Culinary Comfort: Breakfast for Dinner

Pancakes are a good comfort food. Thanks to the horrific outcome of our recent presidential election, I’ve rediscovered this truth.

As a child I loved breakfast food. Coffee. Orange juice. The simple, architectural beauty of a stack of toast triangles fit in the tiny porcelain lip between scrambled eggs and the cheap linoleum of a diner table. My love of breakfast, however, had been somewhat forgotten ever since I started high school, as dark coffee in to-go cups took the place of lattes in favorite Pottery Barn mugs, as a cup of orange juice is downed, every morning or so, like a tequila shot, or English muffins are carried as accessories to car keys, eaten in short, ravenous bites up the length of Moraga Road rather than enjoyed quietly, hot with butter or raspberry jam.

Somewhere between the club meetings, the tutoring sessions, the sleepless nights and the anxiety-ridden scroll-sessions on CollegeConfidentional, my love of breakfast was shoved under the folders of homework or the stack of sweatshirts branded with the names of my favorite colleges. Recently, however, my obsession for toast, for cream-ridden coffee and for the crackle of bacon in a pan, for the way powdered sugar makes a snow-globe of otherwise average blue porcelain, for sweet, dense maple syrup, which runs in determined little mahogany colored rivers across my plate, has re-emerged.

Somewhere between an 11:00PM trip to Mel’s Diner with my sister, where we ate hash browns with too much salt and paid with cash, and the October night I became aware of my inability to cook anything other than Bisquick pancakes, a new joy materialized out of the exhausted and messy existence known to the world as junior year. This joy is called breakfast for dinner.

If you are like me, whose parents guard dinner as an integral piece of the familial institution– regarding the three daily meals as a sort of Holy Trinity not to be questioned –so much as shoved by a dinnertime maple syrup canister– then you will find this phenomenon of breakfast for dinner as foreign, and soon, as invigorating, as I did in discovering it this fall.

Whether you’re trying, like me, to eat your depression abut the events of November 8, or whether you’re merely looking to shake up the monotony of your school-year routine, the following three recipes provide some convention-challenging dinner recipes to get you through this last stint of dead time before the holidays.

***

Soft Boiled Eggs with Grilled Cheese Soldiers (from a Beautiful Plate)

Ingredients:

• 2 large eggs
• 2 slices of whole-grain bread
• sharp cheddar cheese, grated
• butter
• salt
• pepper

Directions:

Soft Boiled Eggs:

1. Fill a small saucepan with cold water and bring to a boil.  Turn down to a low simmer.
2. Meanwhile, use a thumb tack, push pin, or needle to poke a small hole in the broad end of each egg.
3. Using a spoon, lower the eggs into the water–it should be simmering gently.
4. Set a time and cook the eggs for 4 minutes and 30 seconds.  Using a slotted spoon, remove the eggs from the water immediately and rinse under very cold water briefly.
5. You can either choose to peel them or trim the top of the egg (by tapping with the edge of a spoon or knife) and serve the eggs in the shell with a side of grilled cheese soldiers.  Season with salt and pepper.

Grilled Cheese Soldiers:

1. Prepare as you would a grilled cheese: smear the outside of each slice of butter with butter and fill the inside with grated, sharp cheddar cheese.
2. Heat a pan over medium heat.  Carefully transfer sandwich to pan–and brown on each side until golden and cheese is melted and gooey.
3. Cut into 1″ wide rectangles (or soldiers).  Serve with the soft-boiled eggs.

***

Cinnamon-Apple Pancakes (from tbsp.com)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup Bisquick Heart Smart™ mix
• 1/2 cup lowfat milk
• 1 large egg
• 1 apple, peeled, cored and grated
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

Directions:

1. Heat a griddle over medium heat on the stove.
2. While the griddle is heating, whisk together the Bisquick, milk, egg, grated apple, and cinnamon in a mixing bowl.
3. Once the griddle is hot, drop rounds of pancake onto it — about 1/4 cup each. Cook without disturbing until bubbles form all over the top. Then, flip the pancakes and cook briefly on the other side.
4. Serve with maple syrup.

***

Baked Hash-brown Cups (from Everyday Made Fresh)

Ingredients: