Eggs, Toast, Salad and Rhubarb

I must have inherited the 'don't stop till you drop gene'. I got off work late, I was starting to get a gnarly hunger headache but damned if I wasn't going to make dinner last night. I'd like to think that preparing a meal for my husband and me is always a calming experience but last night, as I was julienning carrots and Chris was about to show me the third picture of the world's smallest horse on my laptop, both of us crammed in the "kitchen", I think I got a little grumpy and maybe even snapped. Sorry hon, yes, the horse is very cute.


A few months ago I got the Momofuku cookbook because it just seemed kind of bad ass. There is almost nothing I can make in it without a kitchen unless I were to go to crazy, extreme lengths that might involve cooking for two days straight. I just don't have the capacity to make my own ramen broth and cook a pig's head with a toaster oven and a rice cooker. 


That said, it is a great book to get inspiration from. David Chang uses lots of eggs and kimchi and sweet and spicy dressings so that's what I did last night.


Here is my Momofuku wanna be, crazy hungry meal, that turned out pretty delicious:


Salad
1 head bib lettuce
1 carrot
1 english cucumber
cilantro
bean sprouts


Wash everything. Tear up the lettuce. Julienne the carrots by thinly slicing the carrot on an angle so you get nice long pieces and then stack a few up at a time and cut them into matchsticks. Thinly slice the cucumber and tear off a handful of cilantro leaves. Arrange everything nicely in your salad bowl.


Dressing (I'm guessing on some of these measurements so taste as you go)
1 garlic clove
1 tsp. ginger
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes
pinch of salt
2 tbs. sesame oil
1 tbs. rice wine vinegar
juice of 1/2 a lime
dash of soy sauce
1 tsp. agave (or honey)


Mince the garlic and ginger. Combine all the ingredients and check that the seasoning is right. 


Eggs + Butter


I don't like to heft down my big skillet to cook eggs so I do them in a muffin tin in my toaster oven. They are delicious. You don't have to flip anything and I think that if I were having a brunch and needed to cook a lot of eggs at one time I would do it this way. The eggs get perfectly cooked with nice molten centers.


Heat a toaster oven to 375 degrees. Put a teaspoon of butter into each muffin tin well that you will use and put an inch of water in the unused wells so the tin doesn't burn. Place muffin tin in the oven until the butter starts to bubble but try not to let it get brown. Crack your eggs over the butter, one egg per well. Place in the oven and cook until the whites are solid. You'll have to play with the time depending on how runny you like your yolks to be.


Bread + Kimchi


Get a good loaf of crusty bread to sop the yolks up and I even put a little butter on my bread. And serve some kimchi (delicious, spicy, stinky, fermented, Korean cabbage) on the side.


And.......


I made dessert! Because the rhubarb was not going to fit in the fridge.


3 stalks of rhubarb
sugar
fromage blanc (or greek yogurt)
crystallized ginger


Cut the rhubarb into one inch pieces, put them over the stove or in a rice cooker on the steam setting with 1/2 cup sugar and 3/4 cup water. Cook until the rhubarb is soft and falling apart. Set out to cool to room temperature.


Spoon fromage blanc into a dish, drown in rhubarb and slice and sprinkle one piece of crystallized ginger over each.