breakfast blogger

Dim Sum is a numbers game. Two people can’t really accomplish anything, and nine people can’t fit at one table. Most Dim Sum dishes are comprised of 4 items - usually dumplings - which would make a party of five an awkward experience. A part of four is a delicate situation and would only succeed if all four members were to eat the same meal, which works against the real purpose of the Dim Sum experience. I suppose the ideal number might be somewhere between 6 and 8.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because I’ve been trying to get people together to go for Dim Sum. I’ve been slowly scouting out my friends, and even friends of my friends, to see who would be up for a Sunday Dim Sum excursion. It was pretty slow going at the start, but the momentum seemed to have caught fire last week when all of a sudden I had enough people interested. I set the date for the next Sunday and put the word on the street. Before I could decide between Ruby Rouge and Kam Fung, I had about nine people interested. Uh oh . . . too many. Will even more rsvp? Will we have to split into two tables? Will I get stuck at the mostly vegetarian unadventurous table? This can’t be happening…not to me…

I decided to just relax and ride it out, and sure enough, by the time Sunday rolled around we had enough cancellations, hangovers, illnesses, and dental surgery victims to narrow the party down to six - the magic number. We all met at 11:30am at Kam Fung, which has moved into the 2nd floor of a mostly Asian shopping center in Chinatown. I say “mostly Asian” because there is one non-Asian space in the mall: the Romanian consulate. I wonder if Romanians have a thing for Chinese food, or maybe it’s just a coincidence and those Romanian delegates are sick of Asian food. Food for thought, literally.

Our party was comprised of myself, my Very Special Ladyfriend, the brothers Bertrand (an architect and a film sound editor), a friend who was a welcome last-minute addition to the party, and a surprise re-entry: the dental surgery victim. We had to wait approximately 15 minutes, with about 50 other people, until our number was called. The hostess, a middle-aged Asian woman, would bark out the numbers as the tables became available - on an extremely loud sound system, which is not what you want to hear on a Sunday morning. Here is what it looked like from the hallway:

Because of the ear-shattering volume of the sound system and the thick Cantonese accent of the hostess, it was almost impossible to hear exactly what numbers she was calling. Luckily, the brothers Bertrand had lately been reaching themselves Cantonese, but even they had trouble hearing the numbers. To be honest, because the speakers were of questionable quality and the volume so high, the sound was so badly distorted that it was difficult to tell if the numbers were being called in English or Cantonese.

Here is what we had:

Vegetarian spring roll
Shrimp/pork dumpling and Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce
Sticky rice
Shrimp, pork & Chinese chive dumpling
Pork, nappa and ginger juice dumpling
Seaweed roll with shrimp and crab
Seafood dumpling with mayonnaise
Vegetarian treasure bowl
Rice noodle roll with shrimp
Crab claw stuffed with shrimp
Fried squid

It went unspoken, but at this point I am pretty sure we all had had enough. That egg tart up there symbolized, in my mind, that this meal was over. In fact, I’m pretty sure the words “Dim Sum” translate as little morsels or light snack - but we had crossed that line a while ago.

Although I should admit that I, and quite possibly the brothers Bertrand, may have been trying to decide if the meal was over, or were we just taking a break? That’s when we decided to finish off what was left on the table. And that is also when, mysteriously, more plates of food were suddenly appearing. I don’t know who ordered them, but there they were.

Hot water chestnut squares
I have no ideaSesame balls with lotus pasteCoconut pudding

Here is the aftermath

And the money shot:

There were so many dishes that whizzed by so quickly that looked so delicious, or so weird, that I think Dim Sum will become a long-term commitment. I will try to have a Dim Sum Excursion once a month, and I will try to find more Dim Sum locations in Montreal. I already know about Kam Fund and Ruby Rouge, and I have heard talk of a large Dim Sum place on the south shore, which may be my next pick - if I can convince 4 other people to pile into my car and roam up and down Taschereau blvd looking for Dim Sum.

On our way home, which my VSL and I decided would best be accomplished by walking, we were saddened to see that the big Chinese grocery store on the northwest corner of St- Lawrence and de la Gauchetiere had burned down the previous day - it was still steaming. I used to shop there, picking up barbecued pork, duck, bok choy, frozen dumplings, and sweet packs of Pocky chocolate-covered pretzel sticks that I will sorely miss.

I hope they rebuild.

