Archive for the 'eggs' Category
Wait – don’t go. Hear me out.
Last week I made a resolution to use the food I have in my kitchen, rather than go shop for more, deciding what’s for dinner depending on my mood or the (near-constant) desire to try something new. I go for milk and eggs and come home with bags full of whatever was inspiring or on sale at the time, and then can hardly cram it into my cupboards and freezer. I think this is pretty typical, considering the fact that walk-in pantries and chest freezers are standard issue in most houses.
I hear a lot of people refer fondly to their fridges as that place produce goes to die. And it’s true – in North America (Canada very much included) it’s estimated that we throw out 40-50% of the food we buy. Half! Can you imagine the spending on groceries that takes place across the country on a daily basis? And that half of those purchases are tossed out? (Or composted, but still.) Besides the actual food waste, consider how much time and energy went into growing or producing all that food, transporting it, stocking shelves, even driving to the store to buy it. And it winds up tossed. A study last year estimated the annual cost to be $27.7 billion. Billion! That pipeline project everyone is talking about costs a measly $7 billion in comparison.
Alright, I’ll get to the point. Didn’t mean to get all preachy.
So what do you do when someone brings over a hunk of caraway Gouda so big it’ll keep you in cheese and crackers for a month? And you can’t do grilled cheese because of your six year old’s reaction to little bits in his cheese? You turn to the all-knowing intra-net and search for something to make with caraway and cheese in it. You go to Epicurious and punch in “Gouda” and “caraway”. If you’re lucky, something will pop up that makes use of that enormous bag of coleslaw you bought with the best intentions.
To make this quiche you cook a few slices of chopped bacon with an onion, and when the bacon is crisp and its fat rendered, you throw in a few handfuls of cabbage and cook it down. (A great use of bagged coleslaw – especially the last of the bag, which tends to get wilty.) When I did this, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world – like a fantastic warm bacon slaw. But as it cooked down it became more dense, as cooked vegetables do, and it made a great filling. Especially with the odd thin shard of carrot and purple cabbage – colour is always a good thing.
So yes, a cabbage and caraway quiche is an entirely unlikely thing to ever come out of my oven – but at the same time, MacGyvering my way through dinner pushed me out of my comfort zone, and the results were totally delicious. So good, in fact, that I made one of these a week ago, and then another this morning for my sister’s birthday brunch. The reaction around the table? “What’s in this? It’s delicious!” It wasn’t as easily identifiable as your typical ham & cheese or spinach quiche.
But you know how everything you make just sort of tastes like everything else you make? That you have your spice roster and don’t often edge out beyond it? Caraway is not typically a part of my culinary palette. It’s a fine spice, I have nothing against it, I just don’t really use it. I don’t think I could even locate any among the vast number of small jars and baggies that make up my spread-out spice non-rack. But with the creamy cheese and smoky bacon, it totally worked.
I’m not a quiche maker. But frittata tends to be my fall-back leftovers-user, and they aren’t much different. I contemplated skipping the crust, but then recalled how much I love a good wedge of quiche in a restaurant, and I went for it. I do love a good pie crust, and that you can get away with a slightly softer, more velvety filling when you’re not relying on it to hold its own.
Gouda, Coleslaw & Caraway Quiche
I swapped caraway Gouda for the gruyere and caraway seed in the recipe – you could of course do either. Adapted from Bon Appétit, December 1990.
4 bacon slices, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
2-3 cups coleslaw or shredded green cabbage
3 large eggs
1 cup half & half or milk
1 cup grated Gouda or Gruyère cheese (or more, if you like – just wing it)
1/2 tsp. caraway seeds (optional)
salt & pepper
1 9″ deep-dish pie crust
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line your pastry crust with foil and pie weights (if you have them) and bake for 15-20 minutes, until pale golden. Remove the foil and weights and turn the oven up to 375°F.
Meanwhile, cook the bacon in a large heavy skillet over medium heat, add onion and cook until the bacon is crisp and the onion is tender. Add the coleslaw and cook until it wilts and all excess moisture evaporates, 10-15 minutes
In a medium bowl whisk together the eggs, half & half, cheese, caraway seed (if you’re using it) salt and pepper. Spread the cabbage mixture into the crust and pour the egg mixture overtop. Bake until filling puffs and starts to brown, about 40 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Serves 8-10.
