Archive for the 'breakfast' Category
I eat lunch at my desk a lot. The commute from my kitchen may seem perfectly suited to lunching on big quinoa salads (always my plan, rarely reality) and freshly cooked this or that. Mostly I wind up eating toast. It’s really an enjoyable spot to eat – with Twitter on and this view out the window, it’s almost like being on a park bench. Kinda. Except for all the papers.
Eggs are popular, with the aforementioned toast or quickly sautéed greens or draped over leftovers. I ran out of gumption to poach eggs sometime about two weeks ago, and one day decided to bake some instead. I didn’t want to coddle them. You know, that wouldn’t do them any favours.
I cracked two into a ramekin, poured over a spoonful of half & half, salted, peppered, and sprinkled with Parmesan. Baked at 350F for 15 minutes. (This is how the first few went: at 10 far from done; 20 cooked hard, but delicious with ketchup. Aim for somewhere in the middle.)
On this particular day I roasted some cauliflower, and slid a ramekin into the oven alongside to take advantage of that heat. A couple baked eggs require just a few square inches, and can be popped into the oven alongside just about anything. And they can be cracked over a spoonful of leftovers – meat or veggies or greens or a little nest of mashed potatoes – in the bottom of the ramekin to make things interesting.
How do you like your eggs?
May 18 2012 | breakfast and eggs | 22 Comments »
They say you have either a sweet tooth or a salty one – I have a warm biscuit with butter tooth. I’d choose a freshly baked biscuit over most anything else – it knocks a bag of chips out of the park, and can hold its own against anything chocolate.
I’ve been making a lot of these cream biscuits lately – so easy to stir together, and no cutting in of butter. It’s no secret that such a biscuit can be called into service for any number of occasions.
These are Stan Lee‘s leftovers. (Creator of Spider-Man! The Hulk! X-Men! The Fantastic Four! Iron Man! Thor! All the important people in W’s life.) When I was cooking for the sci-fi celebs at Calgary Expo, a security guy came in and asked for “an egg salad sandwich on white bread with the crusts cut off, and a C-Plus for Stan Lee.”
I asked if he thought I was a restaurant. You know, as if I was his mom. I didn’t have egg salad, nor C-Pluses, but on Sunday I made sure I mixed up a batch. There were leftovers, and when I got home I piled some onto a biscuit. It was a surprisingly good combo. (I can’t offer up a recipe for the egg salad – I peeled a few hard-boiled eggs and mashed them with a blop of mayo, minced celery and Italian parsley, a dab of grainy mustard and some salt and pepper. How does one make egg salad for Spider Man’s dad, anyway?)
A coffee shop opened up last month in my neighbourhood. One morning, in there with a friend for lattes, I met the owner, who professed to not know as much as he’d like to about food. I showed him how to make these biscuits, and now, having never baked a thing in his life, he turns out batches of fresh blueberry biscuits in the morning, and cheese biscuits some lunchtimes to serve with thickly sliced roasted ham. There are few better sandwiches than this – especially when a handful of aged white cheddar is tossed into the dry ingredients before you stir in the cream.
Or you could roll each cut-out biscuit out and stuff it with stuff. Last week I stuffed mine with scrambled eggs, crumbled bacon and bits of Gouda and havarti, and we all ate them for breakfast, and the boys brought the rest for lunch, and with some hot coffee, all was right with the world.
Oh yes, the recipe:
Cream Biscuits
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
2 cups heavy (whipping) cream
extra cream or milk, for brushing (optional)
Preheat the oven to 400F.
In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. If you like, add a handful of grated sharp cheese, some fresh or frozen berries, chocolate chunks or other additions. Add the cream and stir just until the dough comes together. On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough a few times, then pat into a circle about an inch thick.
Cut into wedges and transfer onto a parchment-lined baking sheet; if you like, brush the tops with milk or extra cream and sprinkle with coarse sugar. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until golden. Serve warm.
Makes 8-10 biscuits.
May 08 2012 | bread and breakfast | 20 Comments »
Snow in May calls for a sweet, doughy consolation prize.
Eat your heart out Hef. Could there be anything sexier? This doughnut could be a cover model. Or a centrefold. Do they even have centrefolds anymore? It wouldn’t need any photoshopping, anyway.
Age has brought with it a certain persnicketiness in the doughnut department. At one time I would have been thrilled with Timbits, but I’ve become spoiled – if I’m going to eat a doughnut it might as well be a really fantastically great one. This is not to say I easily shun a box of coffee shop doughnuts should I discover one in my vicinity. Warm ones, made from scratch with real vanilla, are a little more difficult to resist. But why would you want to, when slush is falling from the sky and you’ve pulled out your woolly socks again?
