Thursday, April 12, 2007

A recipe for the road

When one is travelling, living in friend's homes, living off a suitcase for more than a month, it becomes necessary to become creative with food. Here's a breakfast/lunch/snack/dinner recipe that has always worked for me.

What you will need:

Bread:
Half an English muffin, fresh. If you cannot find a muffin, a paratha/lavash/old focaccia/half buttermilk biscuits will do. Basically a piece of flat bread. I dont recommend white bread, since I dont like it. I like mine toasted, sometimes in the toaster other times on a hot pan with butter, if available.

Flavoring:
Again this varies depending on whose fridge I am raiding.

I am usually looking for cilantros, a pod of garlic, some peanuts, and sugar to grind into a paste.
Variations include crushing basil and garlic into a spoon of plain mayonaisse, crushing one mint leaf into a half a spoon of avakkai pickle, adding green chilli sauce and mint to peanut butter, mixing Schezwan pepper and black-salt with Dijon mustard....

Spread the flavoring lightly over the bread and let it sit. Keep aside some flavoring to be used later.

The vegetables:
Remember, you are raiding a fridge, so there is always some precooked veggies available. Its either sitting in a container steamed and ready to use, or its in a prepared dish floating in gravy. Pick the vegetables out of the gravy and set it on top of the bread. You might have to mash the vegetables a bit to get them to sit on the bread.

Set the vegetables on top of the flavored bread

The meat of it.:
One egg. Preferably farm fresh, duck eggs. Or farm fresh chicken egg. Or a plain vanilla egg.
Heat a ladle that is smaller than the piece of bread. Break the egg into the hot ladle and wait untile the white is cooked and a thin film forms over the yolk.

Drop the egg on top of the vegetables on the the flavored bread. Drizzle some flavoring over the egg.

The toppings and sides:
Aha. Some friends always have caviar sitting in the fridge, but I have not had the heart to use the caviar. Yet. Salmon roe, with its distinctive texture and saltiness works fine. A dollop of sour cream and chives gives the sandwich a sensous texture. Bunch of steamed veggies on side makes it a large full meal. A glass of tonic water, into which a spoon of khus syrup has been mixed, gives the sandwich a surreal accompanyment...

And there's only one way to eat this Sandwich. Messily.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You ought to go into writing cookbooks, man! That reads absolutely scrump-munchilicious. :)