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How to Cook Scrambled Eggs with Just a Whisk and a Pan

I eat a lot of eggs. For the past couple of years, I have started almost every day with some form of cooked egg. So I've had a lot of time to experiment with different ways of making them. I have found the easiest, quickest, most tasty way of making scrambled eggs that results in heaping layers of soft, fluffy egg: the whisk-only lazy scrambled egg.

The beauty of the lazy scrambled egg is that it's fast, it's simple, and it results in one fewer thing you have to wash (the spatula.)

Here's how to make lazy scrambled eggs.

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Lazy Scrambled Eggs 

You will need:

• A small-ish non-stick pan. I love and recommend the Scanpan. Non-stick, 100% PFOA-free, and built to last. 
• A whisk. I use a metal one. If you have a standard non-stick pan, you will probably want to use a silicone one. 
• A bowl. 

Ingredients:

• Eggs. (Get fresh organic ones, if you can afford it.)
• Olive oil or butter.
• Salt and pepper.

Steps:

1. Heat up a pan to medium heat for about three minutes.
2. Break eggs into the bowl. Toss in a half-tablespoon or so of water to help them froth up more.
3. Briskly whisk your eggs in the bowl for about 30 seconds. Here's how mine look. 
4. When the pan is nice and hot, pour in about a tablespoon of olive oil or butter. You want all the sides of your pan nicely coated by oil, so it might take more or less.
5. Give the pan a few seconds to heat up the oil or melt the butter. Then toss in the eggs. 
6. Using the whisk, gently but quickly push the layer of egg at the bottom toward the middle of the pan. Keep working your way around the pan, tilting it as you go, so that the uncooked portions of egg keep sliding to the outside. 
7. After the egg is mostly cooked, start to collect it into a pile. Turn it once or twice to keep the bottom from browning too much.
8. Slide it onto your plate. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Step 6 is the only tricky bit, which I admit I don't always do a great job at. But the result is always yummy eggs with soft, fluffy layers cooked all the way through, but not overcooked. And it only takes a few seconds to cook.

Here's a video of me cooking it. I kind of messed up, but you get the idea!

And here's how they turned out. So tasty!

The 2017 SF Kouign Amann Tour: b. Patisserie versus Craftsman and Wolves!

Last weekend I organized the second annual San Francisco Kouign Amann Tour. When I put out the word that I was organizing a tour, there was a huge burst of enthusiasm and related emoji from my friends. In the end, we had a hungry group of eight pastry-nerds assembled.

But where to go? Last year, we were very pleased by Craftsman and Wolves and b. Patisserie, so of course we had to go back to both of those bakeries. I added Le Marais to the list because I had had some good experiences there. 

We started at Craftsman and Wolves in the Mission on a sunny Saturday morning.

Last year's trip there was largely positive. It's a beautiful space, with artistically presented, creatively-conceived pastries. But folks were a little disappointed with their famous "The Devil Within" savory muffins. While they were very tasty, the key ingredient is the quail egg on the inside, which has to be cooked but runny. Most of ours were too firm. Still delicious, but not amazing.

This year, the "Devil Within" muffins we ordered hit it out of the park. A perfect balance between the doughy muffin, the runny egg, and the salt on the side that your sprinkle on every bite. 

But of course, we were there for the kouign amann. They had two varieties that day, a plain and a mocha version. 

I would say that the plain was just fine, crispy outside, soft and layered inside. Nothing spectacular.

The mocha was really delicious though. The mocha filling was just the right amount of sweetness and coffee flavor, without overpowering the rest of the pastry. Nicely crisped on the outside. Very well done.

Then it was off to Le Marais, a few blocks away. It was a beautiful morning for a walk in the Mission, and a nice break in between sweets.

Unfortunately, Le Marais was out of kouign amann for the day. Reportedly, the flavor of the day was caramelized apple, which would have been a lovely contrast. Ah well, another day, another pastry. It was honestly the underdog on our list anyway.

