Category Archives: Eggs

Weekend Scrambled Eggs with Croutons and Herbed Cream Cheese

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If you have a long weekend coming up (and I hope you do), perhaps you’re looking forward to it for the same reason I am—three opportunities, three days in a row, to enjoy an unhurried breakfast.  What luxury!Scrambled Eggs with Croutons and Herbed Cream CheeseTruth be told, these scrambled eggs only take five minutes longer to prepare than the standard sort, an investment that might even be thinkable on a weekday.  But those five minutes yield excellent returns: they give you a little crunch, a little creaminess, and a lot of herbaceous wake-up in your bowl. And yes, it’s really just scrambled eggs and toast, but if you have never crouton-d your toast into your scrambled eggs you are in for a nice surprise. Continue reading →

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How to Boil an Egg

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Well, hello!  Let’s pick up where we left off, shall we?  As I recall, we were enjoying lots of good food and the people we love and life in general, and then I went on a very long vacation.  I hope you did too, or that you stayed home and snuggled your family and drank hot chocolate, and that either way you’ve had a restful and happy end of one year and beginning of the next.

So happy new year! I wish you a year of good health and simple pleasures.How to Boil an EggAnd what, after all, is as healthy and simple as an egg?  I think of the egg as a secret weapon in my kitchen: it cooks in seconds, it’s cheap and filling, it makes leftovers into a meal.  And I owe another debt of gratitude to the egg: it’s the thing that got me started writing this blog a year ago today, in an effort to branch out from my cooking regimen of scrambled eggs and scrambled eggs.  I’ve managed to diversify a bit this year, it’s true, but there’s still always room for a good egg in my kitchen.

Boiling an egg is an economical preparation: the shell holds it tidily, no added fat is required, and you needn’t even exert your wrist with whisking.  You only need water, a pot, a few minutes of patience and, preferably, a pinch of salt at the end.  You can leave the yolks soft to smear over toast or cook them through to creamy perfection for a composed salad. Continue reading →

Kimchi Fried Rice

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I have to tell you, friends, I’m feeling a little pressure here. Like I need to choose my words carefully to convey to you how good this dish is. (How’s this? So good.) Most of the time I feel like I’m preaching to the choir when I write here–I mean, who among us doesn’t love baked chard stems and butternut squash tacos and raw Brussels sprout salads? But here, with this dish, maybe we’re going out on a limb a little bit together. It’s fermented. It’s a little spicy. And I used white rice.

Be fearless. This is the kind of food that makes your mouth tingle with happiness (maybe it’s all the salt, but still). The texture is crunch and chew, the flavors are savory and bright. If you’re not already mad for kimchi, you will be soon.

Kimchi Fried Rice

Continue reading →

Savory Oatmeal with Black Pepper, Blue Cheese, and an Olive Oil Fried Egg

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Today’s the day, people. Wake up and vote!

To fortify you, I bring you the second verse of my love song for savory oatmeal. It will have you jumping out of bed, eager for an excuse to begin your day. It’s quick, so you’ll have plenty of time to swing by your polling place on the way to work. It’s easy, so you can save your mental acuity for the important decisions of the day. And it’s clever, so it will remind you where you keep your stamps if you’re in a vote-by-mail state.* (*Not really.)

More important still, it’s a savory, creamy, hearty breakfast. And it’s halfway healthy, because it’s oatmeal. Talk about across-the-aisle collaboration.

Continue reading →

Shakshuka: Poached Eggs with Tomatoes and Peppers

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A new dish has come into my life recently.  I mean, it’s an old dish, maybe very old, and maybe you’ve been eating it for breakfast or dinner all your life, but I’ve only gotten to know it in recent years.  And I’m a little obsessed.  It’s called shakshuka.

It’s a Tunisian dish, or an Israeli or a Libyan dish, depending on who you ask.  All I know is that I’ve been loving a version from my local bagel shop (which also inspired that caramelized onion hummus recipe).  Shakshuka is a mildly spicy stew of tomatoes and peppers, adorned with a poached egg.  In this recipe, adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty, the eggs are poached right in the tomatoes and peppers, making for a one-pot meal of the most delicious sort. Continue reading →

Frittata with Chevre and Caramelized Onions

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We’ve had backyard chickens in Seattle for more than a decade now.  I kind of like to think that we had city chickens before having city chickens was a thing.  (Now everyone has chickens here; you have to get backyard goats to have any urban farming cred.  J says we’re not getting goats.)  I’m sure Seattle has a home and garden tour somewhere, but I’m also sure that it’s nowhere near as popular as the city’s annual Chicken Coop Tour.

At the moment we have just three hens: Ducky, Feather, and Feather.  Lately one of the Feathers has been acting upon a likely-well-intentioned but completely misguided plan to hatch a nestfull of eggs, except that we kept taking her eggs away and, ahem, with no rooster in flock the eggs had exactly zero chance of hatching anyway.