January 22 2012 | eggs and one dish | 16 Comments »
I’m back to my McGyvering ways, this time orchestrating a meal around two leeks that I did not want to compost. I tend to get stuck at potato soup when I come across a leek, but this time the sight of them triggered the memory or a recipe I had set aside. I found it. I had Gouda! I had bacon! I started to make it, cooking the bacon, then the sliced leeks, until crispy, thinking it was essentially a frittata, wondering why it was called a pancake and why I had set it aside, anyway. Then I noticed the flour in the batter – ah yes, a pancake. A light, eggy pancake, something similar to those puffed apple pancakes, only savoury. Exactly the sort of thing I’d file away in my mental card catalog.
Bacon, Leek and Gouda Pancake
6-8 slices bacon, chopped
2 large leeks (white and light green parts only), halved and thinly sliced
3 large eggs
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup all purpose flour
a spoonful of grainy mustard (1 tsp – 1 Tbsp)
1/2 tsp. sugar
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup shredded Gouda
Preheat oven to 450°F. In a large ovenproof (cast iron works great!) skillet, cook the bacon until crisp. Set aside, pouring off all but a couple spoonfuls of the drippings. Cook the leeks in the pan for 5-8 minutes, until soft and turning golden.
Meanwhile, whiz together the eggs, milk, flour, mustard, sugar, salt and pepper in a blender or food processor until smooth.
Scatter bacon over leeks in the skillet and pour the batter overtop; sprinkle with cheese. Bake for 10-15 minutes, until slightly puffed and golden. Cut into wedges and serve warm. Serves 6.
May 19 2011 | breakfast and eggs and one dish | 17 Comments »
I’ve fallen into a poached egg rut – the very best kind of rut to be in, I’d argue. I picked up a dozen eggs prettier than a box of chocolates, in shades of pale green hostas and blue hydrangeas among speckled brown, toast and ecru. (Sorry, got a little Martha there on y’all.) They’re at the Kingsland market, from Noble Meadows Farm, where it must be said they have THE most amazing goat feta, made right on their farm, from their herd of goats, in Nobleford, Alberta. (Just typing that, I had to go downstairs and nibble a few cubes straight from their brine in open fridge, Nigella-style.) If you go, do yourself a favour and pick up a pack of spreadable goat cheese with apricot jam, then plant yourself on your couch with your sister and a package of crackers.
I picked up a 6-pack of duck eggs, too – from Greens, Eggs & Ham – they’re like chicken eggs, only bigger and mellower, if you can imagine an egg tasting slightly different from the eggs you’ve likely become accustomed to over your lifetime. W was disappointed when we first cracked one and a duck didn’t pop out. After all, we don’t call our regular ones chicken eggs.
With my cold dragging its feet, I didn’t have much will to cook a proper dinner every night. I managed some – one night was lasagna, but I didn’t post it because I winged it, forgot what I did, and didn’t want to come tell everyone to do the same. We ate beef bourguignon with mushrooms and lentils left over from a photo shoot for an upcoming issue of Apple magazine. But mostly this week we’ve been eating mixed greens out of a tub, birthday party food, and poached eggs on toast. No-knead bread toast, even. I could never tire of the combo. I may have to cut myself off of it.
If you are among the millions daunted by the thought of poaching an egg, I posted a wee tutorial over at Family Kitchen.
January 23 2011 | eggs and Family Kitchen | 23 Comments »
Have I shown off my garden yet? I’m loaded – with spinach and chard, that is – between the CSA box and the boxes in my back yard, I should have X-ray vision or some such superpower by the end of the summer. Which is coming up all too quickly.
I punched “chard” into the search box on Epicurious the other day, looking for more inspiration (but really just procrastinating), and these frittata bites jumped out – they suggest cold squares for a cocktail party. I wound up doing my own thing, but kept the sausage-chard-feta combo, and it was loved by all. (Except W, who struggled unsuccessfully to separate the green stuff from the rest.) Bonus: two huge bunches of chard went into this – it always amazes me how small it gets once it wilts. You could cook a bunch down to a spoonful and just eat it, like a real-food vitamin pill.
Chard, Sausage and Feta Frittata
canola or olive oil, for cooking
1 small onion or half a purple one
2-3 large sausages (I used Winter’s Turkeys sausages)
1-2 bunches chard, ribs removed and leaves roughly chopped or torn
8 large eggs
1/4 cup milk
salt & pepper
1 cup crumbled feta
Preheat oven to 350°F. In a large ovenproof skillet (cast iron is perfect!) heat a drizzle of oil and cook the onion over medium-high heat for a few minutes, until starting to soften. Squeeze the sausage out of its casing into the skillet and cook, breaking it up with a spoon, until no longer pink. Transfer to a bowl and add another drizzle of oil (if you need it) then add the chard to the pan – if you’ve washed it, the moisture clinging to the leaves should provide enough moisture – and cook for a few minutes, until it wilts. Add the sausage and onion back to the pan.