This weekend we cooked up a real Jewish Montreal Breakfast.

Of course, when I use the term “Jewish Montreal”, I really mean to say ‘Hypocrydox’, which is the type of Judiasm that I, and most Montreal Jews, and quite possibly most North American Jews, tend to practice. We celebrate Hannukah by eating latkes and lighting candles for eight nights (except for when we go for Chinese food - another Jewish favorite), but we also happen to put cheese into our omeletes that may or may not contain salami. Of course, to make up for this transgression, we fast on Yom Kippur and are absolved for all of our sins - a lovely tradition.

I started out by sautéeing some diced onions until they were soft and transluscent, and then adding some boiled potatoes. Luckily, I had both of the diced onions and some boiled potatoes leftover from my turkey-pot-pie session the previous night, which I will eventually post on a website that is not fascistly breakfast-centric.

I then diced up some kosher salami. I am using the ‘Hebrew National’ brand of salami, which incidentally, is not kosher in Montreal. It is kosher in New York, as far as I know, and even in a few other places, but not in Montreal. This particular brand of salami, which I judiciously selected due to the fact that it was the only salami in my parents refrigerator when I raided it a few days earlier, is not certified by the Montreal Vad, which is the organization that charges exorbitant fees for kosher certification in the Montreal area. Fortunately, being a Hypocrydox Jew, I am allowed to eat this type of salami and still have the honor and privilege of being inscribed, and sealed, in the book of a happy life after abstaining from food for 25 hours every October.

While the salami is blissfully frying, and consequently secreting beef fat into my onions and potatoes, I crack and beat a few eggs. I like to use 5 eggs for a two person scramble to guarantee that each of us ends up with at least 2 whole eggs on our plates.

Once the salami bits are nicely browned on the edges, I pour in the eggs, which I have not slated due to the fact that thew salami has quite a bit of salt in it - I will salt to taste at table.

Let it sit for about 30-45 seconds, to let the egg start cooking. Once the egg mixture has begun to set, I start mixing it with a wooden spoon or some other such utensil. I’m sure even a pencil will do the trick. At some point, I added a heap of grated Parmeggiano-Reggiano.

I toasted our toast, challah - also part of the bounty from my raid on the family kitchen- and sliced up some greenhouse cherry tomatoes. I am trying to eat as locally as possible, so I am abstaining from buying tomatoes from California or Mexico or Pluto - have they started farming that yet? Maybe that’s why it lost its’ status as a planet….

Last year I didn’t buy any tomatoes in the winter as I was so endeared to the ones I grew myslef, as well as the ones that arrived in my weekly organic vegetable basket from La Ferme Cadet-Roussel. This year I already miss tomatoes so much that I will try the greeenhouse varieties, but I know I will be dissatisfied. You can’t have it all.

Now you see it:

Now you don’t:

Not every Breakfast Blogger breakfast is laden with Hollandaise sauce, nor do I start each day with a side order of bacon. I do try to lead a healthy lifestyle and should include those sometimes insipiring and greaseless meals in this blog.

That said, when I was in Toronto a couple of weeks ago to celebrate Hannukah with the family and friends of my VSL, I was given a few grapefruits from my VSL’s mother, who got them from her husband’s brother, who had just returned from Florida, the sunshine state.

I used my special grapefruit knife, which has a curved blade specially designed to carve out each grapefruit segment. Once this task is accomplished, i could enjoy each goegeous bite of grapefruit as an explosion of juice and pulp, minus the bitter, membranous walls which wereleft behind in the skin of the fruit. This is truly the best way to eat grapefruit.

I love the wake-up effect of the sweet/acid combination that just shouts at your palate, “W A K E U P , R I G H T N O W ! ! ! “.

Here is my bowl of grapefruit pieces, ready to eat:

And, after finishing the bowl, I love to squeeze the rind for all it’s worth and then drink a glassful of pure grapefruit juice. I was so excited that I forgot to take a photo of the juice. Sorry.

A few days after my wedding I was in Montreal with my new wife.. and we tried out La grand-mère poule at 2500 Beaubien East.

Since I’m not in Montreal too often these days, when I saw the Saint Viateur on the menu, I couldn’t help myself. From the menu: “2 oeufs pochés et bacon sur bagel, nappés de sauce hollandaise ou carbonara”

In other words, 2 eggs poached eggs on Saint Viateur bagel halves with bacon, covered in either hollandaise or carbonara sauce. It comes with hot sugared apple slices and fresh fruit with fried grated potatoes. Oh my:

Super Yummy. $9.95

Saint Viateur makes the best bagels in the world and I was a lucky boy to have lived a block away from there for a few years.

