Vegetarian Scotch Eggs

I've been fascinated by the idea of Scotch eggs for a while now. Traditionally for Scotch eggs, hard-boiled or soft-boiled or even pickled eggs are encased in a sausage mixture, coated in breadcrumbs, and fried. Since I don't eat red meat, I'd never attempted to make them or even tasted one. Then, along came this lovely vegetarian version with an outer layer made with beets. They couldn't be more perfect. The beets give the outside a good contrasting color to the white and yellow of the egg inside. Just in time for Easter, I found these on Mess in the Kitchen the other day and headed straight to the kitchen. The beet mixture was actually first imagined as a veggie burger and then was used for coating Scotch eggs. I made just a couple of changes to the recipe so as to use what I had on hand, and I was beyond thrilled with the results. The mixture held together very well, and the outside fried to a crisp around the soft-boiled eggs. Not only do you get a tender soft-boiled egg surround by a crispy, tasty, fried coating, there's another bonus to making Scotch eggs. You know how fresh eggs can be difficult to peel after boiling? If there are any uneven surfaces on the eggs after they're peeled, you'll never see them once they're coated with the beet mixture. Everything about these eggs made me very happy.

I decided to go with soft-boiled rather than hard-boiled eggs thinking that the eggs would cook a little more in the hot oil causing the yolks to set, and that's exactly what happened. I used the smallest ones from the carton I had, but you can really use any size of eggs you'd like. I placed five eggs in a saucepan, covered them with water, added a pinch of salt, and brought the water to a boil. As soon as the water bubbled, I turned the heat to low, covered the pan, and let the eggs cook for eight minutes. I drained the eggs and peeled them while still warm, and they were fresh enough to still be difficult to peel but, delightfully, that didn't matter here. For the beet mixture, I peeled two medium beets and chopped them. The beets were placed in a food processor with a chopped leek, about three ounces of firm tofu that I squeezed a bit to remove some water, two chopped green onions, about three tablespoons of flaxseed meal, a quarter cup of toasted breadcrumbs, two peeled and chopped cloves of garlic, an egg, and salt and pepper. The mixture was processed until a paste developed. If the mixture is too dry, try adding a tablespoon or two of water, and if it's too wet add a little more breadcrumbs. The beet mixture was pressed around each egg, and I had extra which I formed into two veggie burgers for another day. Once the eggs were encased in the beet mixture, I rolled each one in some remaining breadcrumbs before frying. I fried them, two or three at a time, in about an inch of grape seed oil in a saucepan, turning from time to time, for about five minutes total.

Did I mention how much I enjoyed these eggs? I already want to make them again for a party and use quail eggs for a daintier portion. They'd look great cut in half and lined up on a serving tray. Or, I could imagine going the other direction and using duck eggs. One Scotch duck egg cut in half with some smoked salmon on top of each piece would make a lovely brunch meal. Obviously, I'll be making this recipe repeatedly.

Stuffed Hatch Chile Omelet

At last, hatch season is here again. It’s a great day when I arrive at the grocery store to find piles and piles of these seasonal green chiles from New Mexico. There’s a stack of hot chiles and a separate one of mild ones, and all the products made with the chiles are tucked into every corner of the store. Our local stores also roast the chiles, and you can buy them roasted whole or already chopped. I kind of enjoy watching them blister on the grill, so I tend to buy the fresh, raw chiles and roast them at home. During their short season, I’m perfectly content to just toss chopped, roasted hatch chiles into pretty much everything I cook, but this year I wanted to stuff some whole chiles too. I pondered what to use for stuffing and what to serve with the chiles for a few days, and then I stumbled upon this omelet recipe which answered both questions. This is from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. The roasted, whole chiles are stuffed with goat cheese, and then they’re surrounded by eggs and cooked into a big omelet. Of course, the same concept could be achieved with stuffed poblanos or anaheim chiles, but it was particularly fun to use some beloved late summer hatch chiles in this.

I had already roasted some hatch chiles on the grill the night before I planned to make this omelet. So, all I had to do was peel the charred layer off the chiles, split each down one side, and remove the seeds. The cheese stuffing was a quick mix of crumbled goat cheese, chopped cilantro leaves, and sliced green onions. I doubled the original recipe and stuffed four chiles with the cheese mixture. The remaining cheese that didn’t fit in the chiles was whisked into six eggs. The stuffed chiles were placed in a saute pan with some melted butter and were warmed over medium heat. Then the whisked eggs were poured into the pan and all around the chiles. I thought ahead and realized the chiles might be a challenge to cut through when serving. So, I arranged the chiles with their tips pointing to the center so they would fit into four pieces of omelet without being cut. The eggs started cooking on the stovetop, and as soon as the omelet began to set, the saute pan was placed under the broiler until the omelet was golden and puffed.

