Eggy Cheesy Toast

My new favorite breakfast, like fried eggs already assembled with bread and cheese.

Eggy Cheesy Toast
1 slice sturdy bread (I used rosemary bread from our local bakery brushed with a little olive oil, fluffy white bread probably won't work)
1 egg
2 slices of cheese, enough to cover your piece of bread

(I liked mozzarella the best, but cheddar was good too)

Preheat the broiler.

Place the bread on an oiled pan (I use my cast-iron pan) break the egg on top, put the cheese on top of the egg, put the pan in the oven, not to close to the broiler flame (I put the rack on the 2nd shelf, about 7" away from the flame), let it cook for a few minutes. The cheese will get nice and bubbly and toasty, and you can cake it out when the egg is at your desired level of cooked-ness, you can let the yolk get firm or take it out when it's still runny. Let it cool off a little before you bite into it, and enjoy.

I'm thinking next time I'll put some caramelized onions between the bread and the egg, that would be good.

Tiramisu for Mormons

While the government is shut down, Lovemuffin is home, video gaming, catching up on dental work, and watching Downton Abbey (but you didn't hear that last one from me). I suggested that he make this treat for me to come home to after my long day of work (someone's got to bring home the vegi-bacon), it's called Sinfully Sinless Tiramisu and it has no coffee or rum in it. (No judgment if you go for the Tiramisu with rum and coffee - everyone is welcome here :) )

I saw it first on my friend's blog, and the original recipe is here, You'll have to click over to one of those links for the recipe, it's too many steps for me to write it all out for you. But don't be put off by the many steps and components. It was pretty easy for us to do it, and we even made it together, which usually is more difficult. (Lovemuffin thinks I'm bossy when I want him to cook with me, and doesn't like that. What?!?)

Instead of copying the whole recipe for you I "documented" the process.

Lovemuffin dipped the ladyfingers in the chocolate mix and arranged in the pan (and looked super serious the whole time).

I made the custard part. I've never made a real custard from scratch over the stove before. Here are my Special Instructions for other custard first-timers: read and follow the instructions, re-read as needed, and google search for descriptions and images of "custard back of spoon" for more insights to help you know when it's done.

We forgot to document the whipping of the cream, the mixing together of the custard and the mascarpone cheese and then the whipped cream, the layering construction and sprinkling of cocoa powder, you'll have to use your imagination. But here is the finished product after chilling in the fridge, ready for (Mormon) consumption!

This was amazing, so delicious, super rich and decadent. It is definitely going to become part of my repertoire.  

A couple more notes: 

1) Someone (not me) really likes the rum flavor, so he doubled the rum extract, I thought that was too much, but it wasn't terrible or inedible, just more rummy than I like. I also would have been happy with just vanilla extract added. The hazards of cooking with others.

2) At first Lovemuffin was afraid that he had soaked the ladyfinger cookies too long, so he took out the extra saturated ones and replaced them (I suspect he mostly wanted to taste test the soaked cookies), but when we cut into it the cookies were pretty crunchy still, next time we will probably soak them for longer. But I imagine that the further in advance you make the Tiramisu, the more moisture the cookies can soak up, so that's something to take into account. I'll have to test this theory tomorrow at breakfast. Haha! 

*edit* After eating this dessert all weekend, I recommend that if you are making it ahead of time, give yourself enough time to let it chill/set up overnight, closer to 12 hours. The custard/mascarpone will set up more and hold the pieces together, instead of what you see in our pictures, where all the cookie parts are falling apart and the custard is oozing everywhere. And I was right, the ladyfingers will get properly softened after a longer chill time. But if you just CAN'T WAIT extra time to dig in, it of course tastes just as good after a short 4 hour set-up time. 

Bonus points to anyone who can tell me what is up with these faces I'm making here. Lovemuffin sure knows how to catch me at my best. (Oh yeah, and check out my shirt, I made that shirt, you should see the stripe matching! BAM!) (Also, bonus points for me for the number of parentheses used in this post.)

2 Summer Salads

Happy Summer!

Wow, I haven't posted for a long time. So, dear readers, to make up for that (because I know your life revolves around this blog), I have 2 recipes - double whammy!

They are barely recipes, and I can't take credit for inventing either of them, but I have pictures (but only of one of them).

The first is basically caprese salad.

Here's what you do:
Cut up some tomatoes (fresh from the garden), cut up some mozzarella from the grocery store, chiffonade those fresh basil leaves (also growing in the garden), sprinkle with olive oil and maybe a little salt.

