Delicious Egg Muffins, just out of the oven. The one in front is turned slightly on its side.

My DH’s guys came to our house yesterday for their weekly Bible study. Usually they eat sweets – doughnuts, coffeecakes, etc. But I decided this time that perhaps they’d all prefer more protein instead. After all the sweets and overall excess of the holidays, I’d make this one a bit different.

So, I turned to a recipe I’d been wanting to try for awhile. I’ve mentioned previously Kalyn’s Kitchen, a blog I read regularly. Kalyn is a follower of the South Beach Diet, which means eating only a few specific low-glycemic carbs and consuming plenty of lean proteins and lots of vegetables. And eggs. Kalyn fixes this type of egg dish nearly every morning – she makes them up in quantity (a week’s worth) and quickly microwaves them as she’s rushing out the door.

Even using low-fat cheese which is a bit less flavorful as full-fat cheese (mine was a mixture of cheddar, jack and Mozzarella) it was very, very tasty. The green onions add a lot. I didn’t happen to have any vegetables that I thought were just “right” for these, and I wanted to try them once without veggies before I added them the next time I make them. I liked these a lot. They’re extremely easy – mincing up the green onions was about the most tedious, if there really was any tedium to making them. I made exactly 12, and when I pulled them out of the oven they were puffed up very high (like a popover), but within seconds they began to deflate to what you see in the photo above. What’s nice about these is that you can vary every single ingredient (egg whites, or more of them than whole eggs, different kinds of cheeses, and use whatever veggies you like). Just remember that the vegetables take up a lot more volume (space) in the muffin cup, so you’ll get more than 12 if you use bulky veggies. If you don’t like preparing breakfast every day, and want something healthy and easy, this is your ticket! Thank you, Kalyn.
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When I first saw this eggy breakfast dish over at A Year at Oak Cottage (a blog I read regularly, written by Marie, a professional chef who lives out in the English countryside with her husband and dog), I knew I wanted to try this. It looked relatively easy (it is) and quick (well, it still takes about 25 minutes baking time). I had no idea how it would taste, but it sure sounded delicious (it is). Here are the four easy steps, but don’t be discouraged because there ARE four steps – they’re really quite simple:

First step: wrap a piece of bacon (streaky bacon they call it in Merry Olde England) around the inside of a muffin cup.

Second step: roll out a tender piece of white bread (after removing crusts), apply butter to one side and push it (butter side out) into the muffin cup as best you can. Once wedged in, you bake it for 10 minutes, until the bread has just begun to brown up a bit.

Third step: break a whole egg into each bread cup and return it to the oven for 10 minutes.

Fourth step: sprinkle some salt and pepper on top, some grated cheese (I used cheddar, but you could vary it easily enough with different cheeses – maybe even Brie, Fontina, or an herby goat cheese), then a few Italian herbs. You return it to the oven, bake an additional 4-6 minutes until the egg is just barely set. Let it sit for a minute or two, then gently remove from the muffin tin and serve. It’s a full breakfast in one little package. It was just delicious. Worth making for sure. My photo at top shows that some of the egg white oozed over the edge and down the side. I used large eggs, so that’s likely the reason. Maybe doesn’t look quite as nice, but didn’t make a whit of difference in the great flavor.

I served this with schnecken, (a semi-sweet yeast roll) and spiced peaches. And just because I had made two casseroles of it a few days ago, I also served some noodle kugel too. Not exactly a breakfast dish, but it went with it just fine. So, thank you, Marie, for this great recipe. If you haven’t ever followed Marie’s blog, I suggest you go check it out. She’s a woman of faith, loves to blog in the early mornings in her pajamas, paints, unabashedly adores her husband Todd, and her dog Jess, and writes up the most fun and interesting stories about her life and her cooking.
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It’s a good thing I enjoy reading, because I get to do a lot of it keeping up with just some of the food blogs out there. And I keep adding more, and very rarely deleting any. More and more people have discovered the fun of writing food blogs, so there are more and more of them. I can’t keep up with them every day, so I work at it every few days, trying to read as many as I can.

