End all, be all banana bread

It's not like I haven't made banana bread before—and I've tried my hand, too, at a unique Vietnamese (or Japanese) banana cake. But now that I've found this recipe, I'm not sure I'll ever go to a different one.

Not only does it bake up a wonderfully moist loaf of banana bread, the recipe is based on ingredients that I usually have on hand: oil, flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, vanilla extract. As long as I have bananas and enough eggs—and typically I do—I can whip up a loaf or two without having to leave the house. The only tricky ingredient is the crème fraîche, but I've subbed in plain yogurt, vanilla yogurt, or milk on different occasions and the banana bread still bakes up beautifully. Taking after my dad, I usually cut down the amount of sugar in the recipe, and a few extra bananas never seems to hurt the loaves any, either.

Instead of walnuts, I've been adding in toffee bits that I purchased from Vern's Toffee before I left Fort Collins. The broken almond toffee kind of melts into the crumb, lending an overall richness and nuttiness to the banana bread rather than asserting itself in large chunks. The bits make a fine topping for muffins, too.

Banana Bread
adapted from Flour Bakery
yields 2 loaves or 24 medium-sized muffins

3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs at room temperature for 30 minutes
2 1/3 cups sugar [I typically cut this down to 1 3/4 cups]
1 cup vegetable oil [I typically cut this down to 3/4 cup]
3 cups coarsely mashed very ripe bananas [6 large, or more]
1/4 cup crème fraîche [I sub in plain yogurt; if using sweetened vanilla yogurt, I cut down the sugar by another few teaspoons]
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/3 cups walnuts (4 ounces), toasted and chopped [or, 1 1/2 cups toffee bits, chocolate chips, etc.]

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour 2 (9- by 5- by 3-inch) metal loaf pans, or line several muffin tins with paper liners.

Sift together 3 1/4 cups flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt into a bowl.

Beat together eggs and sugar in bowl of electric mixer at medium-high speed until very thick and pale and mixture forms a ribbon when beater is lifted, about 10 minutes. Reduce speed to low and add oil in a slow stream, mixing, then mix in bananas, crème fraîche or yogurt, and vanilla. Remove bowl from mixer and fold in flour mixture and walnuts, toffee bits, or chocolate chips gently but thoroughly.

Divide batter between loaf pans, spreading evenly, and bake in middle of oven until golden brown and a wooden pick or skewer comes out clean, 1 to 1 1/4 hours. If baking as muffins, bake about 15–20 minutes.

Cool loaves (or muffins) in pans on a rack 10 minutes, then turn out onto rack. Turn right side up and cool completely.

CSA, Week Seven: Two doughs, four flatbreads

We've been getting herbs nearly every week in our CSA share, and even though I am splitting a single share with four other people, the big fresh bundles of dill, parsley, and cilantro were piling up in my refrigerator. I'd been storing them covered in a plastic bag with their cut stems submerged in a cup of water; while after a few weeks most had fared well, I was worried I wouldn't get around to using them before they rotted. I knew that adding a sprinkle of chopped dill or cilantro to dishes here and there wouldn't cut it. I started looking for recipes that would use up a lot at once, and that's where the idea of making herbed flatbreads came in.

My first experiment was to attempt a replication of the roasted garlic and parsley flatbread JL had served for our sockeye salmon feast, but since she hadn't posted a recipe for it on FoodMayhem, I was left to figure one out on my own.

Luckily, Colorado Review editor SG had recently given me a stack of old Cooking Light, Gourmet, and Bon Appetite magazines. While flipping through the August 2006 issue of Cooking Light I came upon a recipe for Bell Pepper Focaccia, and the base seemed good for what I was envisioning. I swapped out the bell pepper topping for mashed roasted garlic and finely chopped curly parsley, which I mixed together with olive oil and salt to form a loose paste; then I spread this paste over the risen focaccia dough and put it in the oven to bake for 28 minutes, as the Cooking Light recipe directed.

