Three-Ingredient Easy Bread

Today my husband (this guy) and I celebrate our third anniversary. It's been a wild three years during which we both quit our jobs, moved across the ocean, and found a new life in a country we love. I wrote a dissertation and got a Master's degree. Judson wrote the soundtrack to a well-acclaimed video game (and named a character in it after me!). We secured new visas that guarantee us three more years in Scotland and moved all of our belongings here. We've had ups and downs, but so far it's been more of the former than the latter, and that's just the way I like it.

Recently while going through some old family letters, I found the catering bill for Eleanor's wedding to my grandfather Wilbur. They had 48 guests, and the meals, venue fees, and rental of all the tables, chairs, and dishes cost a total of $84, including wine.
EIGHTY. FOUR. DOLLARS. Just let that sink in for a moment.

They got married in 1942 while Wilbur was still in the Navy, exactly seventy years before Judson and I did, and I'd love to know more about their wedding. I've always wondered about what it was like for her to be a wartime bride. Eleanor was a tough cookie when I knew her (and by all accounts, she always was), but it couldn't be easy to get married and then see your husband off for an indefinite period of time, not knowing if he'd be safe or not.

I don't want to make her a wallflower in her own story, though: she didn't sit at home pining for him while he fought in the Pacific. She went to work in a factory (Kenmore or Maytag maybe, no one seems to be sure which anymore) in Brooklyn, doing wartime work. I've always assumed she made airplanes, but it just occurred to me that I have no idea if that is actually accurate. She worked there with her two best friends: her sister-in-law and the woman who would become my mom's godmother. I can't imagine how hard it would be to have your brand-new husband whisked away from you so soon after getting married, but I know if anyone could do it and come out swinging, it would be Eleanor, and I wish I had known her long enough to ask her about that time in her life.

Other than the catering bill and two beautiful pictures where they look like the happiest people in the world, the only other remnant of their wedding day is their wedding cake topper, which sits on a shelf in my flat in front of a photo from my own wedding day. Judson and I didn't have a proper wedding cake, so I figure their topper is as good a stand-in as any. It's seen better days, but it's still one of my favourite family heirlooms. Eleanor was not a packrat and she threw away plenty of family artifacts I'd love to have today, but the wedding cake topper got saved all these years. It must have meant a lot to her, and I'm glad she (and then my mom) kept it safe for seventy years before passing it along to me with the recipe box.

Wilbur and eleanor on their wedding day, 1942.

Judson and me on our wedding day. march 5, 2012.

So, in celebration of weddings, love, and all things domestic, I give you this recipe. It's the easiest thing I've made from the box so far (one of the easiest things I've EVER made), and if you make it, everyone will think you are a domestic goddess. The recipe is written on a torn-off sheet of notebook paper with a list of names on the back, and I'm pretty sure the names are bridge teams, which is just about the most quintessentially Florida thing I can think of.

Fun fact: there are only two lines of instructions on this recipe and I can only read one of them, but the recipe is so simple and so reliable it doesn't even matter. Make this bread and impress someone you love. (But seriously: let me know if you can read the second line from the bottom, just because I'm curious.)

The Verdict:

5 Spoons out of five. This recipe is so easy it shouldn't even qualify as a recipe. I like bread that's dense and chewy with a crunchy exterior, which is exactly what this loaf is like. It's best the first day, but it keeps well at room temperature for at least three days (possibly longer, but we had eaten it all by then). If you're more of a fan of fluffy breads, it might not be your favourite, but I'd encourage you to try it anyway because it's just. so. easy.

THE RECIPE:

Beer Bread

The Ingredients:

3 cups self-rising flour
2 tbsp sugar
12 oz room-temperature beer (in the US, this is one normal-sized bottle. In the UK, it's ¾ of a normal-sized bottle, which means you get to have a noon-day sip while your bread bakes... as long as you don't mind warm beer)

Note: this bread does not rise very much, so you're in for a fairly dense loaf better for smearing with butter and jam then trying to make a sandwich. If you'd like it taller, use a smaller loaf pan and sift the flour before mixing the ingredients.

THE DIRECTIONS:

Grease a loaf pan and preheat the oven to 350F/175C.
Mix all ingredients together in a large mixing bowl, pouring beer slowly to avoid foam.
Pour into pan and bake 40-45 minutes until lightly browned and firm to the touch.
Turn out onto a cooling rack and let cool as long as you can stand it before slicing it open.

