Tag Archives: #breakfast

Let Them Eat Cake …for breakfast

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Was It Worth It? Trying out magazine recipes so you don’t have to!

  • The Source: Bon Appetit September 2012
  • The Cook: Just me…with the “help” of one fluffy kitty
  • The Menu:  Old-fashioned blueberry coffee cake 
  • The Background: I’ve been on a bit of a baking kick lately. Since we’d had a break from scorching hot weather, it seemed like a great time to turn on the old oven. High off my success with blueberry baked oatmeal, I decided to try out another blueberry recipe and this one sounded too good to pass up.
  • The Beginning:

This should also be called: where I messed it all up.

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Gratuitous Food Pics: SPQR

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When my husband and I went to Napa last fall, we made a point of eating as much good food as possible. The jewel of the trip was certainly the French Laundry (best food and service of my life) but we ate some other amazing things on the way, including this multi-coursed breakfast in San Francisco at SPQR.

Insalata with radishes, crispy shallots, mimolette cheese and arugula

Crispy pig ear salad with caperberries, peppers and radishes

Soft poached eggs with sweet corn, squash, goat cheese and bacon

Both of the salads rocked my world, but the eggs were almost surprisingly my favorite. I say surprisingly only because of how simple the dish was. The eggs were perfectly cooked (maybe via a thermal circulator?) and the sweet corn puree took the dish to a whole new level. It was phenomenal. In fact, just revisiting these pictures has made me vow to recreate those eggs very soon for brunch!

Learning to love frittatas…

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Frittatas are one of those foods I’ve always felt I should like. I love eggs, I love breakfast foods at any time of the day and I love dishes that allow you to utilize whatever produce you have on hand. And frittatas are all of those things. They are made with eggs. They can be eaten for breakfast, brunch or even, as magazine writers love to recommend, as “a light supper.” And they can be made with just about anything you happen to have hiding in your fridge.

So what’s my problem? It seems like frittatas and I should love each other and yet, I keep my distance. My main issue is that they always seem dry. I like my eggs runny — there is nothing sadder to me than overcooked eggs. My friend Ariel has actually made me the one and only frittata that I’ve enjoyed — it was moist and delicious. All of the others I’ve eaten tasted like disappointment. So I learned my lesson. Whenever I see a frittata recipe, my eyes skip right over it. I avoid them on breakfast menus. And I certainly have never bothered to try to make one.

Until last weekend when I made this beauty…

I was actually hoping to make something entirely different, but I didn’t have all of the ingredients. Then a recipe from Bon Appetit poked out of my binder and caught my eye. I had ripped out the page for a different reason (these ricotta tortelloni) but when I started reading the Onion Frittata recipe, I decided just to go for it. I had all of the ingredients (for the most part) and it seemed easy as well as healthy. And, as an extra bonus, I only needed one pan to make it.

First up, I cooked a cup of sliced onions until they were golden brown and tender. (Next time I might dice them to lessen their stringiness.) Once they were finished, I added in some fresh spinach for some extra oomph. Then I dumped in the whisked eggs which were mixed with grated Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper and herbs.

I was short on some of the herbs, but I did — for once! — have basil so I threw that in along with some red chili flakes to give it some pep. Eggs love pep.

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A delicious exercise in resisting the allure of restaurant brunch

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My husband and I had a list of things we needed to get done last Sunday — a fairly long list too. Usually, since it’s our only day off together, our Sundays are full of complete and utter laziness. Many of them start with us deciding to go out to brunch, which, I have finally discovered, is why we never manage to get anything done. People might say breakfast is the most important meal of the day but, believe me, brunch is nothing but a sneaky productivity killer.

First, it always takes forever. This is not an insult to the restaurants we frequent, I’m sure the staff is doing all they can to hurry things up. It just seems that whenever we think brunch will only take a little while, it’s a minimum of three hours before we get back home. Sometimes there is a long wait to get seated or maybe the kitchen staff is in the weeds, but more often than not, the worst time-sucking culprit is the brunch cocktail. You have a couple Bloody Marys while waiting for your eggs to arrive. Then once you’re done eating, wandering aimlessly around Target sounds way better than going home to do chores. I’m beginning to think my husband knows this too. Just as he knows my weakness for a good breakfast-approved cocktail.

So this Sunday when he looked at our to-do list and suggested we start by going out to brunch, I was wise to his tricks. Luckily I had a recipe for Baked Eggs with Bacon and Spinach picked out and ready to go. While it looks pretty enough to make up for staying home instead of going out, I made sure it was simple enough that my lazy Sunday morning was not totally ruined by ambition.

Now right off the bat I had to change things up. I didn’t really mean to, but I realized belatedly that we were out of spinach. We did, however, have a bunch of kale looking for a good home. So the night before I blanched it until it was just tender, then gave it a quick sauté with onions and garlic for added flavor.

The next morning, I started by cooking the meat. I had some lovely pepper bacon from Nueskes in Wisconsin. But, of course, I didn’t quite have enough for both of us, so I threw in a couple of breakfast sausages too. Lately I have been dreaming about breakfast sausages. This seemed like a great time to make my dreams come true.

While the meat was cooking, I toasted some bread for the base layer. The recipe calls for a whole wheat English muffin but (are you sensing a trend here?) I didn’t have any. However I did have some scraps of brioche left over from an event my husband did earlier in the week. It worked perfectly since they were already cut into strips, and brioche is way more fun than an English muffin.

Next I went searching for a couple of nice-sized ramekins for us to use. Most of ours are fairly small and I wanted this breakfast to be filling enough to keep us satiated through our chores. I remembered my little Le Creuset French onion soup bowls that don’t get used as much as I wish they would. They were the perfect size and added a little flair to the presentation.

The final step was layering — first the bread, then the roughly chopped meat (with a small tab of butter too, just because) and then the kale. Make a small well in the greens and drop in one egg and a dash of cream. It also worked just fine with milk if you forgot to buy cream. Ahem.

Top the eggs with a sprinkling of salt and pepper, then pop the whole shebang in the oven. Wait about ten minutes or so, but be careful not to overcook the eggs. The liquidy yolk is basically the sauce for this dish. Without that moisture, it might be a little dry.

While the eggs bake, your time is best spent making a cocktail. Sure, you’re not out on the town at some fancy brunch spot, but dammit, it’s the weekend and you deserve a pre-noon drink. I won’t tell anyone. I promise.

Then, after a bit, check the oven. Your egg should go from this…

…to this…

A little Parmesan cheese grated on top and a smattering of brioche bread crumbs makes this an easy dish worth staying home for. And our chore day was successful! We were so productive I even got to take a nap — which is a serious accomplishment in my book.