Feel free to comment if you think otherwise.

I didn’t go to Ikea with the sole intention of eating breakfast, but I had noticed over the last few months, while occasionally browsing the Ikea website, that they served breakfast for $1 until 11am. Even though I am generally against advertising, I guess some forms of marketing are actually effective.

One morning this week, with some errands to run, my Very Special Ladyfriend and I were being particularly slow in getting our day into gear. I remembered the $1 Ikea breakfast, re-checked their website to confirm the fact, and then used that information as incentive to get us dressed and out of the mansion well before 11am.

The Ikea restaurant is actually not a restaurant, but a cafeteria. I expected no more than that, as most department store eateries are/were cafeterias. The cafeteria setup allows the consumer to get food exactly when they want it, and it also keeps costs and prices to a minimum. This being said, the Montreal Ikea cafeteria needs some work. As we approached the food counter, the counterperson quickly assembled 2 breakfast plates, as per the website advertisement: Scrambled eggs, home fries, 2 sausages, and a croissant. It looked exactly like the photo from the website, but without the parsley.

In our rush to get out of the mansion and into our limo, I forgot my camera, so this will be the only photo you’ll see in this post. As I grabbed our plates, I thought it strange that next to the warm bins of eggs and sausages there was also a bin of bacon and possibly some other breakfast food. I quickly scanned the wall-menu and could find no mention of any breakfast items, and the counterperson had already walked away before we took our plates, so I never got the chance to ask if I could get bacon instead of sausage or what other items were available.

Our 2 breakfast plates plus a bottled of orange juice - from concentrate (ech) - totalled about $3.45. Now that’s a deal. We found an empty table and sat down to dig in. I don’t know how cafeterias make their scrambled eggs, but these seemed puffed with air, which resulted in a texture-less, tasteless dish. The sausages were highly nitrated, similar to the sausage in a McDonald’s Egg McMuffin, but tasting a little worse. The croissant was not a real croissant, but something that was clearly manufactured, flash-frozen, shipped, defrosted and then baked. It was about half the size of a real croissant, and did not break into spirally strands like a real croissant would.

I guess we got what we paid for, and at least it got us out of the mansion.

I am ashamed to admit that I’ve never eaten at ‘La Binerie’. This legendary Quebecois lunch counter has been serving pate chinois, tortiere, and their signature feves-aux-lard since, well, way before I can find out on the first 2 pages of a Google search.

I finally decided to seal the deal one sunny Sunday morning, so I called up my friend Paulie. 30 minutes later me and my ladyfriend and Paulie were on our bicycles, pedaling southwards, towards the stretch of Mont-Royal between St-Lawrence and St-Denis where I knew my fate awaited.

La Binerie is a place I had heard about my entire life. It is the Francophone ‘Cosmo’s’. Movie stars and hockey players eat there, and they happily sit at the little counter sandwiched between octogenarian social-security collectors and off-duty police officers. I was excited. Until I tried to open the door.

AAGGHHH!!!!!!

Defeat! Vacation?!?! Of course! Everything around here is closed the last 2 weeks of July for what we call the “construction holiday”. Everyone, from blue-collar labourers to wealthy textile merchants, takes off to the sunny shores of Maine to swim in the ocean and eat lobster and fudge all day. Hmm . . . maybe these guys are setting up a temporary breakfast counter on the beach in Wells or Ogunquit? My eyes begin to tear at the thought of their beans ‘n’ lard - with molasses poured freely over them.

Okay . . . okay . . . think . . .I still have to eat . . . I can’t hold a hunger strike for 2 weeks . . . or can I? . . .no . . . ladyfriend suggests a place she used to frequent . . .called ‘Anecdote’ . . .we can try that . . . so we bike a few blocks east to the corner of and enter

Nice. so far, even though I am still reeling from the fact that La binerie has eluded me, I am relieved to see that Anecdote looks pretty cool.

We sit down. Coffee is served. Paulie orders tea. We open the menu to see what brunchly fate is in store for our bean-deprived hungry bellies, and that’s when we see it:

Crap! Foiled again! Maybe the hunger strike wasn’t so far-fetched.
Okay . . .okay . . .still. . . must eat . . . I suggest biking all the way to NDG to eat at Cosmo’s . .but it is getting late - past noon -so we solemnly bike towards the corner of where I know there to be a family-owned restaurant that I think serves all-day breakfast.

