Migas

Readers, when you're doing a project like this you are keenly attuned to certain ingredients and pieces of cooking equipment that are unusual, that sort of lodge in your brain as something to keep an eye out for. This is why, if you were in Market Basket with me not too long ago, you would have heard me gasp, "Veal Tongue!" Adam and Teena know what I'm talking about.

So I was cleaning out my fridge a few days ago and pitching some stuff when I grabbed a foil-wrapped package of something not well-wrapped at all actually--it was a bunch of corn tortillas from Mexican take-out that were kind of dried out from air exposure. I had one hand on the garbage can when I suddenly gasped "stale corn tortillas!"

I had one of the key componants of Migas right in my very hand.

You won't find migas on the breakfast menu here in New England--in fact I'm betting that most northerners have never heard of it. If you're Jewish and matzo brei is or was part of your life you'll have an inkling of what I'm about to describe--this is basically a homestyle, use-the-leftovers type of a meal that involves bacon, onion/garlic, chilies and tomatoes scrambled up with some eggs, refried tortilla pieces, and shredded cheese.

Sounds good? It is good. Really satisfying. It won't win a beauty contest, but that's not what it's for now, is it?

You start by frying some bacon and setting aside, then frying some ripped corn tortillas and setting those aside too. Then saute onions, garlic and chilies, add crumbled bacon and tomatoes and cumin. Then stir in the fried tortilla pieces and pour on the eggs and sprinkle on cheese--stir til set.

That's it! You might have these ingredients in your fridge. Why not look? Or, maybe it's time for some Mexican take-out?

Cranberry Coffee Cake

One of the chapters in the book that I don't often utilize is the Breakfast and Brunch chapter. And out of all the recipes in that chapter, the ones I despaired of never getting to were the coffee cakes. At work, they just don't like sweet things for breakfast, and at home, well, it's more like Bran Buds for us.

So you can only imagine my delight when the house manager told me that the family had requested a couple of coffee cakes for Christmas morning. Not only could I bake something from the book, I could do it in advance and freeze it. Hooray!

I got right down to business. Cranberry Coffee Cake was make-able without even going to the store, since I had a bag of cranberries in the freezer. And people, it's super-easy--you don't even need any fancy bundt pans because it's baked in a loaf pan.

Here's the basic idea. Chop your thawed cranberries in a food processor with sugar and let them sit in a sieve to drain. I didn't see the "thawed" part and when I realized they couldn't drain while they were frozen, I sat down and read the paper for a while. Bonus.

Then make a cake batter. Now, in my last post I said that Lady Baltimore Cake was a straightforward cake batter, but it was the straightforward: pain-in-the-ass version. This is really, truly straightforward: cream butter and sugar, add eggs, then add flour mix and milk in alternating batches. Voila--cake batter.

Layer the batter and the cranberries in a loaf pan, and bake. So easy! My major regret is that since it's to be served on Christmas I couldn't slice it open and taste it--I'm sure it's beautiful inside and tastes fabulous, because cranberries just do.

(thanks to Lisa Hubbard, who took the above photo for Epicurious)

Oatmeal Trail Mix Cookies and Semi-Ultimate Quiche

I only had one complaint about Oatmeal Trail Mix Cookies, and it didn't have anything to do with the cookies.

It had to do with the weather.

It has been so humid here that although these cookies were lovely, crisp and ever-so-slightly chewy when they came out of the oven, within twenty minutes they were soggy to the point of falling apart on their cookie racks.

This did not destroy their deliciousness--on the contrary, it made for a great excuse to eat more of them, since as everybody knows, portions of cookies have no caloric impact whatsoever.

Look, I'm getting artistic with my food photos! I stole this idea from Martha Stewart's cookie book. Amazing what you start paying attention to.




***********************************

Why "Semi-Ultimate" Quiche, and not "Ultimate", as it's listed in the book? Because I neglected to buy the puff pastry the recipe asks for, and had to whip up my own crust from scratch. Hey, an all-butter crust is a pretty good substitute, I think, but I believe "ultimate" is probably called into use when something is not only delicious but user-friendly, and what could be more user-friendly than rolling out a piece of puff pastry to fit a pie plate?

