French Toast
Thursday, 1 January 2009
French Toast
An attempt to recreate the French Toast that my Grandma used to make for us when we were little kiddies. I’m pretty sure she didn’t use milk (almost everyone else in my family is lactose-intolerant), and it never took her very long to make. But I can’t remember how she made it at all, except that she used eggs and sugar, and fried it in a pan. And the bread was always white plastic¹ bread. OK, so it probably can’t be called “French” toast, but it’s a close approximation. The spices were added to fit our current tastebuds. I’m pretty sure Grandma didn’t even touch cinnamon in her lifetime. Nutmeg, on the other hand, was well-loved in our family, but eaten as preserved shredded fruit (buah pala²) and never used as a spice (although I’m sure my mother had a jar of nutmeg powder for her annual Christmas fruitcake).
Grandma’s “French” Toast, Test Recipe 1 (to feed 2 hungry peeps):
- 3 eggs
- 2 heaped teaspoons icing sugar (powdered sugar in America)
- Pinch of nutmeg
- Pinch of cinnamon powder
- Butter (whatever it takes to line those arteries)
- Crack 3 eggs into a large dish. (I used an 8″ square casserole dish.)
- Lightly beat eggs with icing sugar and spices. (Note to self: next time, try separating eg, and beat sugar with egg whites first, followed by yolks so it’s not overbeaten.)
- Prepare frying pan with a smear of butter (sliver equivalent to less than 1 tsp).
- Dip both sides of bread in egg, allowing it to sit for about 30 sec on each side.
- Fry eggy bread over a medium heat; about 30-60 seconds per side. Flip when side starts to brown.
- Keep fried bread warm in a 350°F (180°C) oven.
- Serve with honey or maple syrup or just plain old jam.
- Take photo after realising it’d make a half-decent food post, even if it’s just an aide memoir.
- Polish the rest off before the man or the dog steal any.
¹ aka Supermarket sliced bread. Plastic because of the way it springs back when you press it.
² Our favourite thing on arrival in Penang would be to acquire the local speciality: nutmeg aka buah pala. My preference was for the sweet shredded pickled nutmeg. This could kick off an entire post reminiscing about the “unusual” and “exotic” food items of my childhood, but let’s leave that for another day.
It’s 2009 already? Where did 2008 go?
Thursday, 1 January 2009
My dearest blog,
My sincerest apologies for not staying in touch. Here’s a cute photo that the P-man took on the first day of 2009 to make up for things. The subject in view is a noren of one of the many images¹ from the collection of Ando/Utagawa Hiroshige‘s ukiyo-e for One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (名所江戸百景 Meisho Edo Hyakkei; go here for a collection of images with English captions). The story goes that he created all these works of art for a travel guide of sorts to Tokyo.
If my dearest blog had been around back in [year so long ago that I can't remember], I’d have posted about a rather ukiyo-e style painting that I’d seen at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, which put me in mind of something that I couldn’t quite place my finger on. It was a copy of this very “Sudden Squall Over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake” ukiyo-e, but in Van Gogh’s rather more vivid and saturated colours, and with some poorly copied calligraphy around the edges. I guess copyright hadn’t been conceptualised yet. Or maybe it was one of those Creative Commons Share-Alike Attribution type thingies.
At any rate, I’m glad we finally put the noren up. Now the heat stays in the living room instead of escaping to the kitchen, and I can sit happily warm on my armchair and write notes to my blog.
Happy 2009, my dear blog!
曉
P.S. I haven’t forgotten the 30GB of photos from 2008 that I meant to put on you. I just can’t face the curation process.
¹ Great Bridge; Sudden Squall Over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake (名所江戸百景;大はしあたけの夕立).
.jpg){kind=link}