Memorial Day Crustless Quiche - May 27, 2013

Nick and I were in Madison over Memorial weekend (yay!), celebrating a special anniversary with dear friends (Happy 10th, Matt and Nikki!), but were back home in time for a Monday brunch.  When my sister, Kate, was in town the last couple weeks, she made herself these fun, crustless quiches that she would re-heat for a quick and easy, protein-packed lunch.  Stealing inspiration from wherever I can find it, I decided to do something similar for a holiday brunch.

The great thing about these quiches is that you can use any wild and crazy combination of vegetables and cheese that you have lying around.  I do so love a good "kitchen sink" recipe.  For my egg base, I consulted the ever-useful "How to Cook Everything," and found a suitable recipe.  For our quiche add-ins, we used blanched asparagus, spinach, chopped green garlic, chopped ramps, feta, and ricotta cheese.  It turned out really well, although it did need to bake about a half hour longer than the directions implied.  Oh well, it was worth the wait. I didn't even miss the crust.

Weekly* CSA Hash - Aug 5, 2012

On the menu at Wise Acre is the aptly named CSA hash, made up of fresh vegetables grown on their farm just outside of Minneapolis.  Nick and I enjoyed our lunch there so much, that we've vowed to imitate it with our own CSA bounty each week.  For round one, we cooked up some bacon in our largest skillet.  Once that was done, we set it aside, drained off some, but not all, of the rendered fat from the skillet.  To the hot skillet we added potatoes, carrots, cauliflower and onions and let everything cook until the edges started to get brown and crispy.  Next we added zucchini, green peppers and cabbage and let everything cook a bit longer.  Finally, after turning off the heat, we mixed in some tomatoes and fresh basil and poured everything off onto our plates.  Nick used the same skillet to make up some eggs while I made toast and then, with plates piled high, we enjoyed a lovely summer brunch in the porch.

Buttermilk biscuits and sausage gravy - January 29, 2012

I apologize for being mostly MIA this month. As seems to happen every year, January has been extremely busy at work with travel and learning a new territory and new programs.

So far, the new territory is great. I used to work most of the east coast, from South Carolina through New England and west to include Michigan and Ohio. That meant lots of trips to New York and Philadelphia. Great food cities, but major PITA for travel. Proof: while the airports in that region handle just 12% of the domestic flights, they account for 50% of the delays!

As of January 1, I go only as far north as Maryland and Delaware and continue to work in the Carolinas as well as picking up Tennessee and Kentucky. Also, we had our company meeting in Atlanta this year (this is the same meeting we usually have in Phoenix, where last year I managed to run into fellow Dinner Clubber and old friend Nick!). All that southern travel has given me hankering for good old biscuits and gravy, which I unfortunately have to pass up in restaurants since they are likely leavened with baking powder than contains corn starch. Boo.

But I think I have now mastered an at home, from scratch version of the classic southern breakfast dish that beats most roadside diners and rivals that of true southern cooks!

It actually starts the day before when I make sausage as a topping for pizza (which I'm still trying to master... I'll write about that soon). I have experimented with several different flavors, but my favorite for both pizza and the day-after-breakfast is a slightly spicy fennel sausage.

Sausage
1 pound ground pork
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons toasted and lightly pounded fennel seeds
1 large (or two small) garlic clove, crushed
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

Mix gently with your hands. Cook a small portion to see if the seasoning is to your liking and adjust.

Then I use about half the sausage for the pizza and save the other half for breakfast the next day (this also keeps nicely for a week or so in the fridge so you don't necessarily have to do the pork overload of back-to-back meals!).

I've tried a few different recipes for buttermilk biscuits and have combined a few to create what I think is a winner. Tasty, flaky, and easy. What more could you ask for?

The key to making this recipe really easy is the pastry blender.

I finally bought one a couple months ago and I it has changed my life. That is a bit hyperbolic, but not really! I use it for biscuits, pies crust, and flour tortillas. I no longer need to drag out and then clean the bulky food processor, nor do I struggle to use knives or a forks to "cut in" butter.

