Depression (Era) Food

Yes, I know. The word of the hour is recession but, frankly, I don’t know the difference. Nor do I much care, since I’ve never had much money to lose anyway.

I do, however, smell a trend.

On Tuesday, my cousin Stephanie sent me an odd little collection of cookbooks from the 1930’s– all three of them product-related (Heinz 57, Royal Baking Powder, and Crisco). They made me giddy. And then, out of nowhere, my friend Lyle hands me a book called Cheerio! — a cocktail book from 1930. Published in New York in total contempt for the Volstead Act. If ever there was a time one needed a drink, it was the 1930’s. Unless it was the 1940’s, of course.

On Wednesday, Amy Sherman commented that online traffic to low-cost ingredient recipes has nearly doubled in the past three months.

And yesterday? While soaking in a bathtub full of gin before work, I noticed, as I flipped through the pages of Saveur magazine, that this month’s issue is featuring items like Mock Apple Pie, Rabbit Stew, and pasta, pasta, pasta.

In case, you didn’t know, that’s poor people food.

Is the American mindset taking a turn towards the cheap? I think this will be rather fascinating to watch. History repeating itself often is. If one doesn’t mind reruns, of course.

In the meanwhile, I think I’ll just pour myself a Cholera Cocktail, put a little Al Bowlly on the Gramophone, and wait for all this anxiety explode into a delicious panic.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Pavlova

Oh, it’s Spring. What joy.

In honor of this turning of the seasons, I bring you a light little piece of fluff– the Pavlova.

When I was cooking at a little restaurant in the Mission called the Moa Room, my favorite Kiwi and boss, Chef Jan Gardner often let me run off and do my own thing with our desserts, which was rather brave of her. But not so when she felt the call to make her Pavlova or pav, as it is affectionately known– the most famous dessert ever to come out of New Zealand. I would stand back to watch her work, asking her to say things like “milk” and “bottle” so that I might be better able to imitate her accent as well as her dessert-making technique. She was a very patient woman who only occasionally would ask a co-worker if he or she wouldn’t mind punching me in the neck.

This pleasant breath of fresh air is rarely seen on San Francisco dessert menus, which I think is a pity. It is as light and airy as the dancing of its namesake, the most famous of all ballerinas, Anna Pavlova.

There is some argument as to the origin of this dessert. Australians claim it was birthed by Herbert Sachse of the Hotel Esplanade, Perth, Australia, citing in 1935 that the dish was “as light as Pavlova.” She stayed at the hotel while on tour in 1929. It just took him six years to come up with something clever to say about it.

New Zealand has an earlier, similar claim coming out of Wellington in 1926, when a hotel chef created a dish inspired by the shape of the touring dancer’s white tutu with green cabbage roses and frothy netting. I’m no social archaeologist, but I’ll just bet the farm he was gay.

Well, I love Australians, but I am siding with my friends from New Zealand on this one.

Pavlova

Jan Gardner shied away from kiwifruit, most likely because they are not echt New Zealand. To her, a kiwi is the smaller, non-extinct cousin of the moa. The Chinese Gooseberry arrived in the land of the dead moa from, unsurprisingly, China in 1904. The name “kiwifruit” was originally a marketing ploy. One that has worked all too well. Though this meringue happily supports a wide variety of fruit, I have used the kiwi because the original dish, as far as I can tell, contained them. Remember those green cabbage roses.

This is not Jan’s recipe. I never got it. I could just punch myself in the neck for not asking for it. The recipe listed below is a culling of several.

For a great run down on how to approach a meringue, read Shuna Lydon’s take on the Pavlova.

Ingredients:

For the Pavlova:

4 large egg whites, room temperature
1 cup of superfine sugar (you can make this out of table sugar by whizzing it in a Cuisinart or clean coffee grinder.)
1 teaspoon white vinegar
1 tablespoon corn starch
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract. Tradition does not call for this, I just like it in my meringue.

For the Topping:

3/4 cup heavy whipping cream
1/4 cup buttermilk. Again, this is not traditional. I just prefer a bit of tang to compliment the über-sweetness of the meringue.
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Fresh fruit. Tart is good. Things like kiwifruit, strawberries, raspberries, beri beri. I don’t care. Passion fruit is really amazing with it, too.