I soon realized that this is not a particularly photogenic dish, but it was such a good idea I had to share it anyway. The stuffed chiles could have served as an hors d’oeuvre with some bread or tortillas, but they were divine in the omelet. The mild goat cheese with the fresh green onion and cilantro flavors mingling with the earthy, smoky chiles all embedded in a puffy omelet was genius. It was so simple but so delicious, and I never would have thought to do this myself.

Fried Eggs with Sage, Chile, and Garlicky Yogurt

Have you seen the book My Favorite Ingredients? I saw it mentioned a few times here and there, and then when I finally had a look at a copy of it, I had to bring it home. The book is by Skye Gyngell, and she is the head chef at London’s Petersham Nurseries Cafe. She describes her cooking as produce driven in that she takes inspiration from what is at its freshest and what flavors would complement that ingredient best. Her intention is to not interfere with the ingredients too much, to let them taste of themselves. That results in recipes that are very doable and very delicious when made with produce at the peak of its season. Each chapter in the book focuses on one ingredient, and it is shown in several different types of dishes. In the asparagus chapter, there’s a beautiful dish involving a tomato dressing and creme fraiche, one simply prepared with ginger and garlic, and a gratin of white asparagus. I’m really looking forward to cherry season, because the chapter about cherries has a cherry cordial and brandied cherries I want to try. There are chapters for tomatoes, nuts, fish and shellfish, vinegar, apples, cheese, and more. I currently have six pages marked, and those are just the recipes with ingredients that are in season right now. The dish you see here today is from the garlic chapter, and I had locally-grown garlic to use from my CSA. It was minced and then mixed with yogurt to make a tangy, flavorful sauce for a spicy, fried egg.

First, the yogurt was mixed with the minced garlic and salt and pepper, and that was left to sit so the flavors could mingle a bit. Next, butter was browned with a few sage leaves in it, and I used leaves from my new sage plants in my garden. When I read this recipe with browned butter with sage and garlic yogurt, I knew this was going to be good. The browned butter was used to fry the eggs, I used some beauties from a local farm, and sliced red chiles were added as well. To serve, a dollop of garlic yogurt was placed on the plate, the egg and some chile slices were added, and that was topped with the sage leaves and a little drizzle of brown butter.

This couldn’t have been simpler, and the flavors couldn’t have been more right. Rich, nutty, brown butter with earthy, herby sage and cool, savory, garlicky yogurt all to accompany a nicely fried egg with a hint of chile heat was, well, a pretty good breakfast to say the least. I’ll probably be mentioning this book a lot, and since I’m eyeing the crab cakes with corn puree and chili oil as I type this, that just might appear next.

Egg Salad Tartines with Smoked Salmon

Of course there were eggs for Easter. I usually make deviled eggs, but this year I decided to mix it up just a bit. The flavors here were the same as what you’d find in my deviled eggs, but the delivery took a different form. These tartines are from Ina, and I’ve always thought her egg salad topped with thinly sliced smoked salmon looked delicious. I thought about making them for the longest time. In fact, I thought about them for so long, I forgot which one of her books included the recipe. In the past, I used to search my cookbooks by pulling each one off the shelf and flipping to the index. I did that to find recipes I remembered or to get ideas for cooking with specific ingredients. That was the old way of searching. These days, I use Eat Your Books, which accomplishes the same thing with just the click of a mouse. You build a list of all of your books which you can then search for recipes or ingredients. The search result will show the book title that includes your search term and the list of ingredients in the recipe. It’s so much easier than the old way. I quickly found that the egg salad tartines are in Barefoot Contessa at Home. This recipe is also on the FoodNetwork site.

