Desayuno Típico: Typical Guatemalan Breakfast

Buenos días, How-We-Eaters! This installment of your favorite food blog is inspired by a recent trip to Guatemala. I spent two weeks there this past March, and I return with many fond memories and one great breakfast idea. Every eatery in this great country offers their own version of desayuno típico. Each is practically the same with a few minor changes. I will explain these options as I go, while I present to you my first attempt at being faithful to the concept.

Preparation:

OK, desayuno típico (literally, typical breakfast) is easy as hell. The hard part is assembling the proper ingredients. The basic version always has eggs (two, fried or scrambled), black refried beans, tortillas, delicious salty square cheese slices (like feta, but slightly softer and less crumbly), and fried plantains (with delicious liquidy sour cream sauce of mysterious origin). There is always some sort of fruit on the side, usually sliced melon. Most of these ingredients are easy enough to acquire at your local supermarket, but the cheese and the cream presented the biggest challenge. Last time I was in San Francisco, I visited a store in the South Bay that semmed to have everything I needed. I found a brick of cheese that had a promising-sounding Spanish name on it, and was the right shape and color (square and white). As for the cream, well, they had something there called “Mexican Table Cream” and I figured that might be a lucky guess. Well, the cheese was all wrong. It was hard in consistence and curd-like in flavor. Not bad, though! The table cream was a very poor choice. It was practically flavorless (in spite of containing “natural butter flavor”), and the ingredients were scary enough not to serve in mixed company. As I was preparing this meal for guests, I left the cream in the fridge. Fine breakfast guest Trevor indicated that perhaps the cream I was looking for was crema natural. This is Mexican-style sour cream, and his description of it sounded an awful lot like what I had in Guatemala. Thanks, Trev-Trev! Maybe next time.

Cooking:

Some tips for making this right! First, have Camille do the scramb. She’s good at it. For the plantains, no one else at the house had any good advice for how to appropach this. We cut the plantain into discs about 1/2″ thick, maybe thicker, and fried them on medium-high heat in a tablespoon of butter. They got blackened pretty fast and thus did not cook all the way through. They still tasted OK, but they weren’t as tender or sweet as I remember them. Lower heat, thinner slices, and more butter may be the key. And don’t forget the crema natural! For the frijoles refritos, you just need to heat them. This is easy. But make sure you get the Mexican kind and not some fancy organic Amy’s brand version. I can’t say for sure whether or not it makes a difference, but the Mexican kind is just fantastic, and it’s not worth the risk. Tortillas should be corn and always served hot. Spend a little extra on good tortillas, for I propose that they are the cornerstone of this breakfast. Cheese? I have no good advice here. As soon as I find out, you loyal readers will be the first to know. And side fruit of choice: avocado. It’s a big hit. The cold avo goes good with the hot eggs. Serve with good hot sauce. And don’t forget the bacon. Make sure it’s good bacon. Not so típico! (Or is it?)

-Sav

Cheeseburger Américain

Greetings, loyal How We Eaters! Today’s entry is inspired by the all-American classic: the cheeseburger (please ignore the German etymology). Please note that I am talking about cheeseburgers here, because no one eats hamburgers unless they forgot to buy cheese. It’s always worth the extra dollar or two, or whatever it costs, to put a slice of whatever cheese is available on a hamburger. I won’t discuss restaurant cheeseburgers here, except to say that they are well known to serve as an acute barometer for general food quality at a previously untested establishment. This blog serves as guidance for making cheeseburgers at home.

Preparation:

We start with the beef. It should be somewhere between 85-90% lean. Less than 85% will shrink your burger appreciably over heat and is thus uneconomical. Greater than 90% will not afford you the juicy quality of a home-cooked burger that is so very crucial to your gustatory enjoyment, for the juice is in the beef fat (pro-tip)! Burger calculus is as follows: ¼ lb. ground beef per 100 lbs. of consumer (click here for helpful Excel spreadsheet). Slap the ground beef into a metal or ceramic bowl and add three (and only three) ingredients: salt, pepper, and yellow mustard. If you start adding anything else, you’re making meatloaf. Shape the beef into discs and set aside.

For toppings, you will need tomatoes, red onions, and some sort of lettuce (I used arugula, but regular lettuce is just as good, if not better, for a burger). Bacon is a good choice, and worth the extra effort, but not necessary. Prepare all sliceables in advance and allow your fellow burger eaters the freedom to dress the burgers themselves. Ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise are the only spreadables you will need, and two out of three ain’t bad. For bread, only a kaiser roll will do. They are usually about 59 cents in a bulk bin at your local supermarket. The little burger buns in the bag can hardly handle my burger calculus.

Cooking:

There is literally only one acceptable way to make a burger at home. You must fire up the grill. Get it real hot and throw the burgers down. They really don’t need a whole lot of time. If it’s hot enough, you’ll get the outside nice and crispy and the inside will still be fresh and juicy. Anywhere between pink and grey is acceptable for color, but you just don’t want it to get dry. Put the cheese on top during the last minute of grilling. Cheddar (the sharper the better) or Swiss (imported) are acceptable. While you’re at it, this is a good time to toast the Kaisers, if you feel so inclined.

That’s it! Follow these simple directions and leave your food guests smiling!

