Perfect breakfast: greens, sriracha, egg

Still, I can live without knowing how to make perfect tofu, at least for now, because I do know how to make this.

Wilted greens, sriracha, fried egg.

olive oil
cabbage and chard/other greens
salt
sriracha sauce
egg (butter optional)

Shred the greens while you warm a little olive oil in a pan appropriate for egg frying. For me, this is a tiny 8-inch nonstick dude; I shredded a huge chunk of green cabbage and a few leaves of chard to fill it to bursting. A finer shred is better here. Add your greens to the pan, along with a pinch of salt. Stir it up and let it cook until the greens are reduced to about half their initial volume. You can also add a bit of water and slap the lid on for steamed greens.

Add sriracha to taste; if you add it nearer the beginning, it will get sweeter and some of the pepper oil will evaporate, but if you add it at the end, it will stay hot and pungent. You can also add some sesame seeds or slivered almonds, if you feel like it.

Make sure the sauce is well mixed in and the leaves are sufficiently wilted, then tip everything out into a bowl.

If the pan doesn't have enough residual oil to fry an egg, add a little bit of butter. Fry your egg, using the steam method. It's just like steaming greens: turn the heat to medium-high, add a little water, and slap the lid on. Leave it for a few minutes before you check the white for required levels of firmness. Since this method makes the heat suffuse the pan, you can get perfectly uniform, solid whites every single time. Knowing this method has totally transformed how I eat eggs. Not kidding.


Ok! When the egg is done, slide it immediately onto your greens. Break the yolk and mix the egg pieces with the greens. Wilted spicy cabbage coated with liquid yolk is one of the finest things.

Eat it all as hot and fast as possible. Do not wait. You remember this is an egg.

Breakfast in NYC

Oh, you thought it was going to be bagels? Well, that happens sometimes, but so does this:

Leftover Thai delivery. This one is my default basil/onion/tofu concoction, and after ten minutes in the toaster oven with rice and a little water, it's perfect. Occasional breakfast Thai is one of my favorite things about living in NYC, which is perhaps lame, but whatever. You know why breakfasts like this didn't happen in California? There was no available Thai delivery. How Silicon Valley gets away with that I don't know.

I really have to figure out how to cook tofu that is not just delicious initially but also on reheating. I mean, tofu is notoriously difficult to cook well, but I still manage to make palatable dinners. It's just that the leftovers are another story.

Quinoa carrot carrot quinoa

I've had a container of quinoa sitting in the refrigerator for the past few days. In conjunction, I've eaten quinoa at last once a day for the past four days. Coincidence? Clearly not. Quinoa fried not-rice with mushroom and onion? Check. Quinoa in roasted pepper tacos? Check. Quinoa and baba ghanouj with a handful of baby carrots? Check.

Until now, I've usually used quinoa as a base for a big spoonful of curry or stir-fry. It hasn't been a component part of cooking, not least because I'm usually steaming it while making something else. With cooked quinoa on hand, ready to throw into whatever comes to mind, my array of recent food has become much more interesting. I think I'm going to have to make pancakes next. Pancakes with a handful of quinoa, yogurt, parsley, and a finely shredded carrot mixed into the batter.

Or I could make some more of this:

Black bean and carrot soup with quinoa

olive oil
red onion
carrots
cooked black beans/broth
additional veg broth/water
sage, thyme, salt, pepper
cooked quinoa
fresh parsley
hot sauce if you like it

This one is super easy. Warm a little olive oil in the bottom of a big soup pan. Chop up some red onion and soften it over medium heat. I used half a big red onion; other kinds of onion would be fine. Peel and chop a handful of carrots--I used four--and add them to the pan. Give the business a pinch of salt and a few shakes of thyme and sage, turn the heat up a little, and cook for another five minutes, shaking up the pan occasionally. You want the carrots to start to show a little browning and caramelization from the heat of the metal. At that point, add your beans. I probably used about a cup and a half of frozen beans and broth, plus a little water to bring up the liquid level. If you're using canned beans, drain the can and use some water or veg broth for the liquid instead. Anyway. Bring the business to a simmer, salt and pepper, and let cook for at least five or ten minutes, more if you feel like it.