I wanted to find Ina’s recipe to see exactly how she made her version and to check the ratio of mayonnaise to egg, but I had to make a few additions of my own. Ina’s egg salad is very straightforward with just hard-boiled eggs chopped in a food processor, mayonnaise, whole-grain mustard, fresh dill, salt, and pepper. I wanted to add a couple of things that are always in my deviled eggs, so I included finely chopped cornichons and spring onions. I had some pretty, red, spring onions from the farmers’ market and wanted to make use of their flavor and color. For bread, I had just baked some sourdough baguettes which are even more fun to bake now that I have a proper baguette pan. I sliced a baguette and toasted the pieces before spreading them with the egg salad and topping it with smoked salmon. I wish I had cured my own salmon, but that’s something that remains on my to-try list.

I knew I was going to like this a lot, and I think I enjoyed it even more than my usual deviled eggs. The smoked salmon added savory, slightly salty bite to the egg salad. Another option would have been to slice some olives to use as a topping. I have a thing for the pickled element of cornichons with hard-boiled eggs, but I’m not sure how popular that is. Do you have a favorite ingredient for egg salad or deviled eggs?

Neapolitan Crostini and Scrambled Eggs with Bottarga

We’re blessed with a few pretty amazing grocery stores here in Austin, and we also have some great ethnic markets and specialty shops in addition to a lot of locally produced items sold at our farmers’ markets. Yes, I spend a lot of time shopping for food, and I’m driven completely insane when I can’t find certain ingredients despite having all these great places to shop. I once spent the better part of a day on an unsuccessful search for salt-packed anchovies, and I’ve never seen bottarga sold locally, and fennel pollen was a whole other story. The good news is that I recently learned of an online source for all of that and more. I was offered samples of a few products from Sausage Debauchery which offers a lot more than just sausage, and I was thrilled with the quality of everything I received. For my first use of the Sicilian, salt-packed anchovies I received, I decided on the Neapolitan crostini from Molto Italiano.

Before using the anchovies, I soaked them in a few changes of cold water and drained them. Then, I split each anchovy lengthwise and removed the spines. For the crostini, toasted bread was rubbed with a raw garlic clove. Then, the bread was topped with a fresh, Calabrian ricotta that had been mixed with red pepper flakes, black pepper, and chopped fresh oregano. The anchovy fillets were placed on top, and the crostini went back under the broiler for a minute or so. The ricotta was nicely softened and warmed, and the anchovies became glistening. I like anchovies, and I’ve enjoyed a lot of different kinds and brands of anchovies in a lot of different dishes, but these were what anchovies are all about. There was no tinny taste, and the flavor wasn’t masked by any oil often used in packing. They were a little salty, and I’ll rinse them even more carefully next time, but the flavor of the little fish themselves was fantastic. To store the remaining anchovies, I packed them into a couple of disposable, airtight containers, covered them with coarse sea salt, and put the containers in the refrigerator.

Another product I received was grated mullet bottarga from Sardinia. I was inspired by a scrambled egg and bottarga dish I’d read about in the The Zuni Cafe Cookbook. The Zuni dish is a very carefully prepared version of scrambled eggs in which slivers of butter and some grated bottarga are whisked into the eggs before they’re slowly and gently cooked over low heat while stirring with a wooden spoon that has been rubbed with garlic. It’s then served with more grated bottarga on top. It sounds lovely, but I was rushed and just scrambled some eggs in melted butter the same way I usually do and then topped them with the grated bottarga. I’ll try the very careful preparation next time. There’s a cured flavor to bottarga, not unlike smoked salmon, and it was a treat with the eggs for breakfast. It tastes of the sea in a way that I like, and it would be a nice topping on breadcrumb-crusted, broiled clams. I also look forward to using some of the grated bottarga on pasta. Although this is cured fish roe, there are no chemical preservatives used as it is simply dried with salt. The products I received were really good stuff, and the site has a lot of other great things to offer as well.

Wild Mushroom-Egg Tacos with Blue Corn Crepes

So, breakfast tacos, where to begin? For the uninitiated, breakfast tacos are an institution in Austin. They’re easily found at countless restaurants, coffee houses, and food trailers around town. They’re inexpensive and convenient. Everyone has his or her favorite filling. For me, bean, egg, and cheese or potato, egg, and cheese are the best, but I also love a spinach, cherry tomato, egg, and cheese on a whole-grain tortilla. Kurt’s preferences are chorizo, egg, and cheese and bacon, egg, and cheese. They’re usually made with flour tortillas except for that multi-grain option I mentioned which I’ve only seen at one place in town. Also, salsa is served on the side in little cups with lids if the tacos are to go, and I always request an extra cup. With so many options for going out for breakfast tacos surrounding me in this town, I’ve never made my own until now. And, to be honest, these are really just something like breakfast tacos. What we have here is a fancy, worldly relative of the breakfast taco. When I was looking for something different for a weekend breakfast, I found truffled egg tacos in Nuevo Tex-Mex, and I always have fun cooking from that book. That main recipe does require two, not one, black truffles which are sliced over eggs, and the filling is then rolled in blue corn crepes to make fancy-pants tacos. Luckily, since I was fresh out of whole black truffles, variations on this theme are offered. I went with the wild mushroom-egg version and added a little truffle oil to the mushrooms after they were sauteed.