Eat outside with your lovemuffin.

The second salad is something that we got at a tapas place in DC called Pulpo, it doesn't look like it's on their menu anymore, so I don't know what they called it. It probably deserves a name other than a list of its ingredients, any suggestions?

Cut up some:
Watermelon (I did about 1/4 of a largish melon)
Cucumber (I used 1 regular cuke)
Soft mild cheese, I used mozzarella cheese, but at Pulpo it was made with soft fresh goat cheese - much better, too bad some people who eat my food don't like goat cheese
Dill (I just kept adding till it looked and smelled good, probably a couple of teaspoons)

Stir it all together and eat it cold. Surprise! Dill and goat cheese are really good with watermelon. Sorry there's no pictures, the leftovers this morning were pretty sad looking, but still delicious.

World's Largest Ham Quesadilla

Honey Baked Ham has directions for serving this ham regular style as well as for making it into individual ham quesadillas, which somehow got confused along the way... Looks delicious! Also, I love brother PJ's New York City platter, which is pretty much not visible under the enormous quesadilla, but trust me, it is awesome.

One more thing: Merry Christmas!

Cheese and Blueberry Filled Bread

It's nice to have a long, involved project to work on during Conference weekend so that I don't fall asleep listening to the nice talks. So this is what I made last weekend, I've wanted to try a sweet bread recipe and do something exciting with it. It worked pretty well, but I think I need to work on yeasted pastry dough recipe that will give me something more like the danishes from Pavel's in Pacific Grove, but I have no idea what to do differently. But this project was quite successful, so here's what I did.

Sweet Braided Bread with Cheese and Fruit Filling

SWEET BREAD DOUGH: (based on Cinnamon Bread recipe from "Beard on Bread")

2 cups milk
1 tbsp yeast
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup (1 cube) butter, divided
5-6 cups all purpose flour

Scald the milk by heating it gently until it just starts steaming, or you see bubbles forming on the sides of the pan, set aside and let cool. Mix together yeast, sugar, 3 cups of the flour, salt, and the scalded milk, and 1/4 cup of the butter, softened, cut into smallish pieces. Mix thoroughly, let rest for a few minutes, then add the remaining 2-3 cups of flour. Knead for a couple of minutes, it should be just a tiny bit sticky still. Form the dough into a ball and let raise in a greased bowl until doubled.

While the dough is rising, prepare the cheese and blueberry fillings. (I used these recipe for the fillings, with a couple changes.)

BLUEBERRY FILLING:

2 cups blueberries (I used frozen)
1/4 cup sugar
1 Tbsp cornstarch (or even less)
juice of 1 lime, or about 1 Tbsp
zest of 1 lime (optional)

Combine all these ingredients in a small pan and heat gently, stirring constantly, until it starts to thicken, you may not even notice it boiling because there isn't a lot of liquid in there. Set aside and let cool.

CHEESE FILLING:
8 oz. cream cheese
1-2 Tbsp sugar, to taste
1 tsp lemon flavoring or vanilla, whichever you prefer

Combine all these ingredients in a small bowl, mix until smooth. Set aside.

Now back to the dough: Gently press the risen dough into a rectangle, smear half of the remaining butter (about 2 tablespoons) onto 2/3 of the dough, then fold the dough into thirds like a letter, then repeat with the remaining butter, this will layer the butter into the dough. Let rest in the fridge for a few minutes.

Roll the dough into a large rectangle, cut in half to make 2 rectangles, spread the cream cheese mixture evenly over the middle 3rd of the rectangles, half on each piece of dough, then spread the blueberry mixture over the cheese, half on each piece. Cut 1 inch tabs at an angle along the two sides of the rectangles. Alternate folding the tabs over the middle, to make something that looks like a braid. Cover with plastic, let it raise in the fridge until they are risen a bit. They will also do a lot of rising in the oven so they don't need to be huge.

Brush with an egg wash or milk just before baking. Bake at 425 for 10 minutes, reduce heat to 350 and continue to bake for 30 minutes or a little longer (I lost track of how long the second one was in, and it didn't collapse as much as the first one, which is the cooked one pictured. Let the loaves cool before slicing.