One such blog that is very prolific is Al Dente (an Amazon.com sponsored food blog showcasing recipes from foodie authors). In this case it was Nigella Lawson. I used to watch her show on the Food Network (but I don’t think she has a show anymore; at least I haven’t seen one). This recipe came from one of her cookbooks (not the one I own). She was recommending the spiced peaches as a hot side for a Christmas ham. Sounded good, but I had a different use in mind. I wanted to serve them as a breakfast side dish.

I have one recipe that I’ve used for years for spiced fruit. But it makes a rather large quantity (since it utilizes cans of different fruit), so when I spotted this recipe that used just one large can of peach halves, aha! It’s got many of the usual ingredients in spiced fruit (cinnamon, cloves and a bit of vinegar) but also some more unusual things (sliced fresh ginger, chile flakes and rice wine vinegar instead of regular). The best part? It was EASY. QUICK.  Took about 5 minutes total start to finish. I highly recommend it. To accompany holiday breakfasts, or as a side for ham (served hot).
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So, I was browsing through some of the blogs I read, and I happened on Chez Loulou’s post (I so enjoy Loulou’s blog – she lives in France, and has THE most interesting photos in and around the area she lives in – always very entertaining – I even tried to make a watercolor of one of her photos) about a breakfast or brunch dish that she’d made recently. It actually came from another blog Loulou reads (ah yes, I’m going to need to add yet another blog to my growing numbers that I read every few days), called Stonesoup. That blog originates from Australia, although the author is multi-national, I think. She’s lived all over the world, but currently resides in Sydney.

Perhaps it was the chorizo in this dish that intrigued me. Or maybe it was just because I’m always on the lookout for some easy entrée dishes that can stand in for dinner. Don’t you have evenings when you just aren’t inspired, or just don’t have the time? That’s me once in awhile (yes, really, there are times when I just don’t feel up to cooking anything much). So, that got me to thinking about meals – like this egg and bean dish – that is called a brunch dish – but could certainly be served for another meal like dinner.

I well remember that my mother sometimes on Sunday nights after we’d had a large midday dinner, would serve us creamed tuna on toast. She managed to make one small can of tuna spread between three people. She made a simple cream sauce, always added some lemon juice to it, then at the last minute she added the drained contents of one 6-ounce can of tuna, and we’d eat that spooned over one slice of white toast. It was a light meal, and perfect for the day in question. But then, there were Sundays when my mother would serve waffles for dinner. Why or how it ever became a tradition in our family I don’t know, but probably once a month we’d have regular waffles with sausage patties for dinner, with the finale being one last waffle piled with strawberries and whipped cream. As a kid, I thought that meal was heaven on a bun. My parents used to entertain other families for Sunday waffle suppers. My mother and dad are both gone, so I can’t ask them how that tradition ever got started. As a young adult I did have some waffle suppers, but my recollection (this would have been back in the 1960’s and 70’s, they weren’t met with much glee as I thought. I always told guests what we were having, so it wasn’t a surprise, but still I could tell people didn’t love it as much as I did. My DH doesn’t think waffles should be eaten at any meal except breakfast. In years past I tried the waffle supper thing on him, but he ate it reluctantly.

So, maybe it was that background of waffles on Sunday nights that made me look at this recipe with more interest. We don’t eat hearty breakfasts – if we do it seems to mess up our eating for the whole day. We’re not hungry for lunch, but then we’re starving by about 3-4 in the afternoon. Therefore, when I read this recipe I didn’t even think about breakfast at all. I thought – great idea for a light dinner. It took me 2 days to decide I wanted to make it.

