Authentic Japanese

My grandmother’s breakfast fried rice, stuffed with bacon and eggs for a quick and hearty meal.

The recipe I’m posting today is one of those family-favorite, special-occasions recipes. Growing up, we always served this fried rice for birthdays and New Year’s day breakfast. It’s white rice, fried up in bacon drippings, with chopped bacon, mushrooms, and scrambled eggs throughout. Top it with some shoyu or, like my father, slather it in ketchup, and you are starting this year off right!

When I decided to post this recipe, I titled it “Authentic Japanese-American Breakfast Fried Rice,” because I thought that it was a fun play on the fact that this is a recipe taught to my German mother (and then to me) by my Japanese father and grandparents, containing decidedly un-Japanese, very-American things like ketchup and American-style bacon. I always thought it was the perfect natural evolution of a traditional recipe to one more suited to the tastes of its current country. But when I went to my father to double check the recipe’s provenance, he told me that wasn’t actually the case.

My grandmother's breakfast fried rice, stuffed with bacon and eggs for a quick and hearty meal. - 2

My grandmother's breakfast fried rice, stuffed with bacon and eggs for a quick and hearty meal. - 3

According to him, the use of non-traditional meats, and condiments like ketchup, stemmed not from a natural evolution, but from the time my grandparents spent interned at Tule Lake during WWII. These were the ingredients they were served in the camps and that’s where they acquired a taste for them. Unfortunately, neither of my grandparents are still living, so I while I have so many questions, I can’t ask them. But I did a little research and there’s a fascinating write up and short audio story from NPR here with other first-hand accounts about the effect of the Japanese internment camps on traditional Japanese dishes.

I debated changing the recipe name since it wasn’t really all that funny anymore, but recipes have histories, and changing the title felt like deleting this one’s. So I’m leaving the “Authentic Japanese-American” part, because that’s what it is. For better or for worse, it’s Japanese food that America helped shape.

Have you ever had any unexpected discoveries when it comes to family recipes? This is a first for me!

My grandmother's breakfast fried rice, stuffed with bacon and eggs for a quick and hearty meal. - 4

My grandmother's breakfast fried rice, stuffed with bacon and eggs for a quick and hearty meal. - 5

Ingredients

▢ 3 eggs beaten
▢ 8 strips of bacon cut into 1-inch pieces
▢ 8 ounces mushrooms sliced
▢ 2 green onions sliced + more for garnish
▢ 4 cups cooked rice* (day-old is best, but just-cooked is fine)
▢ 1 tablespoon soy sauce

Instructions

Heat a large wok or skillet over medium heat. Spray pan with cooking spray (or coat with a little oil) and scramble eggs. Place cooked eggs on a plate and set aside.
In the same pan, over medium-high heat, fry bacon, mushrooms, and green onions until bacon is cooked through and mushrooms are caramelized.
Add the rice to the pan and stir. Continue until rice is toasted. Stir in eggs and soy sauce and cook until the eggs are hot.
Remove from heat and serve. Garnish with sliced green onions.

Notes

Nutritional Information (4 servings)

My grandmother's breakfast fried rice, stuffed with bacon and eggs for a quick and hearty meal. - 7

Charming shortbread tea bag cookies, dipped in chocolate, with printable “Sherlock” tea tags.

Are you ready for the Sherlock winter special? We all have the shows we love, possibly beyond reason. Sherlock is one of mine. The problem with loving this show is that it airs a three-episode season and then goes away for YEARS. The delight of loving it is that every time it comes back, it feels like an event. We aren’t even getting three episodes this time around, just a single 90-minute episode, but it’s Sherlock , so it’s cause for celebration.

We’re celebrating around here by making these Sherlock -themed tea bag cookies. The cookie base is my favorite crumbly, buttery shortbread, covered with melted chocolate and adorned with custom tea tags for a perfect Sherlock dessert. As a bonus, I have a fun extra recipe to use up the scraps so nothing goes to waste! (Scroll down to see!)

I love this show so much, I broke out my dusty old wacom tablet and created three different tea tags for you to use. Click on each tag to download a printable sheet of the design. Number four will give you a mix of the three.

British Government/Silver Fox fans, I also made a special tag just for you. <3 <3

Ingredients

Cookies

▢ 1 cup ( 8oz ) unsalted butter room temperature
▢ 1/2 cup ( 60g ) powdered sugar sifted
▢ 2 cups ( 280g ) all-purposflour
▢ 1/8 teaspoon salt
▢ 6-8 oz sweetened baking chocolate
▢ Chocolate sprinkles for bonus recipe only