As simple as this dish seems, and as familiar as the concept of the breakfast taco is, I was a little nervous about making it because I’d never before made crepes. Without the crepes, this was just scrambled eggs and mushrooms. I doubled the recipe so I’d have plenty of batter for practicing. The first crepe was, of course, a failure, but then things improved. I made my crepes larger than the five inch diameter suggested, so it was a good thing that I had doubled the batter. Blue cornmeal was combined with milk, eggs, and melted butter and then was left to sit for 30 minutes before using. My bigger crepes cooked for just over one minute on each side. The filling was simply sauteed mushrooms which were drizzled with truffle oil and scrambled eggs. I added some grated monterey jack cheese and chopped garlic chives as well.

I always wish blue cornmeal were really blue instead of grayish-pale blue, but regardless of the color, it made a nice crepe with a sweet nuttiness about it. The tenderness of the crepes made them very easy to fold and turn around the filling. It was a little strange to sit down to a meal of breakfast tacos with fork in hand and the aroma truffle oil in the air, but I could get used to this sophisticated variation.

BlackBean Waffles with Tomatoes, Chiles, and Eggs

I started with a Michael Chiarello recipe and took it in a whole Bobby Flay direction. I hope they don’t mind. You see, the other day on Twitter, Chef Chiarello posted a link to what he prepared that day on the CBS Early Show, and that was white bean waffles with heirloom tomatoes and olive oil basted eggs. I thought it sounded great, and then I remembered the leftover black beans in my freezer. I started mentally re-engineering this into a southwestern-influenced dish. I have to explain right up front that although this is a savory waffle, the flavor isn’t beany. The beans are pureed into the batter and lend a nice texture while not affecting the taste in any negative or even noticeable way. The original dish was suggested as breakfast for dinner, but I served it as breakfast for brunch.

I also cut the recipe in half and still ended up with enough waffles to store some in the freezer for a future use. To begin, I weighed out 15 ounces of thawed, fully cooked, black beans. I brought them to a boil with a half cup of water, a big pinch of cumin, a smaller pinch of cayenne, and a generous sprinkling of ancho powder which made me think of Bobby Flay. The beans simmered for a few minutes, and then they were removed from the heat and allowed to cool. Once cool, they were blended with eggs, milk, and olive oil. That blended mixture was whisked into flour, baking powder, and salt. Then, waffle production began. I always let just enough time pass between waffle preps that I forget if it’s five minutes, six minutes, or seven minutes. Five is definitely not quite long enough to get a nice toasty surface on both sides. Six is ok, but seven seems to be just right for my machine. Once the waffles were finished and placed in a warm oven to wait, I fried some eggs as suggested in the recipe. Chopped chiles were added to olive oil in a saute pan, the eggs were placed in the hot pan, and the oil was used to baste the egg whites as they cooked.

To finish the dish, I strayed again from the Italian flavors intended. I left out the prosciutto and used cotija cheese and some crema instead. The waffles were topped with the eggs, a mix of chopped fresh yellow tomatoes, red cherry tomatoes, sliced red and green serrano chiles, and some cilantro. A nice, runny egg provides a sauce of sorts, and the fresh, juicy tomatoes and crema work in that way as well. It was a plate full of contrasting textures and colors. Of course, the waffles didn’t turn out at all black from the beans, but I wondered if their color would have been more interesting if I had used some blue corn meal. I’ll try that next time. I’m always a fan of spicy toppings with eggs, but this melange was above and beyond my usual southwestern breakfast fare.

