Blisters on My Sisters (egg dish, similar to huevos rancheros)
“Blisters on My Sisters” is an egg dish served at Shopsin’s (located in Essex Market, but formerly on Carmine Street). Kenny Shopsin named the dish after a lyric in a song by Frank Zappa, “Jewish Princess” (“I want a dainty little Jewish princess with a couple of sisters who can raise a few blisters”).
The dish has been described as similar to huevos rancheros and contains two fried eggs, cheese, beans, corn tortillas, rice and other ingredients. The recipe of Blisters on My Sisters achieved greater fame when it was featured in Shopsin’s book, Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin (2008).
Shopsin’s menu
BLISTERS ON MY SISTERS
(corn tortillas, bean, rice/vegetable mixture, covered with 2 fried eggs, broiled with cheese until it bubbles and browns)
original blisters on my sisters full-9.95 small-6.95
special blsiters on my sisters full-12.95 small-9.95
1. vegan sausage, vegetarian black beans
2. bacon hoppin’ john, black-eye peas
3. chorizo, cuban black bean with ham
4. all meat chili. onion, ranchero vegetables
5. chicken, avocado, gumbo vegetables
6. artichoke heart, tomato, goat cheese
7. haricot verts, peas,spinach curry, feta
8. mushroom, onion marinera mozzarella
Amazon.com
Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin (Hardcover)
by Kenny Shopsin (Author), Carolynn Carreno (Author)
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Knopf (September 23, 2008
New York (NY) Times
Movie Review
I Like Killing Flies (2003)
July 28, 2006
‘I Like Killing Flies’: A Side of Salty Language for a Soup-to-Nuts Menu
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: July 28, 2006
Nostalgia is a tricky racket. One person’s gauzy trip down memory lane is another’s hot sprint from brute reality, and so on. An evening stroll along Avenue B in downtown Manhattan, for instance, can inspire simultaneous wonder and horror at streets that are as clean as they are antiseptic. That you can actually walk down the avenue past midnight without someone pointing a gun at your head and taking off with your wallet is perhaps one consequence of such sterile living. The lack of character is another.
A similar amalgam of wonder and horror is inspired by the documentary “I Like Killing Flies,” a quick-sketch portrait of Kenny Shopsin, of the legendary or notorious, depending on your experience, Greenwich Village eatery that bears his name.
(...)
Other offerings include Blisters on My Sisters (corn tortillas with more than 20 possible fillings) and an Orange Julius that is accompanied by an image of a leering Malcolm McDowell dressed like a droog from “A Clockwork Orange.”
Gothamist.com
December 19, 2006
Shopsin’s Closed for Good
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COMMENTS
By Mark
[9] | 02/12/07
Another NYC institution bites it. I pity those who never had the cherry pancakes, the Blisters on my Sisters, the omlettes the size of Texas. Kenny is one of those NYC characters that are running in short supply as our town becomes Walmarted for the turistas.
Serious Eats
Last Brunch at Shopsin’s
Posted by James Felder, December 20, 2006 at 7:00 AM
(...)
Our last brunch at Shopsin’s, not knowing it was the last, Amber had Blisters on my Sisters, a tortilla-and-egg concoction she always ordered.
New York (NY) Daily News
News Bites
By JAY CHESHES
Wednesday, August 8th 2007, 6:30 PM
The Essex Street Market (at the corner of Delancey St.) recently unveiled a spiffy Web site (essexstreetmarket.com ), and you can follow its color-coded map to Kenny Shopsin’s new corner perch. Though his place is no bigger than a shoebox, the menu remains nearly as eccentric and encyclopedic as the original - now shuttered - West Village Shopsin’s. After tackling a breakfast plate of “Blisters on my Sisters” (eggs, rice, veggies, cheese, corn tortillas), begin your shopping around the corner at the locally focused Saxelby Cheesemongers (look for smoky Frère Fumant, a new sheep’s-milk from 3-Corner Field Farm in Shushan, N.Y.).
New York (NY) Times
All the Vulgar Charm, in a Smaller Box
By PETER MEEHAN
Published: August 8, 2007
(...)
If your ears aren’t too delicate to weather the shower of obscenities the Shopsins rain down on the world around them, it can be downright heartwarming to spend a few minutes over a hot plate of Blisters on My Sisters ($8; it is like, but is not, huevos rancheros) and watch them — Mr. Shopsin, one of his sons, and sometimes both of his twin daughters — in action at the reincarnation of Shopsin’s General Store in the Essex Street Market.
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Shopsin’s General Store
Stall 16 in the Essex Street Market, 120 Essex Street (Delancey Street), Lower East Side; no phone.
New York (NY) Times
May 23, 2008, 5:35 pm
The Book on Shopsin’s
By Nick Fox
What’s inside Kenny Shopsin’s mind has never been much of a mystery. He’s given a piece of it to his customers for years.
But for a more complete exploration of his thinking wait until September, when “Eat Me, the Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin,” will be published by Knopf.
Along with recipes for such classics as Blisters on My Sisters, Carmine Street Enchiladas and Ho Cakes, Kenny explains what’s behind his particular variety of hospitality – “I kick people out when I don’t like them” – and cuisine — “The base of my cooking philosophy is to get the job done with as few ingredients, as little effort, and in as short a time as possible.”
Serious Eats
Cook the Book: Blisters on My Sisters
Posted by Lucy Baker, October 1, 2008 at 1:15 PM
How many dishes do you know of that were originally inspired by a Frank Zappa song? I’m guessing not many. Motivated by Zappa’s lyrics from his song Jewish Princess: “I want a dainty little Jewish princess with a couple of sisters who can raise a few blisters,” Kenny Shopsin, author of this week’s Cook the Book selection, Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin, went into his kitchen with no clue what to make.
What he came up with consists of corn tortillas topped with fresh arugula, rice, black beans, and a sunny side-up egg. Spice it with as much jalapeño as you like. This dish makes for a very hearty brunch, and, in my opinion, is just begging to be paired with a Bloody Mary.
Blisters on My Sisters
- makes 2 servings -
Adapted from Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin
Ingredients
6 corn tortillas, warmed
2 cups cooked white rice
1 cup Cuban Black Bean Soup (recipe follows) or canned black bean soup or black beans, drained
2 roma tomatoes (fresh or from a can of San Marzano tomatoes), chopped
Minced jalapeño or chipotle peppers, to taste
2 extra-large eggs
2 big handfuls of arugula
Procedure
1. Heat the tortillas on the griddle or in whatever way you like to heat tortillas. In a sauté pan over medium heat, combine the rice, soup, tomatoes, and jalapeño peppers. Mush it all up together.
2. Meanwhile cook the eggs sunny-side up. To serve, put 1 handful of arugula in the bottom of two plates. Put the tortillas side by side on top of the arugula, and the rice-beans mixture on top of the tortillas, dividing it evenly. Carefully slide the sunnies on top of that and serve.
The L Magazine (October 15-21, 2008)
Tuesdays with Kenny
“I Don’t Cook Bad Shit!”
By Carey Jones
(...)
Like, for example, Blisters on My Sisters, a welcome perversion of huevos rancheros: rice, beans and greens slapped on corn tortillas, broiled with cheese and sunny-side up eggs.