Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Yesterday, a posting on “California’s iconic food”, the avocado, in which I noted that California in the name of a food preparation usually conveys the presence of avocado in it: California salads, California burgers, California (sushi) rolls, California club sandwiches. Then, after posting this, I went to breakfast at the Peninsula Creamery with my daughter, only to discover that their breakfast special for the day was California eggs (with, of course, avocado).

I’ll work up to this dish in steps, starting with eggs benedict, an American breakfast dish that consists of two halves of an English muffin, toasted, then topped with (in order) ham or bacon, poached eggs, and hollandaise sauce.

From there we get to the California eggs benedict (cue the avocado):

(#1)

Photo from the Curvy Carrot site, which supplies a recipe that calls for, from the bottom up: an English muffin, split and toasted; shredded Monterey jack cheese (Monterey jack is the classic cheese of California); thinly sliced tomato; sliced avocado; poached eggs; and hollandaise sauce.

Then the Creamery’s California eggs, which had hash browns instead of the English muffin, then avocado slices, topped with bacon bits and eggs in the style of your choice, with a spicy green sauce on the side.

While I was contemplating this dish, Elizabeth (who, by the way, detests avocado) went on a search for more California-labeled food and quickly found the California grilled cheese sandwich. First, this one:

(#2)

This on the Chef Savvy site, which gives a recipe calling for pepperjack cheese (Monterey jack again), sliced tomato, mashed avocado, on multigrain bread (multigrain bread, sourdough bread, and sprouted bread are the primo California breads). All very Californian (it lacks sprouts, but then they’ve pretty much gone out of fashion) — but not very  grilled or toasted, just enough to melt the cheese some. Compare a basic grilled/toasted cheese sandwich, which is nicely browned on the outside:

(#3)

And this version of a California grilled cheese sandwich, from the Miss Information site:

(#4)

Ingredients: bacon, mashed avocado, tomato, and diced jalapeno; both cheddar and Swiss cheese; wholegrain bread.

This entry was posted on May 24, 2015 at 3:09 am and is filed under Language and food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.