When quiche is done right, it's like food from heaven. And by done right, I mean with cream, people. This recipe is not on Epicurious, but basically it goes like this: cut up and fry some bacon, and throw it in with six eggs and 2 cups creme fraiche. Sprinkle Gruyere on top (I used a blend of Exotic Cheese From the Fruitful Basket That Was Leftover In The Cheese Drawer).

And here's my technical cooking question of the day. We cook quiches for the same amount of time that we cook pies, right? So why do almost all quiche recipes ask you to blind-bake your crust before putting in the filling? I don't get it.

This recipe has a nice touch that prevents any kind of possible bottom-crust sogginess, which is that it has you put a baking sheet in the oven to preheat, and then you put your pie plate on top of that. I did not blind-bake, and my crust was done perfectly (with no burnt crusts from over-baking, thank you very much.)

This is not my quiche. I can't believe how tragic this feels to not be able to get my own photos up here, lousy as they are (soon to change! Thank you, Joe!) But it looks kind of like my semi-ultimate quiche except I didn't use a tart pan.



(edit: card reader fixed! Thanks Teena for the temporary use of your photo and stay tuned readers for better food photos soon...)

Jelly Doughnuts

What do you do with a 14-year old during a rainy spring break? Make Jelly Doughnuts, of course!

I've had my eye on this recipe from the beginning. HOMEMADE JELLY DOUGHNUTS--could anything possibly be more hedonistic? And I figured O'Malley, who is kind of, sort of interested in cooking every once in a while would really just love to try this recipe out.

If you're wondering just what goes into making a jelly doughnut, the idea is this--bread dough (you could even buy pizza dough from the store) rolled out and cut into rounds. A little bit of jelly in the middle, a dough round on top, crimp the edges and seal with a biscuit cutter. Pop that baby in the fryer and you've got heaven in a dough ball.







Now be forewarned, nation of Dunkin' Donuts eaters--this is not the airy, open dough of DD jelly donuts. It's dense and bready, so it's not unlike eating, say...a mini jelly calzone. With powdered sugar on top.

Production tip: make sure the jelly stays in the middle and doesn't ooze out to the side--your edges won't seal if there's jelly in between the two dough discs.

Fried Eggs over Warm Lentil Salad

One of the things I like about having my writing group so early (9:30 every other Thursday) is that when it's my turn to host I get to dip into my not-very-often used chapter of The Gourmet Cookbook, which is 'Breakfast and Brunch'.

And here's something I love about my writing group--they are game for just about anything I bring to the table.

So Fried Eggs over Warm Lentil Salad seemed like a fun, unusual thing to try, and the good news for people who like to do things ahead is that you really can do 90% of this earlier and just fry the eggs at the last minute. The lentil salad holds beautifully in a low oven.

I love warm lentils, and vinegar and bacon make a perfect marriage in this dish. Fried eggs round it out, make it smoother, and we had a calendar-marking day as well--this dish was the first time that Ruth had eaten a fried egg. She's had them hard-boiled and poached but never fried.

There is something uniquely thrilling about being the author of somebody's culinary "first". I'm glad I had something so tasty to put under that first fried egg!

Apple Puffed Pancake and Curried Lentil Soup with Tomato and Spinach

Readers, I'm sorry to say that Epicurious does not carry either of these recipes, which means that they were never published in Gourmet Magazine. It's been interesting to note which recipes are family favorites of the cookbook staff (like Ruth R.'s mother's pancake recipe), which ones were culled from other cookbooks (a lot of the ethnic ones) and which ones are from their archives.

Anyway, these were both great recipes so if you don't have the book and you absolutely must cook one or the other or both let me know and I'll include the particulars.