Instructions

Cookies

Cover two cookie sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mat.
Cream the butter and sugar. Stir in flour and salt, mixing until just combined. Be sure to scrape the sides and bottom of your bowl.
Dump dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap. Wrap and smash into a 1-inch thick disk. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Roll dough out on a piece of floured parchment paper, to 1/4 inch thick. Make sure to flour the top of the dough before rolling it out, so your rolling pin doesn’t stick.
Cut out rectangles of about 1.75 inches x 2.25 inches. A pizza cutter works great for this!
Using the stencil or eyeballing it, cut the two top corners off of each cookie, then use a straw to punch a hole in the cookie for the string.
Use a spatula to place cookies on a baking tray 1 inch apart. You can squish and re-roll the scraps to make more cookies, or you can save them and make the bonus recipe below.
Refrigerate the cut out dough for 15 minutes. This will help them keep their shape in the oven. Preheat oven to 350°F.
Bake the cookies for 7-9 minutes until lightly golden. If they have formed any air bubbles while baking, gently (and carefully) pat down while the cookies are still warm. Set aside to cool.
Once cookies have cooled, in the microwave, melt chocolate in a mug or other deep container. Start with 30 seconds, stir, and continue to microwave and stir in 15-second increments until melted.
Dust any stray crumbs from your first cookie and dip until chocolate covers about half of it. Continue with the remaining cookies. When your chocolate gets low, you can sweep the cookies back and forth in the chocolate to help scoop it up the sides of your cookies so that they look uniform. Place on parchment paper and allow to set.
Thread string and cut out tea tags. Using double-stick tape or a glue stick, fold and stick sides of paper together. Trim corners if desired. Serve and enjoy!

Notes

Nutritional Information (Calories are for 30 cookies made with 7 oz chocolate) Cookies inspired by: As Easy as Apple Pie Shortbread adapted from: In the Kitchen with Stefano Faita

Bonus Recipe!

Shortbread hedgehog cookies from BakingMischief.com. - 23

Shortbread hedgehog cookies from BakingMischief.com. - 24

If you’re a Sherlock fan, I’m sure you’ve seen one-thousand-and-one of these Martin Freeman hedgehog memes. With your extra dough scraps, why not make your own little hedgehog?

Squish scraps together, divide into 1-ounce pieces and roll into balls (about 1.5 inches each). Shape into teardrops and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Shortbread hedgehog cookies from BakingMischief.com - 25

Shortbread hedgehog cookies from BakingMischief.com - 26

Bake 12-14 min at 350 degrees F, until the cookie is lightly golden brown. Holding the cookies upside down, dip back halves in chocolate and cover with sprinkles. Dot on eyes and nose with a toothpick. Instant John Watson.

Hedgehog Cookies inspired by: Taste of Home

Hey Sherlock, what do you think of the cookies?

sherlock-tea-bag-cookies-with-printable-tea-tags-sherlock - 27

sherlock-tea-bag-cookies-with-printable-tea-tags-sherlock - 28

Charming shortbread tea bag cookies, dipped in chocolate, with printable Sherlock tea tags from BakingMischief.com - 29

It’s our last day of 2015! You know what that means. It’s time to take a look back and reflect on the year we’ve lived. Did we accomplish all the goals we set for ourselves? Did we put more good into the world? Did we eat enough cookies?

My 2015 was pretty uneventful, but I spent it with people I love and people I like, and I definitely ate enough cookies, so I’m calling it a good year.

This is also the time of year for superlatives. And since Baking Mischief is a food blog, I’m sharing my culinary ones with with you.

Favorite…

Baking Mischief recipe: These Butterscotch Thumbprint Cookies . I love all the recipes on the site, but there’s an amazing sugar-covered, butterscotch-filled reason that this was the first recipe I ever posted.

Food I ate this year: A chocolate and dulce de leche churro I bought at Greenwich Market. Why are all churros not handed to you directly out of the grease and stuffed full of more sweet stuff?? The greatest kindness I ever have or will perform was eating only half so that everyone in my party could try a bite.

New recipe I tried: I made soooo many good ones this year, but in the end, I went with My Baking Adiction’s Café Mocha Cupcakes because her mocha buttercream is perfection in a piping bag and because they were just so damn cute. I sent them to a teacher breakfast and someone asked if they could buy 50 for a party that weekend.

Biggest…

Kitchen disaster: My exceptional clumsiness in 2015 . I broke a total of three Pyrex dishes, two bowls, at least one cup, and two or three plates this year. It was not a banner year for glass or ceramics in my kitchen.

Baking project: This year’s gingerbread house was close, but making more than 60 red velvet Iron Man cupcakes for a Marvel event at my dad’s comic shop was definitely the most stressful project I took on this year.

Most…

Used kitchen tool: My trusty kitchen scale . I love that thing. Interesting food I ate: Escargot sausage . It tasted like sausage. Valuable thing I learned: The weight of most standard baking staples . It makes cooking go so, so much faster, and people are so impressed when you can tell them the weight of half a cup of flour off the top of your head.

A couple non-cooking stats and the big one…

Most read book: Good Omens (x3) Favorite film: Mad Max: Fury Road Longest long run: 18 miles Most happy tears cried: The Parks and Rec series finale

My favorite moment of 2015 : I have three-way tie. Getting the chance to see Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet in London was an astonishing delight. I completed NaNoWriMo for the first time, finishing on day 15 with a 10k word sprint as the perfect writing-fueling storm raged outside. And, of course, the absolute terror and exhilaration of pressing “publish” on my first blog post here.

What about you, do you have any favorite/biggest/most moments of 2015 you’d like to share? I think it’s important to look back on the year’s bright spots, because let’s face it, 2015’s been hard on the world at large. Sometimes it can all feel too dark. Holding onto these little moments of joy and accomplishment help keep me hopeful going into the new year. Here’s to a kinder 2016.