Procedure:

1. Pre-heat oven to 300 F.

2. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Create and cut out a separate circle of parchment paper about 7 inches in diameter. Cut out a matching circle of cardboard. Attach the parchment circle to cardboard with a smear of corn syrup or whatever you’ve got handy to adhere. I’ll bet even Elmer’s glue would work, though I would not recommend it. (Note: this cut out circle business isn’t absolutely necessary, but I find it helps me get a cleaner edge on the meringue.)

3. In the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk egg whites at slow speed, gradually increasing the speed as the volume of the whites increase. When the whites begin to hold a soft peak, add the sugar a little at a time to dissolve. Increase the speed and whip until the mixture is silken and the peaks hold stiff.

4. Having made a slurry of your vinegar and cornstarch, stir to discourage any lumps. Sprinkle the slurry over the meringue and fold in.

5. Gently heap meringue onto your parchment disk, making certain to leave a shallow bowl in the center for eventual cream-and fruit-filling. Smooth the edges of the meringue for a clean look or make any sort of design you wish. Please email me if you’ve come up with anything interesting or vaguely obscene.

6. Place your meringue-topped cardboard parchment onto the lined baking sheet and place in oven. Bake for 15 minutes, turn off the heat and walk away. Baking should take about one hour, but it is best to peek in every once in a while to see how your creation is doing. The Pavlova should not brown, but take on a slight cream color. Leaving it in the oven to dry out a bit is a good thing.

The now-baked Pavlova will keep for up to a week when stored in non-humid conditions in an air-tight container.

7. For the topping, whip cream and buttermilk until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar and vanilla, then whip a little more. You make chose to remove half the cream at this stage for spreading, whipping up the remainder for piping those tutu-like frills around the edge that I somehow failed to achieve.

8. Spread the whipped cream over the meringue. Top with the fruit of your choice, and serve immediately in the fifth position, thereby impressing your friends and family with your limberness of both lower body and culinary expertise.

Eat immediately.

Serves 6

French Icons Create Art

 Sort of.

I have been aware of the collaborative genius of Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot for years, having processed and then filed away their hit “Bonnie and Clyde” to the furthest corners of the garbage can I sometimes refer to as my brain.

I had no idea their tree of musical cooperation bore fruit as sweet as this…

Brenda’s French Soul Food

My friend Mark, who knows about everything before I do, has been wanting to go to Brenda’s French Soul Food for months. He planned to take some people to brunch there a few Sundays ago. It was, however, closed. They don’t do Sunday brunch. Who can blame them? Unless drag queens are somehow involved, the thought of Sunday brunch makes me cringe. The two of us hoped to have dinner at Brenda’s last week. The only glitch in that little plan was this: Brenda’s doesn’t serve dinner. Rather than being miffed, I found that news heartwarming.

When I was a young and foolish California Culinary Academy student, one of my courses called for creating a restaurant business plan. My teammates and I decided that a breakfast and lunch-only venue would suit our tastes just fine, since you can really mark up egg dishes. We’d be doing what we loved– serving up great food, but we’d have our evenings free– enabling us to have a relatively normal social life. We could have our pancake, as it were, and eat it, too.

Brenda’s, then, is a place after my own heart. It’s exactly what I’d want to do if I were crazy enough to run a restaurant.

Located at 652 Polk Street between Eddy and Turk, Brenda’s shares a stretch of road with two other food venues. On its right is Kentucky Fried Chicken– a place of no culinary pretensions whatsoever. To its left and across the street is the California Culinary Academy– a sad, musty diploma mill that churns out nothing but culinary pretension every few weeks. Hovering somewhere pleasantly in the middle, Brenda’s has not disturbed that delicate balance of the block in the least. What it has done, thankfully, is bring great food to the neighborhood.

When I arrived at Brenda’s on Wednesday morning, I was told I might sit wherever I liked by a tall, thin gentleman with a scruffy beard who was, it would seem, the sole server on the floor. I took a small table near the door, where I could have a clear view of the customers around me.

The restaurant is small. Two white-clothed tables for four in the center of the room, one small table in the window, and five small tables along the left wall. Counter stools populate the right wall, just below a bank of mirrors which runs the entire length of the place.