Feather was petulant about the situation and hunkered down in one of the nesting boxes for weeks.  She would not be stirred, unless I would let her into the garden to eat my tomatoes, in which case she happily abandoned her maternal duties and left the nest for hours at a time.  Luckily Feather has abandoned her dreams of motherhood and we are getting a few eggs again (broody hens don’t lay).

Let us celebrate with a frittata.

You made a big batch of caramelized onions and froze some, right?  If not, just throw a few thinly-sliced onions in your pan over high heat and cook them until they have softened and sweetened and proceed from there.  I also like this recipe with a few leeks in place of the onions. Continue reading →

Three Pepper Breakfast Burrito

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I understand that school is starting again.  Like, this week.  Like, maybe tomorrow.  Soon.  I am so not ready.  Here’s how I like to start my mornings: slowly.  With a cup of coffee.  Here’s how I start my mornings on school days: “Put on your shoes!  Where are your shoes?  Where’s your other shoe?  Has anyone seen the other shoe?”  Times three.Yes, I understand that you have a better system for school mornings.  Which is why I’m giving you this recipe.  Continue reading →

Roasted Tomato and Eggplant Tart

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Still wondering what to bring to that Labor Day picnic?  Not only is this tart flavorful and attractive, it also hides a pound of eggplant.  And who doesn’t have a pound of eggplant to hide at this time of year?I mean, I’ll just go ahead and admit it: sometimes the most popular way to serve eggplant is hidden.  Eggplant?  What eggplant?  My oldest daughter gave this dish an enthusiastic review and said it tasted like pizza.  Continue reading →

Baked Eggs with Greens, Yogurt, and Spiced Butter

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Welcome to Emmy Cooks!  You can see some of my favorite recent recipes by clicking the “My Favorite Recipes” category on the sidebar (here are June, July, and August).  If you like what you see here, you can sign up on the sidebar to receive a daily recipe by email, or follow Emmy Cooks on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

It’s a fact of life: sometimes things go wrong in the kitchen.  Sometimes very wrong.  No big deal, it happens.  Those are the recipes (and there are many) I never tell you about here–except, of course, for when I do.  (Ask me some other time about the all the dull things I’ve done with spinach, the watery attempts at Indian food, or those disgusting microwave potato chips.)  But today, this is a story of redemption.

Last time I combined softly-cooked eggs with greens and yogurt, the dish was a bust.  And you weren’t surprised.  But this time!  Things are different this time, friends.  Or, rather, things are much the same, but a few secret ingredients take the dish in a whole new, and altogether delicious, direction.  (Thank you, Yotam Ottolenghi, for your good ideas.)

The basics are the same: a bed of sauteed greens, perfectly-for-you-cooked eggs, and creamy, garlicky, salty yogurt.  The detail that ties it all together, though, is pure decadence: a generous drizzle of spiced butter in which you’ve crisped a few leaves of sage.  So much for my original plan to make a healthier-than-hollandaise sauce for poached eggs–but it’s so worth it. Continue reading Baked Eggs with Greens, Yogurt, and Spiced Butter (click for recipe)

Migas

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We are fortunate enough to live in a walkable neighborhood of a walkable city, and sometimes days go by between car trips.  I made up for all those blissful carless days in one fell swoop today, though.  President Obama was visiting Seattle and I got stuck in traffic for almost two hours with five little girls in the back of that darn minivan.

Luckily, we were well-stocked with snacks, and the girls were full of songs and laughter.  My four-year-old told a detailed and breathlessly-enunciated story to anyone who would listen featuring characters named Macinnanin, Skingerque, Banana Peel, and Spoon Guy.  (The spellings of those first two names are approximate at best.)  The baby practiced her shrieks of joy at top volume.  Other drivers stared at the ruckus my passengers were making and then laughed.

Did you think this was going to be a post about how I came home hours late and cooked a nice dinner?  Heavens, no.  I collapsed on the couch with a beer and let J hustle the kids off to bed.  (Thanks, honey!)  We ate leftovers: this soup, that salad, those beans.  Leftovers are a cook’s reward, I say.

But if you don’t have a fridge full of good leftovers, make migas at the end of a frazzled day.  There’s a reason I mostly cooked scrambled eggs for all those months when life was so hectic: they’re fast, filling, and delicious.  The kids call these migas “cheesy chippy eggs” and eat their plain version (no salsa, no green flecks) without complaining.

Migas take various forms in various countries, but this surely-Americanized version is basically scrambled eggs with lightly crushed tortilla chips, green onions, tomato, cilantro, cheese, and salsa, maybe with a warm tortilla on the side.  Dinner will be served in ten minutes. Continue reading Migas (click for recipe)