Category Archives: Eggs

French Toast with Vanilla and Orange Zest

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I hope that you have some loaves of challah in the oven or the bread box, because you are going to want to make this French toast this weekend.  Lots of the recipes I have posted here are old favorites, but this one is a new favorite.  It’s Ina Garten’s recipe but Sonia made it for me recently, and then I made it again, and frankly, it’s the reason we’ll be baking challah again tomorrow.

Vanilla.  Orange Zest.  Crisp, buttery edges.  Custardy centers.   A drizzle of pure maple syrup, a tumble of fruit, a steaming mug of coffee.  Weekend mornings don’t get better than this.

French Toast with Vanilla and Orange Zest:  In a wide bowl or pan, whisk 6 eggs with 1 1/2 c. milk, 1 Tb. honey, 1/2 tsp. vanilla, 1/2 tsp. kosher salt, and the zest of one orange.  Soak 3/4 inch slices of challah for 5 minutes, turning once.  Cook in plenty of butter over medium heat until nicely browned on each side (meanwhile, get the next batch of bread soaking in the egg mixture).  Transfer to a 250 degree oven while you cook the remaining slices.  Serve with maple syrup and fruit.

Smoked Salmon Frittata with Spinach and Herbed Cream Cheese

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Here in Seattle, when we say “smoked salmon” we aren’t talking about cold-smoked lox-style salmon. Instead it’s hot-smoked, flaky, a bit drier, and by far my preferred style of smoked salmon. Here’s a nice way to feature it for breakfast.

We smoke our own salmon in the backyard in summertime, but it’s available in the store year round. Try to find a piece if you haven’t tried it, because it’s great. But if it’s not readily available and you do have lox, make it easy on yourself, use that. The frittata will be different but still great.

And let’s be honest: the fish adds smoke and salt, but the real star here is the oniony, herbaceous, melting cream cheese. Even if you don’t make this frittata, you might want to keep a little jar of it in the fridge for smearing on your toast. And—this is a lot of talk about NOT making this frittata for a post dedicated to encouraging you to make this frittata, isn’t it?—you can make an even faster dish by simply stirring flaked or chopped smoked salmon and the herbed cream cheese into a pan of nearly-set scrambled eggs.

Smoked Salmon Frittata with Spinach and Herbed Cream Cheese: First make a bowl of herbed cream cheese by mashing some cream cheese with a pinch of salt and a ton of chopped herbs (I used green onions, chives, parsley, dill, oregano, and thyme, probably about 1 c. loosely packed chopped herbs for 4 oz. cream cheese). Set aside. Sauté an onion until translucent and then stir in a few big handfuls of just-washed chopped or baby spinach until the spinach wilts and any moisture evaporates. Meanwhile, beat 6 eggs with salt, pepper, and ¼ c. crème fraiche or plain yogurt. Flake a piece of smoked salmon into the eggs, then add the onion and spinach and mix well. Wipe out the pan you used for the onions, add a little olive oil, and heat the pan over medium heat. Pour in the egg mixture and cook for about 5 minutes, until the edges are set. Dollop herbed cream cheese (as much as you want) on top of the eggs. Move to the oven and bake at 375 for about 10 more minutes, until the eggs are set.

Huevos Rancheros

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A leisurely breakfast is a fine thing on a weekend morning.  A pot of coffee, everyone in pajamas, a few moments to putter around in the kitchen.  These are the simple pleasures.  This breakfast is one of my favorites.

In my book, the essential elements of Huevos Rancheros are tortillas, beans, eggs, cheese, and sauce.  There are many variations, but I don’t think you can go wrong.  This is not a demanding recipe.  Use what you have.  Improvise.  Someday I will make Huevos Motulenos for you, an amazing concoction featuring a fried banana.

