Breakfast for Dinner... Sort of

After work, I planned to cook some comforting fried chicken fingers, brussel sprouts and wild rice with slices of portabello mushroom. Surprise, the newly unthawed chicken was past its prime when you froze it!

My mind begins to race. What the hell else do I have around here? Maple-blueberry sausage (stumbled into at Whole Foods and had to try it)… a peach… an egg I’d already cracked for breading the chicken…what to fix? I’ll stuff the portabello mushroom with the sausage, bread it, fry it and serve it over wild rice. Might be dry. I’ll whip up some kind of sauce. I’ve got a peach, blackberry jam, etc.

So the whole process begins on the precipice of disaster. But run with it right? This is the time to let the creative juices flow. I’m in my element and being all too serious with my girlfriend. You see, our 900 sq. ft. apartment has a tiny kitchen. When we’re bumping into each other/ dropping pans/ can’t find a place to set this damn thing, I like to pretend I’m really in the trenches, banging out a dinner in some cramped restaurant. She lovingly mocks me with “yes chef” when I tell her something I need.

Dinner is under way. The rice is boiling, brussel sprouts browning in butter and my oil is hot. How in the hell am I going to get this sausage patty to stay in the mushroom while I bread it? Toothpicks? Don’t have any. Ok. I’ll fry the mushroom on its own and top it with the sausage. Also nearly impossible. Then it hit me. Slice the mushroom, bread and fry the slices individually with cinnamon in the mix. It’ll be a take on French toast to go with the sausage. I executed this pretty well, but in my opinion I dried the mushrooms out too much.

The whole dish was dry. What about that sauce? Peach maple syrup? No syrup. Ok, reduce sweet tea to a syrupy texture and add a splash of orange juice. I’m not gonna lie and tell you I knew this was a good choice. At this point, I was out on a limb. If all else failed, I had brussel sprouts.

I finally plated everything with a bemused grin. What the hell was this? As you can see in the picture in the photostream, it didn’t look very appetizing. The truth is though, it wasn’t bad. And the reduction really helped bring home the French toast mushrooms.

There’s something really comforting about the fact that when you’re cooking in your own house, there is no right or wrong. Your boss, the media, public opinion. They are all more than willing to say you’re wrong. You’re kitchen just takes your mistakes willingly and hopefully you learn from it.

I would like to say a special thanks to my girlfriend, who put up with this absurd attempt. But hey, when life gives sour chicken, make portabello French toast sticks… or something like that.