Tag 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 →

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

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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.

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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 →

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)

Eggs with Chiles, Chips and Cheese

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This is a five-minute breakfast or dinner that is worth knowing about.  It’s a quickie version of my favorite migas.  (I can’t believe that recipe isn’t on this site yet.  I owe you!)  I like it party because, as you can imagine, scrambled eggs with tortilla chips and cheese is alwlays an easy sell with the kids.  But mostly I like it because the adult version features roasted green chiles, a magical food.

My brother, provider of magical roasted green chiles, passed through town yesterday and brought little container of them.  If there had been more I would have made that queso fundido again, but under the circumstances we just tossed them into our breakfast.  I love how just a little bit of an excellent ingredient can elevate an ordinary dish like scrambled eggs.  I know that the world has accepted scrambled eggs with truffles or caviar as luxury food.  I submit that roasted green chiles belong in the same category. Continue reading Eggs with Chiles, Chips and Cheese (click for recipe)

Easy Cheddar and Onion Egg Bake for a Crowd

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Now that I have confessed that I have a minivan, I might as well tell you about another way in which I’ve become an old fogey without even noticing: these days, I like having parties in the morning.  The kids are in good moods, the house hasn’t been wrecked yet by the the daily tornado of  family life, and you can drink mimosas.  But most of all, brunch is such an easy meal to prepare for a crowd.  All you need are big bowl of fruit, a cake (or two, in the case of J’s recent birthday) these eggs, and lots and lots of coffee.

This dish, or something like it, is one of the easiest ways I know to cook up a dozen or more eggs at once.  You can vary the filling by adding any vegetables, cheese, or meat you’d like.  I kept this one simple because I love the flavor combination of sharp cheddar and cooked-until-sweet onions…and also, I will admit, because monochromatic foods are usually a hit with the kids and we were expecting many, many kids. Continue reading Cheddar and Onion Egg Bake for a Crowd (click for recipe)

Fast Food: Tomato and Mozzarella Frittata with Greens

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Eggs are the original fast food, as far as I’m concerned.  I have been reasonably successful in cooking other things too lately, but that doesn’t mean that eggs don’t continue to make a regular appearance on our table (often shortly after they make their appearance in our backyard chicken coop).  Here’s the glorious thing about an egg: treated properly, it elevates any hodgepodge of leftover vegetables into a meal.  Think of those chard stems!

So odds and ends often end up in little single-serving frittatas around here.  To anyone who thinks they don’t have time to cook, I say, get an 8″ cast iron skillet.  Two eggs, a few generous handfuls of vegetables, a pinch of salt and your meal is ready in ten minutes.  And you know as well as I do that eggs aren’t just for breakfast.  Fancy them up like this and you can serve them for any meal of the day.

The usual rule applies: use what you have.  I was working with leftovers from that arugula salad I kept making, but you might have other tidbits in your fridge.  The eggs cook quickly, so you’ll want to briefly cook most of the other ingredients first, then add the eggs.  I usually cook the veggies, add the eggs for a few minutes, sprinkle a bit of cheese on top, and then broil the pan for minute or two to set the eggs.  Fresh herbs are nice sprinkled on top after cooking (basil would have been perfect here if I had it).  Usually I’d say to avoid wet ingredients like tomatoes on top of a frittata, but this little one cooks so fast that they don’t have time to melt into a juicy mess.

So keep this little preparation in mind.  Next time you find yourself considering a fast food order, see if you have an egg handy first.

Continue reading Tomato and Mozzarella Frittata with Greens (click for recipe)