But, as fate would have it, we are too late.

At this point I am weak with hunger. I consider eating my bicycle seat. Just then, Paulie, who has disappeared from sight, calls out that he found a place directly across from where we were fading away.

Rapido.

It is open.

It serves breakfast A L L D A Y .

I thank god, Jehovah, Allah, and Calvin Trillin. I think about Vishnu, but wasn’t he kinda skinny?

We order omelettes and over-easies with sausages:

The toast was thick, the sausages were great, and the potatoes were better.
We didn’t know if the food tasted delicious because of how hungry we were and how far we had come, but we didn’t care.

We were eating breakfast. Hallelujah.

I didn’t even scold Paulie for not finishing his fruit for the money shot.

Soon, when I have regained my strength and my will, I will try to visit La Binerie.

Pray for me.

I sometimes wish that I spent a little less time eating (not really) and a little more time thinking of a great name for today’s entry. This sandwich deserves a really great name, and that really great name would look particularly fantastic up there in that marquee space….

…but, alas, I spent my time cooking and eating.

So, for now, I have settled on:

“The Challah-French Toast-Peanut Butter-Banana Sandwich, with Maple Syrup”.

Not bad, but a little long. For a short time I considered omitting the segment “with Maple Syrup” that seems haphazardly tagged onto the end of the name, but once I looked at the truncated version I was struck with nervous visions of some poor shmo making this incredible breakfast and then topping it with something like jelly, or even worse - breakfast syrup. It seemed like listening to a well-composed and executed piece of classical music, but then switching off the stereo just before the coda is heard.

That being said, and after letting you glimpse at that marvelously delicious photo, here is the recipe for “The Challah-French Toast-Peanut Butter-Banana Sandwich, with Maple Syrup”. I figure if I say it a few times it will begin to roll off the tongue. Here it is once again: “The Challah-French Toast-Peanut Butter-Banana Sandwich, with Maple Syrup”.

For each sandwich, you will need:
-Challah. I usually use thick slices from a loaf, but as I am demonstrating, rolls are perfectly acceptable. The rolls I am using for this recipe are what I consider to be the best challah rolls in Montreal, baked at Fresser’s on Decarie. Note: the best results will be achieved if you buy your Challah unsliced from a bakery and then slice the bread yourself, allowing for very thick slices.

- 1-2 eggs
- 1 banana
- peanut butter
- maple syrup

Let us begin:

Beat the eggs in a bowl, adding about a tablespoon or so of milk, if you’ve got some laying about). Slice your challah, or in this case, cut your rolls in half. NOTE: This sandwich can be made open-face or closed - depending on your preference. Adjust recipe if closed face.
Melt some butter in a pan, or on your flat-top, and soak the challah in the egg mixture. When hot, lay the challah on the cooking surface and cook until brown, then flip and repeat.

While your challah is Frenching - if I may be so bold as to liberally transform ‘French Toast’ into a verb - slice your banana lengthwise.

Once your French toast is ready, remove from heat and spread on a thick layer of peanut butter, then add slices of banana (If you are making this a closed-faced affair, here is where you would add your 2nd slice of bread, or challah-roll top.)

Most importantly, add maple syrup..

Here is the finished product:

And here is what may also be considered the ‘finished’ product.

My dad used to make these when I was a kid, and now I make them all the time.

Some Ontarians, and other non-Montrealers, call them “egg-in-the-hole”, but that usually refers to a slice of white sandwich bread with a hole torn out. That is wrong.

A bagel is lovingly hand-rolled, boiled in water and honey, and then slowly smoked over real hardwood.
This particluar sesame-seed bagel is from the St-Viateur Bagel Shop, about a block-and-a-half from my home. I like to keep things local, and consider myself very lucky to live in a vortex of such concentrated gastronomic resources. More about that another time. . .

So, to make your Bagelette, you will need your bagel, which you see I already have. You will also need 2 eggs per bagel, and some butter. NOTE: It is preferable to have an ample, and flat, cooking surface that can accommodate your bagel, or bagels. I am using the same cast-iron flat-top that my father used before me. It seems like it was hand-crafted specifically for making 2 bagelettes. Be careful, as a small frying pan will not easily fit 2 bagel halves, sitting flatly, which is essential to the egg cooking properly in the cavity of the bagel.