-Sav

Special Wild Food Édition: Morels

Hello, friends! It is with great excitement and heartfelt joy that I bring to you this very special edition of How We Eat. Luck shined its shiny face down on me just the other day, as Meredith (my lovely hiking companion) and I set out on a chilly (and slightly snowy) afternoon jaunt in the Sierras (my backyard). We were just a’stroll-stroll-strollin’ along, when Meredith pointed out an interesting looking mushroom. I cannot even tell you precisely how far I jumped out of my damn boots as I discovered that this was no ordinary wierdo mushroom. Merra was pointing at a fantastic treat, popping right the hell out of the trail. A morel! The best kind of mushroom¹!! I was bouncing around like a little kid in a candy store. Where there’s one, there’s bound to be more, I declared. Sure enough, thanks mostly in part to Mer’s keen eye, I collected a total of 15 delicious morels.

Now, to be fair, I would nominate Paul to be King Mushroom Man of the Food Blog. He’s gone so far as to inoculate logs with fungus in the past (P: correct me if I’m wrong), and he’s done at least one mushroom hunt that I know of. I have personally never hunted mushrooms, yet I have been lucky enough to come across a few tasties while working in Alaska, including “chicken of the woods” fungus, which is a bright orange bracket fungus found on dead logs (bloggers: look forward to a special “flashback” edition of chicken-of-the-woods casserole at some point).

Anyways, on my way back down the mountain, I called Paul to get a hot recipe from a fellow food blogger, but he wasn’t taking any calls. Luckily, this wasn’t my first morel encounter, and I knew that these babies needed very little to achieve full-blown gustatorial enjoyment. In fact, they needed precisely one thing, and that thing is butter.

To prepare morels: Lay them out and slice them into halves or quarters along the length of the shroom. A few little bugs will crawl out onto the cutting board. Don’t freak out! This is normal when harvesting any wild (or for that matter cultivated) food. Mushrooms have more bugs than normal, perhaps, and they aren’t all easy to get rid of. Solution: Take the sliced morels and put then in salt water. Put them in the fridge for two hours or so, then remove them to a separate bowl.

To cook morels: Take about a quarter cup of butter (I used salted, but it hardly matters) and sizzle it up in the frying pan. Drop the mushrooms into the pan and fry them to desired doneness. I left a few on too long and they get hard and lose some of their delicious flavour. Try not to overcook them. They don’t need much time. Just keep an eye on them!! Let them cool down for about as long as you can stand it (about three seconds, if you’re me) then eat them.

To store morels: If your lovely hiking companion is Meredith, then you might have leftovers, because Meredith detests mushrooms, even the best kind, which is morels. There are several ways to store morels, and most of these methods are on the Internet². I happen to have a vacuum sealer from my salmon smoking days in Alaska. To vacuum-seal morels, dust them in a little flour, then place them on a cookie sheet and freeze them for a couple of hours. Take them out, and lay them out flat in a vacuum sealer bag. Seal it up. It’s just that easy. When mushroom-appreciating company comes by, just open the bag and fry them in butter. They are small pieces of mushroom, so it won’t matter that they’re frozen. Once they hit that hot butter, they’ll thaw real fast and fry up like a charm (I am told). I still have half a batch of morels in the freezer. Who wants to come over and try some?

-Sav

1: Actual fact
2: Best morel website on the Internet, I think. Has info on how to properly ID morels as well.

Aebelskivers are Danish Apple Pancakes!

(edit: aebelskivers are Danish, not Dutch. Thanks, loyal blog reader R.H.)

After an unusually long hiatus from food-blogging, I am pleased to present a very delectable breakfast item, perfect for you and your guests. A few years ago, my friend and I were browsing for kitchen supplies at a thrift store, when we came across a small, wild-looking cast iron pan containing seven equal-sized divots. “Ooh, an aebelskiver pan! You have to buy this,” said friend. Apparently, she had a good family recipe for aebelskivers, and the pan was cheap!

I had no idea what aebelskivers were when I first heard about them (so don’t feel bad about not knowing, loyal blog-reader). Aebelskivers (also spelled ableskivers, ebelskivers) are simply round, puffy pancakes filled with applesauce. Sounds nice, right? It is! Well three years ago, I bought this aebelskiver pan, and my friend made a batch of delicious aebelskivers for me. I washed the pan, put it away, and never considered using it again until last weekend. My current state of bold epicurean creativity combined with a rare wintertime guest inspired me to blow the dust off of Old Dimply for a second go-round.

Making aebelskivers is wicked easy, although I was initially somewhat intimidated. Aebelskiver batter is a lot like pancake batter, with some minor adjustments. Basically, it’s flour, baking powder, dash of salt, milk and eggs. But you have to separate the whites and yolks, and do something different for each. So you combine the flour (sifted), baking powder, and salt and mix it together. Then, dump milk and egg yolks into the whole mess and stir it. Easy! Then you have to beat the egg whites “stiffly” (which means “a lot”) and “fold” them into the batter! To fold in the baking sense means to take the frothy egg whites and gently mix them into the batter with a spatula. Presumably, this is for the effect of not killing the frothiness of the stiffly beaten egg whites, which may or may not add to the effect of a poofy pancake. Put Old Dimply on the stove top and set the heat to medium. Melt a tiny morsel of butter in each dimple. Drop a dollop of aebelskiver batter into each dimple and let it cook for about a minute. Add about 2 tablespoons of apple sauce into each dimple atop the batter, then cover it with another layer of batter. Each individual aebelskiver will cook evenly around the edges like magic. Once they are cooked (and thus loose in their dimples), scoop them out ever so gingerly and turn them upside down. After about another minute or two, the top-side will be cooked and these babies will be ready to go. My guest brought some homemade peach preserves, so we used this for a few aebelskivers and they came out awesomely. An aebelskiver with peach filling is technically called a perzikskiver.

Serve with syrup (and powdered sugar if you like). They are delicious! If anyone actually reads this blog, and they want the recipe, just comment below and ask for it. I don’t have it in front of me right now!

-Sav