Handmade Conversations — Breakfast for Dinner

What do you love about breakfast?

In many ways, breakfast is the ultimate comfort food. It can be quick and light, or thick and greasy. We used this versatility as a guide for developing recipes for the book. Breakfast-y foods can easily be adapted for any meal during the day, which is great because many people don't have time to make a proper breakfast in the morning. Making these dishes for dinner gives you time to properly appreciate them!

Many of the recipes in "Breakfast for Dinner" use what you call morning flavors added to traditional dinner recipes. What are your favorite morning flavors?

There are lighter flavors such as fruits and citrus, and then there are heavier flavors such as bacon and coffee. It is hard to pick out favorites since we sort of like them all. It really depends on your mood and the context in which you are eating or preparing a meal.

Do you have a favorite breakfast-for-dinner meal? What makes this one stand out?

We both love our version of Loco Moco, which is a traditional Hawaiian dish with a bed of rice, hamburger patty or fried Spam, topped with a fried egg and brown gravy. Our version is more Asian inspired, and has a sticky coconut rice, browned ground pork instead of the hamburger patty/Spam, a fried egg, and then a soy sauce/brown sugar reduction instead of gravy. We top it off with some freshly chopped cilantro and green onion.

The combination of flavors is what makes this dish stand out. Fried eggs and browned pork are a fairly common combination, but add to that a hint of coconut from the rice, and a sweet and salty soy sauce/brown sugar reduction, and you have one unique dish.

Which kitchen utensil could you not live without?

A couple of good sharp knives are an absolute must. In addition to them actually being safer to use (less uncontrolled slipping with a sharp knife), they make food preparation easier and more fun. Also, spatulas (spatuli?). You can never have too many spatulas.