When everything is completely tender, correct any seasonings and take the pan off the heat. You can either choose to eat is as-is or pulverize it with an immersion blender. Eat with quinoa and chopped parsley for earthy-crunchy deliciousness. I had mine with copious amounts of seventynine cent hot sauce, for ultimate awesome.

The lonesome crowded dinner

On first glance, it doesn't seem like a dinner consisting primarily of steamed sweet potato and broccoli would be particularly spicy or filling. Wrong!

It is also cheap and easy. Not particularly fast, since a sweet potato never takes less than a half hour, but still.

Steamed sweet potato? Yes. You can definitely steam sweet potato. It doesn't get that oven-roasted caramelization, but that's ok.

Get a shallow pot of water boiling while you peel a sweet potato. Cut it into relatively large chunks. I cut mine in half down its length, then cut each half into inch-thick slices. Like that.

When the water is boiling, throw the potato chunks into a steamer basket/your preferred steaming implement. Make sure you leave some space exposed so the steam can get up to your potatoes easily! As long as you don't fill the steamer within a inch of its life, things should be ok.

Put the steamer basket over the pot, slap a lid on it, and let it steam until the potatoes are cooked through. This took about half an hour or forty minutes, but it'll take longer for bigger pieces of potato. Test them with a fork. If they are mashable: success!

Mash with butter/olive oil/whatever you like. I added a splash of maple syrup (real; not Aunt Jemima! GROSS!) and a big handful of sesame seeds. The seeds would've been even better if I tossed them in a frying pan first, but I was lazy. It was still awesome. Other things to put on sweet potatoes: a spoonful of tahini, or some toasted cashews. You could also crisp up some bacon and crumble it over the top if you feel like it and eat such a thing. Maybe some bacon and a big pinch of fresh parsley. Toasty crispy crunchy salty business is always a good idea with sweet potato.

Ok. Item number two!

That's a salad plate; I didn't eat an entire head of steamed broccoli. Not this time, anyway.

Cut broccoli into smallish florets. Peel some of the stem and chop it up too, if you like that sort of thing. I clearly do. Throw it in the recently vacated steamer basket, put it over the pot of water, and steam for about five minutes, or until said broccoli is done to your preferred texture. Item: you can totally take your cooked potatoes out of the steamer basket and let them sit a minute while you whip the broccoli immediately into the steamer; that water is totally hot and ready for such a thing. Use the heat you've harnessed! Then mash the potatoes while the broccoli is cooking.

When the broccoli is done, you can either eat it plain or put something delicious on top of it. I decided the best plan was sriracha sauce. Man, broccoli and sriracha are best friends. Otherwise, you can eat it plain, butter it, toss it in a spoonful or two of good vinaigrette, slap on some peanut sauce, or add whatever else you can think of.

Eat everything! You will feel surprisingly full and satisfied. Success!

All tacos all the time

I seriously must have eaten tacos for half the week. Er, half of last week. TACOS.

Taco 1: Fried egg! I love the fried egg taco. This one had sauteed black beans/rice/onion/some sort of hot pepper and some exciting salsa verde. I also love the salsa verde, incidentally. If you make a fried egg and put it on one of two tacos, you can then catch any drippy yolk from taco one on the open face of taco two. Wait, that's sort of confusing with the whole "numbered tacos" conceit. Oh well.

Taco 2: Seared shrimp with similar black beans/rice, salsa verde, and squeezy lime. This would be more satisfactory were my shrimp higher quality as opposed to frozen. I need to get on that one of these days.

Taco three: These were actually more like quesadillas, since they were filled with refried beans, melted mozzarella (I know, but it's delicious and salty even though it's also inauthentic), and hot sauce out of the 79 cent bottle. Still: delicious.

Taco four: more refried beans, with cream cheese, wilted onion/red pepper, and big handfuls of greens. This was obviously a result of the newly reincarnated spring farmer's market. MORE SPINACH MORE MORE.