Breakfast/brunch foods are by far some of my favorites. It’s the time when seemingly anything is fair game when it comes to morning (or sometimes early afternoon) meals after a good night’s rest—cereal, eggs, pancakes, bacon, pastries, rice, steak, juice, coffee, vodka (Bloody Mary) and even fried chicken. Pictured above and below is the birthday brunch I cooked for myself a few months ago—a veal chop with eggs and sweetened rice. The meat is simply seasoned with salt and pepper and cooked until the desired temperature on the stove. For the sweetened rice, you finish a regular pot of rice with milk, butter, and sugar—doing so almost turns it into a rice pudding and is incredibly addictive. The rice acts as a sweet counterpart to the saltiness of the meat, which is then all balanced out by the richness added once you break into the golden egg yolk. Yum.
My relationship with this blessed mealtime has changed over the past few months since I began working in the restaurant. Weekend brunch is by far the busiest time in the restaurant in terms of the number of people served—we blew past the 250 mark yesterday and there are only three (sometimes four) cooks on the line pushing out food! In the beginning of my cooking career, fresh out of culinary school and (thinking I was) ready for anything, I got a big reality check about what cooking in a restaurant actually meant. Cooking a few delicious items for a couple of people to sit down and eat at home is one thing—serving multiple items for hundreds of people that come in throughout the day is a whole other beast. So needless to say, those first two months or so working in the restaurant were a bit of a learning experience…
Fast forward to today and the brunch shift isn’t nearly as stressful as when I first started. It’s still plenty stressful/hectic/busy—don’t get me wrong—but thankfully I don’t feel the need to drown my sorrows in a mix of blood, sweat, tears, booze, and fast food after every shift. Every now and then I even have enough energy to be a real person and do something after work! Yesterday was not one of those days. It was the end of a six day workweek (my first one at the restaurant) and I was pooped. I passed out around 8 p.m. and was wide awake by 4 a.m., hence my writing this post to pass the time. I hope the rest of you out there are currently experiencing a slightly more normal sleep schedule…
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