Grenki à la Moi

I’m not sure how long the loaf of rye bread sat in our freezer, but it was long enough that it dried out in spots. While it was delicious in our Reuben sandwiches, I didn’t want to serve that over and over and over (although Wayne probably wouldn’t have minded), and I figured it would probably make decent French toast.

I found three variations in my search – here, here and here. The first one is just bread dipped in egg and seasoned with salt and pepper, kind of like your standard egg and toast, just mixed together. The second one was topped with bananas and maple syrup. The third one was topped with cottage cheese and cherries.

Wayne voted for the last one, which is the one I felt was most intriguing. First of all, isn’t “Grenki” a cool name? Second, we had about 1/2 cup of frozen cherries languishing in the freezer and an opened carton of cottage cheese in the fridge, so it was a good opportunity to use those. Third, I was interested in discovering what whipped cottage cheese tasted like; Tilly’s description of it was quite fascinating.

I enjoyed our out-of-the-ordinary breakfast, and am glad we had a successful experiment, but in the future we’ll save rye bread as a vehicle for sandwiches and not syrup.

Grenki

For the French toast: Combine an egg, 1/4-1/2 cup milk, bit of cinnamon, vanilla and maple syrup. Dip 4 thin slices of rye bread (or 2 thick ones) into the mixture and cook on griddle until done.

For the whipped cottage cheese: Swirl 1/2 cup cottage cheese with 1-2 teaspoons of vanilla in a small food processor until creamy.

For the cherry topping: Place 1/2 cup of thawed, frozen, pitted, sweet cherries in a small saucepan. Drizzle with a bit of balsamic vinegar and maple syrup. Bring to a boil and simmer until the sauce has thickened.

To serve: Top the French toast with the cottage cheese and cherries.

Note: While we used all the cherries, we didn’t use all the whipped cottage cheese. A few days later I added the leftovers to our regular pancake batter (in place of part of the milk) and that experiment was successful; that batch of pancakes was fluffier and lighter than usual. We may do it again sometime!