Salmon Bocadillo at Home

For lunch, I made a salmon and cream cheese bocadillo.

Ok, so not the most traditional bocadillo. Bocadillos are little sandwiches they make in Spain for a light packed lunch or snack. They're just a slice or two of meat, maybe a little butter, on a small baguette. My host Señora (Hola, Pilar!) used to make them for me. They're also usually the cheapest street food you can find.

I had leftover "pan francés" from the Mexican grocery, sort of a rich, sweet, soft baguette that doesn't at all resemble French baguettes, but decided it would make an interesting bocadillo. It would have, except for the horror that is Trader Joe's low-fat cream cheese (which I accidentally bought, assuming it was Neufchâtel). It was tangy and oddly grainy, and completely disgusting. Kind of ruined the sandwich. I hope I don't get sick, but I think it was just gross, not actually spoiled.

Pupusas at Home

For brunch, I had a pupusa with tomatillo sauce, smoked salmon, and coffee.

The pupusas were courtesy of our local well-stocked grocery store. It's nice to live somewhere with a surfeit of Latin American foods again. I cooked them in the toaster. Toasters are extremely useful- watch carefully for flames, but almost anything can be cooked in one. Covered with leftover tomatillo sauce from my little Rick Bayless adventure, they were extremely tasty.

The salmon was an afterthought- initially, I was going to make a pupusa stack, but the salmon by itself seemed like it would overwhelm the pupusa. If I had been extremely hungry, a stack of pupusa, salmon, and crema may have been tasty.

Sammy Scramble at Home

For breakfast, I ate a salmon scramble, with coffee to drink.

The secret to a good scramble is low heat and fatty dairy. We have tons of 'crema Salvadoreña' left from a Rick Bayless recipe I made earlier this week, so I thought it would be a good way to use the remainder.

I'm not sure if crema Salvadoreña is distinct from crema Mexicana, crema Hondurena, etc., or if style names are merely an appeal to national allegiance. The basic idea is a thickened, soured dairy product resembling, but more delicately and richly flavored than, sour cream. It has a buttery flavor, and is sometimes compared to creme fraiche.

I scrambled the eggs over low heat with a tablespoon or so of the crema and shreds of smoked salmon until soft-set, and finished with a sprinkle of freeze-dried chives (I have no idea why we have freeze-dried chives).

It turned out pretty well, although I need to learn to not buy TJ's salmon- there's always something wrong with it- either too mushy, too greasy, or way too salty. Today's is too salty, which I will take over mushy. I also just learned not to research TJ's salmon online (ewww).

Light Lunch at Home

For lunch, I had smoked salmon, cranberry compote, and butter on a roll from Whole Foods.

The salmon is leftover tidbits that are getting old; the compote is basically thick cranberry sauce I made last night out of leftover Thanksgiving cranberries. I was curious to try WF's "seeduction" roll after some friends made a DIY version as part of their Thanksgiving dinner. The combination was pretty tasty. My inspiration was the Sironia turkey sandwich from the late, much-mourned JD's Art Cafe in Waco, TX (don't laugh- rumor has it JD was married to an amazing French-trained pastry chef, and I'll be trying desperately to track down her gorgeous cake recipes for the rest of my life). The Sironia was the historic building's name, and the sandwich was allegedly based on one served at a cafeteria in the building in the 1950s. I have no idea how I got smoked salmon and butter from turkey, cream cheese, and cranberry sauce, but whatever. I see the Sironia is back, in the form of an antique mall, apparently.

Brunch at Home

I really hate breakfast, but I've been trying to eat huge ones because it's supposed to be good for you. We had some leftover smoked salmon from yesterday's bagel, and our eggs were about to go bad. Solution? Soft-scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and a side of oatmeal.

I cracked the eggs into my skillet, added a little salt and cream cheese, and stirred. The salt stems from the Cooks' Illustrated recommendation that salting prior to cooking leads to more tender eggs. The cream cheese gives it a creamy texture, without thinning the egg and making it tougher, which is what added milk tends to do. I cooked over relatively low heat, which takes longer but supposedly keeps the eggs from getting rubbery. Toward the end, I added the smoked salmon in chunks. It was tasty, if a little salty between the lox, cream cheese, and added salt. Low blood pressure runs in the family, so it's probably not a bad thing.

I made oatmeal to go with the eggs. I don't really believe in cooking rolled oats (they get too mushy), so I just mixed it with some milk and toasted almonds and pretended it was museli. The breakfast was filling without being too big, and went well with my Dunkin' Donuts coffee.

Brunch at the Empire Cafe

For brunch, I engaged in a bit of cultural anthropology by trying the "Northwestern Breakfast". It was interesting to see what a Houston restaurant thinks of as Northwestern. It consisted of a smoked salmon, onion, and tomato omelette, some not-very-ripe fruit, and oatcakes with blackberry syrup.

The Empire Cafe is a cute cafe with nice outdoor patios and great trees. It's in Montrose, almost across the street from Cafe Brazil. I'd forgotten how interesting the menu is at Empire, and how good their coffee is. We'll probably end up here more often (assuming we wake up before the huge crowds that materialize around 10am).

Overall, not bad. The omelette was good. The smoked salmon was cold, but that also meant it wasn't cooked into pallid mush, and maintained texture well. The oatcakes were bizarre- very flat, on the raw side, with gummy chunks of steel-cut oats, weird texture, and a troubling shine. I can only presume they were very, very healthy. The blackberry syrup was good, and the cakes had a nice cinnamon flavor, texture notwithstanding. The fruit was like cardboard. Interestingly, I learned from my grandmother how to pick honeydew melons yesterday- if the skin is smooth, it's not ripe. The key is slightly rough, chalkboard-like skin.