But back to Huevos Rancheros: first warm up a pot of beans.  If you have beans left over from making Chilaquiles, or maybe even some leftover chili, you are in business (how clever of you to have made extra for the freezer!).  Or maybe you have some of those Black Beans with Cilantro and Lime in the fridge.  If not, season your beans now: saute an onion and some garlic, tip in the beans and a little salt and water, maybe with some cumin and oregano or chipotle puree, let it all simmer while you get the rest of your toppings organized, and then mash it all coarsely with some handfuls of cilantro and a big squeeze of lime.  Meanwhile, heat tortillas on a griddle (or get traditional and fry them) and fry your eggs.  Layer a warm tortilla with beans, eggs, a scattering of cheese, salsa or chile sauce, cilantro, and avocado.  You could add a dollop of sour cream.  And do you still have some of that cilantro pesto in the freezer?  Lucky you.  Enjoy your breakfast.

Smoky Cauliflower Frittata

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I love my garden and I love my CSA, both of which I treasure for the fresh, delicious, seasonal food they bring into my kitchen.  But I have to admit to a guilty pleasure: the off season.  When I get to select each and every vegetable myself just because I feel like eating it this week.  When I don’t have a bumper crop of arugula or zucchini demanding that I make pesto or relish.  When I don’t have to resist buying some enticing vegetable because my CSA box is groaning under the weight of other harvest bounty.  (I know, some people have real problems, right?)

So anyway, this week, I just up and bought two heads of cauliflower.  I did!  And after you make this frittata for the first time with the reasonable single head of cauliflower you will no doubt purchase at first, I am pretty sure that you will hurry back to the store for two more heads of cauliflower as well.  Just in case you have to make the frittata twice more in rapid succession.  Which might be my plan.

The smokiness here comes from a combination of smoked cheese and smoked paprika, another could-be-overkill-but-isn’t epiphany from the Ottolenghi cookbook Plenty.  I wouldn’t normally say that smoked cheese is my thing, but this frittata is something.  Something good.  J says it tastes meaty.  He means that as a compliment.

This Smoky Cauliflower Frittata would be excellent at any meal, and it is flavorful enough that you could cube it up to serve as a bite-sized party snack (or, you know, a straight-from-the-fridge snack).  In salted water, parboil a small cauliflower, including the stem, cut into medium pieces.  Drain well, then saute in an ovenproof pan with 2 Tbsp. olive oil until the edges of the florets begin to turn golden brown.  Meanwhile, heat oven to 375 and grate and toss together 5 oz. smoked cheese (I used Beechers) and 2 oz. aged cheddar.  In a large bowl, thoroughly combine 6 eggs, 1/4 c. greek yogurt (the original recipe called for creme fraiche), 2 Tbsp. dijon and 2 tsp. sweet smoked paprika, then stir in 3 Tbsp. finely chopped chives and 3/4 of the grated cheese (reserve the remaining cheese for later).  Season well with salt and pepper.  When the cauliflower florets look nice and toasty, pour the egg mixture over the cauliflower and use a fork to distribute the cauliflower and cheese evenly around the pan. Cook about 5 minutes over medium heat.  Scatter remaining cheese on top, move to oven, and cook 10-12 minutes more until the frittata is nearly set.  I like to finish by turning the oven up to a broil for a couple of minutes at the end (leaving the pan on the middle rack) to slightly brown the top.  Let rest a few moments, then serve hot.  (Most frittatas are also great cold or at room temperature, but I preferred this one hot.)  I served it with a plain green salad dressed with this lemony vinaigrette.

Put a Fried Egg on Your Pasta

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Ok, so I’ll give you that this is more of a tip than a recipe.  But I promise you this: a salty, garlicky, spicy plate of pasta is even better with a fried egg on top.

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Celebrate Spring with a Canning Jar Coddled Egg

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Welcome to Emmy Cooks! If you like what you see here, you can sign up on the sidebar to receive recipe updates by email, add the RSS feed to your blog reader, or follow Emmy Cooks on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

I admit that, at first, I found Seattle a bit too grey. It took me a few years to stop minding the weather and learn to love soup. But that was more than a decade ago, before I realized that it doesn’t rain that much, and when the sun shines it’s incomparably gorgeous. And now I just think of Seattle as having five months of springtime. Starting today.

