Image by themadcanudist via Flickr
Just spent the weekend at the Meadowlands Festival, volunteering with the Radio Reverb team. I did a couple of stage managing shifts and helped out in the crew kitchen. We cooked up some delicious dishes working with minimal supplies and cooking facilities.
The most surprising dish I prepared was on Monday morning. While the crew finished taking down and packing up the gear, I turned on the stove and prepared breakfast.
We had some leftovers from Saturday’s bean pots, which Sue and I had collectively prepared, so those were heated up and served with the main dish: Scrambled Eggie Bread with Mushrooms.
When I started out making this dish, I had no idea it was going to turn out like scrambled eggs, but due to the facilities that’s what we ended up with and I realized it’s a good way to feed lots of people with limited resources.
I had 8 eggs and a loaf of thinly sliced, very squishy, baker’s whole wheat bread and about 1.5 kilo of fresh mushrooms. I sauteed the mushrooms whole, cooking them down until they were soft. While they cooked I beat the eggs and added about 1/4 cup of milk, then slice by slice, dipped the bread and set it aside in a stack.
The only non-stick pan I had was a wok, and I had no idea at all how I was going make French toast, or eggie bread as the Brits call it, in a wok. Figuring the pieces needed to be smaller to be woked, I cut the slices of soaked bread into quarters, then layered them in the wok.
It quickly became apparent that a wok is not suitable for cooking a stack of French toast! As I started turning the quartered bread slices they started falling apart. After turning for a while, I saw that the slices of bread were looking more like scrambled eggs than the French toast I’d envisioned
Image by chooyutshing via Flickr
Image by powerplantop via Flickr
…so I decided to go with it, constantly turning, as one does when cooking in a wok, and cutting up the more resilient pieces of bread with the edge of the slotted spoon. When it was cooked, I added the mushrooms, and voila, Scrambled Eggy Bread with Mushrooms.
On the taste end of things, I thought it was a bit bland and dry. Not sure what kind of spices would have helped. Whenever I tasted it as it was cooking, the Canadian in me kept thinking it really needed maple syrup. On the savory side – fresh tomatoes, onions, chives, garlic, basil, coriander, freshly ground pepper, more salt – all might have resolved the blandness of the eggie bread. As we had none of that, nor any maple syrup, I served it with optional left over bean dishes, which were spicy and a bit runny, so one offset the other.
I think if one were making scrambled egg and mushrooms for a gang of people and wanted to stretch the eggs, this is a good solution, yet it needs spicing up a little and needs to be served with something like beans with tomato sauce.
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