My Go-To Breakfast

Have you ever had guests come to visit, and been at a loss for what to make them for breakfast the next morning? This recipe will bring you out of that slump, I promise you that. It's delicious every time, it's easy, fast, and showcases your culinary expertise, even if you may think it's limited! This is something I found in the back section of my Food Network Favorites: Recipes from Our All-Star Chefs cookbook. I've used this book so much that all the pages have come away from the spine, and I'm about ready to hole-punch the pages and make a binder out of it!

It's called Baked Eggs with Farmhouse Cheddar and Potatoes, it uses a minimal amount of ingredients, and is a one-pot wonder! Less dishes = happy hostess, right? The majority of the prep time is taken up dicing the potatoes into pretty little squares. The recipe calls for red-skinned potatoes, and that makes for a very pretty dish, but I usually use whatever I have on hand, and everyone has potatoes on hand. This time around, I had some Yukon Golds to use up! If the potatoes are larger, I usually do 1 - 1 1/2 potatoes per person, if they are small, then I go with the weight measurement of about 1 1/2 pounds. I was feeding three of us this weekend, so I used about 5 medium-sized potatoes, and I've got a good trick for dicing them into lovely little squares! Cut the potato into thick slices and then split it in half and stack them with flat side down. Now you can cross-cut, horizontally and vertically, making beautiful, mostly symmetrical squares when the pieces fall apart!

Once the potatoes are prepped, you can start cooking, and then prep the rest of the ingredients while the potatoes cook. It's best to use a cast iron skillet for this recipe as it gives nice color to the potatoes, and can also transfer to the oven when you're ready to use it. I melted some butter into the pan first, and foremost.

Once the butter had melted, and I had spread it around the pan, I added the potatoes and left them to sizzle and brown, while I turned my attention back to my cutting board, where I had a few more things to chop. I chopped some parsley and a couple of garlic cloves, amidst intermittent potato-stirring. 

I got the eggs out of the fridge, in preparation for the next stage in the process:

...and shredded some sharp cheddar for the last step in the process.

Now, let's check on those potatoes, shall we!? Once they were tender and cooked through, I stirred in the parsley and garlic, along with some salt and pepper and let everything meld together for another minute or two. Now, it's time to make the wells for the eggs. The amount of people you are feeding will determinehow many areas you need to clear. For three people, I made a kind of peace sign out of my cast iron skillet, with the potatoes. If you had four people, you could move things around a bit to accommodate that. More than four people, and I'd say it's time to use two pans. Once you have your wells made, you can break two eggs into each of them.

At this point, the whole thing gets to go in the oven to bake! The recipe quotes times but I usually eyeball it, and move on to the next step once the whites of the eggs are stiff. That's the part that NEEDS to be cooked through. This time, I think I left them in a minute too long, and the yolks got a little overdone, but usually, they stay a little runny and ooze out into the potatoes when you cut into the whole thing!

Once the whites are stiff, it's time for that last step! Sprinkle the shredded cheddar all over the top, and stick back in the oven for 2 or 3 minutes, giving it time to get ooey, gooey and cheesy! It's a crowd-pleaser...every time, I guarantee it!

Now That's-a Spicy Italian Sauce!

A while back, I wrote a post about The Advantages of a Homemade Bolognese, and when I wrote it, my intent was to intermittently touch on different sauces that you can use in your menu planning for easy and quick meals. For some reason, I had arrabbiata sauce stuck in my head today, so I thought I would share this spicy sauce with you in a post!

From Flickr - by AntTree

Traditionally, this sauce is served with penne, as the tubular shape is great for picking up the chunks of tomatoes in the sauce! It's a very simple sauce of only four, sometimes five ingredients. The original version includes garlic, tomatoes, red chili flakes and olive oil. Some people add basil to this mix but the majority of Italian chefs won't do this. When the dish is served, it is usually sprinkled with some parsley, and in my case, Parmigiano Reggiano.

From Flickr - by kellinasf

The great thing about this sauce is that you have control over how spicy you want it. The red chili flakes are HOT, so if you don't like a ton of spice, use a little bit...and if you love the heat, pile it on! My tip to you is start off slow, and keep tasting your sauce as it simmers! You can always add, but you can never take away!

A Successful Attempt at a Korean Favorite

Remember my recent post about all different types of Asian cuisine and their differences? Well, tonight I made an attempt at a Korean favorite of ours, Bibimbap. Traditionally, Bibimbap is a dish served in a warm clay pot, consisting of rice, vegetables, thinly sliced beef and a fried egg, topped with a Korean red chile paste. The recipe I decided to use is a part of The Professional Chef, a textbook from The Culinary Institute of America. I usually use this book as a reference guide, in order to master techniques, but I thought I'd give this recipe a shot, and I'm very glad I did!

From Flickr - by Eunmi Han

This particular version of Bibimbap called for some skirt steak to be marinated in some soy sauce, garlic, ginger, green onions, sesame oil, crushed sesame seeds and pepper. The marinade was really tasty and added some great flavor to the dish. Once I'd made the marinade, I put the vegetables together. The recipe called for daikon, radish, carrots and cucumbers all julienned. One of my cucumbers had gone bad in the refrigerator :( and I didn't have any daikon, but I used some jicama instead, and also added some julienned shiitake mushrooms as well. Even though the recipe called for raw vegetables, I threw them in the wok with some peanut oil for a few minutes, just to soften the carrots and take the chill off the rest of the veggies. Everytime I've ever had Bibimbap, the vegetables have been cooked so I altered that part a little bit. I threw them in a stainless steel bowl and topped it with a pot lid so that steam could continue to cook the veggies a little bit while I finished off the rest of the dish.

While my rice cooked in my wonderful rice cooker, I threw the marinated beef into the wok with a bit of vegetable oil. It didn't take more than a few minutes for the small pieces to cook through, and while that was happening, I fried two eggs in a skillet, keeping them "sunny-side up" so that they would be runny when the yolk was broken over the dish. My rice cooker clicked when it was finished and I spooned some sticky rice onto each plate. I topped the rice with my steaming carrots, jicama, radish and shiitake mushrooms. I sprinkled some chiffonade of iceberg lettuce on top of that, and as it started to wilt from the heat, I piled on some beef. Lastly, I laid the fried egg on top of all of this!

For the sauce, the recipe really just called for Korean Red Chile paste but I wanted to thin the paste a bit so I mixed in some fish sauce, some rice wine vinegar and a little bit of sweet rice wine. It did exactly what I wanted it to do, and thinned down to more of a sauce...which was great for dripping over the already delicious concoction.

Normally, this dish is served in a clay dish that stays warm for an extended period, and continues to cook the rice while you eat, making it crispy and crunchy on the sides of the bowl. It adds something special to the dish, but even without those clay dishes, I really think I nailed the authenticity. It was so delicious and reminiscent of our trips to Korean restaurants! It's always a good feeling when you know you can make something that you love to order out - less money spent, more confidence in my culinary achievements! Try making your favorite restaurant dish at home...and share your experiences with us! We're rooting for you!

Also, check out my new and improved Stock Your Kitchen page. I've renovated it so that you can automatically add my recommendations to your Amazon shopping cart, should you be interested in purchasing something that I've mentioned in any of my posts. Hopefully, this will be more convenient!

Radhika's Kebab Sausage with Tomato Jam

Tonight, I'm making sausages! Well, it's a loosely based version of a sausage, as there's nothing being stuffed into any sort of skin, but still...Quickfire Challenge here I come! (For all you Top Chef fans, you know exactly what I'm talking about, but for everyone else - it's from the Quickfire Cookbook, which includes recipes created during challenges on the show, Top Chef.)

This specific challenge was to create a signature hot dog. Radhika, from Season 5, made these great Kebab Sausages, and here we are, making them ourselves! You can find the recipe here. This recipe also calls for a bunch of accoutrements for the sausages. I'm sure these sausages would be wonderful on a roll, like the recipe describes, but I decided to serve them over a delicious, parsnip puree instead! A little heartier, and more ... dinner-like! :)

The first thing I did was make the sausage mixture. For this, I mixed 1 pound of ground lamb, 1/2 a pound of ground pork, and 1/2 a pound of ground beef with a tablespoon of minced garlic, 2 tablespoons of Tandoori Masala, kosher salt and ground black pepper. Once the mixture was blended, I put half of it into a food processor until it was finely ground. Then I mixed the finely ground portion back into the rest of bowl, and mixed some more. I then formed the mixture into the shape of logs, sort of like bratwurst.

Once that was done, I turned the oven to 350 degrees to preheat while I made the sides. I chopped a red onion into slices, and put them in a pan with a little canola oil to cook down for about 20 minutes. These browned onions sweeten as they cook and make a lovely topping for the sausages. In another bowl, I put a cucumber (peeled, seeded and diced), cilantro, white wine vinegar, capers and a little salt and pepper to taste. I set this aside to macerate for 20 minutes. In a third bowl, I made a tomato jam, which consists of mayonnaise, tomato paste, cumin and a little bit of heavy cream. I only used enough cream to thin the concoction, rather than the amount that the recipe depicts.

I browned the sausages on all sides in a skillet and then added them to a baking sheet I had waiting in the preheated oven, and then cooked them for another 10 minutes.

Once they were done, I plated the parsnip puree and piled two of the kebab sausages on each plate. I served the sides separately, allowing us each to choose our toppings appropriately. Once I added my toppings, I took a picture so you could see the finished product!