I ordered a coffee and dug into my portable Sherlock Holmes, which I placed on top of my little notebook. To my left was a man about my age with a scruffy beard, also reading, but near the end of his meal. Looking at my notebook and camera, he asked me if I was going to do a write up on the place. I cringed at my obviousness. That and the fact that every man in the place, including myself, was wearing a scruffy beard. I lied to him and took another sip of coffee.

There were two men sitting in the window. One was a handsome fifty-something Frenchman . His non-French breakfast companion was rattling on loudly about Napa wineries, San Francisco restaurants and who he knew just about everywhere else. Fortunately, he made his great show of saying goodbye to Brenda before I started eating.

I asked my server which beignets he thought were best. He suggested I try the beignet flight ($8.00) and decide for myself. I did.

From fore-to-background in the photo above: plain, Granny Smith apple with cinnamon honey butter, molten Ghiradelli chocolate, and crawfish with cayenne, scallions, and cheddar. It is the order in which I ate them. My server stated that people normally consumed the crawfish first. I am delighted that I didn’t, because it was by far my favorite– the chewy sweetness of the crawfish popping every so often through the ooze of the cheese, the heat of the cayenne, and the sharpness of the scallion. I am already planning my return to have a full meal of them.

They were all quite good, really. The apple beignets weren’t overly sweet. They had a subtle saltiness to them I found appealing. I’m not an expert on these pastries, per se, and I’ve heard some people (Yelpers) whine that beignets in New Orleans are normally much bigger and cheaper. I would hardly call the portions here small. Or over priced. In fact, nothing at Brenda’s is more than $10.00.

Wondering what to order next, I asked my server’s opinion on the matter. Mentioning that I was intrigued by the Pineapple Upside Down Pancakes with Vanilla Bean Cream and Ginger Butter, he said that, while they were great, I might not want them after so much beignet. He was right, of course. When I asked about the Hangtown Fry special I noticed written in white grease pen on the mirror across the way, he smiled. That’s all I needed. It doesn’t take much arm-twisting to get me to order a Hangtown Fry. “Grits or potatoes?” he asked. “I’m kind of a potato guy,” I said. I saw his smile fade a little. “But, I suppose I’d better have the grits, right?” His face brightened. I was grateful for my ability to read social cues. I told him I’d keep the menu, in case I wanted to order anything more.

It is obvious from the above photo where I placed the most of my gustatory enthusiasm. The grits. Buttery, lightly peppery, and just salty enough. The pat of butter I was given may have been intended for the biscuit, but mine ended up on the grits. I did not ask for instructions.

I never knew I liked grits. In fact, my two or three previous experiences with the dish had left me rather bored. In my thoughts, grits were an unseen province of salty, beehived situation comedy diner waitresses and they were meant to be kissed in some kind of submissive fashion. Well, I kissed Brenda’s grits, and I’ll kiss them again, happily.

While I was tucking into the fry, a man and woman dressed in chef whites wandered into Brenda’s from the Culinary Academy. I thought how sad it was that they couldn’t find anything worth eating over there. The man, I noticed, had one bright blue eye and one of milky hazel. I got caught looking, so I initiated a brief conversation with them about the school. I admitted my status as an alumnus and warned them to keep a wary eye out for people who do not understand the etiquette involved in walking around a busy kitchen with 10″ chef knives. Their reaction to the pitying look on my face when I was told that tuition at the school had nearly trebled since my graduation eleven years ago indicated to me that our little interview should end as quickly as possible. I went back to reading The Adventure of the Copper Beeches and stuffing my face.

As I sat eating and reading, another man of my approximate age and scruffiness sat at the table beside mine. I really must shave. Unlike his predecessor, he seemed uneasy in his status as a single diner. He tapped is fingers and wagged his foot as though it had fallen asleep within the first ninety seconds of his being in a seated position. When his eyes weren’t darting about the place, they were fixed upon his iPhone. I didn’t know whether to laugh (on the inside) or cry. Few people seem really at ease with dining alone. It made me mildly depressed, but it did give me an idea for another blog post, which made me mildly cheerful.

The Hangtown fry itself was good, loaded as it was with salty, smoked bacon and fresh, fried oysters. But my delicate, hummingbird frame was challenged by the enormous portions of both dishes tried. Delicate, too, was the biscuit– the flavor of fresh butter melted in my mouth as is the way with the good ones and it had a flakiness that, had the biscuit taken a human form, might be diagnosed as Brittle Bone Disease by medical students. I mean that in a good way.

