From my favorite cookbook of the last year

I’m finally getting around to Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin. You should pick it up and give it the slow, deliberate reading it warrants and deserves. It’s fucking magnificent, even if you’ve never been to Shopsin’s—which regrettably I haven’t—or even if you don’t care about cookbooks—which regrettably I do very much. This is from the Shopsin’s recipe for Squaw Eggs (Bacon, Peppers, and Hominy):

To my mind, this is the scrambled American Indian version of a western omelet. At the time I came up with it, the feminist Andrea Dworkin was making a huge racket about things that were offensive to women, and I thought Squaw Eggs would be offensive without being too offensive—so I put it on the menu to piss her off even though I don’t know her and she’s probably never heard of this dish. I put hominy (dried corn kernels) in them, which has a squaw feeling for me because American Indians used to grind hominy to make all kinds of breads and shit like that…

A man after my own heart! Not a darling chef (“This egg dish reminds me of Summer in Provence…”), or a faux–tough guy who-gives-a-shit cookbook (“When I cook eggs, I like to listen to Black Flag…”). It’s so good. The rest of the recipe after the jump (for no reason).

…You can buy it canned, frozen, or dried. And I added tricolored peppers because they remind me of the colors in an Indian girl’s dress. This is the kind of egg dish that has more non-egg ingredients than egg, so the egg just binds those ingredients together. If you want it eggier, add more eggs.

Ingredients
1 teaspoon Clarified Butter (page 44), regular butter, or ghee
6 extra-large eggs
1/2 teaspoon heavy cream
8 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
1/2 cup chopped bell peppers (red, green, and yellow)
1/3 cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon Salsa Roja (page 63) or any fresh chunky salsa
2 tablespoons canned or frozen hominy (about 15 pieces)
Minced fresh or pickled jalapeño pepper to taste (see How Spicy Do You Want It? on page 128)

Instructions
Heat the butter in a nonstick egg pan over medium heat. Whisk the eggs and cream together in a bowl, pour into the pan, and cook the eggs as for Scrambled Eggs (page 48). Just before they’re done, fold in the bacon, bell peppers, onion, salsa, hominy, and jalapeño pepper.  

I feel like this is Quilty’s culinary forebear. Like Pound for Nabokov. Like Bourdain for Zimmern. Like water for chocolate. Like water for elephants. 

I love you,

Chris, your 4-bear