Tag Archives: Put an egg on it

Tater Tot Waffles

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I like to have fun in the kitchen. One of my favourite games to play is “will it waffle?” I have had great success with croissant dough and halloumi cheese. It’s just so amusing to put stuff, other than waffle batter, into the waffle iron and see what happens. I have had less success with my other favourite kitchen game, “can you blend it?” Let’s just say that apple pie milkshake was not one of my greatest creations, and leave it at that.

I discovered the idea of using Tater Tots on bonappetit.com. They did a loaded tater tot waffle version, complete with bacon, chives, sour cream and cheddar. I left out the bacon and topped mine with a fried egg, because everything’s better with an egg on top, right?

The amount of Tater Tots you need to fill your waffle iron depends on the size and type of waffle iron you have. I have made it twice now, once in a Cuisinart Belgian waffle maker and once in a regular President Choice waffle maker. You will need to add a second layer of Tater Tots for a Belgian waffle maker, as the grooves are deeper.

Here’s a video to show how it all comes together:

The Tater Tots go in frozen. I discovered that the best way to ensure an even waffle is to let the tots cook for about 2-3 minutes. Then open the waffle iron and see if there are any gaps or holes. Fill them in with more tots and continue cooking for a total of about 9-12 minutes. I used a medium high heat.

Click here to print recipe for Loaded Tater Tot Waffles.

Everyone I made them for loved the nostalgia factor. Most had not had Tater Tots since they were a child. Shockingly, my friend Ed had never even heard of Tater Tots! Clearly a deprived child. I will be making these for hm very soon.

Avocado Toast with Fried Egg

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There are quite a few new subscribers to my blog, so welcome. I very much appreciate your taking the time to sign up to receive email notification every time I publish a new post. I know how full inboxes can get! It means a lot to me that you take the time to read what I’m up to.

No recipe this week, just a fun video to watch what I make for lunch at least 3 times a week. I have been taking a new online food video course from the talented Eva Kosmas Flores, and I’m having so much fun creating little snippets of cinematic beauty.

This lunch is fast and I always have eggs in the fridge and bread in the freezer. Catching an avocado at the perfect stage of ripeness is a little bit trickier. I like to buy 4-5 avocados at a time. I leave one on the counter and put the unripe ones in the fridge. That slows down the ripening process and they will last about 2 weeks in the fridge. Just remove them 1-2 days before you want to use them.

Because we’re amongst friends here, I will be completely honest, and share a few truths. There is no chill jazz music playing while I make my lunch. I usually have a rerun of Masterchef Australia playing on TV. I’m obsessed with the Australian version of Masterchef. I dislike the US and Canadian versions, but can’t get enough of the Australian series. Haver you watched?

Second truth, I usually just pop my frozen slice of bread into the toaster while the egg is frying. But if you’re feeling a little extra, I highly recommend frying the bread in butter. It’s quite delicious. A little tip when frying the egg. If you like your yolk to be runny, (and I’m not sure we can be friends if you don’t), pop a lid on the fry pan. The steam created will cook the white fully, but leave the yolk soft.

While I might skip the fried bread, I never skip the sprinkling of Aleppo pepper. It has a fruity gentle heat, with a hint of sweetness, unlike red pepper flakes. I use it wherever you might use red pepper flakes. Do not skip a sprinkling of salt on both the egg and the mashed avocado,. When building a sandwich, every layer must be seasoned.

Final truth, I don’t plate my avocado toast on the pretty blue plate you see in the video. I eat my avocado toast with fried egg, standing up, over the sink, to catch any egg yolk drips. I also eat my salads in a stainless steel mixing bowl! And no, I wasn’t raised in a barn. When I was growing up, we were not allowed to have any condiment jars on the table. Everything had to be served in a pretty little bowl. I guess it’s my small rebellion.

Let me know in the comments what your go to lunch is and if you eat it standing up or sitting at a table like a human being. Inquiring minds want to know.

