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Breakfast! The most important meal of the day (2004-2011)


percyn

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Hello! new writing here but not to lurking on the board. Have been looking for some nonthreatening topic to post. Breakfast it is. I did not MAKE any food this morning, I MADE myself get off bed for a yet another day trying to find the perfect chocolate chip pancake in my current city--Madison, Wi. The search has been going on for a year and a half now. After living in mostly metropolitan areas my whole life (San Juan--Yes this Puerto Rican city is actually more metropolitan than most might think, NYC, Cambridge-Mass), I am still trying to define my faves in Madtown. Have yet to find the perfect chocolate chip pancake (comfort food for me)---soft and flat, more like a crepe, thin and fluffy with chocolate chunks that slowly melt in your mouth with every bite.

Went to Original Pancake House (after trying many) and have yet to find THE perfect pancake. Alas, perhaps next weekend.

Edited by sus (log)
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Welcome sus !! I am glad you felt comfortable with your first post here, but to be honest, don't be afraid to post anywhere on eG, the people are very nice and welcoming.

Keep us abreast of your chocolate chip pancake quest. When I lived in Princeton, there was a place called PJ's pancake house (http://www.pancakes.com) , which was famous for...you know what.

Susan, not much I can share about the Pork with Cilantro, as it was take-out I purchased from a local Sichuan place.

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I understand your pancake quest. Pancakes are a very important part of my life. I don't let myself have them very often, because I don't enjoy them unless they're dripping with butter and syrup.

I spend a lot of time backpacking, and for years was on the quest for the perfect banana pancake. Sadly, I found it in Pushkar, India. It was the alpha and omega of banana pancakes - crisply fried on the outside - and inside was sweet molten banana encased in fluffy soft batter. It was covered with ample lashings of honey collected from the bees that pollenate the flower fields outside of town - used for the temple offerings.

I ate one every day I was there, overlooking the flower fields from the deck of my hotel. Perfect.

But now wherever I go, I know nothing will be as perfect as that banana pancake. So I don't even bother trying.

I have a similar attachment to the nutella pancakes I enjoyed on pre-Tsunami Phi-Phi Island that I find difficult to talk about this day.

For breakfast today?

Trung Nguyen coffee and a creme caramel. Mooshmouse's breakfast looks like bliss to me.

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Aww the Nutella pancakes sound wonderful. The honey dripping little flaps? Delish. Also interesting because whenever I ask for honey for my pancakes in the states (I grew up using honey for pancakes) people look at me strangely. Ahh have been validated. Love the picture. I have also tried making pancakes at home but with no avail. Yesterday I was thinking of doing a batter that comes closer to a crepe...but that too would not make for the best pancake. Crepes are wonderful but they lack the fluffyness that I would want in a pancake.

Suset

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/weeps quietly inside/

That's beautiful. Ironically, I ended up going to a co-worker's Christmas brunch today, and they served banana pancakes. Disappointed again. Fortunately several glasses of Vang Dalat helped assuage my disappointment.

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All these wonderful looking breakfasts make mine look very ordinary but if one has been dieting for 6 weeks a day off to eat what suits my fancy is wonderful

Pancakes from mix (my buttermilk had gone bad), 2 strips crisp bacon, and an over very easy egg plopped on top. Butter and syrup, too. Bliss!

The honey dripping little flaps? Delish.  Also interesting because whenever I ask for honey for my pancakes in the states (I grew up using honey for pancakes) people look at me strangely.  Ahh have been validated.  Love the picture.  I have also tried making pancakes at home but with no avail.  Yesterday I was thinking of doing a batter that comes closer to a crepe...but that too would not make for the best pancake.  Crepes are wonderful but they lack the fluffyness that I would want in a pancake. 

Suset

I like honey on my pancakes, too

I usually make my pancakes using the recipe in Marion Cunningham's Breakfast Book with the addition of a teaspoon of sugar for better browning.

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This thread continues to inspire. Two-egg omelet with Gorgonzola cheese, sauteed shallots, and heavy cream. Coffee and a banana. Mad Professor dubbing in the background. I love taking a day off from work.

Sorry about the sloppy plate - I was hungry!

Edited to finish the thought.

gallery_42956_2536_31771.jpg

Edited by C. sapidus (log)
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Our office has “breakfast club” every other Friday. This was my week to bring food, so I made three cheese pies: sausage and roasted Poblano chile (front right); jumbo lump crab and sauteed Shiitake mushroom (front left); and pure jumbo lump crab (back). I used Gruyere cheese, half milk and half heavy cream, and flavored with minced onions, salt, paprika, and cayenne.

