breakfast blogger

We made some soft-boiled eggs a while back . . . I had almost forgotten how good they can be.

I don’t think I had my first soft-boiled egg until I was well into my twenties, but it was definitely worth the wait. I grew up in a traditonal Jewish Montreal home with some finicky parents, who were not boring, but they were set in their ways. Even though we had no soft-boiled eggs, no poached eggs, or even any real omelets, we had some great scrambles - salami and eggs being my all-time childhood favourite. I am now glad my parents were such finicky eaters, because it has left me such a wide range of foods to discover in my adulthood.

We get our eggs from a farm just outside of Montreal, as I try not to buy industrially produced eggs anymore: Chickens are animals - not machines. When I am out of eggs before farm day, I will go to the Jean-Talon market and buy eggs from an old guy who says he has “organic” eggs which are not certified - I haven’t yet fully investigated his claims, but I plan to. If I am too lazy to go al the way to the market, I often pick up some Burnbrae Farms “Free run” eggs at our neighborhood grocery store.

Whenever I make soft-boiled eggs, I always use my ‘egg timer’, which I never really trust. It’s a fiberglass dome, shaped like half-an-egg, and you are supposed put it into the water when it is still cold and then start cooking your eggs. When the red color fades to the desired level of doneness, you take the eggs out. I don’t normally use these types of gadgets, but this one was a gift, so I use it, with a certain amount of distrust.

I always take my eggs out of the refrigerator as far in advance as possible, which is usually once we have decided that we want soft-boiled eggs. This is hopefully about 30 minutes before cooking, as I don’t want to shock the eggs and have them crack in the hot water. I fill a pot with water, add the eggs and the egg-timer, and then put it on the stove set to “high”.

Once a boil has been reached, I immediately turn down the heat to medium-high to keep the boil as gentle as possible, and wait about 3 minutes. In my opinion, the size, quality, and age of the eggs are all factors which may affect the cooking time. How can this little plastic dome know anything about my eggs? It can’t!

This said, I usually cook my eggs about 3 minutes. I have a 75% success rate, but I am satisfied with my margin of error because I am usually cooking for my lady and myself, and I will gladly eat any undercooked eggs while my lady will happily eat any overcooked ones. This is one of the reaosn I love her.

The best part about soft-boiled eggs is this little egg circumsizer I got as a Christmas gift a few years back, from the same people who gave me the egg-timer. I found this a funny gift seeing as I am Jewish and I got an egg-moyle to celebrate the birth of baby Jesus.

We enjoyed these with kamut toast points and some hunks of cheese.

Yummy.

My Very Special Ladyfriend and I are on DAY 5 of a ten day cleanse where we will not eat any solid food. You can read more about it here. Two days before this questionable experiment began, we attended a lovely housewarming pancake breakfast at our friend Kate’s new pad.

I don’t like parties, especially loud ones where the guests outnumber the chairs. If I’m invited to a party that involves food, I always make my way to the kitchen to help out, thus avoiding long stretches of social contact with other humans. Especially ones who don’t obsess over food.

Kate and I got straight to work making batter - we had two types: buttermilk and buckwheat blueberry. Naturally, we used organic eggs and the best ingredients we could find. I ran three pans on Kate’s antique stove while she and some other friends prepared the toppings table. We had a great array of fresh fruits and other goodies, including maple syrup, honey, jam, ground almonds, yogurt, hazelnut spread, chestnut spread (my favourite), butter, etc . . .

We kept a couple of warming trays in the oven until we had a decent batch going and then we served ‘em up!

Here are some shots of people plates:

After sitting in the living room digesting all those pancakes, I thought I would stroll over to the kitchen and get a great money shot. I envisioned stacks of syrup-laden empty plates piling up near the sink, but was saddened to see that my Very Special Ladyfriend had washed and put away almost all the dishes! Durn it!

Because I do on occasion eat meals other than breakfast, and I do lean towards healthy, sustainable eating, I would like to let you know that I will be contributing to a blog called The Ethicurean.