Hearty Kale Dinner Bowl

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If you’ve been reading my blog for a while now, it’s no secret that I love breakfast for dinner. There is something about those typical morning foods that seem to soothe and calm me. Just think about it. By the end of the day, when we’re feeling tired and a little bit overwhelmed, we need some serenity. I think there is also some sort of illicit pleasure in breaking the rules. I’m an adult now, and I can eat breakfast for dinner if I want!

When I saw Tim Robinson’s recipe for “Hearty Kale breakfast Bowl” on thefeedfeed.com, I knew I wanted to have it for dinner. I adapted his recipe slightly, adding in some butternut squash and seasoning it with smoked paprika and garlic. It takes about 35 minutes to roast the potatoes and squash, but during that time, you can prepare the other bowl ingredients.

The bitterness of the kale is perfectly balanced by the fatty richness of creamy avocado and oozy egg yolk. The cubes of potato and squash turn into crispy little nuggets. Crumbled feta adds a hit of salt. Don’t skimp on the red pepper flakes! This dish hits all the right notes.

Tim suggests using leftover grains instead of the potatoes. Farro, barley or rice would be excellent substitutions.

Click here to print recipes for Hearty-Kale-Dinner-BowlDownload

If going rogue with breakfast for dinner resonates with you, check out these other awesome recipes.

Bagel Breakfast Sandwiches
Fried Eggs on Rösti Potatoes with Shakshuka Sauce
Breakfast Burrito

Khachapuri (Georgian Cheese Bread)

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Essentially, Khachapuri (pronounced hatch-a-pooree), is a bread canoe filled with hot bubbling cheese and topped with a runny egg. How bad could that be?

This decadent dish originated in the Republic of Georgia,. It’s been on my “must bake” list for several years now. It checks all the boxes for pandemic comfort eating, so I decided the time was right. I pulled out all the various recipes I had been collecting and started baking.

Over the past month my oven has churned out over a dozen khachapuri. I wanted to get it perfect. The first hurdle was what to use for the cheese filling. In Georgia they use a combo of imeruli and sulguni cheeses, neither of which are available in Ottawa. I tested some possible substititions and discovered that I liked a combo of mozzarella, ricotta and feta.

Once the filling was settled, I turned my attention to the dough. The more traditional recipes called for an enriched (butter and milk added) dough. While quite delicious, we found that version to be just too rich. I decided on a leaner pizza dough, enriched with just a tablespoon of olive oil. Storebought pizza dough is fine, but homemade is better.

In a desperate attempt at delusion, I added a big heaping handful of massaged kale to each khachapuri, in order to convince myself that these were healthy.

To get the classic canoe shape, the dough is rolled into an oval. Add the filling, leaving about a one inch border. Then roll up the edges, toward the centre and pinch and twist the top and bottom of the canoe to seal.

When the khachapuri are almost done, pull them from the oven to add the egg for the final few minutes of cooking. I tried it with whole eggs and just the yolk, and preferred the yolk.

In addition to finishing the dish with an egg, the traditional recipe also adds a few pats of butter once it comes out of the oven. Shockingly, this butter lover decided to omit that step of the recipe. Just too much.

The best way to eat khachapuri is with your hands. Rip off a piece of the crust and dip it in the runny egg and cheese, preferably while sitting in front of the TV watching Netflix. We’re watching Fauda right now and it makes for messy but very delicious eating.

Click here to print recipe for Khachapuri-Georgian-Cheese-Bread-Download

Spring Leek Galette

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Leeks have never achieved the same popularity in North America as they have in Europe, and that’s a shame. Leeks are the shy cousin of the low-brow onion. Shyness in this case, is a good thing. Cutting them does not cause tears, and their delicate flavour is much sweeter than the common onion. Their natural flavour partner is peas.
What better way to put leeks and peas together, than in a tart.  No tart pan required, just simply  fold the edges of dough in to form a free-form galette. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may recall that I have posted about galettes before, here, and here, here, and here. Apparently I have a thing for galettes.
In this version, I spread the dough with some dijon mustard for zing, scattered the mustard with Gruyere cheese because, cheese! After the leeks and peas I topped the galette with an egg because everything is better with an egg on top.

