Serves 4
When I was in college at U.C. Berkeley, I worked as a waitress in a Jewish deli across the bay in San Francisco, where I discovered the unsung combination of pastrami and eggs. I add mustard greens and rye berries to the bowl as a wink to pastrami on rye, but you could use any chewy, hearty grain you want. Mustard greens are spicy and slightly bitter, but the pickled mustard seeds, which are sweet, take care of that potential problem. You can use kale, collard greens, beet greens, or chard in place of the mustard greens.
Olive oil
4 ounces sliced pastrami, chopped (or 4 slices bacon, chopped)
1 bunch mustard greens, kale, collard greens, or Swiss chard, stemmed, leaves torn into bite-size pieces
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup cooked rye berries (see here; or another chewy grain such as farro or wheat berries)
2 tablespoons Pickled Mustard Seeds (recipe follows), plus more for serving
4 fried eggs (see here)
Pour enough olive oil to coat a large skillet (preferably nonstick) and heat over medium-high heat until the oil is sizzling hot but not smoking, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the pastrami and cook, stirring to cook evenly, until it is golden brown and crispy in places, about 2 minutes. Add the greens, sprinkle with the salt, and cook for about 2 minutes, until they are just wilted, folding the greens so they cook evenly. Turn off the heat and fold in the rye berries and mustard seeds. Spoon the hash into four bowls and put them near the stove while you fry the eggs.
Remove the eggs as they are done and set one on each bowl. Top each bowl with a spoonful of the pickled mustard seeds and serve the rest on the side.
Makes about 1¼ cups
I discovered pickled mustard seeds when I tested a recipe for them for the cookbook Mozza at Home. I was a little intimidated by the idea, not being much of a pickler myself, and never having used mustard seeds in my life to that point. But this is how easy they are to make: Boil water, pour it over mustard seeds (which, by the way are readily available in the spice section of supermarkets, health food stores, and Mexican, Indian, and Middle Eastern markets), the end. The seeds are slightly sweet and very mustardy, and when you bite into one, you get this great little pop like you do when biting into tobiko (flying fish eggs) in a sushi roll. Being that they are pickled, they last somewhere near forever, so now I keep a jar of them in my refrigerator to spoon into egg salad, or onto any bowl where mustard wouldn’t be a bad idea.
¼ cup yellow or black mustard seeds
½ cup apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons honey
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon kosher salt
Put the mustard seeds in a pint-size canning jar with a lid or in a heatproof medium bowl.
Combine the vinegar, honey, bay leaf, and salt in a small saucepan and bring the liquid to a boil over high heat. Turn off the heat and pour the boiling liquid over the mustard seeds. Set aside to cool to room temperature.
Put the lid on the jar or cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and set the mustard seeds aside for 2 to 3 hours, until the pickling liquid has saturated the seeds (the finished condiment will look like a seedy syrup) and they pop like caviar in your mouth. Use the seeds or put the lid on the jar (or transfer to another covered container) and refrigerate for up to several months.
G-Free Alternative: Using wild rice or sorghum in place of the rye berries in this recipe will make this gluten-free.