Eggs Archives

Raid-The-Fridge Frittata

I don’t often ask you to get out of your seat while reading my blog, but for the frittata you see in the above picture I demand a standing ovation!

I mean, really. Can you believe that I made that? Not only did I make that, I made that bleary-eyed on a Saturday morning using just the ingredients I had on hand. And Craig, who didn’t know what to expect when I said I was making a frittata, couldn’t stop raving about the results. “This is like professional restaurant quality food,” he declared. “Every bite has something different…you get the sweetness of the tomato, the spiciness of the jalapeno, the…..” You get the idea.

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Weekend Brunch: Poached Eggs on Roasted Potatoes with Hollandaise Sauce

Last weekend, I decided to make a very ambitious breakfast of poached eggs on roasted potatoes with Hollandaise sauce. It took a whole carton of eggs (three for the Hollandaise, four for poaching and the rest for throwing away after the yolks bled into the whites) but the resulting dish, as you can see, was pretty dazzling. It’s the kind of breakfast that makes you, the chef, feel proud and triumphant, roaring with the might of a culinary lion. “I made that!” you keep saying to yourself, reluctant to disturb the plate with a fork. “I really made that.”

“Yes,” says your companion, digging in.

“I’m a culinary lion!” you continue. “Rawwwwwwwwr!!”

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Frittata & Aioli

I promised I was done with my trip to Barcelona, but–as often happens when I travel abroad–I came home eager to cook my trip. Of all the things we ate during our ten days there, two dishes were immediate candidates for the Amateur Gourmet treatment: frittata & aioli.

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Eggs Adam Roberts

Immortality is not something food bloggers can look forward to. Even though the internet feels permanent, who knows where we’ll be in ten or twenty years? These posts that you love and cherish so much might vanish into the ether and then what? What will food bloggers have to show for themselves? Nothing, I tell you, nothing! That is, unless we start naming recipes after ourselves. Which is why I bring you a recipe that should hit restaurant menus as soon as I click “post”: behold, Eggs Adam Roberts.

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A Killer Breakfast

There is no greater triumph for a home cook than to make something spectacular out of food you already have on hand. Case in point: the dish you see above, Chorizo scrambled eggs and fried fingerling potatoes–assembled, with no premeditation, in a matter of minutes.

How did I do it? Easy. I took Chorizo that I had leftover from the Arroz Con Pollo I cooked last week and, after peeling off the skin, cut it into cubes. I heated some olive oil, added the cubes, fried them up a bit–poured off some excess fat–and then added 3 eggs slightly beaten. I immediately lowered the heat to barely a whisper of a flame and stirred around until the eggs were hardly cooked. Salt, pepper, all done!

As for the potatoes, I took the fingerlings and cut them vertically. Then I coated a skillet with olive oil, turned on high heat, waited a few minutes and carefully placed the poatoes in face down. I left them like that for a long while–10 minutes–and after lifting one to make sure it was a dark beautiful brown, I started tossing them all around and continuing to cook until a knife went through easily. At that point I added lots of salt and pepper and tilted on to a plate.

Not the healthiest breakfast in the world, but one that’ll put a big smile on your face. And if you’re smiling at breakfast, imagine what you’ll be doing at dinner. No wonder it’s the most important meal of the day.

A Say, Say, Savory Onion, Cheese and Bacon Tart

If it’s fair to mock Diane Keaton for ordering pastrami on white bread with mayo in “Annie Hall,” then it’s fair to mock me for not knowing much about savory tarts and quiche-like items. In my Jewish upbringing both in New York and Boca Raton, Florida I never encountered a savory tart or a quiche. Naturally, I’m sure I’ll get a flood of responses: “I’m Jewish and I ate quiche every day!” “My name is Shlomo Quichey and I resent everything you stand for.” Fair enough. I’m just saying from my experience, at many Jewish people’s homes, Bar Mitzvahs and buffet tables there wasn’t a savory tart or quiche in site. Satisfied?

My point is that savory tarts and quiches are unfamiliar to me. They are difficult for me to wrap my brain around: who would want to eat something that looks like a pie that isn’t sweet? It isn’t human. It isn’t right.

But it just so happened that at the end of last week I found, in my refrigerator, bacon, eggs and cheddar cheese. I entered those ingredients into Epicurious and came up with this, a fabulously well-reviewed bacon, egg and cheese tart. I had all of the ingredients. My interest was piqued. And as I said, this was fabulously well-reviewed. People wrote things like: “I was suicidal and this tart saved my life”; “This tart is better than my child. I sent my child to camp so I could spend more time with this tart.”

So for the specific tart-making directions, follow the recipe link. Here’s a vague overview.

First, you make and bake the tart crust:

I had some trouble, but I overcame.

Then you fry up some bacon:

In the bacon fat, you cook up onions (that’s a genius move). Then you add the onions to the tart:

Now to the onions, you add the bacon, cheese (I had cheddar, the recipe requires the other kind), and a cream mixture with nutmeg and other flavors.

You bake for a while and it comes out looking like this:

I must say, the result was truly excellent. The bacony, carmelized onions are transcendent, and the consistency of everything else–the egg/cream mixture, the tart dough–is sheer perfection. This is a savory tart for the savory tart doubter.

As you can see in the top pic, I served it with an arugula, yellow cherry tomato salad simply dressed with olive oil, champagne vinegar, salt and pepper. ‘Twas a winning dinner served with a crisp white wine. Was also a winning lunch served the next day without wine because I’m not a drunkard. As for how this new affection for savory tarts affects my religious affiliations, all I have to say is that Mel Gibson is my Co-Pilot! Now we’re all in trouble.