Why hello there, and welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophes, where today, we’re taking it a little easy. We almost didn’t take things at all, before deciding to just make it a little late, so we’re making a dish with a name I intentionally made “wrong”, a recipe that’s stupidly easy, and nothing big or complicated to talk about, for reasons we will explain momentarily. If you don’t want that explanation, you can cl i ck this link to get to the recipes. For everyone else, let’s dig in.

Out of My Weakness and My Melancholy

As that line tells you just by its content, we almost didn’t have a post today because I’m not in a good place. As that line tells you further by its REFERENCE (Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2) that place is one of grief: A second visit to the Vet this last Saturday revealed that Blue was not recovering from her injury. Indeed, according to the vet, she was developing an infection, and her broken vertebra was dying. The vet told us that this meant the damage was inevitably terminal, and that the humane thing to do would be to put her down now, since by the time her suffering became evident, it would be agony. (A fact partially attested to by the fact that, despite her worsening condition, I personally thought she was greatly on the mend: she was becoming more active, rather than losing weight (a common signal of chicken illness) she was gaining it, and she was becoming more active… despite her back actively rotting.) As such, Saturday afternoon, we had her put down, and cremated.

This is the second to last picture of her I have that isn’t focused on her injury.

This was, of course, an emotional loss for me, and A FANTASTIC thing to do, I would like to add, sandwiched between two days of working on a high-energy farce for a theatrical fundraiser. “The Show Must Go On” indeed. Blue was not the kindest of our chickens, of all of them, she was the most likely to bite. But she did so, often, from a place of care, no matter how frustrating it was: Blue was CONSTANTLY ready to go broody, ready to sit for hours at a time warming eggs that they might hatch, and willing to protect them with bites and pecks. She was constantly grumpy, and thumped around like a tiny tyrannosaur with her big fluffy legs. She is already missed, but we are happy we could give her peace before her pain became unmanageable.

Anywho, between the emotional drainage and time needed to handle that, as well as tearing down the quarantine enclosure I had just cleaned and updated for her the day before (making the efforts made to keep her comfortable and clean feel even less meaningful), handling that show, and some other obligations, the fact is: I’m writing this 2 AM on Monday, and I haven’t even made this recipe yet. I’m going to TRY and make it Monday afternoon, so hopefully it gets worked out, but…And there’s a…lot, in my chest, about this whole process, and other things going on. A sort of thrumming, churning mass of burning garbage. Pain, grief, blame, anger, all of that grinding itself around the points of light of the last few weeks. But I’m not going to unload that here and now. That’s something that has to be teased out and processed, for the safety of those who could be harmed by its toxic emissions.

The point is that I’m sad, I’m mad, and a bunch of other things, one of the most easily identifiable ones is…tired. Like, “I spent two weeks of emotional and physical labor to no positive outcome, so my brain is lashing out and suggesting that maybe the vet had some nefarious plan to STEAL my chicken, it’s so tired and upset” So we’re making a short post with a simple recipe and a simple story. Ya dig?

Here is a cute picture of a cat, to signify my exhaustion, and to lighten the mood a little.

Toadies and Lack-ies

So, today I’m making a riff on what my family calls “toad in the hole” and what is more commonly called “egg in a hole”, since Toad in a hole is a completely different English dish.

This looks like someone described a Pizza badly to a 40’s British housewife.

Brief discussion: Toad in a hole is, as that picture suggests, sausages tucked into a Yorkshire pudding batter. (A Yorkshire pudding is like, a British fried bun/popover.) The idea was that you’d get these sausages in bread, pour over some gravy, and not notice that your dinner was 60% bread and gravy.

What MY family calls “toad in a hole”, and is more commonly called “Egg in a hole” (though more on that in a second) is when you cut a circle out of a slice of bread and fry an egg in it.

THE EYES WATCH YOU, CHILD.