Voila! And this just goes to show, you don't even need a special tool to make your own sausages. They tasted a bit meat-loafy when cooked, and the sides were the perfect accompaniment to the flavors in the sausage. I really liked my pairing of the parsnip puree. I think it added something that a sandwich roll couldn't have contributed to the dish!

Hug Your Closest Sri Lankan!

Sri Lanka

The other day, I received an invitation to an event on Facebook. The event in question is "Hug a Sri Lankan Day," and it takes place on February 4th. That's FRIDAY! Sri Lanka is located off the southern coast of the Indian sub-continent. It is an island nation. In honor of this day, and my friend Ladali, who is Sri Lankan, I decided to make a fitting dish, complete with how-to instructions, just in time for you to cook dinner on Friday. I chose a Chicken Curry dish, also known as Chicken Dopiaza. The original recipe can be found here. I'm sure that you could make this with other types of meat as well, and for you vegetarians out there, I have a feeling that these flavors would work very nicely with some tofu (you'll have to adjust times a bit, that's all). Now, let's start with what you'll need:

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

8 small onions/shallots, halved

2 bay leaves

8 green cardamom pods

4 cloves

3 dried red chilis

8 black peppercorns

2 big onions, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 inch piece of fresh root ginger, finely chopped

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground turmeric powder

1 teaspoon chili powder

1/2 teaspoon salt (to taste)

4 tomatoes, skinned and finely chopped (I used canned, diced tomatoes)

1/2 cup water

8 chicken pieces, skinned

plain rice, to serve

This seems like a lot of ingredients, I know, but it's actually a very simple dish, and it's delicious. I happened to have these spices on hand, but if you don't, you can find them at your local grocery store, or order them online if you have a few days before you plan on cooking this dish. Now, of course, the first step is your mise en place. But, for mine, I combined the ingredients for each step into separate bowls, to make it easier for me. If you want to do it that way, this is what should be in each bowl:

Bowl #1: Shallots

Bowl #2: Bay leaves, cardamom pods, cloves, chilis and peppercorns

Bowl #3: Onions, garlic, and ginger

Bowl #4: Coriander, cumin, turmeric, chili powder and salt

Bowl #5: Tomatoes and water

Bowl #6: Chicken

We're ready to begin cooking! Before I start with the main part of this dish, I put the rice and water into the rice cooker since that usually takes about a half an hour to cook. Rice cookers are a fabulous invention. All you have to do is press the cook button, and it turns off when the rice is done. When I cook rice, I always use the ratio, 1:2. If you use a cup of rice, you should pour in 2 cups of water. That goes for any measurement of rice...double it for the water. Then, set it...and let it go!



Now, on to the main course, right? It's about time! I promise things are going to go quickly from here! I made this dish in a wok, but you can also use pretty much any large pan. Be sure that it's large enough to fit all the things you are going to put in it.

Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in the wok, or large pan, and fry the halved small onions/shallots until soft (I used shallots). Remove and set aside. Make sure those shallots are really soft, because otherwise, they are going to be a very overwhelming flavor in the finished product. Shallots get sweeter as they cook.



Add the remaining oil and fry the bay leaves, cardamoms, cloves, chilis and peppercorns for 2 minutes. Be careful here...as the cardamom pods get hot, they can pop. One almost knocked my EYE out!



Add the big onions, garlic, and ginger. Fry for 5 minutes.



Add the spices (coriander, cumin, turmeric, and chili powder) and salt and cook for 2 minutes.



Add the tomatoes and water to the pan and simmer for 5 minutes until the sauce begins to thicken.



Add the chicken pieces and cook for 15 minutes more. Once I added the chicken and it had begun to cook, I found that the sauce needed a little bit more water because it was evaporating quickly. Don't be afraid to trust your instincts and add something if you feel it needs it.



Add the reserved shallots back to the pan, and then cover and cook for another 10 minutes until the chicken is tender. I cut about 4 minutes off this time because I found that my chicken was done, and I didn't want to over cook it. However, it all depends on the size of your pieces, the parts that you choose to use and the temperature of your pan, so you be the judge. Once it looks tender and cooked through, take it off the heat so that the meat doesn't get chewy. Serve over rice.

This was a delicious meal, and I found it to be an educational experience. I have friends from all over the world, and it is always a treat to learn about their cultures and cuisines. It's not every day that you see a Sri Lankan restaurant, or even think about cooking a Sri Lankan meal, so I'm very happy that I took this opportunity to learn about this fascinating cuisine. I will definitely be trying more in the future, and I'll be on the lookout for a restaurant too. I'm intrigued! And a great big thank you goes out to Ladali for pointing me in the right direction for this post. I will be giving her a GREAT BIG HUG on February 4th!