One of these days I'll try making a pie crust.

gallery_42956_2536_25601.jpg

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For breakfast today?

Trung Nguyen coffee and a creme caramel. Mooshmouse's breakfast looks like bliss to me.

I adore Trung Nguyen coffee. Do you fix it in the little single-cup drip pot? I haven't mastered the method yet and I always want a lot more than one cup. So I stick it in the old vac pot and it comes out yummy.

My question: which coffees go particularly well with which breakfast foods? I can see how the slightly chocolate-y Trung Nguyen would go well with the creme caramel. Maybe also with those chocolate chip pancakes. What are the Vietnamese eating when they're drinking this coffee?

Lonnie

"It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all of the answers." --James Thurber

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What are the Vietnamese eating when they're drinking this coffee?
Lonnie: According to Mai Pham, Vietnamese breakfast may include beef stew with star anise and basil (thit bo kho) and a French baguette, sticky rice with mung beans and fresh coconut (xoi dau xanh dua), or pho. I have also read that fried rice is a common breakfast in SE Asia.

This morning we had King Arthur Flour's “biscuits for breakfast.” This time the dough was more firm, and the biscuits puffed up and flaked nicely (Ann_T – thanks for the helpful suggestions). A touch more cream would probably have helped the batter. I know that biscuits are pretty basic baking, but I’m a pretty basic baker so any success is quite encouraging.

Mrs. Crab made cinnamon buttered honey to drizzle over the biscuits. Mmmm.

gallery_42956_2536_12646.jpg

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I adore Trung Nguyen coffee. Do you fix it in the little single-cup drip pot? I haven't mastered the method yet and I always want a lot more than one cup. So I stick it in the old vac pot and it comes out yummy.

My question: which coffees go particularly well with which breakfast foods? I can see how the slightly chocolate-y Trung Nguyen would go well with the creme caramel. Maybe also with those chocolate chip pancakes. What are the Vietnamese eating when they're drinking this coffee?

Lonnie

Most people seem to drink tea with their meals. Breakfast on my street seems to be chao (congee), or pho. Sometimes sticky rice balls...not sure of the name of these, but this lady is always set up across from my door.

I also have been unable to master using the small drip pot, so I usually run my coffee through a coffee maker. It tastes different, but also good.

Vietnamese people seem to reserve the drinking of coffee for a morning or afternoon break. For young people, it's the drink of choice for dating. People don't eat anything with their cup, but often a cigarette is consumed - by men only.

Right now, I don't have any TN in the house - I'm splitting my drinking between a pound of Ethiopian mocha that a friend of a friend brought from Ethiopia (It's unspeakably good!) and a half kilo of Cafe Mai, from a venerable small roaster in Hanoi. It's very sweet and chocolately - much more so than TN even. It's like drinking a cup of dark chocolate! Today I'm going to have a cup of that and some leftover shortbread cookies from my Christmas party last night. If I can find any amongst the Halida cans, that is. I'll pretend it's a modified Italian breakfast.

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nakji: I was hoping that you would answer the question about Vietnamese breakfast.

Ann_T: Mmm, ham and cheddar omelet.

I haven’t been able to cook for the past few days, so I made an, um, unusual breakfast: yard-long beans stir-fried with bacon, ginger, shallots, garlic, chili bean paste, fish sauce, hoisin sauce, and maybe some other things, and finished with Chankiang vinegar and sesame oil. I was probably trying to pack several days worth of flavor into one meal. Came pretty close, too. :rolleyes:

Breakfast went nicely with ca phe sua nong (hot Vietnamese coffee with sweetened condensed milk).

gallery_42956_2536_51309.jpg

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Bruce, those long beans look great...can you share the recipe?

Percy: Um, no recipe really, but it was inspired by Sichuan dry-fried green beans. After stir-frying the vegetables, bacon, and aromatics in a very hot wok, I lowered the heat and started dumping in sauces until it tasted right and the beans were crunchy-tender. Turned off the heat and mixed in sesame oil and Chankiang vinegar. Sorry, I didn't measure anything and probaly couldn't make that exact concoction again if I tried.

ETA: Ah Leung has a pictorial on Sichuan dry-fried green beans (link).

By the way, scrambled eggs and Serrano ham looks and sounds delicious.

Edited by C. sapidus (log)
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