Biscuit au Beurre

When I finally opened Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. One and got cooking, I couldn’t stop with just one dish. I wanted a dessert from the book to serve after our meal of coquilles st. jacques. I looked through the desserts and cakes chapter and paused at the flan des isles but decided I’d rather try a cake. The babas and savarins I will definitely come back to in the future, but they weren’t exactly what I wanted for this meal. Then, I arrived at the biscuit au beurre described as a “fine, light spongecake [which] may be served with a sprinkling of powdered sugar, and goes well with tea, or with fruits.” A nice, simple cake with fresh, summer fruit sounded perfect. At the end of the recipe, there are three optional toppings. The first, which I chose, is to simply shake powdered sugar over the cake. The second was an apricot glaze with almonds, and the last was a buttercream icing which could be made chocolate. There are actually suggested variations for serving all of the cakes in the chapter which shows how versatile they are.

This is a classic sponge cake and contains only egg whites for leavening. You begin the recipe by melting butter and letting it cool. Sugar and egg yolks were then mixed together, and vanilla was added. Egg whites were whisked with salt, sugar was added, and they were whisked to stiff peaks. Then, the folding and sifting began. Some egg whites were added to the yolk mixture and some cake flour was sifted on top. This was folded until partially blended. Then, the same process was repeated with more egg whites and more flour. It was repeated once more, but before completely blending everything together, the melted butter was added. That seemed odd to me. I wanted to add that butter much earlier, but it went in at the end and I’m not sure why. The cake baked in a ten inch pan for about half an hour and then cooled on a rack. It was a little difficult to wrangle it out of the pan, but I managed to do so without destroying it.

As promised, it was light with a springy airiness about it, and the butter and vanilla gave it nice flavor. The sprinkling of powdered sugar was just enough embellishment. I served the cake with fresh cherries, and that was a happy combination. It’s also mentioned that this cake works well as strawberry shortcake, and I’ll definitely use it that way too. Like so many recipes in this book it’s simple, classic, versatile, and most importantly really good-tasting. Why did I wait so long to start cooking from this book?

Chilled Lemon Souffles

The dessert of the meal I’ve been describing this week was individual chilled lemon souffles, and this comes from a delightful, little book. Eggs by Michel Roux is smaller in size than other books, but in it you’ll find perfected techniques for cooking eggs and a wealth of ideas for egg dishes. Each section is devoted to a way of cooking eggs. The steps involved in the basic preparation are clearly described with instructions and photos, and then several variations on dishes using that preparation are presented. I’m looking forward to trying crunchy fried eggs which is a method of poaching in hot oil. The variations include crunchy fried eggs on darphin potatoes with spinach and crunchy fried eggs on dandelion salad. And, there’s so much more. Classic sauces like hollandaise, mornay, and sabayon are described. There are crepes both savory and sweet, quiches, omelets including rolled Thai varieties, custards, baked eggs, and hard-cooked eggs stuffed with mussels. I really like this book.

While so many dishes jumped out at me as I read this book, the chilled lemon souffle was the first thing I made because it worked well with my plans for the party. This is not a cooked souffle. The ingredients are simply folded together, transferred to serving dishes, and chilled. I wanted to use the freshest eggs I could find, so I headed straight to the farmers’ market. Milagro farms had some beauties last weekend, and I talked with the farmer about the chickens that laid them. They have several varieties of chickens which are allowed to roam free, have a moveable coop so their domain can be moved about the farm, and they’re fed the organic vegetables grown at the farm. The dozen eggs I bought included some brown, some cream-colored, and some pale blue eggs. They were perfectly fresh and delicious. For the souffles, six eggs were separated. The yolks were whisked with sugar and lemon zest. Gelatin sheets were softened in water, the water was squeezed from them, and then they were dissolved in warm lemon juice. That lemon juice was then whisked into the egg yolk mixture. Cream was whipped to a ribbon consistency and folded into the yolk mixture. Egg whites were whisked to soft peaks with some sugar, and then they were folded into the main mixture.

In the book, this is presented as one large souffle with a ring of lemon slices around the top and sliced almonds in the center. I decided to serve it in individual portions instead. So, I used six ramekins and wrapped each of them with parchment paper to support the souffle as it was spooned into each cup and above each rim. The ramekins were chilled for about five hours. Thinly sliced lemon was gently cooked in sugar syrup for a couple of minutes and allowed to cool. I served each souffle with a few lemon slices and a sprinkling of sliced almonds. I was pretty sure this was going to be an enjoyable dessert, but I was surprised by Kurt’s reaction. I had imagined he would tolerate the lemon dessert and find it ok, but he was actually just as thrilled with it as I was. The texture was like clouds as it was set just enough to hold its shape, and the flavor was lovely and lemony without being too assertive. It wasn’t too rich or too filling, and it was a nice way to end the meal.