My handle is Nosher of the North.

My first post was uploaded today - check it out!

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:

I am sad to report that Shopsin’s General Store, a restaurant that I and my VSL enjoyed a special brunch at while in New York in October, 2006, has closed its doors.

The Shopsin family is opening a sandwich stand in Essex Market, which of course is a great thing, but still, I am sad.

I am so happy that I got to eat there, although I still haven’t seen the movie.

I am going to put my Muddy Waters “King Bee” LP on the stereo and weep.

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.

Since my latkes turned out so well last year, I thought I should post this recipe BEFORE the holiday begins this year.

If you are an avid reader of the Breakfast Blogger, you may well recall that last year I made latkes for a Hannukah brunch held in Toronto, where the guests were the extended family of my Very Special Ladyfriend. It was a high pressure situation and I pulled through with flying colors - I didn’t burn down their kitchen AND the latkes turned out fabulously. I am going to Toronto in a couple of days and will probably make latkes once again. I decided to post this thread now so everyone can make latkes before Hannnukah instead of after, not that you can’t eat latkes all year round. . .

Hannukah starts this Friday evening, so light your Hannukiah before lighting the shabbes candles . . . .and then eat your latkes!

I learned to make latkes from my mother, and we both use the recipe from a local cookbook that most Montreal Jewish homes seem to have sitting on their cookbook shelf. It is called Second Helpings, from B’nai Brith Women Montreal, 1977 - edited by Norene Gilletz, but almost all latke recipes are just about the same, so any will do.

The last time I made latkes, I used:

6-8 potatoes (Yukon Gold potatoes are best)
2 onions
3 eggs
1 tbsp oil
1 tsp salt and some pepper
1/4 cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
oil for frying

You can multipily this recipe if you are feeding many people - I usually do. Also, feel free to add an extra onion if you like your latkes a little oniony, or omit an onion if you prefer your latkes bland. I usually adjust the recipe according to the size of the potatoes and onions that I am using.

Peel the potatoes into a big bowl of cold water, to avoid them turning brown.

Now you have to grate the potatoes. This should be done by hand, but can easily be done in a food processor. The important factor is the consistency. If grating by hand, I grate the potatoes using both the big and small sides of a box grater until I achieve a smooth consistency - just keep switching until it seems right. You don’t want to see too many big potato shreds, but you don’t want it to be a puree either.

If using a food processor, grate all the potatoes first with the grater blade, and then use the regular blade to puree a few handfuls and mix it back in until it looks right. Now grate the onion, either by hand or with the food processor.

Put the grated potatoes into a clean tea-towel (or cheesecloth) and wring it out until most of the water is gone. Then mix in everything else and you’ve got yourself some pretty decent latke batter.

Now set the stovetop to medium and heat up some oil in a frying pan. There should be enough oil to submerge the latkes halfway, so when you flip them, the other side will cook without burning the edges (too much oil) or leaving the middle raw (not enough oil). As you are cooking, you will have to add more oil every now and then as the latkes do absorb oil when they cook. It may not be the healthiest food in the world, but consider it a ‘mitzvah’ as it represents the miracle oil that burned for seven days. Hopefully your heartburn won’t last quite as long.

I usually use 2 or 3 (or even 4!) pans simultaneously, depending on how many latkes I am making - this time I used 2. Shape some of the mixture, about 1 tbsp or a small handful, into a ball and carefully place it into the pan and flatten it using a spatula.

Repeat until the pan is full - usually five or six latkes at a time. Let each latke fry until the underside is done and then flip it to do the other side. you can get a really good rhythm going so you are always adding, flipping, or removing, without too much worry or hurry.

Put a baking sheet in the oven on the lowest setting (warm). As each latkes is ready, place it onto a plate lined with paper towels to soak up the extra fat and then place the latke in the oven to keep warm.
Keep doing this until all the mixture has been used.

I made about 50 latkes.

Here is what one plate of latkes looked like:

We served them with apple sauce and sour cream.

I hope your latkes turn out great. Please let me know . . .

