Eggs + Rice + Panko = Breakfast

I like to cook, and my husband likes to cook, and we both do a reasonable good job of it. Because he’s the stay-at-home parent and I’m the commuter, he does far more of the cooking than I do, but I do a lot of the inventing. I’ve dubbed myself the “executive chef” – I invent a dish, he makes it happen.

Somehow this morning the cupboards were bare of our usual breakfast fare. No bread, no Cheerios, no “snap, crackle, pop with brown sugar on top”. We could have had oatmeal, good real oatmeal (and I digress but if you haven’t read Mark Bittman’s piece about McDonald’s oatmeal go read it now) but I found a cup of cooked rice in the fridge – leftover from last night’s dinner – and the little wheels in my head turned 'round.

"How about little pan-fried rice and egg cakes?"

My husband looked at me sort of skeptically, but got out the rice and two eggs and beat them together. He paused, and added a handful of panko because the “batter” looked too thin. Then he melted some butter in a skillet and fried up two perfect little cakes using the silly little round silicone rings that he'd bought one day.

They were soft and crunchy and salty and delectable – a perfect little breakfast, for two. Alas, there were three of us, so I had to content myself with a half a grapefruit and some stolen forkfuls of goodness.

The moral of the story? We may need three of those silicone rings.