I grew up the oldest of six kids in a Japanese-American family. My mom honed her cooking skills working at her aunt and uncle’s diner in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, where she met my dad, a truck driver who delivered produce. It was 1940, and she was 18.Later, as a young mother feeding her family in postwar Detroit, she served an amalgam of Japanese home cooking and truck stop fare. From this hodgepodge I found my comfort foods—sausage gravy on white bread, fried rice with scrambled eggs and bacon, raw egg and soy sauce mixed into a bowl of steaming-hot rice, and mom’s own version of scrapple. I can still whip these up on a moment’s notice, except for the scrapple—a dish that takes time and a lot of patience.Scrapple for breakfast was a treat—sliced and fried, it was sometimes served with an egg on top or drenched in a pool of maple syrup. It was cheap food, born of a tight economy and the need to stretch ingredients. Mom stopped making it when I was about 6 or 7 years old. There were three kids by then and a lot of food in the fridge. The very lean years had passed and scrapple was replaced with Frosted Flakes and piles of cinnamon toast.Several years ago, I called Mom and asked for her scrapple recipe. She couldn’t imagine why I wanted to revive this dish, but we pieced it out and I made a batch the next day. I savored the crispy, fried slices and the taste of bacon fat—the way the sunny-side egg yolks flowed like gravy and how good it all tasted with lots of black pepper.This scrapple resembles polenta with hearty pork flavor. Adding chopped green chile makes it a toothsome entrée, especially served with a pile of frijoles and a salad. For anyone who’d like to try it, here’s the recipe.
Mina's Dish
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