The first time I made them I added the egg just before I put the tart into the oven. The tart takes about 35 minutes, which totally dried out the egg. You want the white to be just set and the yolk a bit runny. On my second go-round I baked the tart without the egg for about 25 minutes and then topped it with the egg for the last 10 minutes of baking. Perfect!

What I love about this galette is that you can serve it hot, warm or room temperature. It’s great for lunch or a light dinner, or cut it into wedges and serve it with drinks. What are you waiting for? Make it today.

Click here to print recipe for Spring Leek Galette.

 

 

E.A.T. Breakfast Sandwiches

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breakfast is ready 1This started out as a post about biscuits. Specifically, the amazing biscuits from Biscuit Love, the beloved Nashville brunch hot spot. I had breakfast there last year. Their lofty flaky biscuits, slathered with butter and sorghum syrup were one of the highlights of my visit. Biscuits were added to my must blog about list.

I found their recipe online and read through it very carefully. It’s an unconventional recipe as it uses yeast as a leavening agent. Most traditional Southern biscuits rely on baking soda and/or baking powder. The other unusual ingredient was melted butter. Every other biscuit recipe I have read uses very cold, sometimes frozen butter. The theory behind cold butter is that, when the biscuits hit the oven, the butter begins to melt, causing steam, which contributes to flakiness. This recipe ran contrary to everything I knew about biscuit baking.

I took a leap of faith, mixed up the dough and baked a batch. I split a warm one open, buttered it and took a bite. It was good, but nowhere near as flaky and delicious as I remembered. These were not the biscuits of my dreams. Clearly some more research is needed here before I pass the knowledge onto you.

I decided to turn these passable biscuits into something really special. I created the E.A.T. breakfast sandwich featuring  Egg, Avocado and Tomato. I had some halloumi cheese in the fridge and fried some of that up as well, for a salty, cheesy layer.

I sliced up some pretty heirloom tomatoes, salted them well and drizzled them with olive oil. tomatoes and avocadoesI decided to mash up the avocados to give the sandwich a creamy base. A bit of lime juice, olive oil, salt and some red pepper flakes were added to the mash. Fried halloumi cheese and some fried eggs added the final two layers.ready to assemble

I took an adequate biscuit and turned it into a spectacular breakfast.

I did a bit of research and discovered that Biscuit Love makes 3 kinds of biscuits. The yeast raised ones that I made (also known as Angel biscuits) are what they use for their biscuit sandwiches. They also make a beaten biscuit, which are tiny and firmer, more like soda crackers. And finally, they make a traditional drop biscuit, which is what I must have been  served with butter and sorghum syrup. Those were the lofty flaky biscuits of my dreams. The quest is on to reproduce these biscuits. I’ll be back with something soon, I promise.

In the meantime, feel free to use store bought biscuits, english muffins or even some great bagels for this sandwich.

Click here to print recipe for E.A.T. Breakfast Sandwiches.

 

Breakfast Pizza

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cutting-leek-pizzaI blame my addiction to online shopping on my late paternal grandmother, my Bubbe. I grew up in Toronto, but she lived in Philadelphia. At least twice a years would send us her special poppy seed cookies. She always packaged them in a shoe box for mailing. I was conditioned to anticipate the arrival of apparel boxes at a very early age. It’s not my fault.

If you think about it, online shopping is really just the evolution of 20th Century catalogue shopping. If you are Canadian and of a certain age, you will remember The Eaton’s Catalogue. As a child, I spent many happy hours lusting after Barbie clothes and accessories. Not much has changed.