I was unable to finish my meal, being as well-stuffed as one of those beignets from earlier in the meal. I took my remaining victuals home and had them for lunch. The grits were good even then, served cold.

My server returned, looked at the menu still placed on the table, and said, smiling, “Are you still planning on ordering more?” My brain said yes, but my stomach disagreed. I looked out the window at the Eastern Park Apartments, a retirement home that is neither in the East nor anywhere near a park. I thought to myself that, if I kept eating like this, I might not live to an age which might necessitate my inhabiting such a place. I sided with my stomach and asked, instead, for the check.

Now, I do not know Brenda Buenviaje, namesake of the restaurant. I chose not to introduce myself nor ask questions during my first visit. My photo-taking and journal entries made me look idiotic enough. When I took a closer look at Brenda’s website, I read her profile and had a better clue as to why the food made me happy– she is a former head chef of Sumi (the only good restaurant in the Castro, as far as I’m concerned) and of Cafe Claude (my I’m- hungry-and-tired-of-watching-other-people-shop/ I-need-a-drink place of choice). She looks like someone I might like to sit down with over a glass of wine. I only hope, should that occur, that I can stifle my desire to blurt out grits-kissing remarks.

I’ll be back to Brenda’s, and soon. There’s a lot there that I still need to try, like the Grillades and Grits, the Egg and Bacon Tartine, and those Pineapple Upside Down Pancakes. But really, it’s that crawdaddy beignet. Second only to relieving my bladder, it was the first thing I thought about this morning. Really, I swear.

Brenda’s French Soul Food is located at:

652 Polk Street (at Eddy)
San Francisco, CA 94102

Telephone: (415) 345-8100

Hours of Operation:

Breakfast is served Monday through Friday from 8 am to 3 pm.
Lunch is served Monday through Friday from 11(ish) to 3 pm.
Brunch is served on Saturdays from 8 am to 3 pm.
Closed, for now, on Sundays.

Because I Just Had To…

Really.

Health Care Ordinance Infects Restaurant Industry

San Francisco restaurants are suffering from what Michael Bauer at The San Francisco Chronicle called “another 1-2-3 punch to their already slim wallets.” The first hit: a minimum wage increase to $9.36 per hour. The second: a sick leave law which states that employees receive one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked.

And then came the rabbit punch: The Health Care Security Ordinance, which mandates that businesses employing 20 or more employees to spend a minimum of $1.17 per employee per hour on health care. For businesses employing more than 100, that minimum increases to $1.76.

If one also factors in sharp increases in fuel costs, the doubling of wheat prices, and a public hyperventilating over dismal economic forecasts, the San Francisco restaurant industry isn’t looking forward to a rosy-hued 2008.

The cost of business, my friends, is rising like so much expensive dough. How, then, are our local eateries attempting to punch it down?

A few are taking it on the chin, while others are increasing their menu prices to help absorb the costs.

And some are implementing an additional service charge, in the guise of either a percentage of the total bill, or a per person cover charge. With letters of explanation attached.

There are those among us who appreciate the transparency of these explanatory letters, even applaud them. Others find this new trend offensive. I sense that composing such letters and adding these charges was a tough call for those who have added them– one made under the strain of coming to terms with a well-meaning, but essentially flawed ordinance. The result has become unavoidably political.

Personally, I don’t want my dinner to be any more political than it needs to be. I make enough of those choices in my daily life as it is. Even the choice of which restaurant I go to is often a political decision. Once I enter that restaurant, however, I’m done. I want someone to greet me warmly, I want to be fed and watered well, and I want to forget– for an hour or two– the problems I purposefully left outside the front door. I want to be taken care of.

If I want a full explanation of what goes into a Tripe alla Fiorentina, I’ll ask my server, thank you. Same goes for any price increases. I don’t need an essentially whining, buck-passing letter of explanation slapped in my face. It is the diner’s role to whine, not the restaurant’s.

If these letter writers were indeed so “proud to do business in a city that has chosen to test a landmark solution to this ongoing and serious national problem,” these letters would not have been written in the first place. It is clear that the authors are distressed about the increased financial burden this new ordinance places on their shoulders. Of course, they are. But these letters just smack of insincerity. What’s next? “Dear Guests, we are excited to announce that our rent has just been raised! We are proud to live in a city of astronomical real estate values…”

I think not.