Unfortunately, 28 minutes was way too long. When I opened the oven door, I was dismayed to find dried-out herbs atop a tough, dark brown crust. It was far from the focaccia of my dreams, though the flavor of the roasted garlic and parsley tasted spot-on.

So I tried the focaccia again, this time with a topping of finely chopped cilantro and minced garlic, also mixed with olive oil and salt to form a loose paste. This time, I only baked the focaccia for fifteen minutes, and it was perfect. The slight sweetness of the fluffy dough combined with the cilantro, garlic, and salt was positively addictive. (Recipe at bottom!)

After that success I probably would have kept on going with focaccia, but then KS, who works at Cozzola's, bestowed upon me a large bag of leftover pizza dough. I wasn't sure how to work with the stuff so I just winged it: I rolled out the dough and topped it with layers of chopped up roasted cauliflower and broccoli (also from the CSA) and grated Monterey Jack cheese, then baked it in the oven at 400 degrees for about twenty minutes or half an hour. This combination proved delicious, but I should have let the dough rise for a bit before topping and baking—the crust was tough and almost cracker-like in the thinnest areas.

I wasn't going to try making another bread at that point, especially because I was leaving for NYC in just a few days, but then I realized I had a nearly full container of cottage cheese in the fridge that I had mixed with lemon juice and chopped CSA dill. (I'd done this with whipped cottage cheese before and had been delighted with its dip-like properties, but done with small-curd cottage cheese, the dip seemed to lose its charm. So I'd ignored it for a while.) I figured if I spread the mixture on top of pizza dough and baked it, it would be another decent flatbread of sorts and I'd want to scarf it down.

Unfortunately it didn't come out quite as I envisioned it, and the flavor was just okay. I ended up sticking most of it in the freezer, where it will probably languish some more. I'll have to work with this idea again.

As for other CSA recipes, I only made a few new things: a salad combining chopped cherry tomatoes and CSA fresh raw peas with lime juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper; and a minimalist version of my "very merry broccoli salad," meaning chopped up broccoli, a dressing of half mayonnaise and half nonfat plain yogurt, and a few spoonfuls of cranberry chutney.

Oh, and French breakfast radishes? I know it sounds weird, but they are delicious when eaten sliced up on top of pita chips (specifically the Stacy's brand, which I am addicted to). Something about the toasty, salty, hearty crunch of the pita chips paired with the spicy, fresh crispness of the radishes just really works for me.

As always, if you have any suggestions for veggie preparations, I'd love to hear them. Hope everyone is doing well with their CSA bounty!

Cilantro-Garlic Focaccia
by Soopling

Dough
1 package dry yeast (about 2.5 teaspoons)
1 cup warm water (100 degrees to 110 degrees)
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 3/4 cups all purpose flour, divided (about 12.5 ounces)

Topping
1 cup finely chopped cilantro (about 1 bundle)
4 cloves minced raw garlic
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 teaspoon salt

To prepare dough, dissolve yeast in warm water in a large bowl, followed by honey and salt. Stir until well blended. Stir in 2 1/2 cups flour to form a dough and turn out onto a floured surface. Knead about 10 minutes, or until smooth and elastic; as you knead, add enough of remaining 1/4 cup flour, 1 tablespoon at a time, to prevent dough from sticking to hands. The dough will still be a bit sticky when it's ready.

Place dough in a large bowl coated with oil, turning to coat top. Cover and let rise in a warm place free from drafts for about 45 minutes or until doubled in size. (It's done rising when an indentation remains in the dough after you've gently pressed a finger into it.) Punch dough down, and turn out onto an oiled jelly-roll pan or cookie sheet; press into an 10x8-inch rectangle. Cover and let rise 30 minutes or until doubled in size.

In the meanwhile, preheat oven to 400 degrees. Make the topping: mix the cilantro, garlic, olive oil, and salt together and let sit until dough is ready.

Uncover dough and make indentations in top of dough using your fingertips. Using a spoon or your fingers, evenly spread the cilantro topping over the dough.

Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or until loaf is golden brown around edges and sounds hollow when tapped.

Yield: 8 servings

Brought to you by the letter B: Blueberry Banana Bread

Hey! Remember my issue with flat baked goods? I have no idea how I achieved this one, but I managed to bake a loaf of banana-blueberry bread that rose up beautifully. I almost didn't want to cut into it, lest it should somehow deflate.

I used a recipe somewhat modified from Dozen Flour's, cutting down the sugar, adding more flour, adding some milk, using one less banana (because I only had two), and throwing in blueberries. As with the lemon-blueberry yogurt loaf, I also sprinkled pearl sugar on top, which I am liking more and more as a cake/muffin topping. It's pretty, it adds texture and sweetness, and it's not messy like frosting or powdered sugar. The sugar does lose some of its crunch as it gradually melts into the baked loaf and pulls moisture from the air, but that only happens after the cake has been around for a few days. If you're sharing this loaf with other people, the sugar melting won't be a problem.

Blueberry Banana Bread
by Soopling

1/2 cup salted butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs, at room temperature
2 bananas, very ripe and mashed or cut into chunks
1/2 cup skim milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup blueberries (you can increase this amount, but that was all I had)
1/4 cup pearl sugar (optional)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Butter and flour a 9-inch loaf pan.

Using an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl until the mixture is fluffy. Add the eggs, bananas, milk, and vanilla extract and mix until combined. It's okay if the batter is a little lumpy from the banana.

Whisk together the baking soda, salt, and flour in another bowl and then add to the wet batter. Mix on low speed, scraping the sides of the bowl as needed, until the dry ingredients are incorporated. Toss the blueberries in about a tablespoon of flour, and then gently fold them into the batter.

Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and sprinkle pearl sugar on top. Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 350 degrees and bake for another 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean.

Remove from pan and place on a rack to cool.

Easy as key lime pie

I still had key limes leftover from my bag o' twenty, having used only about ten to make the key lime coconut cake. What to do?

Pie, of course, pie.

I love sweet, tart, creamy desserts like this, and few seem as simple to make. Even if I had made the graham cracker crust myself, it wouldn't have been a big deal. Though for me, it took a while to juice the limes, but that's because I don't have any kind of juicing tool save for a fork.

I do, however, have an interchangeable-blade Microplane zester, which made zesting a breeze. Whew.

By the way, anyone else watch Dexter? All I could think about while making this was whether or not Camilla would approve…

Key Lime Pie

14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk
4 egg yolks
zest of two key limes
juice of ten key limes (about half a cup)
graham cracker pie crust

Whisk first four ingredients together until smooth. Pour into pie crust and bake at 300 degrees for 20 minutes. Cool to room temp and then refrigerate for 4–5 hours, until filling is chilled and set.

Banana cake, with Asian origins

It had landed in my inbox months earlier, courtesy of my brother: "Granny Nguyen's traditional Vietnamese banana cake recipe." Jeff had eaten the cake at a potluck and requested the recipe from his friend, and it's one that seems to be copyrighted to Hiroko Shimbo at Hiroko's Kitchen. I'm not sure whether that means the recipe is really Japanese instead of Vietnamese, but either way I was willing to give it a shot if my brother was saying that the cake had been delicious. Especially since I had three large overripe bananas on the counter.

I was most intrigued by the cake's base of torn French bread and cornstarch batter. Since I'd never eaten it or even seen what it was supposed to look like, I was envisioning something like a bread pudding beneath a layer of caramelized bananas, maybe with a slightly different texture from the cornstarch and lack of eggs.


Instead of French bread I used a few slices of sturdy, crusty bread that were going stale, and I used light coconut milk, too, instead of regular. I also cut the amount of sugar, since my brother had said the cake was quite sweet.

Pre-bake.

Post-bake, and cooling on my "windowsill."