Loulou’s and Stonesoup’s recipe is straight forward – you cook up some chorizo (I made a special trip to Whole Foods to buy their very meaty and lean version), some onion and garlic, a bit of Mexican oregano, red wine vinegar, tomato paste, canned tomatoes and canned cannellini beans. Little indentations are made in this mixture and eggs are gently cracked into them, then you bake it in the oven until done to your liking. This dinner took about 40 minutes to make from start to finish. My DH didn’t know what to think when I presented this dish at his place mat – for dinner. I had asked him first if this dish sounded good to him. I won’t say that he was over the top about it from reading the ingredient list, but generally he’s very willing to eat anything I put in front of him. So I made it the next night.

Truly, I enjoyed it a lot and Dave did too. I liked the flavor combination. It was hearty (beans). Very tasty. Easy and quick. I learned a couple of things, however. I revised the recipe to serve 2, since I didn’t know whether we’d eat leftover fried eggs on this chorizo bean bed. So I halved the recipe and tried to adapt it. I used a very large frying pan that can go in a hot oven, but the bean mixture then was quite thin. You must make this in a dish or pan that has enough depth to make the indentations for the eggs. And 15 minutes in MY oven was way too long at 400, so I revised the temp to 375. The eggs were almost rubbery, but not so overdone that we couldn’t eat it. My DH actually liked them that way since he doesn’t like runny eggs. So I’ve revised the cooking time to 10-15 minutes also. You need to determine your own preference. Definitely don’t use convection, either, as you don’t want hot air fanning the eggs! I also want this dish to have a bit more fluid – so use your own judgment about how much of the liquid to cook off. Ours was almost too dry, probably from being in the flatter pan. But it still tasted great.

Then you need to know about the leftovers – there was definitely enough to serve 3 adults using my recipe below. Dave and I both had a small portion of seconds, and there was still some leftover. So, what to do with those, you ask? Easy – I made soup. To the about 1 ½ cups of leftover beans I added some more tomatoes (I still had half a can of tomatoes), a small can of corn, some broth, chile powder, some ancho chile powder, heated it up and sprinkled shredded Cheddar on top. It was scrumptious!
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Every time we visit our daughter Dana, and her family, we have some chorizo and eggs. Her husband Todd has some Hispanic heritage in his bloodline, and he’s the breakfast cook in the family. Whenever he visits us here in So. California, he likes to make a trip to Whole Foods to buy their chorizo. Of all the chorizo out there, he really likes theirs better than others. He explained that chorizo is one of those products kind of like hot dogs, where the meat processors use all the leftover pieces of everything, (I don’t know about organ meat – I hope not) and they throw in a bunch of chile powder and other seasonings, I suppose. The chorizo from Spain is somewhat different – can even be more like a dried sausage, and probably isn’t seasoned with heat, but with paprika or other dried mild chiles. Whereas, the Mexican versions (which must be unique to every cook, just like tomato/meat sauce is to an Italian home cook) contain more spicy ground chiles.

I’ve been disappointed with the chorizo from the regular grocery stores. The meat just looks gooey. And it’s drippy with some kind of dark red liquid (partly the chile peppers). I don’t like meat that oozes. So in my mind, cheaper chorizo is more suspicious. Since I’ve read enough stories about how the meat producers use all those “other” meat parts from the cow or pig, and they employ chemicals to distill it to mush, I assume they do the same for chorizo. So, Whole Foods is my only source for chorizo. Theirs is encased in links, fat links, so you can cook them as is, or slip the meat out of the casing.

The CHORIZO & EGGS: Todd didn’t have any Whole Foods chorizo the other morning. Since I didn’t have to cook it and observe the ooze, I had some. And it was ever so good. I’d never cooked with chorizo until Todd came into our family. He cooks up the chorizo in a nonstick skillet until most of the fluid has dried up. He doesn’t stir it much, because he likes the chorizo to have some form (pieces rather than mush). Meanwhile he beats up a bunch of eggs (he may add just a small splash of milk to the eggs – I add water to mine, not milk). He pours off any pools of fat, then pours in the eggs to the pan with the chorizo. The skillet gets stirred until the eggs are nearly set, then he sprinkles a bunch of shredded cheddar cheese on top. He puts a cover on it for a minute until it’s melted and they’re done. You can eat the eggs plain, but the only way to eat it in their household is scooped into piping hot flour tortillas and eaten out of hand.