Andhra Scrambled Eggs with Hot Chile Oil Paste

I read Mangoes and Curry Leaves when I received it a few years ago, and it’s a beautiful, informative, well-crafted book. I also have Alford and Duguid’s equally gorgeous, newer book, Beyond the Great Wall, and it’s sitting in my to-read stack. Their books are part travel memoirs, but they are mostly in-depth looks at completely authentic regional foods. Despite having enjoyed reading Mangoes and Curry Leaves, I hadn’t cooked anything from it simply because I’m a big, big chicken. I feared failing horribly at my attempts to re-create what looks so incredible in the photos, and sub-continent cuisine is not my forte. I do wish to learn though, and there’s only one way to do that. So, what we have here today is the first item I cautiously attempted, and Kurt even more cautiously tasted. He knows when there’s a good chance we’ll have a failure on our hands, and he was rightly concerned when I announced I was going to make Andhra scrambled eggs.

The introduction to this recipe explains that these eggs are like ones author Jeffrey Alford had at a tea shop in rural Andhra Pradesh which is a day’s drive north of Chennai (Madras). To make the eggs, they were whisked in a bowl with some salt while sesame oil was heated in a large skillet. Minced garlic and ginger, chopped shallots and chiles, and turmeric were added. The chiles specified here were cayenne which I can never find in local grocery stores, although I did receive a few in a CSA pick-up last summer. I used serranos instead. Those ingredients were stir-fried in the sesame oil for a couple of minutes before chopped tomato was added. After another couple of minutes the eggs were added and stirred about to mix everything together. Once just barely set, the eggs were transferred to plates and topped with chopped cilantro leaves.

I was feeling a little cocky since this was just a simple egg dish, so I went ahead and made the hot chile oil paste from the front of the book as well. This involved chopping ginger, garlic, and dried red chiles in a food processor and then placing that in a heat-proof bowl. Minced scallions were added to that bowl. Then, vegetable oil was heated in a skillet until almost smoking, it was poured over the mixture in the bowl, and it was allowed to cool. I poured this cooled mixture into a jar with an air-tight lid, and it will last in the refrigerator for up to one month. I’m looking forward to using it as a condiment on all kinds of things like grilled chicken or fish, maybe a dollop on some soup, and maybe even use some on plain scrambled eggs. For the Andhra scrambled eggs, it was an added punch to an already very flavorful dish, but we used a little anyway.

And, the result? Satisfactory all around. Kurt was pleasantly surprised with the level of success achieved here and quite enjoyed the dish. I may have worked up enough confidence to attempt some other things. I’ll have to remember to plan ahead and allow plenty of time for tracking down some ingredients like curry leaves, but I’m looking forward to learning more and experiencing more of the food described in the book.

Roasted Red Pepper and Goat Cheese Tart

For an Oscars party last Sunday, I wanted to bring a couple of things that would transport easily, could sit at room temperature, and would be simple enough to pick up and eat with your fingers. I decided on this savory red pepper and goat cheese tart and one sweet item. The tart is from The Modern Baker which I’ve mentioned previously. The book is mostly devoted to sweets, but the few savory things in it all look excellent. The shrimp and toasted pumpkinseed and the tomato and cantal tarts caught my interest too. Savory tarts are great for prepping in advance because the crust can be made early, and in this case, the peppers could be roasted a day ahead as well.

The crust used here is made from an olive oil dough, and Malgieri warned that it would require more pressing as it is more elastic than a butter-based dough. It seemed to tear easily, but could be pressed back together well enough. Since there is no butter, you don’t have to worry as much about keeping the dough cold while working with it, and it can be left in the refrigerator for several days. I made a double quantity of the dough, fit it into two tart pans, and left them in the refrigerator for two days. I used red, yellow, and orange bell peppers which were roasted and cleaned. They were then layered in a wide dish with olive oil and sliced garlic and left in the refrigerator for a day. With two parts of the recipe already completed, assembling the tart was quick and easy on the day of the party.

Goat cheese was layered with the roasted peppers, and Malgieri notes that keeping the cheese under the peppers prevents it from becoming dry in the oven. I did my best, but the shapes of the peppers and the shapes of the tart pans didn’t make that possible for the entirety of both surfaces. Eggs, whisked with salt and pepper and lots of chopped parsley, were poured into the crusts, and they baked for about 35 minutes until set in the center.