I recently discovered an unexpected bonus of online shopping. With my Amazon Prime subscription, I have access to Amazon TV. While making these breakfast pizzas, I began binge watching Good Girls Revolt. I had been feeling a bit lost after finishing Downton Abbey, and this series is filling the void.

Feel free to use store-bought pizza dough, or make your own. I am a big fan of Jim Lahey’s no-knead pizza dough. All you do it mix flour, yeast, salt and water in a bowl with a wooden spoon. Cover it and let is sit overnight until it becomes all bubbly. I have included the recipe for it at the end of this post.

My breakfast pizzas were inspired by an episode on Cook’s Country

The first one I created starts with a ricotta and feta base and is topped with nests of sautéed leeks cradling golden eggs.leek-pizza-mise-en-placespreading-ricottapouring-egg-into-leek-nestEach bite delivers a perfect combination of texture and taste; crispy, bubbly crust, creamy ricotta, gooey mozzarella, tangy Gruyere and golden brown caramelized leeks.  Topping this pizza off with eggs may seem like excess, but trust me, when your fork breaks the sunny yolk, and you drag the crust through that golden eggy goodness, you will thank me. slice-of-leek-pizzaMy second breakfast pizza is Southwestern, featuring tomatoes, corn, jalapeño, avocado and cilantro.tomato-nestsThinly sliced grape tomatoes form the nests to hold the eggs. pouring-egg-into-tomato-nestThe avocado and cilantro are added after cooking. tomato-avocado-pizza-sliced

 

slice-of-tomato-pizza

Click here to print recipe for Ricotta-and-Leek-Breakfast-Pizza.

Click here to print recipe for Tomato-and-Avocado-Breakfast-Pizzas.

Click here to print recipe for Jim-Laheys-No-Knead-Pizza-Dough.

breakfast-for-2

Sweet Potato and Turkey Sausage Hash

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brunch for 2Although I write a food blog, I seem to struggle when it comes to deciding what to make when I have company for brunch. Smoked Salmon, cream cheese and bagels (unless I bake my own), feels like I phoned it in. Just not enough effort. Sort of like serving jarred salsa and bagged tortilla chips when friends come over. Pancakes and waffles are a challenge because they really are best served as soon as they are made and I don’t love cooking when I have people over. I prefer to have as much done in advance if possible. Plus, so many people are avoiding gluten and/or carbs these days.

My go-to brunch standard is a fritatta. My favourite is studded with sautéed leeks, cauliflower, corn and Gruyere cheese. It can be made ahead of time and is delicious served warm or at room temperature. But I get easily bored with food and always want to try something new.

Clinton Kelly made a variation of this hash on The Chew a few weeks ago. It seemed like a perfect brunch dish. He used ready made chicken sausage, but I keep Kosher, and couldn’t find any at my butcher. I decided to make my own. Since I wasn’t putting  the sausage in casing, it really is quite simple to do. It’s just a matter of picking the right seasonings.making sausageI decided to use ground turkey and seasoned it with paprika, fennel seed, allspice, salt and red pepper flakes. Ground turkey tends to be dry, so to add moisture, without adding extra fat, I added some finely grated apple and onion. I learned that trick from Rachel Ray.

Once the ground turkey is browned up, it’s time to make hash. I used a combo of sweet potatoes and Yukon golds. I added some corn, sweet red peppers, and jalapeños for a bit of zing. ready to make hashOnce all the veggies are cooked, the ground turkey is mixed in and it’s time to add the eggs. before baking12 minutes in a hot oven and brunch is ready. A big (12 inch) cast iron skillet is perfect for this dish, but any large skillet will work. It can be brought right to the table and served from the pan.hash for 4brunch for 1 625 sqIf you want to get really cute, make the hash in a big pan, and then transfer it to 4 mini cast iron pans. Top each with an egg and bake. Serve each person their own little pan. I found the mini pans at World Market for $7.99 each. I couldn’t resist. hash in mini pan 625 sq

 

Click here to print recipe for Sweet Potato and Turkey Sausage Hash.