and to allow sufficient time and opportunity to practice. Behold: my birthday gift to myself, on which I spent a happy and absorbed hour.

In the spirit of DIY January, I selected Dorie Greenspan's beurre and sel jammers when DP asked me to bake something as his contribution to his department's first morning tea gathering of the year. Mainly because they provided an unmissable opportunity to tackle some of the umpteen half-empty jars of homemade jam taking up space in the fridge; I emptied about four jars into the two dozen cookies this recipe makes. Favorable reports back from the crew at work.

And finally, a reminder to myself (and anyone else who might need it) about the greatness of simple but delicious things: a soft-boiled egg for breakfast, eaten with strips of buttered, toasted bread (known as "soldiers" in England). Almost as enjoyable as the eating part was using one of the beautiful egg cups I bought at a Christmas market in Birmingham years ago, and thinking of the friends who took us there and the lovely day we had. There is always so much more to food than just the ingestion, or even the preparation, of it.

That's all for January. Stay tuned for reports from the latest jaunt to England.

Cured meats

Did you know that when you ask for “bacon”, what you get will depend on where you are? In the US you get a long, thin rectangular piece of meat which comes from the belly of the pig and is about equal parts flesh and fat, optimally fried until perfectly crispy. Outside the US, this is known as “streaky bacon” or “streaky rashers”. In the UK and Australia, the bacon you commonly get comes from the back of the pig, is much less fatty, and is called, not surprisingly, “back bacon”. (This is known as “Canadian bacon” in the US, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me.)

Despite this being my fourth stint of living outside the US, I have to re-adjust every time to the fact that the bacon elsewhere is significantly different from what I'm used to and that, honestly, I don’t like it as much as I do the traditional US style. So much so that at least once I’ve done something that is usually unthinkable, and run out. As it turns out, this domestic faux pas has yielded some unexpected benefits, principally discovering that salty, cured meats are more interchangeable than I’d realized. A recent, very successful breakfast experiment emphatically demonstrates this; wanting some bacon to jazz up my fried egg on toast and finding none, I swapped in some fried spicy salami. The variation has now officially entered the RL breakfast rotation.

Fried egg & salami on toast
Of course, following the cured-meats-are-interchangeable principle means that you should feel free to swap in whatever you’ve got lying in the fridge.

1 slice whole wheat toast

2 slices spicy salami
1 egg
salt & pepper

Toast bread. In a small frying pan, fry salami until crisp on the edges, turning once. Remove salami from pan and crack in egg, frying to your liking. (I like sunny side up with a runny yolk.)

Put toasted bread on a plate, top with salami, then with egg. Sprinkle with salt & pepper and consume.

Tiny omelettes

Like millions (billions?) of other people, many of whom you’ve probably encountered on the internet in the past few weeks, I annually buy into the whole ‘January-Fresh-Start’ mentality. On top of the general zeitgeist, my birthday is in January, so this month is the start of my personal New Year as well as the one indicated on the Gregorian calendar in widespread use worldwide.

I don’t make resolutions as such, but in the few weeks that elapse between January 1 and my birthday, I try to give some thought to the things I want to focus on in the coming year to make the most of my time. These usually boil down to living more mindfully in various ways: working on replacing sloppy or unhealthy practice with good practice, focusing on habits I want to develop, eliminating various kinds of physical (and mental) clutter, and so on. Some of this is directed toward food, generally with a view to making the most of what I’m eating while practicing moderation. I told SP last year that my personal food philosophy is “make every mouthful count”. One of the ways in which I do this is to eat a variety of different foods, since when I fall into eating ruts I am more likely to lapse into unrestrained and mindless snacking. So I’ve been working on coming up with different things to eat for breakfast, and ideally to develop a schedule where I eat a different thing for breakfast every day of the week, which to me is the ideal combination of repetition and variety.

Paradoxically, my latest addition was inspired by reading a blog post where its maker talked about eating it for breakfast every day for the last several months as part of a weight-loss program: an egg-and-cheese omelette that clocked in at a mere 220 calories. But what caught my attention about this was her note that it was a 2-egg omelette. Revelation! Omelettes don’t have to be made with 3 eggs, the way they are in restaurants. I could even make one with just 1 egg, add a little filling, have a bit of starch alongside, and still not break the caloric bank.

One-egg omelette
Eggs, in addition to being a pretty reasonably-priced source of protein (even if you buy the free-range, no-chemical, gold-plated kind), are filling, tasty, and versatile. Probably the reason why most cuisines offer some variation on the omelette.

1 tsp olive oil
1 egg
~2 teaspoons filling of your choice*
salt & pepper

Heat the olive oil over medium-low heat in a small frying pan.** Meanwhile, break the egg into a small bowl and beat the yolk into the white until consistently mixed.

