This is the best breakfast I’ve had in the region, ever. Housemade corned beef hash, topped with perfectly fried eggs and accompanied by creamy grits and a buttermilk biscuit.

Another vacation morning on the Isle of Palms, another quick post. Slow start this morning, so I took a leftover meatball, squished it, fried it, and slapped it onto a toasted English muffin with a fried egg.

We had a fairly solid plan for breakfast on the morning following the Big Pig Gig.  Since we only had a couple of overnight guests, we figured we would whip up some crepes on Sunday morning, something quick and easy that doesn’t require a lot of thought.

Then, Drink-O happened.  Plus we went to bed at 3:30am.  And I forgot to make the crepe batter ahead of time, and in the morning I discovered that a crucial element for the batter, milk, was nowhere to be found in the fridge.  We also felt like a truck hit us.

So, crepes never happened on Sunday, and we ended up at a Bob Evans on Sunday afternoon, which is the best place to grab a meal of breakfast food after a night of BBQ and booze-fueled debauchery.  After a couple of days, when everything was cleaned up and put away and the house returned to normal, I picked up some milk and went about implementing my crepe plan, two days late and for dinner instead of breakfast.

Hardware-wise, it’s nice to have a crepe pan.  It’s not absolutely essential, and if you don’t have one you can always use a non-stick saute pan.  I’m very idiosynchratic about my crepe-making process - I always use my same crepe pan, and I have to always use my wooden spoon that measures out exactly the 1/4 cup of batter that I need for each crepe.  But, at minimum, you need a nonstick pan, a ladle or other means of providing a consistent measure of batter, a nonstick spatula, and a nonstick pair of tongs.

The batter recipe that I use is from the site Chocolate and Zucchini, and you can get the recipe there by clicking on the link.  You’ll find most crepe recipes don’t vary much in their ingredients - flour, eggs, water, milk - as long as you end up with a thin batter, you should do just fine.

Like my other favorite quick meal, omelettes, crepes are more about technique than anything else.  You need to get your fillings in order before you start cooking, so chop whatever needs chopping (in this case, smoked salmon and chives) and have them close at hand.  Open up your container of creme fraiche (sour cream is a good substitute) and put two spoons in there (one to scoop, one to push off the creme fraiche onto the crepe).

Now comes the fun part.  Take your pan and set it over high heat, and put a drop or two of water in the center of the pan.  Take some butter out, and get a pat of butter ready (for each crepe, about half a tablespoon, maybe even less, depending on the size of your pan).  When your water droplets sizzle and boil away, the pan’s hot and ready - put your butter in, and use your spatula to spread a thin layer of butter across the pan’s surface.

Using your left hand, hold the pan above the stove at a 45 degree angle (handle pointed down towards you - and if you’re left-handed, reverse whatever I’m saying here).  With your right hand, equip your ladle, and ladle about 1/4 cup of crepe batter into the pan, keeping the ladle at the same position while swirling the pan to allow the batter to coat the surface and form a circle.  Don’t worry if your circle isn’t perfect, it’ll be hidden when you fold it.  Set the pan back down on the burner and cook the crepe for about 30 seconds until the top is dry and the edges begin to curl.

Equip your spatula, and shimmy it underneath the crepe, lift it, and flip it over to cook the other side.  After you flip, start laying your filling ingredients in one quadrant of the circle (not a full half, since you’ll be folding this).  By the time you’re finished, it’s time to flip and fold - use your tongs to grab the edge of the crepe, drag it over the filling, and fold again to form a little wedge.  Shove this off onto a plate and start on the next crepe, adding more butter to the pan and letting it melt completely before ladling more batter.

Repeat as necessary.  You’ll find that you have more than enough batter, so it can keep for a day or two in your refrigerator.  We like to make a batch of dessert crepes, using things like Nutella, peanut butter, marshmallows, and/or bananas and chocolate.  Really, anything you can get your hands on would work just fine.  There are no crepe police.

I took the day off from work today.

After mowing the lawn, watering the garden, and refilling the bird feeder, I decided to treat myself to one of the most basic, yet misunderstood, of food preparations - the scrambled egg.

If your exposure to scrambled eggs has only been in restaurants, or at brunch buffet lines, then you probably do not understand my enthusiasm for the dish.  After all, it’s only eggs and butter, something to be whipped up quickly and in mass quantities for a crowd, right?

But that’s the problem - our society has taught us to interpret scrambled eggs as a dish that’s to be made as quickly as possible.  Here’s the real truth - haste is the enemy of scrambled eggs.  High heat makes for tough, dried out eggs, and result in the short-order scrambled eggs that you find in diners, and the egg jerky that you find in buffets that’s been sitting over a sterno flame for an hour.

Preparing perfect scrambled eggs requires the exact opposite of the process to make an omelette.  When sauteing an omelette, you want to work quickly, tilting and swirling your pan to coat the bottom with egg, over the highest possible heat so that the egg sets and you can roll it around whatever filling you’ve chosen.

For scrambled eggs, you want to cook them as gently as possible, over the lowest heat possible, to yield the most delicate structure that you can.  Perfect scrambled eggs should take a long time to make, and should just barely hold together.  It’s a spot-on dish for a day off from work.

This is my recipe for Perfect Scrambled Eggs.  You can jazz it up a number of ways, which I am sure will show up here soon, but today we’re starting with the basic master recipe.  As with all recipes with fewer than five ingredients, the better the quality of your ingredients, the better the final product.  Find the best eggs and butter you can get your hands on.

Perfect Scrambled Eggs

Butter
3 eggs, preferably organic or at least free range
Salt
Freshly ground pepper

Take a nonstick pan and set it over medium heat.  Place about 2 Tbs of butter into the pan, and keep an eye on it while you whip your eggs up.  You want to let that melt, and tilt the pan so that it gets an even coat of butter.  Once your butter is melted, turn the heat to the lowest possible setting. [note - all of my recipes presume gas cooking; if you are working off of electric burners, have one set to low and transfer the pan over to that one]

Crack the eggs into a small bowl, and use a whisk or fork to stir them up until you have a uniform beaten egg mix.  Pour the eggs into the pan.

Take a nonstick spatula or spoon, and give the eggs a good stir.  Wait a bit.  Stir some more.  What you’re doing here is incorporating the bits of egg that have cooked into the bits of egg that haven’t yet cooked.  As the eggs heat up, they’ll start to slowly firm up - the key is to reach this point in as much time as possible.  Avoid the temptation to turn up the heat - the eggs will cook faster, but they will be nowhere near as delicate, and you will have missed the fun train.

When the eggs are done to your liking, tip them into a serving bowl and top with a fresh grinding of pepper and some salt.  Welcome to the world of real scrambled eggs.