One of the perks that you have in living at home with the folks, if you can call it a perk, is that you are overcrowded with your stuff in your room. As a chef, this has served as an inspiration for me, as I recently found an old bottle of almond extract that was still good. I woke up a few days after my luscious experience, with those textures still tickling my tongue, and as I observed that little bottle, newly placed on my bookshelf, I decided that it would be the way to take this recipe to the next level. Honey would be the obvious pairing to complement the almond and accentuate the richness, but I opted for an old Persian recipe my grandpa loved that my mom still makes; dates sautéed in butter, pan fried with eggs. I simply added the almond extract and cream to the mixture, and the end result was even better than I could possibly imagine. Dates are rich too, on top of being perfectly sweet for this recipe, and their consistency being like a natural, solid sap might make them even better than honey, albeit less spreadable. So, here she is, breakfast of beauty.
The final product
The final product tousled to reveal its parts
Toast and strawberries
To make:
Get the smallest frying pan you can find that will fit two eggs, because you want your eggs to be cooked in the cream, and you don't want your cream to be spread out and burnt. You will also need:
butter
one date (I split it in two, and chop it finely, akin to thick julienne sticks; my mother tears it up coarsely into 4 or 5 pieces, and likes to eat them like that on her pita)
(natural) almond extract
heavy cream
two eggs
1. Place one pat of butter, roughly 1 1/2 teaspoons in frying pan at low heat. Before your butter is completely melted, add your date to the sauté so that the date can swim in the butter as they both cook up, but you do not want any browning as it will taint the delicate rich flavor, making it roasty which is not what I want with this ethereal dish. Let sauté for a minute or two.
2. Once the mixture is slightly fragrant, add the almond extract, and let cook for another minute or two. About one teaspoon.
3. Add your cream, enough to cover the frying pan, and sit about 1/8th of an inch deep (which is incidentally the exact width a julienne must be in order to be characterized as julienne). You can put more if you like.
4. Crack and add your eggs right after the cream. Set the heat to medium low ad cover until desired level of cookedness is achieved on your eggs, about 3-5 minutes. I always eat organic, and like them as raw as possible, yet with the entire albumen (egg white) cooked. I do not enjoy a translucent plasma, no matter how good it may be for me.
5. Serve and enjoy!
One final note on purity. In such an animal-fat rich meal, I can not stress enough the importance of organic, AND free range ingredients, as to avoid the generally dirty, and specifically inflammatory fats that are abundant in grain fed cows. The difference is night and day, and while this breakfast is very high in fat, they are good fats if the cow is fed a diet of grass which contains omega-3's (that the cows receive directly), and produces CLA fats in the cows, some of the purest, and most health supportive fats the body needs for healthy organ/tissue maintenance and growth. I am proud to use Stonyfield products; it's an amazing little company, and their products make my day time and time again.
I strongly recommend checking them out. They make me feel proud of being American, reminding me of the pioneer spirit that lays as the backbone of our great country, however crookedly she may sit at times, it is still there, waiting for the day when she may once again be erected, tall, and proud, unwavering, for all to share in her glorious bounty. America, the beautiful.
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