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It was time, again, for me to bake something for my DH(dear husband)’s Bible study group. I flipped through the options and came upon this one, which was very simple. That’s what I needed, as I was short on time. And I had one big Braeburn apple waiting to be utilized in something. I was supposed to use a Granny Smith, but I didn’t have one. Braeburn would have to do! There was only one problem. The recipe was mostly in metric (milliliters and grams). I managed, primarily because I have a kitchen scale that will convert the two. Good thing since I was rushing.

But for you, my friends, I’ve made it easy. I went to a website and did all the conversions for you, so you needn’t worry about having a special scale to compute the measurements.

As for the scone, it was very nice. A drier kind of scone, but since this is from a European blogger, she likely likes a drier type recipe. I tend to prefer a more tender crumb but that’s just my personal preference. Don’t misunderstand – it was delicious. I liked it. And I liked that I just plopped it onto a large baking tray (Silpat lined) and scored the top. Didn’t have to pat it out and cut rounds. The apple contained within the dough (which is mushed into it after it’s mixed up in the food processor – see, I told you it was easy) gave it a nice moistness. The fellows nearly ate the whole thing, but we had enough for breakfast instead of toast. I’d make this again just because it’s so very easy.

The recipe came from a blog I read regularly – Buerre et pain – and she got it from Morning Bakes, a breakfast baking cookbook by Linda Collister. I did have to make another adjustment – I didn’t have any whole wheat flour, so substituted additional all-purpose. I’ve altered the recipe for that, but you can substitute about ½ cup of the whole wheat if you’d like. And I’ve included just a tad more butter in the mixture than was called for in the original. Once the round is patted out, you sprinkle the top with some demerara sugar – I used turbinado. That gave each wedge a nice little crunch. I liked that part. I’ll make this again! You can also split a wedge and toast it, although the scone is very crumbly – even more so the second day.
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A friend, who lives on an actual small farm just a few miles from us (we mostly live in a suburb of several small cities, but we do have some lovely homes that are also zoned for livestock, horses, etc.). We actually live on county property, not city, so technically we could have chickens too. Fortunately none of our neighbors have begun raising any livestock to date.

So, this friend Fay has a bunch of chickens, and when they’re laying, she’s overwhelmed with eggs, so she gives them to everyone she knows. She dropped off a dozen lovely brown eggs for us. I hadn’t made specific plans for dinner, so I gave my DH a choice: an omelette or a big green salad (we’d had a nice lunch out that day, so wanted something lighter). He chose the former, and I concurred.

I dug around in the refrigerator for whatever I could find that lent itself well to an omelette: fresh dill, fresh mushrooms, Monterey Jack cheese, very sharp Cheddar and a bit of red onion. Perfect. Like you, I don’t generally follow a recipe for making an omelette. I mean, why? Eggs are so forgiving unless you cook them over too high a heat, or don’t use enough.

After sautéing the onion, I cooked down the mushrooms a bit (and set them aside), then whipped up the eggs, added a slurp of water to the bowl, poured it into the buttered pan. Using a spatula I gently spooned the cooking eggs toward the center, and once they were nearly cooked through I lapped the top with the mushroom mixture, the chopped fresh dill, and the grated cheese. A squirt of salt and pepper and I was nearly done. I sort of rolled one side over the other, and let it sit until the cheese melted. Once done, the omelette went onto plates and I sprinkled the top with some of Napa Style’s Citrus Rosemary Gray Salt.