Turns out the dish actually has a TON of names: “egg in a basket”, “egg in a frame”, “egg with a hat”, “egg in a trashcan”, “the one-eyed jack”, “bird’s nest”, “the Popeye”, and (showing my family isn’t entirely in the wrong) “toad-in-a-hole”, or “Eggs Rothko”, because supposedly the dish was a favorite quick breakfast of the famed painter Rothko. Indeed, according to one website, there are more than 66 different names for the dish recorded in various recipes, sometimes with slight variations to justify the name, sometime not. (“Egg with a Hat”, for instance, often serves the punched-out ring of bread, itself toasted, as a hat for the bread. The Eggs Rothko are typically coated in a layer of cheese, with tomatoes and kale on the plate to form the bold colors and simple shapes evoked by the artist) Perhaps my three favorites from the list are “Bregg”, the portmanteau of bread and egg that sounds like the least popular kid at a Montessori school, “toast tits” because it’s an amazing touch of crudity for a breakfast dish, and “lazy eyed pirate”, because….what? Look, I get all the “one-eye” names, but LAZY eyed?

They’re a little breakfast flair, that you can also see incorporated into a fair number of diner/American food places (because eggs and bread are super cheap) or incorporated into more decadent dishes like “Egg in a Hole Grilled Cheese” or “Egg in a Hole BLTs”, etc.

So, with that knowledge, you already get the title of the post, right? Hell you functionally already understand THE ENTIRE RECIPE: We’re making an egg-in-a-hole, just through a quesadilla instead of a slice of bread. And I promise you: this isn’t like, a GOOD quesadilla. The recipe I read for this had refried beans and homemade salsa, and that’s too much effort for me today. I’m doing this like a five-ingredient meal. SO let’s slap this bad boy out so I can pack this in at like, 1200 words and go wallow some more.

This is THE last picture of Blue I have: where she was too big and fluffy to fit in the towel-stuffed carrier I set up to take her to the vet.

Slapdash Style

So, this is a super-simple version of the recipe, but it’s still going to have a couple more steps than a standard Toad-in-the-hole. You’ll want tortillas, an egg, cheese, and salsa. Start off with a simple flour tortilla, and lay on some cheese.

This is probably an excessive picture, since “Cheese on a tortilla” is a pretty clear concept.

Toss it in a pan, and another tortilla on top. Toast it over medium heat on one side for 2ish minutes. Then take it out of the pan, and cut a 2-3 inch hole in the middle of the tortilla.

I hope you’re ready for the pictures to come hot and heavy here, because I churned those suckers OUT.

Slap the untoasted side back in the pan, add some oil in the hole (hehe), and crack an egg into it (less hehe) and cook until the egg fries.

Now, with this one, I kind of see the “lazy eye” label.

I ended up flipping mine after a minute or two, since I don’t like sunny-side up eggs. Then you pop that onto a plate, and make sure you toast the section you cut out. No reason to waste the hat! Sprinkle with some salsa, and a sprinkling of parsley, because we don’t have cilantro.

And because I needed SOMETHING for visual contrast.

And you know what? This was surprisingly satisfying. The egg’s still runny, and it mixes really well with the salsa and the toasted tortilla. It’s not complicated, but nice and warm and soft. Like Blue was. (Though, to be fair, it’s not nearly as bitey as Blue was.) So I call it a success.

THURSDAY: MAYBE I’LL PUT OUT THE THING I WAS WORKING ON FOR LAST WEEK, BEFORE ALL THIS BLEW THAT OUT OF THE WATER.

MONDAY: WHO KNOWS.

Here's the

Recipe

Quesadilla Toad-in-a-Hole.

Makes 1 quesadilla

Ingredients.

2 flour tortillas

¾ cup shredded cheese

1 tbsp olive oil

1 egg

Salt and pepper.

Herbs, hot sauce, and salsa (optional, for serving)

Preparation

Place the first tortilla in a skillet over medium heat, and top with the cheese, and remaining tortilla. Toast on the first side for roughly 2 minutes, then remove from the pan. Cut a 3 inch wide circular hole in the center of the tortilla. Return to the pan, untoasted side down.
Add the oil into the hole, and add the egg, seasoning with salt and pepper. Fry to desired doneness, flipping if desired.
Remove from the pan, and toast the untoasted side of the cut-out portion of the tortilla.
Serve with desired accoutrements.