I made Apple Puffed Pancake for breakfast on Saturday morning for a special treat. I am generally a cereal/oatmeal girl, and even when I go out for breakfast I tend towards egg dishes. But O'Malley was with us and I thought it would be fun to do. I had something like this long ago visiting my friend Moira when she lived in Cambridge--her apartment-mate whipped it up for breakfast and I remember being quite amazed at the chemistry of it.

If you've ever made popovers or Yorkshire pudding the concept is exactly the same except you're adding apples that have been sauteed in butter, a lot of sugar, and spices. Think apple pie filling and you've got it. You use the same skillet on the stovetop and in the oven, and the filling puffs up gorgeously, then settles into itself within a minute or two of being out on the counter top. Dust with confectioner's sugar, and you've got a breakfast treat with hardly any redeeming nutritive features...but it's wildly tasty, so who cares? O'Malley loved this dish and ate most of it, I'm happy to say (which means I'm glad that I didn't eat most of it.)

**************************

I made the Curried Lentil Soup with Tomato and Spinach at work when D. and his daughter H. were visiting. H. is a vege-fisha-tarian, and this was something I was able to produce with what I had on hand in the pantry.

Anybody who is or has been a vegetarian has probably had umpteen versions of lentil soup--I know I have. So what elevates this dish are two things--curry powder and lemon juice. The curry powder goes in at the beginning, and the lemon juice goes in at the end. A fantastic dish for a fall day!

Poached Eggs on Artichoke Bottoms with Mushrooms and White Truffle Cream

I know you're not going to believe me when I say this, but Poached Eggs on Artichoke Bottoms etc. is a light dish.

Oh, but the cream! I hear you cry...well, yes, there is cream, and the egg yolk is rich too, but what this dish evokes is eggs Benedict, and what does that have? Typically some sort of bread, and also some kind of protein...ham, smoked salmon, Canadian bacon. This has neither. I'm not going to go so far as to say it's DIET, unless you're on the Atkins Diet and then it would fit right in.

Lightness, heaviness, dietetic, fattening--all that aside, this is one tasty breakfast that will wow anybody you're trying to impress. The flavors are subtle and play perfectly off each other.

Technically, it's a bit of a pain to trim artichokes. I doubled this recipe and it took me about half an hour to trim nine (keep in mind it was pretty darn early--maybe later I'd be faster and also because it was so early I didn't read the directions properly which said to do half the trimming AFTER you cook them, oh well). I did find myself wondering if art hearts existed in frozen form, and I see on epicurious that they do (from one of the recipe reviewers) but they're not in my store. I also couldn't find either porcini or cremini mushrooms, just baby bellas, and I know that would have altered the flavor ever so slightly. Not enough to scrub the mission though, if you can't find their suggested mushrooms.

Feedback quote of the day for this dish: E. (not E., finicky granddaughter, this is E., daughter-in-law, writer, and all-around sensitive soul) wandered in the kitchen after breakfast, praising the meal, and said that while she was eating it she fantasized about the house being an inn someday, with happy diners looking out over the view and enjoying similarly fabulous meals,and that somehow it felt like Italy to her.

I don't pay her, honest.

Salmon-Wrapped Poached Eggs

If you want to impress the heck out of somebody at breakfast, try this dish.

Salmon-Wrapped Poached Eggs has many virtues, and I'll list them here:

-it's colorful
-it is slightly less bad for you than egg dishes with hollandaise
-you could even make a case for it being GOOD for you because of the "smart fats"--avocado, omega-3s, and olive oil
-if you've ever cursed the heavens after your hollandaise sauce broke (or scrambled) you will love this sauce, which is sour cream mixed with lemon juice, herbs and some olive oil
-it tastes INCREDIBLE (assuming you like smoked salmon, avocado and eggs).

I didn't follow the recipe exactly--I didn't have brioche to use on the bottom, so I used sourdough for the S.s and rye at home for dinner for us. I also didn't have sorrel or arugula--I used spinach.

A new trick I learned--putting poached eggs on paper towels to drain. You would think, after the countless eggs Benedict variations I've made and served to the general public, that I'd have picked that one up, but I hadn't.

