Archive for the ‘Breakfast’ Category
Smoked Salmon, Asparagus, and Goat Cheese Omelet
Ok, you can chalk this one up to “using up the leftover ingredients from my last few dinners”. I find omelets to be the perfect vehicle by which to clean out my refrigerator of odds and ends, and in this case I just happened to have the perfect ingredients to make a lively, atypical breakfast out of what I had lying around. I would go out and buy these ingredients again specifically to make this omelet; it was really that good.
Crab Cakes Benedict over Creamed Corn
If you’ve been reading frequently, you will know that it’s blue crab season in Connecticut. Last weekend I pulled two dozen from the water in about 30 minutes, which wound up being far too many for two people to eat in one sitting. After picking out the remaining crab meat, the obvious choice was to make crab cakes. Behold, a breakfast fit for kings:
Sour Cream Pancakes
This past weekend at the Cape I woke up early and decided to make some pancakes. Unfortunately I didn’t have any milk at the house, but we did have a large tub of sour cream. Remembering vaguely a recipe for sour cream pancakes, I did a quick search online and found a wonderful-looking recipe from Smitten Kitchen for sour cream pancakes. I had to give them a shot.
Breakfast Frittata
I love cobbling together a breakfast from the odds and ends lying around in the fridge. Today I had extra chopped onions and peppers from our seafood feast, a couple potatoes, eggs, bacon, and plenty of cheese. A modified frittata with a home fry crust seemed to be the obvious choice for breakfast.
What’s For Breakfast? Spaghetti Carbonara
So it’s Saturday morning. It’s too early to go to dim sum, and I’m not in the mood for a traditional breakfast. What to do? Make bacon and egg pasta!
Garlic Bread Eggs
Over the weekend I cooked up some garlicky eggs with rosemary, thyme, tomato and baguette. They turned out well, considering that I threw the dish together using the ingredients I had on hand, so I’ll share the recipe with you and you can give it a shot. They were inspired by an article I read on Serious Eats about Shopsin’s restaurant down on the Lower East Side, here in New York, and by a dish called “Fellini Eggs”. Mine wound up differing quite a bit because I didn’t have all of the ingredients that they called for, so I just made it up as I went. You can do the same (i.e., substitute what you have on hand), but the main thing that makes this dish interesting is the garlic bread croutons.
Special Eggs: A Breakfast Tradition
In my family we have a breakfast tradition that stretches back to my great grandfather on my Father’s side, called Special Eggs. I remember this as being my favorite breakfast growing up, and it is a family tradition to always make it on Christmas morning when we are all together. I make it quite often on weekends because it is the perfect Saturday morning comfort food, and I usually have all of the ingredients on hand. It’s simple, yet complicated and exacting in the timing and execution if you want to get it right, and more importantly, hot, especially for multiple people. You will need eggs, Thomas’ English Muffins, Land ‘o Lakes American cheese, and bacon (preferably Boar’s Head). This is how we traditionally make it. Feel free, of course, to substitute your favorite brands. But in our house on Christmas there is no substitute. The only concession that has been made in the past few years is to substitute my home smoked bacon for the Boar’s Head, which definitely alters the flavor profile, but I think it’s a good change.
Special eggs, cooked to perfection.
Ham and Cheese Quiche
For breakfast today I realized that I had the ingredients for a quiche on hand, so I made one:
Crepes
Yesterday I was really in the mood for crepes. I had made them on a whim for my family over Christmas, and they were simple and delicious. We made breakfast crepes, which pretty much consisted of putting any and every available topping on them that we could find. From simple butter, cinnamon and sugar (still one of my favorites) to honey, almonds, and raspberry jam. We didn’t have much fresh fruit in the fridge, but there were some fresh raspberries , which my Dad crushed and spread with honey and chopped chocolate morsels. Each crepe was a new iteration of the last, and it was a fun and delicious breakfast. The ingredients are also things that most people have around the kitchen: you have eggs, milk, flour, butter. You have crepes.
I decided to do a savory crepe for dinner, which wound up being ham, gruyère and a simple mushroom cream sauce.
One-Eyed Egyptians (a.k.a., eggie in a basket)
This morning I made a breakfast dish from my childhood that I haven’t had in quite a while. My parents used to make these for us when we were kids, and they are called “One-Eyed Egyptians”. I’m not sure where the name came from originally, but I assume it has to do with the fact that most depictions of ancient Egyptians are in profile, showing only one eye, like the one-eyed Jack from a deck of cards. I’m sure that this connection was made a long time ago, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. (Nerd trivia: V makes Edie these when she wakes up in his home for the first time in “V for Vendetta”. She calls them Eggie in a Basket, which I assume is the British dystopian future name for them.)