Yields one craggy, crunchy, delicious loaf.  

Country Breakfast

“There is no sadness in the world that can't be cured by breakfast food.”
--Ron Swanson.

This, however, is not a post about sadness. It's a post about breakfast food and making do with what you have. The recipe for “Country Breakfast,” as Eleanor saved it in The Box, is not a recipe at all. It is, in fact, nothing but a list of ingredients.

At first I was kind of irritated at her about this. I am super organised, to the irritation of everyone who has ever had to live with me, and so this kind of nonsensical clipping of only the ingredients but not the recipe flies in the face of everything I stand for. I kept rolling my eyes every time I saw the non-recipe, wondering how I was supposed to come up with directions to make something that she hadn't even correctly saved, BUT THEN I realised something.

The ingredients for “Country Breakfast” are listed at the bottom of a newspaper page. At the very bottom of the list is a note that reads “(Please see EGGS, Page 12-D).” So as it turns out, I was mad at Eleanor when I should have been mad at the St. Pete Times for laying out their paper so badly. I mean, how are you supposed to make this dish if the recipe and the ingredients are on two separate pages of a newspaper? If this issue of the paper wasn't twenty-seven years old, I'd send them a complaint.

On second thought, Eleanor probably took care of that for me. 

Lately, I live for the weekends, which is kind of silly, really. I'm currently in the middle of a job search, so really every day is kind of like a weekend for me. But it's harder to have fun on a Monday than it is on a Saturday because during the week everyone I know is at work. Enter the weekend, where Judson and I get to pal around, sleep in, and do whatever we want-- but we get to do it together, which is way more fun.

When we lived in the States, we used to sleep in on Saturday mornings and then go out for brunch somewhere. It was a ritual, and we adhered to it religiously. We'd do a crossword puzzle while we waited for our table, I'd get coffee and a hundred refills while Judson drank tea, which I still thought was gross, and then we'd tuck in to a delicious brunch and be set until dinner.

Brunch, however, is a peculiarly American institution-- when I had a German friend come stay with us for two weeks, Judson and I got up on Saturday morning and asked our friend if she wanted to go get brunch that morning. She literally giggled and said “Brunch! Is that even real? You guys are so... American.”

But when we moved to Scotland, two things happened: first was that we were living on a single income, and second was that there just isn't as great of a brunch scene in Edinburgh as there was in Atlanta... or, I'd hazard a guess, anywhere in the US. So we started making our own weekend brunch. Usually eggs and beans (a British breakfast thing that I used to think was weird but now really love) and a scone or whatever we have on hand. Now we know the town and we're more financially set, but we still make our own weekend brunch, because, as Judson said this weekend when we were happily munching on Country Breakfast, “we just make better breakfast than any restaurant can.”

The Verdict:

4 Spoons out of five. This breakfast is delicious, hearty, and filling, but it does, however, dirty a ton of dishes. It's not super fast, either, so if you're hungover and just need all the bacon on your plate as soon as possible, it's probably not a great option. BUT it reheats like a charm and we found it even better the second morning we had it as leftovers, so if you have guests coming, make it on Friday evening and everyone will think you're Martha Stewart the next morning when all you had to do was sleep in, have a mimosa, and reheat the pan.

THE RECIPE:

Country Breakfast

The Ingredients:

2 large potatoes (or equivalent in small ones), cubed
6 slices bacon, pancetta, or lardons, diced*
1 onion, sliced
1 green pepper, chopped
4 eggs
1 c cheddar cheese, grated

*As always, if you're in the UK, use lardons, not bacon, because UK bacon doesn't make the grease you need to cook everything else. If you're in the US, use bacon, and know that I am supremely jealous.

THE DIRECTIONS:

Boil potatoes until fork-tender.
While potatoes are boiling, fry bacon until crisp but still tender.
Remove bacon from pan with a slotted spoon and set it on a paper towel to drain, leaving the grease in the pan.
Cook the onion in the bacon grease until translucent and soft, then add green pepper, scraping up bits from the bottom and stirring frequently.
When green pepper has softened (3-5 minutes), add the potatoes to the pan and season to taste with salt and pepper (go easy on the salt since the bacon and cheese will both impart some saltiness).
While potatoes fry in the pan, fry the eggs, sunny side up, until whites are opaque but yokes are still runny.
Just before removing the potato mixture from the heat, add the grated cheese and give the mixture a last stir to melt the cheese.
Taste and season as needed.
Divide mixture into fourths and serve in a bowl, topping each serving with a fried egg.