For the time being, the health care ordinance is, for better or for worse, part of the cost of doing business in this city. There are many other restaurants here that have chosen to deal with this hit gracefully. And, yes, I think that a discreet increase in menu prices is graceful. It allows customers to make their own choices. Actually, it allows customers to feel more akin to what they should be feeling like– guests. It offers a choice. It allows them to feel a little more in control of the dining process. If a guest wishes to pay x amount of dollars for a steak, he will. If not, he will opt to pay y amount for something else. Regardless, he is paying for his seat one way or another. Adding an extra math equation in the form of a service charges is anything but guest-friendly.

Great restaurants don’t just fill the stomach, no matter how spectacular the food. They must satisfy an emotional need, as well.

Think of all the people who go out to dinner and then think for a moment about how these people have spent their day. Most likely, they have been working at their own jobs, seeing to the needs of others. How many people come into restaurants after hours of taking on the stress of their children, their bosses, or their customers? As a waiter and twenty-year veteran of the restaurant industry, I have to remind myself daily that it is my job to see that the people who walk into my place of work forget their troubles and get happy, even if it’s just for the two hours they are under my watch. They’ve got problems of their own. They don’t want to hear about mine. Or yours.

By writing these letters and adding this charges with little notes attached, restaurant owners are chipping away at the fragile-yet-necessaryfaçade that a diner’s needs are what matter most. By reading these letters, people of good conscience trade in a part of their much-needed role of the care-given, to that of care giver. It’s a subtle shift, but it’s important.

As diners, we know that we all have to pay in the end– the bill, I mean. But tacking on an extra percentage or per-person fee to the end of the bill will ultimately cost the restaurant industry far more than the money it hopes to recoup from the sting of this health care ordinance. Like goodwill.

The letters? To me, it’s like reading the list of ingredients on the side of a pint of ice cream. I already know the basics of what goes into the mix, but do I want to know everything? Not always. Sometimes, I just want to treat myself to something that is going to make me feel good for a little while. If the machinery involved in the perfect churning of the cream is expensive to maintain, if the vanilla pods are of the best quality, I am quite willing to pay the reflected price for my indulgence. I don’t want to read a god damned sob story about it on the side of the package.

What is most irritating to me is that these charges are being implemented by some of the busiest — and most influential– restaurants in the city. These chefs have ridden mighty high in the good times. Now that the going has gotten tougher, they’re still busy as hell but, rather than deal with their problems gracefully, these darling prime ballerine of the food press are bitching to the audience that their toe shoes are too tight.

If they want to play the Dying Swan, I suppose we should let them. However, to the best of my knowledge, no one ever paid Anna Pavlova to honk and squawk when she first performed it– it is a role that is most effective when it is played in silence.

Yes, this is a troubling time for the city’s restaurants, but if these restaurateurs could stop their covert complaining and blame-gaming long enough to realize that their integrity is potentially at stake, they might hopefully get back to the business of doing business. If these already-successful places keep providing us with the food and service they’re known and respected for, we’ll keep supporting them. If they need to raise prices to offset the costs of a harsh city ordinance, no one in their right mind is going to think they’re greedy. I just want them quite their pandering, stick out their grease- encrusted chins, and remember that the show must go on.

Because it will.

The Hangtown Fry

Before I moved to San Francisco, I knew surprisingly little about the City, which suited me fine, since I have never felt the need for too much advanced knowledge about anything. And I had no desire to trade the fantasy I had of Carol Doda and a chorus of flannel-clad gay men singing the Rice-a-roni jingle from a cable car as it crested some hill or other with the reality of some homeless guy ranting, oblivious and incoherent, as he defecated in front of me on Capp Street.

Once moved, I had a formulated a shortlist of what I thought were very San Francisco-y things I needed to experience. One: visit Alcatraz, no matter how touristy. That I finally accomplished this year. Two: read Tales of the City by Armistad Maupin. Still haven’t gotten around to it, much to my friend Bill’s irritation. Three: oh, there were lots of things on that list, but way down near the bottom of my to-dos was eating a dish called Hangtown Fry. Why? I think I read about it in a cookbook somewhere at some point and I got it into my head that it was more ur-San Francisco that sourdough bread. So I was wrong. But not by much. The Hangtown Fry is a very old school San Francisco dish– take a look at the Tadich Grill menu if you don’t believe me, but the hangtown in question was not, as I had hoped, our City-by-the-currently oil- streaked-Bay. That particular honor goes to Placerville, a charming little town in the Sierra Foothills formerly fraught with multiple crises of identity.