So happy springtime! Right on schedule, my hens laid their first two eggs of 2012, and when I poked around in the garden I found soft green herbs unfurling from hibernation. The first chives, tender parsley, tart sorrel, green onion shoots, mint. Lunch.

When I read this the other day, I couldn’t believe that it had never occurred to me to coddle an egg in a canning jar. (Is that weird? Really, I couldn’t believe it.) So, as I said, lunch.

To make a Coddled Egg in a Canning Jar, butter a wide mouth half pint canning jar. Crack in two eggs and season with a pinch of salt. I drizzled in a spoonful of cream because I had some in the fridge, then piled in the handful of chopped fresh herbs. You wouldn’t go wrong adding cheese instead of the cream (or, go crazy, use both), but I didn’t. Put the lid on the jar and place it in a pot. Fill the pot with water to just below the jar lid. Remove the jar from the water, bring the water to a simmer, put the jar back in, and simmer 12-15 minutes, depending on how well-cooked you want your yolks. (Think ahead of time about how you will lift the jar from the simmering water. I used a jar lifter, which I own for canning, but I’ve heard of people using tongs with the ends wrapped in rubber bands for traction. If you plan to use this method, you should probably try it first in cold water to make sure it seems safe.)

I love the idea of serving these for brunch with a toppings bar–label the lids with a Sharpie and let everyone assemble their own. With a few pots on the stove you could cook a lot of these at once. Serve with buttered toast.

 

Breakfast for Dinner, Grownup Edition: Eggs and Kale on Sweet Potato Pancakes

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Weekends sometimes demand fancy, special-occasion, I-cooked-all-afternoon-because-it’s-Saturday fare.  And sometimes just the opposite.  This recipe is dedicated to a Sunday spent doing better things, like collecting sticks outside with the kids for hours,  or reading by yourself all afternoon to the exclusion of any other activity whatsoever.

If you saved some batter from making sweet potato pancakes for the kids this morning, you’re ahead of the game for a simple dinner tonight.  If not, go ahead and whip some up now, it won’t take long.  While you’re doing that, put a washed and torn bunch of kale in a pot with an inch of water and a teaspoon of salt to simmer until tender, about 5 minutes.  Start warming your griddle now for the pancakes.  Drain the kale well, toss it into a hot pan with a touch of olive oil and sautee it for a few minutes.  I recommend a splash of fish sauce at this point, but you could just salt it to taste instead.  Then smoosh the kale over to the side of the pan, where it will work on getting some crispy edges while your eggs are cooking (don’t forget to turn the greens occasionally with a tongs).  Lower the heat in the pan, add some oil or butter to the now-empty part, and crack in your eggs. Let the eggs cook to your liking while your pancakes bake, then pile everything at once onto a plate: sweet potato pancakes, then kale topped with a soft egg.  Serve with, no joke, maple syrup and your favorite hot sauce.

Sunny Side Up Pizza With Potatoes and Eggs

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Making pizza is often an improvisational affair at our house.  There are tried-and-true combinations that we like, sure, but often we decide to get a pizza crust going before we check out what’s in the fridge.  One of our usual favorites is a potato pizza, and if you think that doesn’t sound delicious, please go straight to Tom Douglas’s Serious Pie and then stand corrected.  (If you don’t like it, which I believe to be impossible, you’ll still have lots of other amazing options to choose from.  Pro tip: go with a crowd at happy hour when they make mini pizzas so you can try them all.)

This post is not about potato pizza, however.  Because after J roasted a pound of thinly-sliced fingerling potatoes until nearly crisp, I made the mistake of piling them within the children’s reach, where the heap of “chips” was quickly decimated.  So I’ll give you a recipe for potato pizza another time.

