When Andy was little, his mom Darlene would make him a poached egg over Dutch rusk (a.k.a. crispbake or beschuit, in the Netherlands) for a special breakfast treat. Andy's family is Polish-American, but western Michigan is full of people of Dutch extraction, so you can easily find things like rusk and salty black licorice in the grocery stores here. (Well, to be expected, when your major local grocer is called Meijer!)
Rusk on its own is not very appealing. It's basically a large, round, extremely dry toast. But when you make rusk with poached egg a la Darlene, it turns into something quite heavenly and very comforting! Andy made me this lovely breakfast this morning. Here's how you prepare it (you could, I suppose, substitute very dry, stale, thick toast for the rusk if you can't find it):
1) Put two rusks with a small pat of butter on each, in a bowl.
2) Soft-poach an egg.
3) When egg is almost done, ladle a few tablespoons of the poaching water on the rusk to soften it slightly. (Andy likes his like mush; I prefer mine a bit crisper.)
4) Put egg on top, and salt and pepper it. Enjoy!
xo
K&A
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That sounds so delish! My mouth is salivating as I read it...Where do you find Rusk?
ReplyDeleteDefinitely will give this a try!
ReplyDeleteWell, I find it in my local grocery store's international foods sections, but we do have a large Dutch-American population. If you can't find it at your grocery, you might try a place like World Market that sells a lot of international foods. Another possibility would be to use German zwieback, though I'm not sure if zwieback are sweet or not...if they are, that would probably be pretty weird-tasting. Last option would be to use very dry, stale, and thick-cut toast.
ReplyDelete