Deliciousness

On my flight to the Frankfurt airport, I heard the flight attendants talking about this spread that is like peanut butter but tastes like speculatius cookies, which we love. Listening to them, I thought, they don't know what they are talking about, they probably think Nutella is this special spread. But today at the grocery store, while looking at the different hazelnut spreads, I found.... speculatius spread! As well as some other flavors, like coconut and pistachio. We think this will be killer on crepes, we're planning a crepe brunch party next Sunday. I'm also trying to calculate exactly how much of this stuff I can fit in my bag, and I'm glad I packed light. Oh, for your reading pleasure, a very short article about the market for this stuff in Belgium.

speculatius (speculoos, speculaas) spread

Here's another bit of deliciousness from Germany. Quark is a soft, fresh cheese, kind of in between yogurt and cream cheese. I only heard of quark last summer, so I've been looking for it here and so far been unsuccesful in finding plain quark, but I have found several flavors, like these two savory ones, and the plum/cinnamon holiday flavor as well as other fruity flavors.

red pepper and herbed quark spreads

Plum and cinnamon quark

Oh, and here's a little quark brotchen, it's kind of like a cream cheese danish, and I've eaten at least three of them already. We've gotten them from cheap self-serve bakeries for about 1 euro. I'm so impressed that even the cheap places like those bakeries have really good stuff. I wish there were more places like that in the States.

quark filled sweet bread

three of us with our quark breads

 This was quite possibly the best apple strudel I've ever had. Of course, most of the strudel I've had has been super cheap frozen grocery store variety when we were living in Vienna. So, yesterday morning we went out to a Viennese cafe for warm drinks and cakes, and some of use ordered strudel. It was obviously the best choice since there was a fight over the last few crumbs. The cakes and marzipan stollen look pretty good, but they didn't come with warm with warm vanilla sauce and whipped cream and currents. Yeah, I know, you wish you were here, right?

Viennese apfel strudel

chocolate/vanilla cake for the monkey, gluhwein cake with cherries, and stollen with marzipan for Lovemuffin

 

Some happenings in the kitchen and around town

Here's some of our adventures in eating lately.

Ethiopian Food today at Awash, it looks like a mess, but it's quite delicious.

Brownies with cardamom and orange peel topped with preserved kumquat and orange sauce, kumquats from Chinatown, New York City, sorry the lighting was bad, but these were pretty amazing. Just add about a teaspoon of cardamom and some orange zest to your favorite brownie recipe and try to make an awesome orange topping.

What we made with our eggplant from the market: Eggplant casserole with onion, pepper, tomatoes and kefalotyri cheese (a fabulous greek cheese I got from my friendly neighborhood middle eastern market).

Peach and cardamom upside down cake, not super successful, will develop a better recipe, probably in muffin form, coming . . . sometime, if I ever figure it out.

Crepe Party

I made some crepes the other night, my crepe pan is well seasoned now and I have the technique down, so it was kind of a party. The savory crepes for dinner were delightful and surprisingly filling. I used the recipe for blintzes from Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian" and they were very sturdy and hefty, as you can see in this picture. You can use any tried and true crepe or blintz recipe.

Savory Crepes For Dinner

1 onion, finely chopped

about 10 mushrooms, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1 10 oz. package frozen spinach, thawed and drained

3-4 oz. mozzerella cheese, shredded or diced

2.5 oz. parmesan cheese

salt and pepper to taste

10-12 crepes or blintzes, already cooked

Saute onion, mushrooms and garlic till soft, let cool somewhat. Mix with well drained spinach, cheese and spices. Place about 1/4 cup of filling on the crepe and roll it up burrito style. Place all of the rolled crepes in a casserole pan in a 350 F oven for 10-15 minutes, until the cheese is melty, then serve. Or you can just keep the filling very hot when you prepare it and everyone can roll up their own.

And I made sweet crepes for dessert/breakfast the next day with cottage cheese and berries and a dash of sugar. You don't really need a recipe for this one.

Goat Cheese!

I tried this new cheese that we started getting in at work, called Humbolt Fog. There's a specialty cheese company, Cypress Grove Chevre in northern California, check out the website: Cypress Grove Chevre. They have several cheeses and we started carrying the Humbolt Fog kind. It's ripened, strong, soft and delightful. It looks like cake, fluffy white cake with chocolate filling, it's so cute! And you can taste the goatiness of it, which I love. Lovemuffin doesn't like goat milk or goat cheese because of the goatiness, but I think it's great. Besides, what's so great about cow's milk? Here's a picture that I took before I demolished the wedge. Mmmm.....  Even if you think you don't like goat milk cheese, if you see this stuff, you should try it. But I should warn you that it starts melting after about 4 minutes at room temperature, which is why the edges are weirdly gooey in this picture, so if you are going to serve it at a party or something, you'll have to figure out how to keep it very cold.