If you make this dish (and I think you should) don't bother trying to wrap the salmon around the poached egg. It's silly, a waste of time, and you risk breaking the egg. Just drape it across the top--it looks better and is more stable anyway.

Matzo Brei

I knew even before embarking upon this recipe that Matzo Brei is an intensely personal experience. I witnessed this a few years ago when we met a branch of my husband's Long Island family for brunch at Zaftig's, a famous Jewish deli in Brookline. Don's cousin Jamie ordered the matzo brei with great anticipation, but when it came, she looked at it and the waiter like he had served her something unmentionable.

"It's supposed to be sort of scrambled," she said, making a mixing motion with her hands. "Kind of dry."

So the waiter took it back, and the chef tried again. Again, Jamie looked at her plate, this time with a mixture of dismay and resignation. Too polite to send it back a second time, she pushed the matzo brei around her plate a bit, took a few bites, and gave up. It wasn't right, she said. Not like her mother's at all.

Fortunately I don't have the baggage of a Jewish culinary upbringing to weigh down my feelings about matzo brei--I was simply worried that soggy matzo crackers in scrambled eggs was just plain weird and couldn't possibly be worth wasting time on. But could thousands of years of Jewish tradition be wrong? Well, look at gefilte fish.

Don't worry, soothes the recipe. Editor Ruth Reichl's secret (which she learned from her mother, of course) is lots of butter. All right, I'm on board.

The end result was pretty edible, if rather plain. It was kind of like...buttered popcorn. That kind of experience. But less crunchy. So sort of like rather soggy well buttered popcorn with cooked eggs in it, which can be just the thing if you're in the right mood. One thing I liked about it was that I was able to flip it in my pan (like those chefs you see on tv) because there was so much butter in it that it slid around beautifully once the egg was cooked. I kept hoping for the matzo to crisp up (as the recipe suggested it would start to do) but I would have had to let it sit and I was having too much fun flipping it.

I see on Epicurious that at least one reader out there adds grated onions and parsley, and I think that would be an improvement. And if you make this (and why not? Maybe to eat while you're watching a movie) I would suggest a beverage that's astringent (black tea, dry champagne, gin on the rocks) to help that butter dissolve.

I'd like to give a shout-out to my new friend Kasha, who came over to take some poetry books off our hands, shared the matzo brei with me, and came bearing a gift of the most amazing chocolate creation I've ever eaten (excluding anything from Maison du Chocolat) which is dark chocolate and chipotle pepper bark from Turtle Alley. GOD!!!! Is it good. Thanks Kasha!

Whole Grain Pancakes and Watermelon Rind Chutney

No, I didn't serve these together, they were separated by hours of time. If you hadn't noticed already, I cooked a heck of a lot of food yesterday--Sundays are my long shift, from 8am to 8pm. And I'm only telling you about the food that's in the cookbook!

After Ruth's Pancakes last week, I was pretty keen to try out the Whole Grain Pancakes. (no link, sorry.) I made the variation with blueberries. The element I was most pleased with was their suggestion to add a little lemon juice to the maple syrup if it's too intense, and that's the best suggestion I've heard all year, practically. The pancakes themselves were very pleasant and if you're trying to fit whole grains into your diet it would fit the bill nicely since it also includes corn meal.

The Watermelon Rind Chutney...I like it, but I have some issues with it. The first one is personal, which is that I think it's way too spicy for Dr. and Mrs. S., so I'm wondering what the heck I'm going to do with all that chutney. The second is that when I did serve it, I had to mince it up so it would fit well on top of a cracker with cream cheese. The recipe directs you to cut the rind into half inch cubes, but I think 1/4 inch would be more like it for crackers, sandwiches, whatever. If I were to do it again I would probably pulse the rind in batches in the food processor. If you are a fan of hot pepper jelly you will love this recipe so give it a try--you can regulate the temp by maybe not putting BOTH of the two green hot peppers.

Ruth's Pancakes

I am breathing a deep sigh of contentment just remembering these pancakes. And since they are not on the Epicurious website, and because I love you, I'm going to give you the recipe right here and now so you can sigh with contentment too.