Serves 4, heartily.

Note: I suspect this would be great with some garlic added in with the onion, and if you're trying to cut carbs, I also suspect it would be great with mushrooms instead of potatoes-- just clean and slice the mushrooms and add them raw to the onion/pepper mixture. Also, if you go that route, you could always wrap each serving in a flour tortilla and have the greatest breakfast burrito this side of New Mexico!

Tuna Steaks in Teriyaki Sauce

The original title of this recipe, as listed on the newspaper clipping it came from, is "Fish and Vegetables in Foil." AKA the most self-explanatory (and blah) name in the history of food, so I changed the name, but obviously not the recipe.

This week Judson is working his fingers to the bone on an illustration he did that's going to be featured in a magazine, so I've been on my own making dinners for us. This one is perfect for that because everything is prepped together so there's no worry that the sides will be done before the main course, or that everything is going to get cold because you forgot to preheat the oven. 

I guess the idea of cooking food in foil packets had to have been novel at some point, but it's still a foreign concept to me to cut out and preserve a recipe that is basically just "put all ingredients in foil then bake." Anyway, Eleanor thought it was worth cutting out, so I made it and we liked it. It's easy, cheap, and makes a great weeknight meal because the cleanup is practically non-existent. (Plus, you can cheat and buy your teriyaki sauce already made. Bam.) 

Some notes on ingredients: One of the rules of this project is that I make NO substitutions, to the extent that I am able. I've so far been able to find most ingredients that I needed, but that all changed today after trips to two different grocery stores looking for corn syrup brought me up empty-handed. I presume that back in Eleanor's day the lack of scare tactics surrounding high-fructose corn syrup meant that it was much more readily available for her than it is for me now. I don't know if corn syrup is just not available here in the UK, or more likely, if it's just not available at my grocery stores, but either way, I had to come up with a solution to make the teriyaki sauce listed below.

I ended up with Lyle's Golden Syrup, which I've mentioned before. It's a byproduct of refining sugar and kind of tastes like a cross between corn syrup and honey. We put it on sausage all the time at breakfast, and it's delicious. Also, it comes in a paint can, so it's one of my favourite weird British condiments for that reason alone. It worked great as a substitution in this recipe and if it's all you have on hand, go for it. Bonus: the logo on the can is a dead lion carcass filled with bees (it's a Biblical reference, but I fail to see the relevance, and, having worked in advertising for four years, I find it really strange their marketing team hasn't come up with a new logo that doesn't, you know, align their product with dead animals).

Last, I don't even like zucchini, but in the spirit of “don't deviate from the recipe,” I cooked up a zucchini and it was delicious. Tuna works great in this dish because it's an Asian-inspired set of flavours, so get tuna steaks if you can. Otherwise, salmon or any other firm, steak-y fish would be great, too.

The Verdict:

3 Spoons out of 5. It's good, but it's also simple and kind of boring. Definitely worth making on a night when you don't want pizza but also don't want to have any dishes to wash.

THE RECIPE:

Tuna Steaks in Teriyaki Sauce

THE INGREDIENTS:
FISH:

2 fish fillets or steaks (approximately ¾ lb total)*
foil
2 carrots
4 green onions
2 small zucchinis (courgettes if you're on my side of the pond)
1 small sweet pepper

THE DIRECTIONS:
Fish:

Preheat oven to 425F/218C.
Pat fish dry.
Place each piece of fish on an individual sheet of foil large enough to wrap all the way around the fish and veggies.
Slice all vegetables diagonally, divide in half and layer on top of fish.
Pour teriyaki sauce over each portion.
Bring the edges of the foil together and crimp them.
Place on baking sheet and bake 12 minutes per inch of thickness, until fish is just opaque (if using tuna, fish does not need to be opaque but should begin to flake when poked with a fork and should still be pink in the center).

*Original recipe calls for frozen fish, so if you want to go that route you definitely can. We used fresh tuna steaks and they were great.

 

Teriyaki Sauce:

2 tbsp + 2 tsp soy sauce
2 tbsp + 2 tsp white wine or vermouth
2 tbsp light corn syrup (or golden syrup)
¼ tsp ground ginger
¼ tsp garlic powder

 

TERIYAKI SAUCE:

Mix all ingredients together and let sit for 15 minutes or up to overnight.
Recipe scales up easily, but if you only need enough for two servings of fish, this will get the job done.