Again, this was when I was still struggling with the craziness of my oven, so after an abbreviated baking time of twenty minutes, I had to take the cake out of the oven before the entire thing burnt to a crisp. You can see that the edges are already a little blackened.

Frankly, I have no idea if this was how the cake was supposed to turn out. The flavor was good, laced with caramelized banana and coconut flavor, but despite my substantial cutting of the sugar (by about half a cup) it was still extraordinarily sweet. And while the directions said to chill before serving, I found that I liked the cake best when it was still warm: in the refrigerator, the cake turned hard and unpleasant, while when warm it was bouncy and soft. When I ate a slice the next day, I microwaved it first.

I'm guessing that if I had been able to bake it at the proper temperature and length of time, it would have come out better. Given another stash of overripe bananas, I might try this recipe again.

Banana Cake
by Hiroko Shimbo

4 large bananas, peeled and sliced thin crosswise
14 ounces sugar, about 1 3/4 cups (I cut this amount to 1 1/4 cups)
1 can coconut milk (I used light coconut milk)
6 ounces French baguette
1.8 ounces cornstarch flour, about 5 1/2 tablespoons

Heat the oven to 400 degrees F. Grease the inside and bottom of cake mold and line with parchment paper. In a bowl mix sliced banana with half amount of sugar. Stir gently with wooden spatula to toss banana with sugar thoroughly.

Break French baguette into small pieces by hand and place them in another bowl. Add remaining sugar and coconut milk. Stir and mix thoroughly until bread is very soft. Add cornstarch. Place bread mixture into the mold. Level the surface and cover it with banana. Bake in the heated oven 40 to 50 minutes. Remove cake from the oven, cool and chill in the refrigerator before serving.

A round of cheese, a braided loaf

Sometimes you say no, and sometimes you say yes.

When Ile de France contacted me with an offer to send over one their cheeses to sample, I hesitated. I generally don't like exchanging samples for blog posts, because I don't like being obligated to write about something I might not be excited about. But then I thought about it again—hey, it's cheese! What's not to be excited about?

So when the wheel of Camembert arrived in the mail, I went off in search of a good way to use it. There were chicken breasts in the freezer, and onions on my counter; a batch of bread dough nestled at the bottom of a mixing bowl in my fridge. Once I spotted this post, I had my plan: I would bake a stuffed bread.

After dicing and caramelizing two large onions, I poached three chicken breasts, which yielded about a pound of moist, flavorful cooked meat (I used this method, but omitted the ginger and sherry because I didn't have any). I had about four ounces of turkey ham in the fridge, too, so I diced that up too. For the Camembert, I simply cut the entire wheel into slices after taking off the rind.

I had originally envisioned one loaf, but I soon realized I had enough ingredients for two—even after nearly eight months of living alone, I haven't broken the habit of cooking in mass quantity! To assemble each one, I rolled out the dough on a floured cutting board, trying to achieve an even thickness. I arranged half the chicken, half the turkey ham, and half the caramelized onions down the middle, and then layered half the cheese slices on top. Because the dough was so sticky, my first attempt at braiding the dough pretty much failed miserably, so for the second one I just ended up pressing the ends together on top to seal the dough around the filling. An egg wash would have made them prettier, but I went only with a sprinkle of grated smoked Swiss cheese, and after moving the loaves to a greased cookie sheet and letting the dough rest for ten minutes, I put them both in the oven at 400 degrees for half an hour.*

The resulting loaves came out just as I'd hoped: crusty, chewy bread with a center of chicken pieces, sweet caramelized onion, and salty, smoky bits of turkey ham, all bound by the rich, earthy-tasting Camembert. Not exactly light fare, but utterly comforting and delicious.

I think this recipe is quite flexible, too. You can substitute homemade or store-bought pizza dough instead, or any kind of bread dough really. Roasted chicken instead of poached; a different kind of ham, or bacon; a different type of cheese. Even the caramelized onions can be swapped out for something else—I've been thinking that the cranberry chutney I've got in my fridge might work pretty nicely. Next time!

