Top Chef prep, first course: Breakfast.

Yes, I've been a slacker. Yes, I've failed to keep up even my normal, extremely lazy, twice a week pace of blogging.

Fear not. Things will pick up this week. You know why? Season 5 of Top Chef starts this week! Yayyyyy!!!!!

To celebrate, I thought I'd kick off Top Chef week by making something from the Top Chef cookbook. I've had the cookbook for a few months now, and I keep meaning to make something out of it. However, most of the recipes don't really suit the way I cook most of the time--for one; things that can be portioned out as lunches over the course of a week (soups, pasta dishes, salads); or that will freeze well (soups, pasta sauces, Nigella Lawson's beef in British beer). And the things that do fit those parameters (Dave's Truffle and Cognac Cream Macaroni and Cheese) involve ingredients that I'm not a) likely to have on hand or b) inclined to shell out for just for lunches for one.

But the breakfast recipes look pretty simple, and many of them are written to serve one or two. And one of them was a dish that I've thought looked delicious since the moment I saw it: Elia's Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner Waffle from Season 2.

Basically, it's an open faced breakfast sammich, but made on a syrupy waffle, and featuring refried beans. So it's like the awesome love child of a McGriddle and a breakfast burrito. It sounded delicious, and better yet, it sounded like it would make a great Greasebomb breakfast for days when you wake up with that not-so-sober feeling.

I made it on Sunday, to test drive both of these theories. The mise en place:


To make breakfast for one, you will need: Olive Oil; butter; refried beans; frozen waffle; muenster cheese; egg; maple syrup; and ham (more on the ham later). The official recipe also calls for parsley on top, but I left that part out (didn't have it on hand and didn't feel like buying a giant bunch of parsley just to flake a tablespoon of it over the top of my hangover breakfast on a morning when there was no way my palate was going to be in top form).

So you preheat your broiler, and warm up 1/3 cup of refried beans. You then add 1 tbsp of olive oil to the beans to thin them out to a spreadable consistency.

Mmmm. .. .thinned beans. . .


Then, if you're like me and have a shitty old stove and a very small apartment, the broiler will cause your smoke alarm to go off. Turn off the alarm, turn down the oven, and return to the kitchen.

Toast the waffle to desired toastiness. While waffle is toasting, melt 1 tbsp. of butter in a small frying pan, and fry your egg over medium heat.

This was the part that had me nervous. I'm about to let you in on a shameful secret: I love fried eggs, but I can't make them. I've tried a couple of times, and every time, I quickly start thinking "that looks weird. Abort! Abort!" And then I mash at them with a spatula and end up with an extremely buttery scrambled egg (not that this is a bad thing, but it's not the same as fried).

But how hard can it be, right? I mean, my 90 year old grandfather has fried himself 2 eggs a day for most of his life, and while he's a sharp guy, he's not exactly Cordon Bleu trained. So I gritted my teeth, melted my butter, cracked the egg into the skillet and forced myself to stare it straight in its beady yellow eye without flinching.

Hey hey! Not a bad job there, kid. I see many delicious fried egg breakfasts in your future.

As the above picture indicates, you then remove your beautiful fried egg from the skillet and set it to the side. Your delicious toaster waffle should also be done at this point. So you're going to grab that from the toaster and put it on a baking sheet. If you had to turn the broiler down or off earlier, you may want to get it cranking again.

Butter your waffle, then spread your thinned refried beans on the waffle. Drizzle your beany waffle with maple syrup.

Mmmm. . . syrupy bean waffle. . . .

On top of this, you're going to put two thin slices of Muenster cheese

And then you're going to pop this whole apparatus into the broiler for two to three minutes, or however long it takes for the cheese to become melty and delicious.

While the cheese is becoming melty and delicious, you can struggle to get your packet of ham open. Despite the packet saying you can just rip it open, this will somehow become a protracted process involving scissors and a lot of swearing. At some point, your smoke alarm will start going off again. Run to the other room, turn it off, and remove the waffle from the broiler. Plate the waffle, and take a blurry picture of it.

Next you're going to put the ham on top. Now, the recipe calls for coppa ham, which is a dry-cured Italian ham, firmer than prosciutto but still quite tender. It's delicious, but as you'll see if you click on the link, it has a distinctive appearance, and is usually noticeably marbled.

The ham in the picture online is clearly coppa ham. However, the ham in the cookbook picture is clearly not. It's just ordinary pink ham with a rind, and that threw me off. So I used Black Forest Ham. . . .more on that later.

Anyway, put your egg on top of your ham, salt and pepper it, and if you went all out and bought the parsley, throw that on there too.

I love how the ham completely covers the waffle, like a warm and comforting blanket. Of pork.

Armed with my coffee and extra syrup in case I needed it (fuck you; I really like syrup. Don't judge. You don't know my life), I traipsed out to my dining area to enjoy my breakfast and read the Sunday WaPo.

The best moment of any breakfast involving a fried egg? The moment when the yolk breaks and gets everything all yolky and beautiful.

This is an extremely tasty breakfast, and except for the egg frying anxiety and the multiple smoke alarms, it was actually pretty easy to make. It's got that fantastic salty/sweet thing going on, but with the neat twist of the refried beans instead of your usual sausage patty action. And this will sound bizarre, but: refried beans and maple syrup are DELICIOUS together.

There are two things I'd change, though. First, I ended up not adding extra syrup, but in retrospect, I think I would. The savory aspects of the dish are kind of heavy, and I think a little more sweetness could brighten the flavor up a little bit (the parsley probably does the same thing).

Second, I REALLY wish I'd used the coppa ham. It's so much lighter than Black Forrest ham, and there's so much more pep to the flavor. Again, it would've reduced the heaviness of the dish significantly and brightened things up a bit. I'm actually kind of angry with whoever styled the food for the cookbook shot and caused so much ham related confusion.

Finally, while I initially thought that it was insufficiently greasy to be a good greasebomb, and that I was destined to serve out a headachey, stomach churning Sunday on the couch, I am pleased to say that I was wrong. Shortly after consuming the Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner Waffle, I was peppy and clearheaded. It's like instant hangover relief on a waffle. With beans.