I buy this vanilla bean paste from the Cookbook Company Cooks for applications such as this, where the flavour is predominant and the smooth glaze allows you to see the bitty black seeds. You could use actual vanilla beans too – I just find the paste a bit easier and more economical. Also – I used every last bean in my cupboard to (finally) make my own extract. So easy-I’ll fill you in soon.
Doughnuts from scratch is the sort of thing I generally reserve for company, for days when I know more mouths will be around to help me out, because leftovers (it could happen!) don’t age well.
It may be the sort of thing I’d make if I had a group of friends over to make peroghies! Remember when I put it out there? The suggestion to have a good old-fashioned peroghy bee? I was thinking it might be a suitable Food Revolution Day activity. It’s coming up fast – May 19th – but really, any longer than two weeks would be far too long to wait. So if you’re free to come make peroghies and nibble coffee and a pile of warm doughnuts that Saturday, leave a comment here!
Vanilla Bean Doughnuts
Adapted from Canadian Living
Sponge:
1 tsp. sugar
1 cup warm water
1 pkg (2 1/4 tsp.) active dry yeast
1 cup all-purpose flour
Dough:
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla bean paste or good vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. salt
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
Vanilla Bean Icing:
2 cups icing sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 tsp. vanilla bean paste or good vanilla extract
canola oil (or another mild vegetable oil) for cooking
In large bowl, dissolve sugar and yeast in warm water; let stand until frothy, about 10 minutes. Stir in flour until you have a smooth paste. Cover with plastic wrap; let stand until bubbly and stretchy, about 30 minutes.
In large bowl, beat butter with sugar until fluffy. Beat in eggs, vanilla and salt, beat in sponge. Stir in flour until you have a sticky dough. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 6-8 minutes, or until smooth and elastic. Place back in the bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and place in a warm place until tripled in bulk, about an hour and a half.
Punch the dough down and roll or pat it out about 1/2-inch thick. Using a 3-inch doughnut cutter or a round cutter and a smaller one for the hole, cut out doughnuts. Transfer doughnuts and holes to a baking sheet, cover and let rise for another hour, until doubled in bulk.
In a wide, shallow pot, heat 2 inches of oil until hot but not smoking. Cook a few doughnuts at a time for a couple minutes per side, turning as they turn a rich golden. Remove from the pot with a slotted spoon and set aside to drain on a wire rack or paper towels. Makes 1 1/2-2 dozen doughnuts.
Vanilla Icing: Whisk together all the ingredients, adding a little extra icing sugar or milk if needed to make a dippable/drizzlable consistency. Dip or drizzle over doughnuts while they’re still warm.
May 05 2012 | bread and breakfast and dessert and sweet stuff | 19 Comments »
I know, who makes blueberry perogies anymore? Nobody, that’s who.
And I never have either, until the subject of Alberta cuisine arose earlier this week – and while we’re known for our beef, bison, canola, and really a ton of other great ingredients, there are few dishes that get up and scream Alberta. But homemade perogies – they truly are the food of the prairies. And sure, you could stuff them with any number of potato-cheese-bacon-saurkraut combos, but I wanted to give berries a go – in fact, I suddenly felt as if it would be unpatriotic to not make them. And besides, I wanted to know if they’d translate well into little doughy two-bite pies of sorts. Browned butter, berries and sour cream-oh my.
Perogies fall into that category of foods hardly made from scratch anymore because there’s no need. At one time perogy bees were the social events of the season – the original social medium – wherein folks would gather to catch up, gossip, discuss politics and together solve the problem of how to feed their families. This is what girls did before Starbucks, I guess.
Multitasking is not new – at peroghy bees thousands of perogies could be assembled in an afternoon to feed families, raise funds, or in preparation for social events. I love the thought that at one time weddings didn’t have ginormous trade shows and magazines and everyone just got married in the church where they lived, and the community got together to make perogies and dainties to serve afterward. Is that just in my head, having grown up watching Little House on the Prairie? I loved that show. I so wanted to be Mary, except for the blind part.
This dough is one of many versions out there, and simple to mix together. The finished perigees were boiled, then scooped out of the pot with a slotted spoon and browned in a hot pan with butter until they were golden and crisp on both sides.
You don’t have to fill them with blueberries, of course, if you don’t want to – take the leftover mashed potatoes from dinner, add a handful of grated cheese, and set the kids at the kitchen table with an after-school project.
OR. Gather a few pals and bring back the bee. Which brings me to my idea. (Insert eye-roll via Mike.) I think it’s been too long since our last playdate, which was before Christmas, come to think of it. Should we have our own perogy bee? Should we? Should we?
