Best Meal of the Day
I have always loved breakfast. When people tell me they don't really eat it, I'm baffled. How can they pass up the chance at fare like pecan waffles, blueberry pancakes, Greek yogurt with honey and walnuts? Not to mention the savory stuff--oh, sweet fancy Moses, how I miss New York bagels with lox and cream cheese! Even something as simple as cream of wheat with brown sugar or steel-cut Irish oatmeal with golden raisins and bananas can be wonderful. I could never pick a favorite breakfast food, but there's one advantage eggs have over every other choice--Stinger makes them.
Stinger is the undisputed King of the Egg at our house. And he worked hard to earn that title. He doesn't just scramble the eggs--he delicately whisks them with butter, salt, and pepper over very low heat until they form soft, silky curds. You need a spoon to eat them. He spent hours watching and rewatching Julia Child's show on omelettes, perfecting his technique. Now, we have perfect French omelettes, beautiful, thin envelopes of barely cooked egg around fillings like sauteed spinach and mushrooms with scallions or diced ham and gruyere. Even fried eggs, that specialty of short-order cooks everywhere, gets the royal treatment in our kitchen. Stinger consulted Fernand Point and now his process for preparing eggs sunnyside up involves gently cooking the egg on one side until the white is just opaque, then pouring hot melted butter over the top to set it. And I'm here to tell you, old Fernand knew what he was talking about--the results are like no diner egg you've ever had. We like to serve them on buttered toast; in the pic above, it's this fabulous seed bread a friend of ours baked. Yum!
So what's your favorite breakfast dish, and who in your family is the master of it?