So we headed off to the Mecca for kouign amann, b. Patisserie in Pacific Heights. Most of us had been to b. Patisserie several times, so we knew what to expect. But it was my friend Diane's first visit, so I was excited to see her reaction to her first b. Patisserie pastry. She seems pleased.

The special that day was a cranberry-pear-pecan kouign amann. I admit to being sad that they didn't have a more seasonal variety like peppermint chocolate or speculoos. But I was confident it would be excellent anyway. 

Here's a flight of the three varieties they had that day: cranberry-pear-pecan, plain and chocolate.

Here's what it really looked like with all of us taking food pics. LOL.

As always, the quality of the pastries at b. Patisserie is unmatched. I was not blown away by the cranberry-pear-pecan version. There was no distinct flavor profile that came through, just a general jam-like sweetness. Still very tasty.

I preferred the "plain" kouign amann, which just perfectly balanced between the crispy exterior, the layers of dough inside, and the sweet sugar filling.  Really, there's nothing plain about it.

The chocolate-banana-pecan croissant and the ham and cheese croissants were other favorites at our table. There's nothing like a fresh ham and cheese croissant that is still warm, which crispy cheesy bits on the outside. Amazing.

All in all, a very pleasant outing with my friends to some of my favorite places doing one of my favorite things: eating fresh pastries. This is what life is all about. I'm a lucky bastard, for sure.

 
I'm honestly not sure how to top this for next year. I think it would have to be... a trip to France to try kouign amann straight from the source. Hmmm.

 

Study of 135K Individuals Concludes High Carb Diet Linked to Higher Mortality

Here's something to make you reconsider that bowl of pasta. The largest global study looking at environmental, societal and biological influences on obesity and chronic health conditions just released their findings, and it doesn't look good for carb-based diets.

Led by co-investigators Drs. Salim Yusuf and Koon Teo at McMaster University, this mega study of over 135,000 individuals in 18 countries compared the consumption of carbohydrates, fats and proteins against mortality and general health over the course of about 10 years. Data was collected through participant questionnaires, with individuals additionally undergoing a physical assessment consisting of blood pressure, anthropometric measures (weight, height, waist and hip), body fat percentage (BIA and DEXA measures), spirometry, electrocardiogram, a fasting blood sample and urine sample. Participants were followed up with telephone contacts occurring annually and reassessments every 3 years.

Here's what they found:

Higher carbohydrate intake was associated with an increased risk of total mortality (highest [quintile 5] vs lowest quintile [quintile 1] category, HR 1·28 [95% CI 1·12–1·46], ptrend=0·0001) but not with the risk of cardiovascular disease or cardiovascular disease mortality. Intake of total fat and each type of fat was associated with lower risk of total mortality (quintile 5 vs quintile 1, total fat: HR 0·77 [95% CI 0·67–0·87], ptrend<0·0001; saturated fat, HR 0·86 [0·76–0·99], ptrend=0·0088; monounsaturated fat: HR 0·81 [0·71–0·92], ptrend<0·0001; and polyunsaturated fat: HR 0·80 [0·71–0·89], ptrend<0·0001). Higher saturated fat intake was associated with lower risk of stroke (quintile 5 vs quintile 1, HR 0·79 [95% CI 0·64–0·98], ptrend=0·0498). Total fat and saturated and unsaturated fats were not significantly associated with risk of myocardial infarction or cardiovascular disease mortality.

In short: high carbohydrate diets were associated with higher risk of mortality. Total fat and individual types of fat were related to lower total mortality. 

More about the study here. 

RELATED POSTS: Which is more effective for weight loss: diet or exercise?

Less Coffee = More Energy

About 2 months ago, I was noticing a significant energy drop at around 2-3pm everyday which was bothering me. I had cut out heavy, carb-filled lunches, ate little to no sugar, got a decent amount of sleep (7-8 hours a night.) And still I was struggling to stay away in the late afternoons without external stimulants.