Pour egg into hot pan and allow mixture to cook for 30-45 seconds or until the edges are just starting to set. Sprinkle over fillings, then season with salt & pepper. Using your preferred spatula, gently flip one half of the omelet over the other half. Allow to cook for 1-2 minutes more, then slide out onto a plate.

Serves 1. Tastes great with a toasted whole wheat and olive oil biscuit alongside (if you've still got some calorie allowance left).

* I have been using chopped bacon and shreds of cheddar cheese.
** I have a 4-inch cast iron that’s perfect for a tiny omelet, but you can use whatever you have that's good for cooking eggs. The omelet won’t look as neat in a bigger pan, but will still be fine.

April roundup

Like sands through the hourglass, so goes another month, leaving only the last crumbs behind. And, like yesterday’s Royal Wedding tea party, almost consumed before there’s enough time to take a decent picture. Before it slips away completely, here are a few links to commit some of April’s best mouthfuls to memory:

Spinach salad

Aka look: more eggs! Because apparently that’s what I like to eat when the weather shows signs of spring.

Although hard-boiled eggs are not essential to the composition of a spinach salad, they can give it enough nutritional heft to make it count as a meal. And anything I can eat that contains something as healthy as spinach and serves as a vehicle for eggs and bacon? Lead me to it.

Breakfast burrito

Having time to cook a proper breakfast is one of the luxuries of working from home, although not one I take advantage of very often, if I'm honest. This, despite its name, is much more likely to appear on my plate at lunch, particularly on a day when I’ve had a productive morning and thus feel justified in spending a few extra minutes preparing a meal that will fuel an (I hope) equally productive afternoon.

Egg salad

I never ate egg salad when I was growing up. Not even once. No one ever offered me any, and I’m sure if they had, I would have declined with disgust.

Even after I emerged from my egg-hating phase, I had no interest, although by then plenty of opportunity. Aside from its starring role in grade-school lunches, egg salad is a perennially popular sandwich filling at the ubiquitous English sandwich shop (under the name egg mayonnaise) where, adoring mayonnaise as they do, a sandwich filling has never yet been found that they didn’t believe couldn’t be enhanced by the addition of copious amounts of butter or mayonnaise. Possibly both. (How about on hummus with roasted vegetables? I kid you not.)

Needless complication

The other night, someone I follow on Facebook posted a query: “Anyone have an easy carbonara recipe?”

I thought, “Huh? Easy carbonara recipes? Is there such a thing as a difficult recipe for spaghetti carbonara?....I’ll just post a link to my recipe….um….”

At which point I remembered that I’ve never posted about spaghetti carbonara. Possibly the dish I make most regularly. The one that DP requests for every last meal before he goes away, and every first meal when he gets back. The one he requests so often, in fact, that when I say, “What should I make for dinner for X?” I now immediately follow it with, “…and don’t say carbonara!” He would be completely on board with Calvin Trillin’s campaign to have it replace turkey as the national dish for Thanksgiving.

Deviled eggs

When I was growing up, I had to eat an egg for breakfast every day. Every. Single. Day. Seven days a week. For approximately 17 years.

(I’m not sure exactly when I started, but I vividly remember staging a revolt on my 18th birthday, as had all my sisters before me. Because I was still in high school, my mother and I struck a deal, cutting eggs for breakfast to three a week until graduation, at which point I swore off them entirely for I forget how long, but until at least sometime in my mid-20s.)

(I think I’ve mentioned before about my mother’s, um, inflexible meal schedule?)

Kitchen perspective

When I started getting seriously interested in cooking, ten years ago or more, I remember my early encounters with the “authoritarian” style of cookbook writing. You know the type: when the author states that you must make the recipe using exactly these ingredients (preferably in season, locally sourced, and organic) and exactly this method, or else a hole will open up in the space-time continuum and all humanity will be doomed.

Okay, I might have exaggerated that last part a little bit. But you get my drift.

I remember reading these treatises and getting panicky—and embarrassed, if I had already made the dish in question and done some part of it “incorrectly.” As if the Kitchen Police were even now on their way to come and get me. (Apple crumble in summer?! To the dungeons!)

Recently I came across one of these opinionated tomes and, leafing through it, was slightly surprised to find myself not only not getting flustered, but mentally rolling my eyes at page after page of personal experience and opinion presented as kitchen dogma.

Either I’m getting more confident as I get older, or more impatient. Maybe both.

Because here’s the thing: life isn’t like that, and cooking certainly isn’t like that. Rigid rules and systems are all very well, but the fact is they only give the illusion of control. Reality, in the kitchen and out, is dictated by the amount of time, energy, money, and space that people have available to do the things they need and want to do. And sometimes, no matter how much you plan and prepare, things go wrong. You don’t know why. It doesn’t matter how much you have or how much you know. And you can’t do anything about it. You just have to roll with whatever sucker punch the universe has decided to give you.