Camembert, Chicken, and Caramelized Onion Loaf
by Soopling

Makes two large loaves

Bread dough, divided into two portions (I used half the yield from this dough recipe)
16 ounces poached chicken breasts (about 3 medium sized breasts), cut or torn into chunks
4 ounces turkey ham, diced
8 ounces caramelized onions (from about two large onions)
1 wheel Ile de France Camembert (7.7 ounces), sliced into pieces
Egg wash (optional)
1 ounce shredded smoked Swiss cheese (optional)

On a floured cutting board, roll out one bread dough portion into a 9x12 rectangle about one centimeter thick.

Layer half the cheese slices down the middle, and then layer half the chicken, half the turkey ham, and half the caramelized onions on top. Lift the sides of the bread dough up to close over the filling and press the ends together to seal—there shouldn't be any holes in the dough. Transfer to a greased baking sheet, flipping the loaf so that it rests seam-side down on the sheet.

Repeat with other bread dough portion and remaining ingredients. Let assembled loaves rest for ten or fifteen minutes.

Brush loaves with egg wash and/or sprinkle with shredded cheese, and bake in 400 degree oven for 30 minutes.*

*Originally I had written that these loaves should be baked at 350 degrees for half an hour. But I recently learned that my oven has been running 150 degrees too hot—which means that while I had my knob at 300 degrees while baking these loaves (to compensate for my oven running what I thought was 50 degrees hot), they were actually baking at about 450 degrees. And though these breads miraculously came out okay, I did have to rescue them a little early to prevent them from burning. I'm going to say 400 degrees, for half an hour, is the best bet for this recipe.

The great bageling

It must be obvious by now that I love bagels. If it isn't, well…I do. And I have been meaning to try my hand at making them forever.

It was the elusive malt syrup that foiled me, each and every time. I had read recipes that said I could substitute honey or leave the syrup out altogether, but I was determined to do it right, make the real deal, come up with a bagel that would eliminate my need to buy bagels in a shop forever. Every time I came across a bagel recipe I'd think to myself, Gotta go get that malt syrup…and then I never would. I didn't know where to look. When I finally came across a jar of the stuff in Whole Foods while on winter break in NYC, it was nearly seven dollars and I was about to leave for Colorado.

So once again bagels were on the brain. But I was still missing my ingredient.

Back in Colorado, I happened to find the same jar of malt syrup in Sunflower Market for about the same price. But just as I was about to pay, I spotted a bag of malted barley flour by the register, discounted to a dollar because of a small puncture in one side. Could I use this instead? Yes!


I finally had everything I needed. So following the recipe posted by the Fresh Loaf—one of the only ones I could find that gave a measurement for malt flour—I whipped up the sponge, incorporated the dry ingredients after two hours, kneaded the hell out of the dough, divided the dough into twelve balls, and let those rest for twenty minutes.

Shaping the dough into rings took a little more time than I expected, mostly because the dough was so stiff and dry it didn't easily adhere to itself. I used the hand-rolling method as detailed in the LA Times recipe (roll the dough ball into a rope, pinch the ends together with a two-inch overlap, and continue rolling together with your fingers until the ring is smooth and even) rather than the hole-punch method described by the Fresh Loaf. I did try the hole-punch method with another batch later on, and found that I preferred the former method because it provided sleeker results.

After twenty minutes I covered the shaped rings with plastic wrap and put them in my refrigerator to give the dough a slow overnight rise.

The next morning, the rings came out of the fridge looking noticeably risen. I started a pot of water boiling, and readied two bowls of toppings: sesame and dried onion.

Following a whim and some of the advice in the lengthy string of comments that followed the Fresh Loaf post, once the water got hot I added honey, sugar, and a few tablespoons of malt powder to my brew instead of baking soda. I'm not sure if the malt powder did anything, but I do think the honey and sugar helped to give the bagels the nice shiny crust they ended up with.