One of the suggestions I received was to reduce my coffee consumption. That seemed counter-intuitive, at face value. The argument was that too much coffee throws your body's natural rhythms and energy levels out of whack, causing you to get significant energy dips when you aren't drinking it.

I didn't like that argument. I really love coffee. I've devoted a significant amount of energy into perfecting my coffee setup at home, sourcing the best beans, and getting my technique down. But I also enjoy experimenting with my body and understanding it better.

So for the past couple of months I've been weaning myself down from my typical coffee routine. Normally I have one giant mug of coffee all morning – effectively two normal cups of coffee. Then in the afternoon I have an additional giant mug of decaf coffee. 

I've gotten myself down to one normal cup of coffee when I wake up, followed up by black or green tea later in the morning. In the afternoon, it's another cup of black or green tea. And that's it.

Surprisingly, I've been feeling great and more alert than when I was drinking more than twice that amount of coffee. I would not have guessed that less coffee equalled more energy. But there you go.

Health Check: Eating and Climbing More, Some Weight Gain

It's been awhile since I've done a general health check-in here. Overall, things are going really great. I'm feeling fit, eating smart, and keeping active. 

I spent a lot of the Summer training for a couple of dance competitions I was in. I recorded some of my lowest weight since I started tracking them a few years ago, at around 132 pounds. 

In the Fall, I relaxed a bit on my diet restrictions, allowing myself more carbs during the week, but still abstaining from most sugars including fruit. Sweet potatoes are my new favorite food! I also started eating more, particular more protein, in order to counteract some fatigue I began experiencing in the afternoons. It's been working -- I haven't experienced significant midday slumps in several weeks now!

My exercise regime has also shifted, with my new hobby rock climbing. I try and climbing three times a week, which cuts into both my normal running and dancing "workouts." Climbing is much more of a full-body workout, but it isn't as cardio intensive. So I'm seeing general strength gains and increases in muscle mass, particularly in my upper body, but not expending more calories compared to other exercises.

So, combining all of that increasing food consumption and shifting exercise, I'm seeing a bit of a weight gain, tipping out at 137 this week. Still well within a healthy BMI range at 22.8. But interesting to note.

Next up for me is revisiting my cheat days, which have perhaps gotten a little out of hand lately. I think I ate thousands more calories than I should have last Sunday, and wasted it on dumb things like potato chips and Safeway cookies. I'm thinking of focusing on just a couple of cheat meals, with some moderate snacking thrown in, instead of the full-on sugary bacchanals that I've been subjecting my body to. Honestly, it's just kind of gross how much junk I can eat.

Taste Test: The Beast Burger vs the Beyond Burger

A couple of weeks ago, I got my hands on the Beyond Burger by the company Beyond Meat, purported to be one of the most meat-like veggie burgers on the market. Check out my review if you haven't read it yet. The short version is that I enjoyed it a lot!

This week, I got ahold of another product by the same company, the Beast Burger.

What's the difference between the Beyond Burger and the Beast Burger? According to their website:

The Beyond Burger™ is a ready-to-cook "raw" patty that looks, cooks, and tastes like a fresh beef burger, and it will be sold in the meat section of the store. The Beast is a precooked frozen patty shelved with other frozen items. Our goal in creating The Beyond Burger™ was to provide the full 360° mouth-watering, juicy, and delicious experience of beef but without so many of the health, environmental, and animal welfare downsides of traditional animal-based meat. On the other hand, we developed The Beast with nutrient density in mind, working with Brendan Brazier, a rockstar plant-based triathlete to develop it. The Beast has 23G of protein and a slew of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and omegas to help support performance and recovery for especially active folks.

 Let's compare the actual nutritional value:

	Beyond Burger	Beast Burger
Total Fat	22 g	16 g
Saturated fat	5 g	2 g
Protein	20 g	23 g
Iron (DV)	25%	20%
Calories	290	260
Sodium (DV)	450 mg	480 mg
Vitamin C	90%	20%

 So the Beast Burger has more protein and less fat than the Beyond. It's not clear from the specs provided how the Beast has more nutrient density than the Beyond, as the copy maintains.