1 cup whole milk
2 large eggs
3 tbsp plus 1/2 teaspoon vegetable oil
1 stick butter, melted and cooled
1 cup flour
4 tsp. baking powder
4 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt

Whisk together milk, eggs and t tbsp. vegetable oil in medium bowl, then whisk in butter. Stir together flour, baking powder, sugar and salt in another medium bowl. Whisk in egg mixture until just combined.

There's another whole paragraph on how to cook them, but can I assume that if you're an adult, you know how to cook pancakes? Heat pan and a little oil, pour in batter, flip when bubbles appear on surface.

OK, here's what's amazing about these pancakes. You know how when you make regular pancakes from a mix, or you go out to eat, and the pancake basically acts as a sponge for maple syrup? So you end up eating soggy pancake that's so sweet you are practically in insulin shock by the time it's over, and the coffee you drink to balance out the flavor just makes your heart race even more? This is why I stick to eggs. With THESE pancakes, the butter acts as a foil--both in flavor and somehow biochemically. So you get a mouthful of both sweet and salty that's somehow a little crispy too.

God, my mouth is watering just writing about them--I know you have this stuff in your pantry, so what are you waiting for? A Nor-easter is a good excuse for a decadent breakfast, so go for it. Do it for those poor marathoners who could probably use a good pancake right about now.

P.S. The Ruth is question is of course Ruth Reichl, Gourmet's editor-in-chief.

Santa Fe French Toast

For all of my friends who are watching their weight, turn away now. Just reading this will make you gain five pounds.

All right, brave of heart, here is how you make Santa Fe French Toast (so called because it was famously served on the Santa Fe line):

Soak your challah or thick white bread in a heavy cream/egg blend. Fry (that's in a good inch or two of oil, or heck, a fry-a-lator if you have one) until golden brown, about two minutes. Drain briefly on paper towels, then bake in a 400 oven until puffy, about four minutes. Dust with powdered sugar, and serve with warm honey or syrup.

Sigh.

Now do an extra fifteen minutes on the elliptical tomorrow. (me too.)

Birthday Brunch I--Baked Eggs and Mushrooms in Ham Crisps; Creme Brulee French Toast; Grits and Cheddar Casserole

Oh, my stomach!

What is it about parties, and buffets in particular, that make you load up that plate and stretch your poor stomach lining to the limit? Well, maybe it's the good food. And we had plenty of it.

For my money, the best all-around was the Baked Eggs and Mushrooms in Ham Crisps. Talk about easy, and it really was a show-stopper. Even my sister, who has done some catering, has never seen it. It could easily be modified--I can imagine the mushroom tarragon mix replaced with sauteed red bells and onions, or spinach/shallots and goat or feta cheese. Or for super simple, just the ham and the egg. But the mushrooms put it over the top for me, so I'd only make it simple for a fussy audience (like four-year olds).

But if you asked the crowd, I'd say their favorite was the Creme Brulee French Toast. That really was a hit --the kids went back for seconds and so did some of the adults (I'm not naming names). High marks for this one for ease of preparation--put it together the night before and let it soak, then bring it to room temp in the morning, and throw in the oven an hour before show time. You don't even need syrup--the butter/brown sugar/corn syrup layer on the bottom becomes the oozy top syrup when you flip it onto your plate (if you're agile).

The most problematic dish was the Grits and Cheddar Casserole. I bought the wrong grits (stone-ground instead of regular), didn't let them cook long enough stovetop (so they were soft but still loose), cooked them too long in the oven in an effort to brown the top, which overcooked the eggs enough to make them release their water. All of these were my fault, but the one direction from the recipe that led me astray was "sprinkle with remaining cheese, cover with foil, and bake for 30 minutes." Now, anybody who has ever made lasagna knows that cheese sticks to foil, and yes, the cheese stuck to the foil and got thrown away with said foil once I took it off to brown the top.

In spite of all these troubles, the flavor was great and a good counterpoint to the French toast, which was quite sweet.