I got one of those opportunities-of-a-lifetime to spend a few months in NYC in 2008. It was during those months that I fell hard for the City. I hate to say it, but living in New York is about a thousand times better than visiting. That’s because the charm of the City is in the nooks and the crannies that take time to discover and know. The City is so overwhelming and vast that it’s hard to know where to begin with only a short stay and if you’ve somehow managed to figure it out, well, then a weekend’s just not enough time. I’ve definitely considered the possibility that I wasn’t in NY for long enough to become annoyed by all the things that make it so great and that I left while the metaphorical party was still raging. With that disclaimer in mind, every minute I spent in the City was an adventure, and especially a culinary one.
Despite my love for the kitchen, my gas bills were low during those NY months. You can eat (affordably or not, you decide) breakfast, lunch and dinner every single bloody day at different street stands, dives and restaurants and never ever run out of excellent options. The City just begs you to eat out. And that is pretty much what I did. I even kept a log on my computer of all the places I ate at over those months, and now, when friends are heading down to the City, I give them suggestions of where, and in what neighbourhoods, to eat, although I’m sure that 90 percent of those recommendations no longer exist. I guess New York wouldn’t be New York if that weren't the case.
NY is a City built on immigrants and foreigners, but there’s no doubt that there are distinctly NY foods. Breakfast sandwiches, for example, are astonishingly ubiquitous. At every turn, you find another café, deli, diner, stall, hole-in-the-wall, convenience stores and fast food chain where coffee and a sandwich (bagel, biscuit or English muffin) of egg, sausage or bacon and cheese will run you $2.50. One of my many favourite NY past-times was waking up, choosing a neighbourhood, choosing reading material, finding one of those purveyors of the breakfast sandwich, spending 2-3 minutes eating the sandwich and another couple of hours drinking coffee and reading. Truth be told, when I wrote the second sentence of this paragraph I was going on observation alone, but now I am also vindicated by my favourite resource: while apparently some guy in Southwest Oklahoma named Harold Moeller invented the breakfast sandwich around 1954, one of the earliest breakfast sandwiches in the U S of A was actually the typical tri-state breakfast sandwich.
Today, in an homage to that great City, which I dearly miss for far more reasons than I’ve listed above, I have made breakfast sandwiches on English muffins. Disturbingly, it turns out that McDonald’s was the first to make the breakfast sandwich on English muffin which teaches me for doing my “research” during the post-production phase.
Let me walk you through that photo. From top to bottom, you’ve got home-made English muffin, melted cloth-bound Avonlea cheddar, home-made breakfast sausage/patty and an over-easy egg (then there’s more muffin but you can’t see it). I think an authentic breakfast sandwich is probably made with a Kraft cheese single (sometimes called American cheese), but that stuff is embarrassing to buy and tastes like plastic. While it looks like I made the sandwich with an ostrich egg, I didn’t. I just made extremely tiny (accidentally so) English muffins. I used the tiniest plate I own to take this photo to make the sandwich look gigantic.
Like all proud mothers (the kind that eat their own offspring, that is) I’m a bit biased, but I think you can tell from the picture that the sandwich was great. Let’s start with the sausage: it was rich with layers of flavour, after having marinated for 24 hours in herbs, and had a subtle sweetness from the pinch of brown sugar that kicked in after a few chews. As for the English muffins, they are apparently cooked on a griddle, and not baked, which I found to be a logistical pain-in-the-ass, and I’m not sure the pain was worth it for a sandwich I’d rather eat on a bagel. The muffins also didn’t expand as much as I had expected during cooking which accounted for their miniature status. Having said that, I now know the secret of the English muffin and so can you if you follow the recipe below.
Which brings me to the end of this post: the rest is just the muffin and sausage recipes for those who are interested (how dare I say “just”!) and for those who aren’t, now’s the time to stop reading.
ENGLISH MUFFINS
Ingredients (20 muffins)
• 1 cup milk
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 1.5 teaspoons of active dry yeast
• 1 cup warm water
• 1/4 cup melted shortening
• 6 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
Directions
1. Warm milk in small saucepan until boils and remove from heat. Add and dissolve sugar and let cool until room temperature.
2. In a different bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water and let stand about 10 minutes.
3. In another bowl, combine milk, yeast mixture, shortening and 3 cups flour and mix until fully blended.
4. Add the salt and remaining flour and knead.
5. Put dough in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise say … 3 hours?
6. Roll the dough to about 1/2 inch thick. Cut rounds with biscuit cutter, drinking glass, or empty tuna can. (FYI I used a drinking mason-jar and it made super tiny muffins I’d go with a tuna can!).
7. Sprinkle waxed paper with cornmeal and set the muffins on this to rise. Sprinkle the top of the muffins with cornmeal. Cover and let rise 1/2 hour (I didn’t do this).
8. Heat greased griddle to medium and cook muffins for 10 minutes on each side (watch the heat these will burn).
HOMEMADE BEEF BREAKFAST SAUSAGE PATTIES
Ingredients (I halved this recipe)
• 2 pounds ground beef
• 2 teaspoons dried sage
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 teaspoons dried basil
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
Directions
1. Mix sage, basil, brown sugar, onion powder, salt, pepper, marjoram and red pepper flakes in a bowl.
2. In another bowl, add the spice mixture to the ground beef and evenly mix. Refrigerate for 24 hours to let the flavours blend.
3. Divide into 8 patties.
4. Cook the patties in a pan on medium heat until cooked through (approx 7 minutes per side).