Their actual ingredients are very similar, the number one being "pea protein isolate" followed by several forms of oil. No soy products, and gluten free.

Equally important is the manner in which both products are made available to the consumer. I found the Beyond Burger in the refrigerator section of my supermarket (although not the meat section, as claimed on the website). It looks and feels quite a bit like raw ground beef.

The Beast Burger, by contrast, is found in the frozen food section, and is sold as pre-cooked patties. I think this difference has a big factor in how they taste.

I cooked the Beast and the Beyond Burgers quite similarly: in a hot pan with a little bit of oil. I was careful not to overcook either, aiming for a nice sear on the outside, but still soft and juicy inside.

Here's how both of them came out.

Beyond Burger

Beast Burger

You can see that the Beyond Burger still has some redness in the middle section, with the top and bottom nicely browned and chewy. The Beast Burger is more of a uniform density, with not much contrast.

This is much more evident from examining smaller bits of both burgers.

Beyond Burger

 

Beast Burger

 The Beast Burger is a lot dryer, as you can see. I think those white bits were meant to simulate marbled fat? But they were just slightly different tasting from the rest of the veggie burger.

Overall, I enjoyed the Beyond Burger a whole heck of a lot more than the Beast Burger. The mouth feel was much more satisfying, it had a pleasant fattiness to it, and the flavor had a distinct meatiness that I enjoyed. Eating the Beast Burger, a lot more of the pea flavor came through, and not in a good way. The outer surface didn't caramelize well and the inside was quite dry and unappealing. 

Both products are equally priced at $6.76 at my local Safeway, which I have to say is quite economical. Both patties are quite sizable and filling.

So other than the convenience of having the Beast Burger in my freezer, I would see no reason to ever get it again. The Beyond Burger is definitely the tastier choice.

Have you had either of the Beyond or the Beast? Are there other veggie burgers you think I should try? 

Taste Test: Korean Fish Sausage

I saw these adorable looking sausage-y things in a Korean market on Fillmore and had to try them. I love fish cake. I like things in sausage form. Could be delish! Look at how happy those kids look!

According to BuyKorea.org, this "fish sausage brand" from ChunHaJangSa "carries the history of Korea’s premium fish sausages. It is an overwhelmingly top market share product." That's quite an endorsement!

This what the individual sausages look like coming out of the box. 

It's kind of fun to unpeel them, although the color is not particularly appetizing to me.

And the taste? Well, they aren't offensive. They are mildly fishy, with no really dominant flavors or spices. I wanted to like them more, but alas they are just kind of boring. I imagine these are something that harried Korean parents throw in the backpacks of their kids before rushing them off to school in the morning, hoping they eat something at least a little bit healthy. 

Not sure I would buy these again. There was a crab version in the store that I might want to try though! Mmm crab sausage.

Available wherever weird Korean snacks are sold near you.

Taste Test: the Beyond Burger

Today I tried the "Beyond Burger", a vegan product that purports to be the most beef-like mass-market veggie burger out there.

The Beyond Burger is the flagship product of Beyond Meat, a company aiming to "create mass-market solutions that perfectly replace animal protein with plant protein." They also make chicken strips (which my cousin swears by), beefy crumbles and other meat substitutes.

Straight out of the box, the Beyond Burger does look and feel somewhat alarmingly like raw beef. The smell is not meat-like at all, and a little gross, honestly.

On a hot pan, the burger browns quite nicely, owing to the high fat content (5 grams.) I was careful not to overcook it, searing it for two minutes on each side in a medium-hot pan.

Plated, it does look quite nice, particularly with the grilled onions I prepared ahead of time.

But how does it taste? On the one hand, it would not fool anyone paying attention that it was actually beef. On the other hand, I thought it was totally delicious. The texture was definitely meaty, with a nice fattiness and saltiness. The outside crisps up nicely, while the inside was moist and flavorful. I felt pleasantly full afterwards too.