And in the kitchen, what matters, in the end, is taking the trouble to make good, nutritious, tasty food—for ourselves and other people—and remembering how lucky we are to have the wherewithal to do so.

Reluctant baked egg puff
Adapted from The Best American Recipes 2002-2003
Aka my most recent kitchen fail. I’ve made this recipe numerous times; the other night I prepared and baked it as usual. I took it out after what I thought was enough time, and put a knife into the middle to test it. The knife came out clean (in three places!), so I left it out. When I tried to cut it five minutes later, a large puddle of uncooked egg oozed out, and back into the oven it went. In the end, it took almost an hour to cook. Why did this happen? Is it my crappy oven? The dish I cooked it in? Who knows? Even with years of cooking experience, sometimes things still happen that mystify me. And in the end, even though it was ready 25 minutes after everything else, it was still good.

¼ cup plus 2 Tbsp all-purpose/plain flour
1 tsp salt
¾ tsp baking powder
9 large eggs
3 Tbsp butter, melted
1½ cups cheddar cheese, grated
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 cup pecorino romano, grated
3 scallions, chopped
½ cup salami, chopped

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C. Butter a pie dish or similar. Measure first three ingredients into a small bowl; whisk to combine, then set aside.

Beat eggs in a large bowl until doubled in size (this will take 3-5 minutes, depending on your mixer). Add dry ingredients, butter, and cheeses and continue to mix until combined. Fold in the scallions and salami, then pour into baking dish.

Bake until golden brown on top and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean (make sure to double—or quintuple—check this). The recipe suggests 30-35 minutes, but it may take longer. Let stand for a few minutes before slicing, if you can.

Serves 6.


Dedicated to the memories of J. and M., who I never got the chance to meet.

Breakfast BBQ

It takes the Australian mind to bring together two great Australian traditions: the barbeque and the full cooked breakfast. Eggs, bacon, sausage, plus a vegetable medley: tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers, and onions (the last two contributed to the mix by yours truly--not traditional). Sourdough toast on the side (the only thing not cooked on the grill).

Simple, yet brilliant. And delicious. I'll be copying it on my own grill at the first opportunity. I think you should too.

Pack rat

This recipe is the best reason I can think of for never getting rid of a cookbook ever.*

I bought How to be a Domestic Goddess more than seven years ago. At the time, I had a job that required me to travel an average of two weeks out of every four, and that was when my cookbook collection (not to say problem) really started. I had just moved back to the US, but was often either in the UK on these trips, or else passing through en route to somewhere else. I started picking up cookbooks here and there, reading them as though they were novels as a way to assuage my homesickness and mitigate night after night of eating alone in restaurants. This was one of the first ones I bought, and for me it exemplifies what Laurie Colwin said about cookbooks: that they are distillations of domestic life at a particular place and time. And very comforting at a time when domesticity of any kind was in short supply.

Even though I’ve pored over this cookbook numerous times over the years, I’m not sure I had ever cooked a single thing from it before this month. But I’ve been wanting to make this recipe ever since the first time I cracked the spine; in fact, as soon as I chose it for the Cookbook Challenge, I thought, “Now I’m finally going to make that bacon and egg pie.”

* In the mental health field, this is known as rationalization—finding post hoc reasons to justify otherwise inexplicable actions.


NL's Boxing Day Egg-and-Bacon Pie
So called because it is NL's preferred Boxing Day supper; obviously you don't have to wait until then to make it. I fiddled with the filling proportions, as the original recipe was practically all bacon and hardly any egg. It was delicious like this, but next time I make it, I might lower the bacon by another 100g and add yet another egg.

Pastry
I used this recipe for Anxiety-Free Piecrust; or substitute your own favorite

Filling
400g/1lb (streaky) bacon, cut into thin strips
1 medium onion, chopped
Freshly ground black pepper
1 scallion, chopped
2 Tbsp chopped basil**
3 large eggs

Make the pastry ahead of time, so it’s had time to rest by the time you are ready to put the pie together.

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F.

Fry the bacon and onion together, seasoning liberally with pepper. Mix the remaining ingredients together thoroughly and set aside.

Roll out both halves of the pastry dough to fit your pie dish of choice; line the dish with one, and set the other aside. Dump the bacon and onions into the pie shell, then pour over the egg mixture. Cover with the pastry lid, trim both, and fold over and pinch the overhang to seal the pie. Cut steam vents in the top and bake for 30 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack. NL recommends serving it cold or about room temperature, but we ate it hot and it was good that way too.

Serves 6.

** The original recipe called for parsley, but I’m not a big parsley fan and I never have any on hand. I do, however, have three basil plants on my balcony.