I boiled each ring for about two minutes on each side. As each came out of the bath and on to the baking sheet, I quickly sprinkled on the toppings while the ring was still wet. Once I had a full tray, into the oven it went!

Pre- and post-bake.

Success! The sesame bagels were perfect—they came out of the oven looking just as glossy and browned as I had hoped they would.

The onion bagels weren't quite so pretty—in the oven every last little bit of onion had burnt, creating a bumpy landscape of charcoal and ash atop each crusty orb.

After I brushed off the more egregiously burnt bits though, I found that the bagels still tasted fine, with a nice flavor from the onion. Next time I will try soaking the dried onion beforehand. Or is there another method to dealing with the onion topping?

Also, I felt inspired by reading FoodMayhem's recipe to whip up some scallion cream cheese to smear on top. So simple to make, and definitely an excellent accompaniment to the crunchy, dark-brown crust and chewy innards of the bagels!

A few last things.

1. My first batch seemed to lack salt, but I suspect that might have been an error on my part (I may have added 1 and 3/4 teaspoons of salt instead of the 2 and 3/4 as specified by the Fresh Loaf). The next time I made them, I added 3 teaspoons so that I could bump up the salt just a little in case I had simply made a mistake the first time, and that seemed to be a good amount.

2. The Fresh Loaf specifies two teaspoons of malt powder, but I found that three teaspoons gave the bagels a more noticeable bagel-y flavor. The malt addition is definitely what makes the bagels taste like real bagels.

3. I also added two teaspoons of sugar to the dough in my second batch. I think it improved the flavor.

4. A dozen bagels out of this amount of dough made for some pretty huge bagels. With my second batch I divided the dough into sixteen balls, and while that was fine they were just a little smaller than I liked. Fourteen is probably the magic number.

5. I've already stated my preference for hand-rolling rather than hole-punching when shaping the dough into rings, but I wanted to give a bit more detail. When I shaped the dough via hole-punching, the surface of the dough seemed bumpy and cratered, especially when they came out of the water bath (another commenter on the Fresh Loaf mentioned this problem, too). With the hand-rolling method, the bagels were nice and smooth. It was also harder to get a consistent thickness in each ring with the hole-punching method.

6. Definitely honey and/or sugar in the water bath, and not baking soda. Baking soda, as far as I can tell, is instead what gives pretzels their distinctive flavor…but for bagels, this is no good.

7. The crust on my second batch of bagels developed a curious separation from the inner ring of dough, and basically crumbled off once I toasted them, leaving me with naked-edged bagels. I'm not sure if this is because I froze them and then defrosted them to eat, but I did notice it more after doing so. Then again, I froze and defrosted my first batch too, and there was no such issue. Anyone have any ideas?

That's all I've got. I hope some of you end up making a batch of bagels, too, because while for bread-baking the process is not as simple as making no-knead and its kin, the results are really worth it. Plus, I'm still experimenting, and would love to hear all of your attempts/trials/feedback/advice. Good luck!


Crusty Homemade Bagels
by Soopling, adapted from The Fresh Loaf

Makes fourteen bagels

Sponge:
1 teaspoon instant yeast
4 cups bread flour (I used all-purpose, which was fine)
2 1/2 cups water

Dough:
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
3 3/4 cups bread flour (again, I used all-purpose)
3 teaspoons salt
3 teaspoons malt powder
2 teaspoons sugar

1 tablespoon honey and/or 1 tablespoon sugar for the water bath
Toppings for the bagels (seeds, salt, onion, or garlic—soak dehydrated onion first)


Day 1
In a large bowl combine yeast and water and then add flour. Stir until well blended and then let rise for two hours, covered.

After two hours, add the additional yeast into the sponge. Add only three cups of the flour and all of the malt powder, salt, and sugar. Mix until until a ball forms. Gradually incorporate the remaining 3/4 cup of flour and knead for ten minutes. Dough should be stiff but well blended.

Split dough into fourteen pieces and roll into balls. Cover with a damp towel and let rest for twenty minutes.