Originally called Dry Diggins by the miners who carted their dry soil from there to the river to wash out the gold, Placerville’s second sobriquet was collected in a pique of impromptu vigilante justice. Tired of being robbed of their hard-earned gold at knife point, some merchants and miners of the area suggested making human swings out of three men accused of the crime. Since this was the first such recorded hanging in the Mother Lode area, the camp was rechristened “Hangtown”, leaving its old name to blow away like so much dust. As the town grew up and struggled to become respectable, the best of their marketing minds came up with the more child and virgin-friendly “Placerville.” They could have done worse.

It was at some point in the early life of Dry Diggins/Hangtown/Placerville that, as legend has it, a newly-rich gold miner walked into the restaurant of the El Dorado Hotel and demanded the most expensive meal that could be had there, mumbling something about being tired of eating nothing but canned beans. What he was given was a scramble of eggs, oysters, and bacon. Perhaps the chef misunderstood him and made the richest meal he could think of rather than the most expensive. Whatever the case, he was charged a princely sum since, it was explained, “Canned oysters had to be shipped in from Boston, eggs were as scarce as pig feathers, and bacon was just as expensive.” Of course, as read at Gold Rush Chronicles, “Eggs, bacon, and oysters were the only ingredients the chef could find. Chickens were portable so the camp had eggs early on, oysters were prolific in San Francisco Bay at the time, and bacon would keep without refrigeration.” I somehow doubt this miner held onto his money for very long. At least he got a good meal.

Hangtown Fry

Many of the recipes I found called for the use of a non-stick pan. Since I strongly suspect the humoring chef at the El Dorado Hotel had no acquaintance with Teflon, I asked my trusty cast iron skillet to take on the job instead, to keep in the spirit of all things 49′er. Of course, it is also doubtful that he utilized a gas stove, overhead electric lighting, or an ipod. My spirit carries me only so far.

This particular recipe is an artery clogger, near as rich as anything one might care to put in one’s mouth. I decided to go for broke, otherwise, what’s the point, really? There are lighter versions of this dish, certainly, but the spirit of the thing is it’s richness. This was made at the request of a man who stumbled upon a gold strike after months of eating nothing but beans, after all. Life expectancy rates were lower then and no one knew the meaning of cholesterol. Shave a few months off your own life and try it.

Ingredients:

3 whole hen’s eggs (if using Plover’s eggs, 4)
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/8 teaspoon of nutmeg
a turn or two of your pepper grinder
6 small oysters, alive and in their shells…

enough flour for dredging the shelled oysters as they lay dying
1 tablespoon of cow’s butter
1 tablespoon chopped parsley (I use the curly kind because I have finally rejected my previous rejection of it)
3 strips of thickly sliced bacon

Preparation:

1. Into a pan heated to medium intensity, place your bacon and fry until crispy. Remove to a paper or cotton tea towel to drain and cool. Reserve the bacon drippings.

2. Combine cream, salt, pepper, nutmeg and eggs in a bowl and beat until egg yolks are just incorporated.

3. Drop shelled (you may have to do that yourself if your mother is not available to help you) oysters into flour to coat lightly and suffocate. Tap off any excess flour.

4. With the bacon grease still hot in the skillet on mediumish heat, introduce the oysters to the fat and brown on each side. About 45 seconds to one minute per hemisphere. Do not overcook, since a certain degree of juicy sweetness is desired of them. Remove from heat onto paper or other-materialed towel.

5. If the bacon grease is hissing and spitting at you, I find the best way to deal with such rudeness is to ignore it. Return to it once it has cooled down sufficiently to introduce it to its new fat friend, butter.

6. Add egg mixture to the butter/grease melange and treat suitably, as one might treat an omelet, say. When half way cooked through, crumble in some of the bacon, add the oysters, and cook the other half of the way.

7. Remove your newly developed Hangtown Fry to some sort of plate and have at it while it is still warm.