Today I will skip ahead to intermediate cooking levels and get a little fancy by adding some parmeggiano reggiano, grated onto the bagelette.If you are still in cooking 101, or don’t spend any time with food snobs, or more specifically, cheese snobs, Parmeggiano Reggiano is Italian for “very, very good parmesan cheese”.

Here is a shot of the almost fully-cooked bagelettes.The recipe is fairly simple:

-Cut your bagel
-heat up your pan, or skillet, or flat-top, and melt some butter
-put your bagel halves on the hot surface and drop an egg into the center of each
-when you feel it is time, flip
-enjoy

Throughout the history of the bagelette, there has been some heated arguments as to which side of the bagel to start your cooking. Some more conservative cooks prefer the flat (cut side) side face-down to start, thus not allowing any egg to escape the confines of the bagel. Some more liberal-minded folk swear by beginning their bagelettes with the natural, bumpy side face down, to allow for a greater cooking surface for the egg. There is also the rare cross-section of society that has no political affiliations whatsoever - these people tend to cook their bagelettes with each half facing a different direction. I believe the term ‘I swing both ways’ was originated from this group of bagelette eaters.

Personally, I find both techiques to be equally satisfying.

Behold:The goal, if there were a goal other than eating, is to cook the bagelette so the yolk is still runny, thus allowing the eater to mop up some yolk with each bite of bagel.An added treat is the little bits of fried cheese that may have ‘accidentally’ not landed directly on the bagel during the cooking process. Here is an example of such a casualty: As sad as I was for this poor scrap of cheese, I forced myself to eat it.

And, of course, the money shot. .

I had to cash a Western Union money order the other day, so I drove around until I saw a Western Union sign in a shop window. The shop happened to be a neighbourhood Filipino restaurant.

I decided to get some take-out lunch - rice with goat stew, and noticed some pretty big eggs on the counter, some of which were painted bright pink. I asked about them and decided on the pink ones - the others were “Balut‘ - basically a fertilized duck egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside that is boiled and eaten in the shell. Too much for me to handle just yet.

The pink eggs were Itlog na maalat/Itlog na Pula - Duck eggs that are hard boiled, then cured in warm brine. Their shells are often dyed with red food coloring to distinguish them from chicken eggs. I thought the size was a pretty good hint - but the pink was nice - they reminded me of Greek Easter Eggs.

The next morning - a lazy, rainy, Saturday, we decided to try them. We toasted some whole-wheat pitas and cut up some tomato slices, and peeled the eggs.

I laid the food out on plates and served them up. After 1 bite, my girlfriend thought the consistency a little too weird and very salty - so I ate both. I’ll admit, they weren’t delicious, but edible.

My girlfriend opted for freshly-pressed organic peanut butter and New Zealand Macadamia honey on her pita- it looked amazing but I stuck to my guns.

The honey was sent by an acqaintance of a friend, straight from New Zealand, and is some of the best honey I have ever had in my life. Honey is a new category of food for me now that I know such things exist - I also have a jar of Tasmanian Leatherwood honey that is also deliciously spicey in its’ own right.

So much for Filipino breakfast - although I doubt these duck eggs were intended for the first meal of the day, and also for eating straight up like we attempted. I will do the proper research and give these eggs a fair shot, and then maybe try the duck embryos…but after seeing those photos I’ve been having second thoughts. . . .

A Montreal Classic. You can find this place on Laurier Avenue, 1 block west of St-Denis.

As the sign states, Chez Claudette serves breakfast “toute la journee”. They also serve ‘cuisine familiale’ - this means tortiere, shepherd’s pie, meat loaf, etc….
They also offer the unique choice of paying a little extra to transform your breakfast potatoes into a poutine. The beautiful thing here is that they still use the breakfast home fries for the ‘pout.

Here is some shots of the menu.

I ordered an orange/banana juice. Fresh.

After that, I ordered the ‘regulier’ with sausage and brown toast -and of course the poutine option.

This was delicious:

My lovely ladyfriend had the ‘regulier’ with bacon - no poutine, but I think she secretly regretted this error as she kept poking her fork into my poutine bowl.

All in all, a great Montreal breakfast experience. I hadn’t been here in a while, but Claudette is back in my little black book, and I will call on her regularly.