Breakfast of Champions
One of my co-workers, a regular at triathlons in the area, managed to get ten of our company's employees interested in doing a triathlon. A "newbie" one, to be sure, but still not a trivial feat.
Knowing my notorious anti-exercise stance, they tried to convince me to join them. I demurred, but got into the spirit of things enough to offer to make breakfast for everyone when they finished the race.
This was how Melissa and I found ourselves pulling into Pleasanton's Shadow Cliffs park at 6:15 on a Saturday morning. Yes, that's right. Who knew there was another 6:15 during the day? Ginger didn't feel the need to advertise this in the process of getting everyone excited about it. When she sent out a note suggesting that the carpoolers from San Francisco meet at 4:45am, one of the other runners responded that he hadn't known the race was actually on Friday night.
Clearly being able to make everything in advance was a key consideration; there was no way I was getting up any earlier than necessary.
Here's the official menu:
- Gravlax - not knowing how much to make for the roughly 20 people who would be there (racers
as well as significant others), I asked the butcher. He came back with 1/4 lb. per person, so
about 5 pounds. So I bathed my big slab o' salmon in vodka, coated it with a salt-sugar mixture, put
it under weights for a week and brought it along. I brought my knife roll so that I could cut it
there.
Let me just say that 1/4 lb. of gravlax per person is a very generous amount of the stuff. I cut probably 1/2 lb of the stuff for the diners that morning. And now I have 4 big slabs of gravlax in the freezer, so Melissa and I will probably be doing a lot of brunches soon.
- Chocolate-chunk coffee cake - Cook's Illustrated
had a big article on sour cream coffee cakes about a year ago, and it had stuck on my mind as something
I wanted to try. Brunch (breakfast, really; everyone was done by about 9:30 in the morning) seemed
the perfect opportunity. Perusing their variants, I was struck by the lemon-blueberry version. At least
until I saw the chocolate chip version. They use chocolate chips, but I swapped in Scharffen Berger
chocolate chunks, which seemed to be a good substitute.
This is a recipe I should've made a long time ago. Man, those cakes (I made two) were good. And they keep well at room temperature for a few days. I brought some into work on Monday and it was still delicious. Moist and dense and flavorful, with a yummy strudel in the middle and on top, I feel like I should be making this every weekend.
- Fruit Salad with Lime-Ginger gastrique - Partially in honor of our organizer, but mostly because I'm a big fan of the lime-ginger combination, I figured this would be a good sauce for a summer fruit salad. A gastrique is basically just a syrup, but rather than water, you use some sort of acidic liquid (lime juice, here). Once it was reduced to 1/4 its original volume to concentrate the lime flavor, I tossed a whole lot of minced ginger in to let it infuse for a day or so. Needless to say, the sauce had some kick. When I was doing the assembly in the park, I put in a little sauce, tried some fruit, and kept going until it was well seasoned. Of course then the fruit sat in this sauce for another hour, so every bite was bursting with flavor. It went quickly.
- Homemade Brioche rolls with Explorateur cheese - All those racers burning up all those calories. I couldn't bear the thought of it. So I figured a triple-creme cheese (75% butterfat by law) with a nice egg-butter bread would compensate for all that running, biking, and swimming everyone did. The real intent was to slice open a brioche, smear some cheese on it, and then top that with the gravlax. Even Melissa, who isn't a big gravlax fan (unfortunate, given the four huge slabs of it sitting in the freezer), loved this combination. I didn't feel like the brioche was the best I had ever done, but it was good. And, more importantly, filling.
- The almost-rans: I had this great idea. Borrow a camping stove, and do scrambled eggs right
there in the park for the triathletes. Melissa would use the other burner to boil water for
coffee and tea (Ginger brought orange juice, Gatorade and water). I got up early and cracked 4 dozen eggs into a big container so I could just ladle
out the mixture in the park. It sounded perfect.
And it probably would have been. If the tank for the stove hadn't run out of gas. Melissa and I ended up having scrambled eggs for dinner that night, and no one managed to have coffee or tea that morning (except Melissa, who made herself some when we first got to the park).
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