Whisk eggs, milk, salt and pepper. Stir in the cheese and pour over the meat and veg in the pan. Turn the heat to medium-low and cook for a few minutes, until it’s starting to set around the edges and on the bottom. Transfer to the oven and cook for about 10 minutes, until cooked through and golden on top. (Alternatively you could stir the lot together, pour it into a buttered baking dish and bake for 40-45 minutes, until set.)
Serve warm, in wedges, or cold in squares. Leftovers make great sandwich filling. Serves 8.
One Year Ago: Browned-Butter Blueberry Muffins (made with saskatoons)
August 24 2010 | appetizers and eggs and one dish | 16 Comments »
I thought I might actually lose some weight this week. Ha! Instead I’ve become hooked on peanut butter toast, those chewy-salty peanut granola bars, and Oreos with 2% milk. When your very best choices are the snacky things, you tend to go a bit overboard. Or I do, anyway.
Damn you, Mr. Christie. You make good cookies.
I’ve been running on fumes this week. (Literally-I haven’t managed a shower in two days.) I haven’t been keeping up with the conversation here or at the Week in Their Kitchen blog as much as I’d like to. Today I didn’t have much time to spend trying to figure out what to do. I thought it was going to be a can of soup night. But I pulled out the thickly sliced zucchini and mushrooms in tomato sauce I made earlier in the week, thinking I’d put it on pasta. But it was so nice and chunky… I warmed it in a little baking dish, made some wells with a spoon into which I cracked a few eggs, and baked it. The eggs are tiny – rolling around in their styrofoam egg container with the expiry date hand-written on it in marker. I wonder if they are from someone’s backyard chickens?
You guys. I can’t believe how good this was. It was brilliant. I am so adding this to my regular repertoire, and not even changing it when I have access to more ingredients.
I’ve made eggs in Pipérade before – with peppers, tomatoes and garlic – but I don’t recall it being quite this good. Perhaps it was the time the vegetables had to spend in the fridge.
It was simply a zucchini, package of mushrooms (and OK – an onion – only because it was on the countertop on Monday and Mike unknowingly chopped and tossed it in, thinking it was with the rest of the stuff) and a shake of dehydrated garlic (one of my three spice choices) sauteed in a skillet with some canola oil. I poured a can of the plainest tomato sauce overtop and let it simmer, then it spent a few days in the fridge. Once the eggs were cracked in, they took about 15 minutes to bake in a 400ºF oven. Wowzah.
We ate it on toast, which was part of the appeal – I’m a fan of bread dragged through thick tomato sauce – and this was almost sloppy-Joe-esque, only better. And what a great, cheap, meatless meal – like eggs on toast for grown-ups. So long as you have tomato sauce, it could be made from any number of wilting veggies.
Speaking of. I know the Calgary Food Bank has become a sort of dumping ground for produce that is unsellable and often on the verge of composting itself. Plenty of companies (generously?) donate what’s garbage to them to the food bank, much of which is on the verge of unusable or already slimy – I’ve seen staff and volunteers out back, sorting through heaps of compost, opening packages to dump out the contents and filter out the plastic packaging. They really don’t need to be spending time and resources sorting through garbage so that whatever is compostable makes it into compost instead of into landfill.
So while we’re collectively eye-rolling over plantains and mushrooms and expired coleslaw (which is dated May 25th, but I ate again tonight, and it was just fine) I’m glad that some of this is being used – clearly plenty of it is perfectly edible, despite its poor aesthetics. We consumers like our produce to be plump and fresh with nary a blemish.
Which brings me to the topic of food waste. It’s something I’ve wanted to address for awhile – I have plenty to say on the subject, but for now I want to toss it out there for you to comment on. Every month, residents of Toronto toss out 17.5 million kilograms of food. (I’m sure statistics for Calgary are similar.) About a third of food purchased in the UK is thrown out every year – that translates to about $19.5 billion in Canadian dollars. Part of the problem is best-before and use-by dates on packaging, which isn’t regulated by any governing body and so determined by the manufacturers, most of whom undoubtedly would like to see a faster turnover of their product. Part of the problem is planning, and ease of accessibility, and sheer volume of food we all keep in our kitchens. (Do you know exactly what’s lurking in your fridge?) And buying more instead of using what we have.
Discuss.
June 03 2010 | breakfast and eggs | 29 Comments »
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