Mangold Steaks

A dear, late friend of ours, K, my husband's colleague, declared when I first met her, "I don't cook!" Then, with a shrug, she admitted to making two things--three, if the "dry" rice made with a box of Uncle Ben's converted rice was included. I never learned to make the dry rice (it was delicious). K said the trick was to cook it hot and fast in a shallow skillet, stirring all the while, and to use very little water. But no   matter how carefully I followed her instructions, my rice came out soggy. The two other dishes--spaghetti carbonara and what K called Mangold steaks--are as delicious as her dry rice was, and much easier for me to prepare. Years later, with K now gone, Mangold steaks are one of our best-loved meals and a delightful way to remember our friend.

Some people would call the “steaks” puffed-up hamburgers, and that is how my husband likes them--on toasted bread with all the trimmings. If you want to prepare them as K recommended, have the butcher grind up a nice sirloin for the patties, roll the patties in fresh breadcrumbs, gently fry them in olive oil, and serve them with--what else?--dry rice. My method is much less refined, but I try to hold to the spirit of K’s dish.

For two people, you need ½ pound grass-fed ground beef, 1 teaspoon capers, 1 tablespoon chopped onion, 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard, a splash of Worcestershire sauce, a splash of wine vinegar, ½ shot whisky (optional), ½ beaten egg, a pinch of salt, a handful of fresh breadcrumbs, 1 peeled garlic clove, and a few slices of your favorite cheese. Gently mix together all the ingredients except the cheese and the garlic clove, using just enough breadcrumbs to hold the mixture together and form three or four patties (if you like, use the remaining breadcrumbs to roll the patties in before frying them). Then fry the patties in olive oil, with the garlic clove alongside to flavor the oil. Right before the patties are cooked to your liking, top them with cheese and let them sit a moment in the pan. Serve them with anything you like.

Here are most of the ingredients:

The patties frying (and rolled in breadcrumbs as K made them, though I often do not):

And resting in the pan, alongside our favorite fixings and a pitcher of cold tomato soup:

Breakfast in Makiki

I’m a homemaker and retired nurse, living with my husband in Honolulu. I love to eat, to cook, and, unless I’m tired and/or hungry, to shop for food. One of my favorite sayings is by Hippocrates: “Let food be your medicine.” To that I would add, and your fun.

My husband and I live in a 34^th floor apartment that overlooks Makiki Heights. It’s a green view of monkeypod and African tulip trees, palms, banyans, plumerias and bougainvilleas, all rising up toward Round Top Drive and the Koolau Mountains. Directly below our apartment, on Nehoa Street, there’s a Korean Baptist church and a Montessori school. Kitty-corner across Nehoa is Roosevelt High School. Early mornings, the school band practices on the athletic field. Friday nights, during the fall, there are football games.

I love the early mornings, when noisy green parrots fly past our apartment lanais and white fairy terns glide over the heights. The view from the lanais is like having a large and beautiful, albeit distant, garden (that we don’t have to tend).

Most mornings, we eat breakfast on the dining-room lanai off our living room. Weekdays we have peanut-butter toast and fruit salad, Big Island coffee and Earl Gray tea. Sundays we have a special, but not a fancy, meal. I make bull’s eyes--eggs set into the cut-out center of a piece of bread and fried in olive oil. My husband taught me how to make them (and his father taught him). He prepares the fruit salad, and I make the breakfast salad. The breakfast salad is a recent addition. I’d heard about “breakfast radishes” and was intrigued. What are they? French radishes? Mild and pink, not peppery and red? I still don’t know. But one Sunday morning, an uneaten green salad was leftover from Saturday night’s dinner, and we ate it with our bull’s eyes. I can’t remember if the salad had radishes or not, but with or without them, it’s become part of our special Sunday-morning meal.

The whole breakfast takes only 15 minutes to put together. It’s a great way to start a Sunday or any day.

For two bull’s eyes, you need 2 tablespoons of olive oil, 2 fresh eggs, and 2 slices of sourdough or other sturdy sandwich bread. Cut roughly 1 ½ inch circles out of the middle of the bread slices and set aside. Heat the olive oil in a wide skillet until fairly hot. Then put the bread slices, with their centers alongside them, in the skillet. Crack one egg into each open circle. Fry the bread slices with their eggs and the small circles of bread on one side until brown, then turn with spatula and fry on the other side until the eggs reach the desired doneness. We like ours with the whites cooked and the yolks runny, which takes about 2 to 3 minutes each side. For keeping the yolks intact and overall appearance, a nonstick skillet works best. But we use a stainless steel paella pan for ours. It’s wide enough to hold two bull’s eyes, and we don’t mind a broken yolk now and then (to be honest, almost every time). The olive-oil fried eggs and crisp bread taste wonderful together, and the little bread circle is great for sopping up dressing from the breakfast salad. Add a little fruit and yogurt, and we are in Sunday morning 34^th-floor heaven, overlooking that garden rise and watching the birds fly by.

Here are the makings for the breakfast salad:

 

The bull’s eyes in progress:

And the complete meal:

 

Oops--I almost forgot the fruit salad: