Jessica Koslow from L.A.’s Sqirl holds the key to your heart and it’s crispy and spicy and topped with an egg.
Design by Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed. Photos by Lauren Zaser / BuzzFeed
It feels like Los Angeles is beating most other cities in the battle for satisfying, trend-setting food right now, and that's partly because of chef Jessica Koslow her tiny (even by NYC standards) spot Sqirl. What started as a seasonal jam operation at farmers' markets ("You never quite know when her blueberry jam with thyme is going to be sold out for the year," wrote Jonathan Gold in 2012) is now a 20-seat, "sort-of cafe," in the city's hipster SIlver Lake neighborhood. When you go to Sqirl, you will likely wait in a long line of young people, squint at an overwhelming chalkboard menu, order at the counter, then have to passively aggressively fight someone wearing an all denim, drop-crotch jumpsuit for a table while you wait. You will possibly become cranky, but then get your food and decide it was all definitely worth it.
Initially Sqirl got a lot of press because of Koslow's toasts — brioche smothered with things like Santa Rosa plum jam, thinly sliced pecorino and topped with bacon and a fried egg — lots of "OH MY GOD PEOPLE IN L.A. ARE PAYING $7 FOR TRENDY TOAST" headlines. And while Famous Toast And Jam seems like an obvious choice for our BuzzFeed Breakfast column, I decided that the Sqirl dish to show you how to make right now, since it's not exactly preserving season, is Sqirl's spicy, herb-y crispy brown rice bowl with house-fermented hot sauce.
Here's why: This dish and others at Sqirl seem to combine the Asian flavors made hot by chefs by David Chang and Andy Ricker with the grain bowls and eggs on top made hot by Pinterest. The magic here is the crunchy rice, which you have to boil the night before, let it dry out overnight, and then fry until it's golden brown and crispy. The good news is that once you've gone to the trouble to make it, crispy rice keeps for months in an airtight container at room temp and you will want to put it on everything because it's amazing. To make it, Koslow uses locally grown organic brown rice from Koda Farms, the oldest family-run rice farm in the U.S. She discovered them in an effort to try to find farmers that are doing interesting work close to where the restaurant is, she says, and Sqirl now has a separate storage facility reserved for this rice because they order about 2,000 pounds of it every month. That amount seems insane until you taste it fried and understand its popularity.
The secondary magic of this dish is a fermented jalapeño hot sauce that we will show you how to make, but you can also just use Sriracha. And we will definitely ask her to come back to the BuzzFeed Test Kitchen to show us how to make her Famous Toast and Jam some day, don't worry. —Emily Fleischaker
A heads up before we start: One of the best parts of this dish is a fermented jalapeño hot sauce that takes four weeks to make. You should probably make it because it's so good, but you can use Sriracha instead.
Get the fermented jalapeño hot sauce recipe here. That said, if you want to eat this rice bowl NOW...well, I understand. You can substitute Sriracha for the hot sauce or, if you're in the Los Angeles area, you can buy a jar of it from Sqirl.
Lauren Zaser / BuzzFeed
Start with the rice: You need to boil it the day before you cook this breakfast so that it can sit in the fridge overnight to dry out.
Bring a pot of salted water to a boil, then add 1 cup short grain brown rice and cook for 45-50 minutes, until it's tender. You can use any short or medium-grain brown rice for this recipe. At Sqirl, chef uses Koda Farms whole grain brown rice, which she thinks is the absolute best.
Lauren Zaser / BuzzFeed
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