I’ll make dough, and get some bubbly, everyone can bring a filling, and we’ll open the back door and let the spring air breeze in while we cover the house with dough and flour. And I’ll enlist Mike to clean-up duty with the promise of homemade peroghies with bacon, onions and sour cream.
And blueberry perogies for dessert.
Blueberry or Saskatoon Berry Perogies
adapted from Canadian Living
Dough:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
pinch salt
2 Tbsp. butter, melted
3/4 cup milk
1 large egg
1/3 cup water (approx)
Filling:
2/3 cup sugar
1 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
2 cups fresh or frozen (don’t thaw them) blueberries or saskatoon berries
butter, for cooking (optional)
sour cream or whipped cream, for serving
In a large bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt. In a small bowl (or Pyrex measuring cup) stir together the butter, milk and egg; add to the flour mixture and stir until you have a dry, shaggy mixture. Add the water about a third at a time, until you have a soft, slightly sticky dough. Knead it about 10 times, then cover with a towel or plastic wrap and let rest on the countertop for 20 minutes.
To make the filling, stir together the sugar and flour; stir in the blueberries. On lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to a scant 1/4-inch thickness. Using a 3-inch round cutter, cut into rounds. Stretch each round slightly; fill with a spoonful of the blueberry mixture, ensuring you get some of the sugar-flour in there as well.
Pull dough over filling into semicircle; pinch edges together to seal. Cover with tea towel. Repeat with remaining dough and filling. Freeze in a single layer or cook immediately.
In large pot of lightly salted water, boil perogies in batches, until they float to the top and the dough is tender, about 10 minutes. With slotted spoon, transfer to dish; drizzle with butter to prevent sticking. If you like, brown the well-drained boiled perogies in a hot pan with butter until crisp and golden; dribble the remaining butter from the pan overtop. Serve with sour cream or whipped cream. Makes about 3 dozen peroghies.
April 25 2012 | breakfast and dessert and freezable | 42 Comments »
It was a pretty great weekend, actually. I nestled right into it. It had all the elements of a weekend that I might not have thought at all ideal ten years ago: bringing the boys to an early movie on Friday (meh), on Saturday we went to Seedy Saturday and Market Collective, and then were so inspired by all that creativity and all those seeds that we came home and started planting. We made little pots out of newspaper (a Pinterest discovery – I’ve just discovered the potential for procrastination there) that once sprouted, you plant directly outside in the dirt.
When we ran out of newspaper we drilled holes in the bottoms of stacks of plastic cups. We started with our just-bought seeds (W chose pumpkins, sunflowers and stock, a flower I had never heard of but it turns out was one of my Grandma’s favourites) and then W asked if we might hack apart an apple and plant its seeds. Why not? He then ransacked the cupboards, asking if each jar of grains and beans was in fact a seed and might grow. We wound up planting quinoa (actually a seed), chia, dry chickpeas and a few speckled du Puy lentils.
Mike came home to a kitchen covered with a not so thin layer of dirt. We’ll see what comes up.
Sunday morning we went for a family brunch – the perfect excuse to bake a batch of scones with berries and white chocolate – which are obviously far too dangerous to make on a regular morning with just the three of us. (Also, I had some excess half & half that had been frozen, which makes it go all lumpy in coffee, and the early March expiry date makes Mike nervous. Huge scone potential.)
Blueberry & White Chocolate Chunk Scones
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter, cut into chunks
1 cup milk or half & half
1 large egg
a handful of fresh or frozen blueberries (or raspberries, or blackberries)
a handful of chopped white chocolate
Preheat the oven to 425F. In a large bowl or the bowl of a food processor, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the butter and pulse or blend with a pastry cutter, fork or your fingers until the mixture is crumbly.
In a small bowl, stir the milk and egg together with a fork. Add the berries and chocolate to the dry ingredients and toss them about, then add the milk mixture. Stir with a spatula until the dough comes together, then gather it into a ball and pat it out an inch thick on a baking sheet. (When I make this quantity I pat it into a rough square.) Cut into pieces – try cutting across each direction into 3 or 4, making 9-16 pieces. It doesn’t matter if they’re square, rectangular or wedges – they’ll look great.
Pull the scones apart about an inch so that there’s space for them to cook all around, and bake for about 20 minutes, or until they’re golden. Serve warm, if at all possible.
Makes 9-16 scones.
As for the weekend, we’re wrapping it up now with some Shiraz, popcorn, and Annie Hall.
March 18 2012 | bread and breakfast | 20 Comments »
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