After the resting period, roll each dough ball into a rope, pinch the ends together with a two-inch overlap, and continue rolling together with your fingers until the ring is smooth and even. There should be about a two-inch hole in the middle when you're done. Arrange each one on a lightly oiled baking sheet.

Cover the shaped rings with plastic wrap and let rest for twenty or thirty minutes before stashing in the refrigerator overnight.


Day 2
Take the bagels out of the refrigerator. Bring large pot of water to boil and add sugar and/or honey to the water.

Boil each bagel for a minute or two on each side, and then place onto a lightly oiled baking sheet. Immediately after taking each one out of the pot, while the dough is still wet, sprinkle on the toppings.

Bake in a 500 degree oven for five minutes, and then rotate the sheets and bake for another five minutes.

Eat with scallion cream cheese!

From memory, a Filipino breakfast

My college ex-boyfriend was the one to introduce me to all things Filipino, and that included Filipino-style breakfasting. When he'd come to visit me or I'd come to visit him, he'd take a few cups of leftover white rice, plenty of chopped garlic, and some salt and stir up a pan full of garlic fried rice to be eaten alongside runny fried eggs and sweet, vinegary longanisa sausage. Ketchup and/or hot sauce were optional but welcome. And we ate, of course, with a fork and spoon.

It had been many years since I last ate a Filipino breakfast, but since I had a package of chicken longanisa in the freezer, I decided it was as good a time as any. Using my ex's old method I chopped up a head of garlic, sauteed it with oil and salt in a pan until the pieces became golden, and then added in two cups of cold white rice, breaking up any clumps with my spatula until each grain was hot and coated in the savory oil. In another pan I fried up the longanisa and the eggs, and I took out the ketchup and hot sauce from the refrigerator. Fifteen minutes later, I had a steaming plate of garlic fried rice, fried eggs, and fried sausage in front of me, and the way it filled my belly was just as good as I remembered.

Hard-boiled: Soy sauce eggs and tea eggs

This past Lunar New Year was, for me, one of my least festive and most lonely. Without my family or any Asian-minded friends around me in Colorado, there was little to do in way of celebration but hang around in my apartment doing homework, wishing there was a parade I could go to or a feast I could attend instead. The only thing I could think of that would be a little out of the ordinary and manageable for a single girl in the kitchen was to make a batch of tea eggs.

There's no reason for tea eggs to be a special occasion recipe, however—the process is dead easy and the ingredient list is simple. I tried to follow Jaden's directions over at Steamy Kitchen, but because I had to leave out the cinnamon stick and star anise (I still haven't stocked my spice rack), in the end I only had black tea, soy sauce, and sugar in my brew. The flavor was different but still good.

After hard-boiling the eggs, lightly cracking their shells with a heavy spoon, simmering them in the tea and soy sauce for two hours, and letting them steep overnight, this is how they looked. More than anything else, I love the beautiful pattern that appears all over the egg once you peel them. Like stained glass, or a drunken spiderweb of sorts, no? Considering these were marinated for so long, they are actually a bit pale—I could have cracked the shells harder to let more of the tea and soy sauce seep in.

Looks aside, the paleness also meant they were bland, so later I peeled all of the remaining eggs and plopped them directly into the tea marinade. After bringing the mixture to a boil, I let them simmer for another hour before taking them off the heat.

It's funny, but Jen at Use Real Butter just wrote a post about eating soy sauce eggs as a kid, which I totally identified with…as a kid I too was ridiculed about the shade of my lunch egg, and found it terribly humiliating when my oddly hued specimen was greeted with a chorus of ewwwws. After the first time, I stopped eating them in public. But you can see how little I care now; I let these eggs become a deep, warm brown. Without their shells hindering the absorption of the tea and soy sauce, their flavor increased by leaps and bounds. Next to dumplings, half a pomelo, and some stir-fried chicken and napa cabbage, these soy/tea eggs were the perfect thing for my solo Lunar New Year's meal.