I am of mixed ethnicity. My father was Filipino and my mother was Irish. Both loved to cook. Both loved foods from all over the world. My father grew up eating Filipino food, rice, lots of fish and traditional Filipino cuisine. When he came to the US at the age of 14, he settled in Oakland and became a short order cook before he went into the Army. My mother grew up in the state of Washington, redneck Irish as my Aunt Ardelia used to say. She knew how to make traditional Irish food like corned beef and cabbage and soda bread. Since her mother’s family had come from Ireland and settled in West Virginia, my mom also grew up making southern food, biscuits, country gravy, fried chicken, collard greens with bacon, pork chops with red eye gravy. She grew her own veggies, canned them and made all kinds of other canned items like stewed tomatoes. She also made her own jams and jellies. But my mom had also been married before and my brother and sisters’ father had owned a Chinese restaurant in Seattle. My mom got the chef to teach her classic Chinese dishes like pineapple chicken, chow mein, and barbeque pork. Yum.
So I grew up learning how to make all kinds of foods, breads and desserts. I make my version of some of the things I learned, but I also make things exactly as my parents did. And since my brother Tom had worked as a sous chef for years for Hyatt, I learned a few things from him too. Today, for breakfast, I made something that has influences from both my parents and my brother.
Raiding the fridge, I had some rice, eggs, and linguica. Linguica is a Portuguese sausage made with wine vinegar. It’s just my favorite sausage in the world. When I was a kid, the sausage came raw and my father would steam it in the cast iron skillet then fry it once the water had boiled away. My dad loved this sausage. He’d become a fan during his years living in Oakland. I don’t know how he discovered it, but I’m so glad he did because it’s so yummy!
I decided to make Filipino fried rice with linguica and eggs with curry, something my brother made for me when I was a kid. It sounds weird, but it tastes great! I think all my nieces and nephews grew up eating Uncle Tom’s curried eggs. I know my daughter certainly did. Curried eggs and fried rice is one of Annicka’s favorite foods. My brother made it for her all the time when she was small.
So I start out by checking out the rice. Rott bought it the day before at Flame Broiler. It’s cheaper to make it myself, but alas, in the motel I have no pot or rice cooker. Unfortunately, the idiots at Flame Broiler didn’t seal the lid on the bowl so the rice is hard and dried a little. I leave the lid cracked and stick the bowl in the microwave for 2 minutes. If the rice is still a little hard, I’ll add a tablespoon of water and nuke it again. Steamed rice isn’t difficult to bring back from a dried state, especially if you’re making fried rice out of it.
I slice the linguica and fry it up in a pan. Sizzle, sizzle! I take it out of the pan when it’s crispy on the outside and dump in the steamed rice. I add salt (like potatoes, rice needs salt!) and garlic powder. My dad used to say that Filipino fried rice was never the same twice, which isn’t exactly true. See, Filipino fried rice is made with whatever you have on hand. My dad would make it with bacon, sausage, linguica, pork steak…whatever meat he had on hand. He loved making it with linguica which turns the rice orange from the linguica grease. He would always cook the meat first and then make the rice in the meat drippings. He felt that to not use the drippings was a waste. Now, my dad, unlike other Filipinos, was not a fan of dumping veggies in the rice, especially those stupid canned or frozen peas and carrots. He hated those. He would put fresh veggies in scrambled eggs or omeletes, but never fried rice. He did say it wasn’t Fililpino rice without fresh garlic or garlic powder though.
Once the rice is all saturated in the drippings and fried up, it’s time for eggs. Oooh…eggie weggs. To answer your question about whether I can handle eggs, the answer is YES. Hey, my dad was a short order cook! I can flip eggs with the best of them!
Now, I’m not a fan of sunny side up eggs. I like em over easy. Before I flip them though, I gotta hit em with yellow curry powder. This is my brother Tom’s trick and it is a yummy one.
You can try it the first time with just a light sprinkle. If you like it, season it to taste the next time. I like a good, heavy sprinkle as you can see above.
There they are, flipped and unbroken. Told you I could do it. 😉 Next, the eggs are dropped onto that rice fried in linguica drippings.
And last, but not least, I mess up that pretty picture by mixing the egg with the rice. Chop, chop, mix, mix, yolk all over the rice…My kid can tell you, it might look like a mashed up mess, but those curried fried eggs mixed with fried rice are sooooo good!
And there you have it, my weird breakfast. It’s not a one person meal so since Annicka isn’t here, about half or a little more than half goes into a bowl for dinner or breakfast tomorrow. The babies don’t really like to eat the linguica, but they love the drippings, which I let them have to help with their fur balls.
I doubt you’ll get another post from me for at least a week. I don’t do breakfast during the work week. Actually, I often don’t do dinner during the work week. I just get too tired and a $1 taco from Del Taco sounds like heaven when I’m exhausted. So I don’t think I can do one of these posts, fun as they are, when I do make dinner, but you never know. Maybe I’ll be back in a day or two with some photos from dinner, just to prove I can do it.
On the writing front, I’m working on a novella for MLR Press and I hope to have it finished soon. VJ Summers and I are in talks with our editor at Loose Id regarding the possibility of them contracting Partners and us finishing the sequel, Masks. I have asked for my rights back to Scrambling, which is currently at Loose Id. I’m hoping to self-pub it for a lower price when I get it back in the fall. So anyone who wanted to read it, but didn’t care for the high price will have a chance to read it now. In fact, I’m considering going Kindle Unlimited with it. A lot of MM books do very well on KU and I think I may want Scrambling to have that chance.
Hope you’re having a wonderful, safe Independence Day!