For many years I’ve been a real fan of Michael Chiarello. I may have mentioned him on this blog before – early in his career he taught a few classes here in Southern California. At the time I didn’t really know much about him, but he taught a class about infused olive oils, which was really very interesting. Everyone went home with a small vial of infused oil, and I never forgot Michael Chiarello. The fact that he was (and is) a hunk of a good looking man didn’t hurt any, either! He was, at the time, just opening Tra Vigne restaurant in St. Helena (a fabulous restaurant, by the way, if you’re looking for a great meal), which consumed him for some years. The restaurant had a very cute cottage in which they sold lots of Italian inspired kitchen and house wares, and Napa Style was born. Then he got sideways with the partners, and they parted ways. Am sure there’s a long story about all that, none of which I know. He left Tra Vigne, and has gone on to great success with his mail order Napa Style business (now with physical stores here in California as well) and being a star on the Food Network.

Absolutely nothing contained in Napa Style is inexpensive, but most of the things are unique. Rarely have I seen any item in other stores, or in other catalogs. I respect him for that. I’ve ordered some things from them, and recently purchased a lovely metal side table to grace my office. But what I do buy from him are his salts. I do believe he started the flavored and herbed salt boom, and I’m grateful. They’re a cook’s epiphany. The perfect foil, the quintessential sprinkle. And I forget to use them as often as I should. I have several kinds, not just his – truffle, rosemary, lemon, and salts from the Himalayas, France, and other locales. I keep saving them for some special occasion. Now, what’s that about? Every meal is a special occasion . . . well, almost anyway. And some of Michael’s rosemary gray salt was the perfect topping for our glorious omelette.

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Eating an egg dish for dinner is just not something I seem to think about. It never even flits across my recipe-thinking radar. Eggs are for breakfast or brunch. Maybe, possibly, for lunch. But just not for dinner. Maybe it’s because we think we (maybe) had eggs for breakfast, and eggs are a treat these days, what with cholesterol, etc. Although what I’ve read most recently indicated that all these years we’ve been avoiding eggs was for the wrong reasons. They’re not so bad for us after all. But I buy those Omega-3 eggs, with added Vitamin E, or something. They’re supposed to be healthier for us. Less of the bad cholesterol. We don’t eat eggs for breakfast, so why not have them for dinner?

This frittata was prepared at a cooking class I went to this week. Given by one of my favorite cooking instructors, Phillis Carey. The subject for this class was pork, and ham was included in the frittata. An ideal combo – ham and cheese in an egg dish. Like ham and cheese in a sandwich, or a ham and cheese omelette.

I had most of the ingredients for this in my larder, so it was an easy decision, that we’d have this for dinner. Everybody loved it, me included. Asparagus is in season, and I think it would be just the best in this, and it’s what Phillis served in hers. I didn’t have any, but did have some sugar snap peas, and they worked just fine. Gave a little crunch to the dish, which is a good thing. I still had some of the fabulous Kurobuta Ham (I posted about it last week) that I bought for Easter, which was delicious in this dish. I still can’t rave enough about how fabulous the ham was.

• A frittata, by definition, is a bit different than an omelette. It’s an Italian omelette that frequently features filling such as meats, cheeses and vegetables. Like a French omelette, a frittata is prepared in a skillet. Where an omelette is cooked on a stovetop, a frittata is first partially cooked on a stovetop and finished under the broiler and served open faced. (mostly from Wikipedia)

I was first introduced to frittatas, a long time ago, by my Aunt Jan. She’s now gone, but she used to make a very good frittata with zucchini and cheese. I hadn’t made it in years, so the one today tasted particularly good. Phillis encouraged us to make this for a brunch. She suggested that, like the Spanish tortilla (an egg – and often potato – dish), the frittata can be served at room temperature or just warm. Ideal for a brunch. And vegetables certainly can be varied, based on your family’s likes or dislikes. Mushrooms weren’t in Phillis’ version, but several of us decided they’d be a welcome addition. And Phillis also mentioned serving this with a red pepper (bottled) – mayo sauce dolloped on top of each serving, something you could easily just mix together minutes before serving.
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The stories that go along with recipes, those hand-me-down treasures from family members especially, lend a rich character to them. Their origin gives them special merit. Added credibility. A known quantity of deliciousness.