In my travels, although I do enjoy and appreciate the hospitality of friends and family, I sometimes have the privilege of staying in nice hotels. Sometimes, perhaps about once a year, I get to stay at a really nice hotel. As part of a birthday gesture to my Very Special Ladyfriend, I arranged for us to stay at the Waldorf-Astoria - perhaps the most famous hotel in Manhattan, possibly in the world.

Their reputation is obviously top-notch, but after 100 or so years in operation, the service is most definitely beginning to show signs of slipping. After one reservations and communications mishap too many, the manager (impressive that a peon from Montreal should be granted an audience with the manager!) offered us free breakfast the next morning. Trying out my best Daniel Craig impersonation, I called his bet and raised.

“Sure. Breakfast, But, let’s make it ‘room service’”. To my surprise, he obliged.

Luckily, this converstaion took place whilst my VSL was soaking in the lush atmosphere of the Waldorf-Astoria lobby, which was filled to the gills with tuxedo-clad gentlemen and their wives about to attend one the many galas held each night in the ballroom. Eggsellent, a surprise for my honey.

That evening, we went to bed following a fabulous birthday dinner at Orchard. I will not divulge any details of that meal since it was not my first meal of the day - feel free to read a review of it here or wait for my new food website to hit the cyberworld in the coming days. We awoke at about 9am, and looked out our hotel-room window to discover that it was raining in Manhattan. The bad weather postponed, or even canceled, our plans to walk the streets of New York all day, window shopping, shopping, and eating. In lazy holiday moods, we switched on the television and watched a bad movie in bed, and then realized that we were very hungry. It was my VSL ’s birthday and she didn’t feel like getting up just yet, so I suggested that I quickly get dressed and run out in the rain to see if I could forage for breakfast in the streets of upper Manhattan. Of course, my VSL knew perfectly well that the only edibles within 3 blocks of the Waldorf would be street vendors grilling hot dogs or newsmen hawking candybars. Just as we were pontificating our sad situation, which was growing more desperate with each growl in our bellies, there was a knock at the door.

“Who could that be?” I moaned, hinting that it could perhaps be another misinformed Waldorf-Astoria representative trying to tell us that we had to switch rooms, or should be checking out, or maybe that a couple of New York’s finest were here to take us away. I growled, hesitantly donned my Waldorf-Astoria bathrobe, and made my way to the door.

Then, surprise, surprise, I wheeled a room service cart into the room and surprised the begeezuss out of my VSL.

Full breakfast decorated with white roses and fresh squeezed orange juice to boot! There was also a basket of breads and croissants, coffee, and an array of jams and preserves.

What could be under here . . .?

Scrambled eggs with sausage!

And it comes with such cute and luxurious accoutrements:Fresh butter pats with nothing less than the Waldor-Astoria seal of approval.Mini bottles of Heinz ketchup (yes, of course I took the unopened bottle home with me)Naturally, they have their own silverware. (No, I did not take this home with me)Croissant with marmalade: Absolutely delicious.

After eating our breakfast in our triple-sheeted king-size bed, I decided to check out the room-service menu to see what this feast would have cost us.
Whoa. Thiry-one US dollars. That is actually sixty-two dollars for two of us, plus tip. It was good, but not that good. The eggs were perfect and the potatoes were first-rate. The croissants were actually decent considering we were not in France or Montreal, and besides, we expected them to to below-par since they call them ‘crescents’ in the USA. The juice was fresh-squeezed, but the sausages were weird: Chewy with thick, rubbery skins kind of weird - and a little too much fake hickory chemical taste. They definitely have to work on the sausages.

Let’s see some other prices . . .who could have thought that a bowl of cereal would be US&8.50? Nine bucks for half a grapefruit?!? Oy.

Well, all in all, this was a great breakfast experience, but I highly doubt I would ever had done this if it were not offered with the full compliments of the lovely Waldorf-Astoria.

By the time we showered and dressed, the rain had stopped and we proceeded to have a lovely day of strolling in Manhattan. Straight to Zabar’s…

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.