Kaiserschmarren is a thick, souffle-like pancake, first created for the Austrian Emperor, Francis Joseph I. Oma and Opa Muschenetz grew up in Czechia, an area under the Austro-Hungarian Empire and full of Viennese influences. The dish was a “company-over-for-breakfast” kind of recipe in the Muschenetz household–a fancy treat that was unusual for American palettes and fun to eat. Light in texture, you could have seconds or thirds of it without feeling guilty. 
Ingo’s mom, Karen remembers ordering Kaiserschmarren during a hike in the Austrian Alps. Traditionally served swimming in butter, Karen has adapted this …

Couscous is a simple, fast-cooking grain that goes particularly well with Middle-Eastern dishes like lamb. Often, we’ll cook couscous, saute some vegetables and toss the vegetables and couscous with some herbs, and cheese. This is one of the more successful combinations we’ve made.

There are many different ways to make an omelet and two ways to spell it. This way, taken from a recipe by Tyler Florence, makes it easy to get a nice, fluffy specimen. The spelling of omelet vs. omelette comes out to a tie –evidently the latter is more common in Britain.

There are three ways I like eggs, depending on how they are used. If I’m making an egg sandwich on a croissant, then it’s scrambled eggs for me. If it’s rather an egg sandwich between two pieces of bread (like an English muffin), then it’s an egg over easy, cooked just so that the interior of the egg oozes enough to leak a little on the bread, but not onto your hands. Otherwise, it’s eggs prepared this way, the way my dad prepared them. It’s very similar to sunny side …

As a young kid, Ingo would often make this pancake recipe. It’s so named as it came out of the “Mickey Mouse Cookbook.” It is not necessary to shape the pancakes like Mickey Mouse’s head, but it helps.

As a kid, I loved these huge, bigger-than-my-head, eggy pancakes, which my Oma would cook for me after a cold morning tromping through the snow. My favorite topping is melted butter with a little honey, but they can be topped like normal crepes. You’ll want to serve them immediately out of the pan with a knife and fork to cut them into squares.

This dish became a favorite of Ingo’s while in London. Admittedly, it’s very simple, but nice.