I don’t talk about my first marriage much (thank goodness, you really should be spared the details), but in the course of the years that she was alive, I got to know and love my former husband’s step-grandmother, Ethel. She was a dear little lady, and I have 3 or 4 recipes of hers acquired over the years. This is one (I also have one for avocado ice cream, and another for icebox almond cookies that I remember right off the top, neither of which I’ve posted yet) that must have been served to me one of the multitude of times I visited her home. She was a very good cook, and managed to prepare some amazing meals in her very small kitchen. She enjoyed entertaining, even though it was hard work for her as she aged. She lived to be in her 90’s, bless her. I hope she’s waving at me from heaven since I’m sharing her recipe for coffeecake.

For many years, even up until recently, I have made this on holiday mornings, like Christmas, or Easter, or the day after Thanksgiving. With a bowl of fresh fruit, and maybe some bacon or sausage, it makes a lovely breakfast or brunch.

Chocolate as an ingredient in coffeecake isn’t very common. At least I don’t think so. And this really isn’t chocolate-chocolate coffeecake. You might think the chocolate is in the entire coffeecake, and it’s not. It’s not overwhelming with chocolate, but is laced through in a kind of dry mix that is layered, then sprinkled on top. So, it’s a chocolate streusel-type coffeecake. It’s just a rich sour cream based cake. The only unusual ingredient there is cream of tartar. Not many recipes include it anymore. It used to be quite common, before double acting baking powder. So, that probably gives you an idea how old this recipe really is. Old.

So I did a bit of research about it cream of tartar. I’d forgotten what it is, exactly. Now I know:

Cream of tartar is a by-product of the wine industry. A crystalline acid forms on the inside of wine barrels. The barrels are scraped and the sediment is purified and ground to form cream of tartar. Cream of tartar is used to stabilize egg whites when making meringue or as an addition to certain frostings to produce a creamy product.

Why it’s in this recipe, I don’t know, but I’ve never wanted to bake the coffeecake without it merely to test it. There’s so much chemistry involved with baking that I don’t want to tamper with success. But be my guest, then let me know!

• Normally, when cream of tartar is used in a cookie, it is used together with baking soda. The two of them combined work like double-acting baking powder. When substituting for cream of tartar, you must also substitute for the baking soda. If your recipe calls for baking soda and cream of tarter, I would just use baking powder.
• One teaspoon baking powder is equivalent to 1/4 teaspoon baking soda plus 5/8 teaspoon cream of tartar. If there is additional baking soda that does not fit into the equation, simply add it to the batter.

Looks like you could substitute additional baking powder for the cream of tartar and baking soda called for, but since I had the cream of tartar, I stuck with the tried-and-true recipe when I made it this time.
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As a card-carrying chocoholic, I will attest, these little numbers are too darned good. I ate a whole one plus a little piece of another just after baking. And it took all my will power to stay out of them. My advice: either don’t make them at all, or put the leftovers – immediately – into the freezer.

I was putting away recipe clippings the other day, and needed something to fix for DH’s Bible study group, and this recipe went into the “try immediately” stack. They came together easily, although I did dirty-up many a bowl getting them ready. I mixed up the dry ingredients the night before. I watched a demo on TV just the other day of a chef mixing in cold butter to flour. You do it by hand, just smashing the little pieces of butter and making those pieces smaller and smaller by sifting the mixture through your hands and pressing. It was fun, actually. Made a bit of a mess of my hands, but so what? Then you add the liquid ingredients (heavy cream and egg yolk), before kneading slightly into a big blob and pressing it out for cutting. I brushed the tops with heavy cream instead of milk, and I sprinkled the tops with just a tad of white sugar too. Were these good? Oh my yes. The recipe is from an issue of Bon Appetit in 2006, I believe, and is credited to The Balmoral Hotel near Edinburgh, Scotland, The Bollinger Bar at Palm Court.

Here are the scones before baking, brushed with cream and sprinkled with granulated sugar.
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