Luckily, the cut pieces held together as well as they appeared to in the book, and small pieces worked fine as finger food. This is a very simple combination of flavors with just peppers, goat cheese, a scant bit of garlic, eggs, and parsley, but those things all worked together very well. The olive oil crust was a nice foundation for this because a buttery one might have pushed the richness level too far. I kept a couple of pieces at home which we re-warmed for dinner last night to enjoy along-side a salad. It was just as delicious out of the oven the second time as it was the first.

Pocket Eggs

I mentioned on Monday that I’m trying to learn more about Chinese cooking and gain some confidence in that culinary arena. I’ve been reading The Key to Chinese Cooking, and this is another dish from that book. Pocket eggs were very simple but new to me. The basic concept is to break eggs into a pan to fry them and fold them in half before they are finished cooking. Easy enough. Soy sauce, cider vinegar, and sugar were combined as a sauce which was poured over the eggs at the end of the cooking time.

As I turned the eggs onto themselves, I imagined future versions of them as mini egg tacos stuffed with a pinch of shredded cheese or a dab of salsa. The resulting half-moon eggs were very cute especially when you think of them as mini egg tacos. For a moment, I considered leaving the sugar out of the sauce which is just the sort of thing I would normally do. But, since I’ve been on a mission to learn from Irene Kuo and gain some understanding of Chinese cuisine, I stuck to the exact instructions. The sugar mitigated the vinegar’s acidity and was balanced by the soy sauce. The sauce is poured into the hot pan just as the eggs have finished cooking, the heat is turned off, and a lid is placed on the pan. You shake the pan as it sizzles, and the sauce thickens just a bit as it swirls around the eggs. The process was so simple I really couldn’t have failed. I need to learn a few more dishes to create a complete Chinese brunch, but the pocket eggs were a success.

Eggs with Chiles and Tomatoes

A few weeks ago when I was picking up my CSA share, I found myself in a conversation about cooking. Strange, huh? Ok, I find myself in such conversations all the time. When someone at the grocery store is buying a lot of one vegetable, I have to know how he or she is planning to use it. On that particular day, I was going on about what I’d been making with my fresh veggies and what I had planned for that week. My friend from WCOF said “here’s what you have to try: eggs with chiles and tomatoes.” He described to me in general terms how the dish comes together. I had an immediate, happy flashback to a brunch at Fonda San Miguel and their eggs poached in stewed poblanos. I enjoy eggs just about any which way, but eggs with hot chiles are outstanding. The delicate, subtle egg is never lost; its flavor just gets sidled right up to by the chiles’ earthy heat. One of my favorite frittatas is one with green chiles and monterey jack cheese. As 'eggs with chiles and tomatoes' was described to me, it also reminded me of a Martha recipe for poached eggs in tomato sauce. This would be a little different since the sauce would be pretty chunky from fresh tomatoes and lots of chiles. Here’s how I threw it together.

2 T olive oil
1 T butter
1/4 c finely chopped red onion
2 anaheim chiles, seeded and roughly chopped
2 mild chiles such as hungarian wax or cubanelle, seeded and roughly chopped
3 jalapenos, roughly chopped with or without seeds and membranes
1 jalapeno, not seeded, sliced for garnish
2 serrano chiles, seeded and roughly chopped
1 large heirloom tomato, chopped into 1” chunks
5 eggs
1/2 c shredded monterey jack cheese
2 green onions, sliced for garnish
Salt and pepper to taste

-pre-heat broiler; in a medium sauté pan over medium heat, heat oil and melt butter; add onion and chiles, season to taste, and sauté until just softened; add tomato chunks and cook until starting to break apart and juices escape, about seven minutes
-break eggs into stewed tomatoes and chiles and cook for two minutes; sprinkle monterey jack on top and place under broiler for about five minutes or until eggs are just set and cheese has browned slightly
-garnish with sliced green onion and sliced jalapeno and serve in bowls

The eggs don’t exactly poach since there isn’t room for them to be completely immersed. Instead, they’re sort of soft fried. The spicy chiles, the melted cheese, and the crunchy garnishes make this dish a satisfying morning meal. Next time, I’ll have some warm corn tortillas ready as an accompaniment. In fact, now that I’ve thought of that, I can’t wait to make it again.