Bacon and Egg Salad Sandwich

"I've spent a good portion of my life searching for the perfect egg salad sandwich. I finally found one in New York City, at a deli on Seventh Avenue." - GALE GAND

Whenever I'm craving an egg salad sandwich, I default to the one at Starbucks, because that's the only place I can find one around my office.  But Starbucks seems to have pooled all of their excellence into coffee and muffins and left nothing for their egg sandwiches.  It looks impressive, all fat and eggy, but it's just lacking - sort of like the way Perrier is confusing to me because it's soda........but tasteless.. ?...

This one by Gale Gand is exactly what I crave - lots of big flavors, lots of color, lots of chunks.

And if you are wondering why I needed a recipe to make something as basic as egg salad, it's because I've never been able to properly boil an egg in my life, and I needed someone to walk me through it.
Nothing more humbling than looking down at an overcooked green egg. I get it, I am a novice. I get it. 

Bacon and Egg Salad Sandwich

adapted from Brunch! by Gale Gand

INGREDIENTS

8 hard-boiled eggs, peeled

4 strips bacon, cooked and chopped

3/4 cup mayonnaise

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives

salt + pepper to taste

bread, for sandwiching

DIRECTIONS

Roughly chop the hard-boiled eggs, and throw them in a medium bowl.

Stir in bacon, mayo, mustard, and chives. Season with salt and pepper. 

Sandwich!

Macaronis Au Gratin Va Va VOOM

"As they roast, the dabs of butter melt into the mushroom juices and the hit of garlic, making a lovely, deep jus that seeps into the mac and cheese they rest on." - MARLENA SPIELER

At the moment, I am broke. I ripped off my driver's side mirror in an unfortunate incident of stupidity, so that is where a chunk of my holiday savings have gone. This explains why I skimped on the suggested 8 - 10 oz of mushrooms, and went with 6 pieces. I do not recommend it.  This dish would have looked ten times more spectacular if the entire thing was topped with a mountain of shroom, but I ended up having to scatter them far and wide... each an ocean apart from the other.

I also added procuitto to this already hefty dish because that is how I live my life -- in excess.

Macaronis Au Gratin Va Va Voom
adapted from Macaroni & Cheese by Marlena Spieler

INGREDIENTS

12 oz small macaroni (i.e. elbow)
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 shallot, chopped
10-12 oz Gruyere cheese, shredded
4 oz heavy cream
salt + pepper to taste
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
8-10 oz medium mushrooms, stems removed and chopped
1 tablespoon fresh chives, chopped
4 slices prociutto, baked and crumbled

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 375 F. Lay the prociutto flat on a baking sheet, stick it in the oven, and forget about it for about 5 minutes. Take them out when they've gotten crispy.

Cook the pasta in a large pot of salted water until it is barely al dente (5 minutes for elbows). Drain, reserve 1/2 cup of the pasta liquid.

Return the hot pasta to the pan immediately, and toss with about a quarter of the garlic, chopped shallot, half the shredded cheese, heavy cream, salt + pepper, prociutto, chopped stems, and 2 T of the butter.

Add the pasta  liquid, and toss again. Add the rest of the cheese and toss one last time.

Spoon the pasta mixture into a baking dish evenly and lay the mushroom caps on top, smooth side down.  Cut the remaining 3 T butter into small sqaures and fit them into each of the mushroom caps.  Sprinkle with remaining garlic, and season with salt + pepper.

Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the mushrooms begin to brown and the juices collect in the caps.

Sprinkle with chives just before serving.

a little background

Welcome to my 7th blog! The previous six that I have tried to launch and keep up with have failed fantastically. But with Texty Food, I really feel like I found something I won't just abandon after one lazy weekend. So here's to a new year, another new blog, and a new resolution to Stick with it.

A little background about Texty:  I think all recipes in a cookbook should be accompanied by a photo.   It's inevitable that the ones without it are going to be neglected, because nothing is more inviting than a flashy, well photographed, professionally styled dish.  The photos in cookbooks are extremely glorifying! Cheese is always melted golden brown, the honk of meat is juicy (but not bleeding, which happens a lot when I attempt medium rare), and the chocolate ganache is perfect - not a single trace of a bump. I'm always bookmarking these pages.  The text-only recipes are so, so neglected. All they have are words, and more words, and most people are probably turned off by excessive text. Like this paragraph.

I started this blog so I can cook the texty recipes and give them the photos they deserve. I don't know why the author or the editor decided to demote them to visually boring pages, but it can't be because they're sub-par recipes. I believe that if they made it into the book, then it must be some sort of delicious.

My hope is that by giving these recipes a picture, it will inspire someone to cook it in their kitchen, or to start adopting recipes from their own pile of texty cookbooks.

And if you do tackle a "boring" recipe on your own -- please take a picture and send them my way! I want this personal blog to one day grow into a community project, and I'd love to have contributions. 

This is as wordy as my posts will ever get, I promise :)