Left with only a handful of potatoes, it was back to the fridge, and this Sunny Side Up Pizza was born.  Crank your oven as hot as it goes and put in a pizza stone if you have one.  Layer your thin pizza crust (recipe here if you want one) with thinly-sliced potatoes (first roasted at 425 until just beginning to crisp) and a sprinkling of mozzarella. Pile on chunks of goat cheese and a big handful of rinsed capers.  We crumbled on some smoked salmon, but you could skip that step and just go with a big sprinkle of salt over the whole pizza if you prefer.  Finally, we broke two eggs over the pizza, but they were so good that we later wished we’d used four.  Getting the eggs perfect will depend on your oven temperature and how thin you stretched your crust (because that has to cook through, too), so you might need to experiment a little.  Baked in our oven at 550 for almost 6 minutes, the whites were set and the yolks were lusciously runny, perfect for wiping up with the last piece of pizza crust.

We served the pizza with a simple green salad with Creamy Pear Vinaigrette and bowls of leftover Cauliflower Soup–which, like most soups, was even better after a day in the fridge.

Frittata Sandwich

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With a frittata in the house you’re only about 3 minutes away from a delicious lunch.  This is not the most attractive sandwich ever, but it’s delicious and healthy!  I used this frittata and whole wheat bread with a swipe of harissa oil.  Mayonnaise (if you’re inclined that way) mixed with something spicy is also always a good bet.

Spinach-Mushroom-Swiss Egg White Frittata and Lentil Soup with Rosemary

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As a mostly-vegetarian (and especially during this time in my life when I’m nursing babies), I find that one of my challenges is getting enough protein without overdoing it in the fat/calorie department.  (Not that I’m OPPOSED to overdoing it in the fat/calorie department–but, you know, moderation in all…nah, scratch that.)  So anyway, I am tentatively experimenting with things that I don’t normally consider food, like egg whites from a carton–which I can only bear to do because our chickens have stopped laying for the winter–and low-fat cheeses.  So if that sounds terrible to you, stop right here and skip to the soup below.  But if you’re looking for a way to add protein to your diet and/or cut back on fat and calories, this frittata isn’t half bad.

A Spinach-Mushroom-Swiss Egg White Frittata could really have any combination of veggies and cheese, of course, but here’s what I did: Cook nearly a pound of mushrooms like crazy over high heat in a little olive oil until they release their liquid and it evaporates and they get nice and brown. Then and only then, add a pinch of salt, then some handfuls of spinach, then another pinch of salt.  When the spinach wilts, take the pan off the heat and scoop the veggies into your waiting bowl of 16 oz. egg whites beaten with 4 whole eggs, more salt, a splash of water and 4 shredded slices of lite Jarlsberg cheese.  Return your pan to a medium-low burner, wipe it out and add a little more olive oil, and pour in the whole mixture.  Once the edges of the frittata have set, I like to transfer the pan to a hot oven to finish baking, then brown the top by flipping on the broiler for a well-supervised minute or two.  This was lunch today on a slice of toast with a drizzle of lemony, salty harissa oil–and it will be breakfast for the rest of the week.

To recover from my slight queasiness over the very idea of low-fat cheese, I needed a good honest lentil soup for dinner.  This is a pure, clean recipe, courtesy of Alice Waters from her book In The Green Kitchen.  Of course, I doubled the recipe, because you know how I feel about soup–and about leftovers.  Both divine.

Lentil Soup with Rosemary: Finely dice 2 small onions, 4 ribs of celery, and 4 carrots.  Sautee with a tsp. salt until the onion is lightly browned, then add 6 big cloves of chopped garlic and the chopped-up leaves of a big branch of rosemary.  When these additions become fragrant after a minute or two, add 2 c. sorted and rinsed tiny black or French green lentils,  3 1/2 quarts of water, and another Tbsp. salt.  Bring to a boil and simmer until everything is very soft, about an hour.  Season to taste with salt and black pepper and serve each bowl with a dollop of greek yogurt.