Buttermilk Biscuits
2 cups (10 ounces) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder (I use Hain's Featherweight)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4 inch cubes
3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons buttermilk

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Whisk dry ingredients together, then add the butter use a pastry blender to mix. Leave a few large clumps of butter. Stir in the buttermilk with a wooden spoon until the mixture is a soft, slightly sticky ball. Transfer dough to floured surface and form into a rough ball (don't overmix!). Use dough cutter to divide dough into 8-12 equal size pieces. Shape and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until biscuit tops are light brown.

I'm still working on a system for dividing and shaping so that they come out prettier, but the taste and texture is perfect.

While the biscuits are baking, you can start the gravy.

Sausage Gravy
1/2 pound sausage
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups milk (whole is best, but reduced fat tastes fine too)
Optional: Tabasco for additional heat, salt and pepper to taste.

Brown the sausage over medium heat until not pink. Sprinkle flour over sausage and cook until everything starts to get a nutty brown (about 3-5 minutes). Slowly add milk in three or four additions, stirring between each addition. Reduce heat and cover, allow to cook until thick.

Place two biscuits on a plate and smother with gravy (you may have extra biscuits - they freeze nicely). Enjoy!

Bagels - December 10, 2011

I've been really into baking lately and have wanted to tackle bagels for a while. It all started when I discovered that my corn allergy precluded pretty much all commercially produced baked goods, but now I'm having so much fun testing out new techniques and recipes (and eating the results) that I'm almost grateful for my adult-onset food allergies. Almost.

I've seen several bagel recipes on the internet and in books, and decided that the recipe from my Baking Illustrated cookbook (actual recipe here on someone's blog) seemed to compile the best of all of them and was relatively easy to follow. I believe, as they do, that a good bagel begins and ends with the flour. I followed their advice and ordered high-gluten flour from King Arthur Flour (where would we be without the internet!). 

At $6 for a 3 pound bag the per-bagel cost is somewhere between $0.40 - $0.50 each, so this is not really a cost-saving exercise. But worth every penny for taste!

You also need to plan ahead. The bagels need to proof in the refrigerator over night, so mix up the dough the night before the morning you want to eat them. Then the baking process is two-steps... a quick dunk in the boiling water...

Here are my bagels waiting for their turn in the hot tub.

Then, 15 minutes in the oven, a few minutes to cool... and in the belly!!

The only change I needed to make for my corn allergy was to substitute semolina flour for the corn meal.

Corned Beef Hash and Eggs - March 20, 2011

It was a couple days late, but I made a traditional corned beef brisket and boiled potatoes for dinner to recognize St. Patrick's Day on Friday. Neither of us has Irish heritage, but I'm a sucker for themed meals. I bought the meat pre-corned, but next year I'm going to try doing it myself. The New Best Recipe says it is easy, but I'm not so sure...

Anyway, the real highlight of the St. Patrick's Day meal is actually the leftovers the next day, which we had this morning in the form of homemade corned beef hash and eggs. Yummm. I looked at a few recipes for inspiration first. Most include onions, which I decided to leave out because I know Richie is not a fan. A couple recipes had you start with bacon, which I also decided to omit in order to make the dish just a bit less rich, and since I was skipping the onions I didn't really need any fat to start with.

Instead I started with a minced garlic clove and pinch of dried thyme leaves sauteed with a dash of olive oil, then added the chopped corned beef and potatoes to the skillet. Cooked and tossed everything together, and then the ultimate kicker... I poured about half a cup of cream and a dash of hot sauce over the top. Despite leaving out the bacon, this was NOT a "light" breakfast!

I let everything sit in the pan over medium heat undisturbed for about 5 minutes, then started turning it so the top pieces got browned too. After about 10-12 minutes, I made a little divot in one half and cracked an egg into it (Richie only likes scrambled eggs, so I cooked his separately), turned the heat down to low, and covered until the egg was set. Unfortunately, I let it cook a bit too long and my egg was firmer than I would like but it was still delicious!