I would put it in the same general range of the Impossible Burger, which I tried a few months ago. Perhaps even a little better.

Add some cheese or avocado and you've got a fine burger. I would gladly have one fresh off the grill at a barbecue. Here's what a tiny piece of it looks like.

If you are looking to reduce your carbon footprint but don't want to give up burgers, I would encourage you to give the Beyond Burger a try. Yeah, it's expensive, but that's the price of saving the planet. 

Available at Whole Foods and other retailers around the country. See website for details.

Asian Sweet Potato Noodles with Kale and Pine Nuts (recipe)

I love my spiralizer. It turns veggies into paleo-friendly noodles in minutes. And everything is better with noodles.

I recently discovered sweet potato noodles and now they are my new favorite thing. Sweet potatoes are full of awesome vitamins, just a little sweet, very filling, and part of most paleo diet plans.

Here's a recipe I created, just riffing on this one. It pairs sweet potato noodles with kale and pine nuts, creating a nutritious and delicious blend of flavors. And it's stupid easy.

Asian Sweet Potato Noodles with Kale and Pine Nuts

Ingredients

• 2 medium sweet potatoes
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced fine
• 2 Tbsp of raw pine nuts
• 2 cups or so of cut up kale
• Sesame oil
• Asian chili paste
• 2 Tbsp of olive oil

Instructions

Put the pine nuts in a small pan and put on low heat to toast them. Takes about 10-12 minutes. Swirl around the pan to make sure that they brown evenly.

Use your handy spiralizer to make the linguine-sized noodles out of the sweet potatoes. Here's how mine came out.

Heat up a large pan or wok for a couple of minutes to medium heat.

Put 2 Tbsp of olive oil in and heat it up for a minute. Then toss in the garlic and stir fry around for a minute until it starts to turn golden. 

Toss in the sweet potato noodles and stir fry for about two minutes. Then put in 2-3 Tbsp of water and cover. 

Let the sweet potato cook for about 4-5 minutes, stirring every once in awhile to keep it from sticking. Don't overcook them -- they should be softer but still have a bit of bite to them.

Then toss in the kale, mix it up, and cook for just a minute to wilt it down.

Add 2 tsps of sesame oil, a Tbsp of chili paste and salt and pepper, to taste.

Add the pine nuts at the end and mix well.

That's it! Super simple and so tasty and nutritious. Good for about 4-6 servings as a main dish.

 Enjoy! 

Trying Luwak "Cat Poop Coffee"

As a big coffee nerd, I was so excited when my sister and brother-in-law came back from Indonesia with some fresh beans for me. The crown jewel was a small bag of precious kopi luwak, which has been called the "most expensive coffee in the world."

What makes luwak so amazing (and costly) isn't the beans or where it's grown, it's how it's processed. To put it nicely, the bean goes through the normal coffee fermentation process through the digestive tract of a small mammal, the Asian palm civet. To put it another way, it's cat poop coffee.

The reviews I've read of luwak run the gamut from "gross" to "interesting" to "incredibly smooth." Given the enormous buzz around luwak, and the resulting scramble of Indonesian farmers to produce more and more of this expensive product, quality can vary widely. There are several reports of civets being kept in very inhumane enclosures and force fed coffee, instead of being harvested naturally. My sister tells me that the farm they purchased our coffee from ethically harvested their beans.

I made a batch for myself and some guests to try last night. We all agreed that it was exceptionally smooth, a balanced medium roast with a pleasant fruitiness. I am generally not fond of fruitier, lighter roasts, but I really enjoyed the luwak coffee. I would gladly have some in the future.

If you have an opportunity to have a cup of kopi luwak -- and you are reasonably sure it was produced in an ethical way -- I highly encourage you to try it.

CREDIT: Civet photo by Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE - Common Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus), CC BY-SA 2.0, Link