Diners and brunch

This weekend I went up to Boston to see many of my college friends who were around Harvard for the Harvard-Yale football game. I have very little interest in Harvard football (the Giants an Jets are more fun), but this was a good chance to meet up with many of my friends I haven't seen recently. As typical of these type of visits, the main meal everyday was brunch, generally eaten at a local diner. I've been thinking recently a lot about breakfast/brunch foods, since there is an NYU cooking competition I would like to apply for, which requires a submission of a breakfast menu to be prepared in the first round of the contest. I applied last year, but offered a somewhat stupid menu (I'll paste it in at the bottom of the post). This year I am trying to find a more traditional breakfast approach, so I really valued the chance to eat at the diner. My Jewish gene kicked in for the first brunch I had, and after just a little bit of wavering, I purchased a bagel with lox. I should have thought a little more critically about this: I was in Boston and the lady I ordered from did not know what lox was... and needed me to restate my order as "smoked salmon". The meal was nothing special, and there wasn't really enough lox in the sandwich. Today however I wised up and got a breakfast combo. But here in lies the beauty. For the same price as a bagel and lox, I got 2 slices of french toast, 2 eggs, and some home fries. Plus, the combo came with meat. I can't eat the meat, so I asked the waitress if she could substitute lox for the meat. She obliged and I received more lox than I had in my sandwich the previous day. I reserved this lox, and at the end of the meal ordered an everything bagel with cream cheese, and made myself a bagel with lox sandwich, for a third of the menu price.

Now that I have told everyone of my craftiness, I want to solicit people for breakfast/brunch ideas. The constraint is that I have just 1 hour to make the meal in the competition. Last year, prior to settling on the "Breakfast Bento Box" below, I toyed with making some sort of Dosa like crepe. This was a complete failure and involved me running rice and lentils through a blender, and then making a mess out of my pan when this mixture failed to cook.
Ideas I have had so far this year:
- Making a nice omelet with just fresh spices and a little cheese.
- Crepes
- Eggnog french toast. I'm not sure if I can get eggnog in the competition (note about eggnog -- I will, in about a month, need to write a posting about eggnog, since my brother gets the worlds best eggnog enmasse every Christmas time).
- Salmon bacon (again I don't think I can actually get this, and again this deserves its own post)
- Blintz

The problem I have with breakfast food is that I very seldom eat breakfast food for breakfast. My usual breakfast involves eating the same food I had the night before. In fact, aside from my granola experiment and an occasional omelet, I have not made any breakfast food in quite a while. The most common meal I make at breakfast time ----- roasted chicken. I cook this for after a morning run.
Anyway, I need some help thinking of breakfast foods that will be good for this competition.



********************************
Breakfast Bento Box

Lightly Browned Vegetable, Bean and Egg Burrito with Cilantro Salsa
-Take a large soft torilla and cut it into a square. Then lay a thin layer of white rice. Meanwhile make an omlet with some pepper and garlic in the mix. And saute large slices of onion and red pepper til tender. Heat black beans. On the layer of rice, in the middle lay a 1.5 inch row of beans. On that place in pattern long slices of egg, pepper and onion. Then using a sushi rolling board, roll into a roll. Cut into pieces and dip in tempura batter and fry.

Blueberry / Apple Blintzes with Sour Cream
Form blintzes skin mix and then pan fry to form blintzes. Use Ricotta (or farmers if available) plus creamcheese and sugar. For blueberry just add fresh. For apple, saute apple with cinnamon and nutmeg. Then fill and roll. Then pan fry till brown. Sour cream on the side.

Mango and Smoked Salmon Lettuce Boats
Take medium piece of lettuce --- optimally bib. Make balsamic vinager, brown sugar and olive oil dressing. Dice mango, smoked salmon and red onions and put in lettuce boat. Dressing on the side.

Thin Strawberry fruit soup with treats of mango and raspberries
Blend strawberries with lemon juice and orange juice, squeezed, plus some water. Drop in small chunks of mango and raspberries. Garnish with mint if available.

Traditional orange slices.


Arrange as a bento box. The soup is like a miso soup --- serve with similar spoon. The burrito like temura sushi rolls, the blintze like sashimi and the lettuce boat the salad.