Scrambled Eggs with Smoked Trout and Cream Cheese

Sometimes you have a week where everything goes wrong. Electronics break, work is a distater area, the IRS makes a mistake, and interactions that seem simple become REALLY complicated. Some people rise to this sort of occasion. They take a deep breath, they sit down in front of the knot and they start unraveling. I, however, seem to do everything in my power to tighten the knot even further.

Friday night I set out to comfort myself in my classic way. This involves drinking all my friends good wine and boring them with the details, then going home and having a private dance party. Then of course this morning I woke up needing a different kind of comfort. For this particular comfort I like to have breakfast with my husband. His presence is soothing, he is funny and he keeps telling me how bad he feels for me. Since I am the only one who cooks I am the one who provided the breakfast.

This is my new favorite way to have scrambled eggs. Smoked trout is easy to get in most stores like whole foods. It keeps forever so it's handy to have around for snacks on cracker or bread with a dab of cream cheese. It is less unctous than smoked salmon which gets a strange oily texture and aggressively salty taste when it is cooked. When heated smoked trout doesn't change texture of flavor. It is intensely salty and has a nice flaky meaty texture, so it needs a foil. I find cream cheese to be perfect. It mellows out the salt and allows the trout flavor to come through. Scallions add a wonderful fresh taste and a touch of bite.

Scrambled Eggs with Smoked Trout and Cream Cheese
(serves 2 hungry hungover people)

• 4oz of trout(or half a package, less will do)
• 5 large eggs
• pat of butter
• 2 scallions, white and green parts chopped into a (1/16") dice
• 5 teaspoons creamcheese. (I like horizon brand) in 1/2 teaspoon chunks

1. pull apart the trout into small bits, and set aside
2. crack the eggs into a bowl, and whisk the eggs adding a pinch of salt and grinding of pepper.
3. melt the butter over low heat in a non-stick pan(10-12 inches is perfect)
4. pour the eggs into the pan. stir in the scallions- putting them in this early this softens then and makes them less aggressive.
5. scramble the eggs by stirrring them slowly in a pan.
   
6. when they are still runny but just set, stir in the trout. Adding it any earlier just makes the whole dish fishy. Keep scrambling until eggs are to your liking.
7. when just ready to serve, put small chunks of cream cheese into the pan and stir once, they should still be mounds of cream cheese interspersed with the eggs.
8. serve immediately with a grinding of fresh pepper.
   

Notes:

- The ingredients for these eggs is the perfect thing to have waiting for you for the weekend. What I love about this dish is that the prep is to a minimum, I am generally way too hungry to just launch into the browning and wilting of things before I put my eggs in.

- If your scrambled eggs never turn out read Sidney Corriher's invaluable "Cookwise". You will never have another rubbery morning. Her secrets are: low heat, and take off the stove before they are fully cooked, because they will continue cooking.

- The spoon-shaped silicone spatulas are perfect for this. In fact they are perfect for almost everything.

Craving: Shrimp crudo at Bar Crudo

Full disclosure: if i could i would eat all my food raw. let me clarify, I would eat all my protein raw. Raw food as a life-style concept is one thing but the tenderness and clarity of raw fish and red meat is yet another. I love how clean raw fish tastes. I love the butter-iness and it's slightly gelatinous texture. When fish is uncooked you can taste a hint of something flowery that seems to get lost when you add heat and time.

When we walked by Bar Crudo on Sutter street, i got really excited. It is a now celebrated seafood restaurant and the menu had a whole section just for raw fish. I quickly cajoled (ok, forced) my parents and husband into having dinner there that night.

Bar Crudo is tiny, it is in one of those cool old store fronts you see here in San Francisco. You walk in and the first thing you see is a gleaming zinc counter brimming with oysters, shrimp, crabs clams and chefs calmly shucking, cracking and assembling. This is common in most seafood restaurants but Bar Crudo is warmer feeling and more stylish that places like Swans or Liberty. First of the walls are a pale yellow color and the lighting is soft and diffuse. We came in from a San Francisco February frigid rainy night and we felt instantly warm. the people sitting around the raw bar were stylish and happy to be with one another. There are whimsical paintings of mermaids on the walls and there is a chandelier made of plastic strips shaped like jellyfish. This chandelier is so genius that you have to come just to hang out near it. We were led upstairs to one of the only 7 tables in a tiny alcove. We were sitting in front of the floor to ceiling windows happily watching the rain on the inky street while we were cosy.

so onto to the craving. we ordered the crudo sampler, a selection of their raw plates. he flavors were fun, the fish was ravishingly fresh. The dish that kept me up at night: raw shrimp crudo. Raw shrimp, raw shrimp. Where have you been hiding yourself? Why have you been so bland and chewy at sushi bars? Why did I not know how creamy, how sweet you could be?

The dish is a tangle of raw shrimp, topped with a pepper puree, slivers of radish and sieved hard-cooked egg. there is a mid and fresh gazpacho sauce but it is more a mild broth. the pepper puree is just a little bitter, just a little tart and very clean. The radish is a lovely watermelon radish,. it had the colors of a Thebault and was bracing. The gazpacho sauce is is fresh tasting, it tasted of spring.

Then the shrimp. It is not briny like oysters and not miner-ally like tuna. It does not taste the way the sea smells, it tastes the way a mountain lake looks. When you put it in your mouth, it's solidity gives way to a creaminess. It has a clean sweetness and floods your mouth with it's texture.

My husband and I went back a few days later, just the two of us. The dish I kept thinking about was placed in front of us. I put the shrimp in my mouth and there it was, perfect.