Tag Archives: eggs

Fancy Breakfast Friday: Khachapuri

I was flipping through Food and Wine recently and I saw this picture:

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There wasn’t a recipe, just a reference to the Walnut Street Cafe in Philadelphia. So I googled Khachapuri and read a bunch of different recipes, and then just decided to wing it. It kind of reminded me of the breakfast pizza I tried to make a while ago, with terrible results. But the shape seemed promising. The idea with khachapuri, is that you have a bread boat full of cheese and a lightly cooked egg. You tear off bits of crust and dip it in the melted cheese and yolk. Sounded like a perfect breakfast.

I made my normal pizza recipe, but I subbed milk for water, and added two tablespoons of butter. Then I let it rise in the fridge over night. In the morning I let the dough sort of warm up while the oven preheated, and then I rolled up the boats and added cheese. I just used mozzarella because I decided to make this after dinner on Thursday night, and I didn’t want to go to the store for fancier cheese. (Also, I am boycotting our normal grocery store because the remodel was causing me to experience anxiety every time I went, which was about two times a day. In my new, post grocery store life, I am happy and calm. I’m shopping elsewhere, at Costco and Lucky’s. Lucky’s serves $2 pints and has some carts with a beverage holder. The opposite of anxiety inducing! They also don’t really have a lot of food, and what they do have is kinda expensive. And I accidentally bought decaf coffee there, but after two days of severe headaches, I figured it out. $2 pints!!)

The khachapuri bakes at 500 for about 15 minutes and then you add the egg and cook it for 4 minutes more. I couldn’t decide if I was going to add the egg at all until the very last second, but I did, and I’m glad, because it was so delicious. Only one egg slid out of the boat, but I got it back in there quickly with the yolk intact.

Everyone thought they were delicious. The boys couldn’t finish theirs so I said to eat the messy part and then I put it in a tupperware for lunch or snack. Luke at he rest of his, but Jack forgot about his, and somehow his tupperware ended up back in the cabinet, and I found half a khachapuri in there 4 days later.

Other than that, huge success! A bit ambitious for a school morning though.

Fancy Breakfast Friday:Breakfast Enchiladas

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Have you ever watched one of those food videos on Facebook where they cook something beautifully on fast forward and you think, “Yum, and that’s so pretty!!!” Sure, of course you have. But have you ever, then, followed the recipe? Is anyone going to make those fancy pie crusts for Thanksgiving? I mean, I would love to… but my crust isn’t so perfectly easy to manipulate. I know that would be a literal recipe for disaster and a #nailedit photo. Plus I’m currently all out of doilies. (That is a sentence I said last night when I was explaining why I brought a cake to a potluck in a cake carrier that wasn’t the cake carrier my friend gave me. I knew I’d see her, and if only I had put the cake on a doily I could have more easily transferred it to the pretty cake carrier when I remembered I was going to see her.) (If you are wondering why I brought up doilies, it’s because in the pie crust tutorial, you roll your crust out on a doily to get a cool pattern.)

Any who, last week I saw a cute video about breakfast enchiladas on Facebook and it inspired me. This recipe is very customizable. The night before I made bacon, and I boiled cubed potatoes. I filled the tortillas with bacon, potatoes, cheddar, mozzarella, and scallions. I sautéed peppers but I served them on the side for picky eaters. I rolled the enchiladas and I think I fit 10 in a 9×12 pan. Then I whisked 6 eggs, and a cup of milk* and a tablespoon of flour with some salt and pepper. I poured that over the tortillas and put the casserole in the fridge over night. In the morning I baked it at 400, which may have been too high, but whatever.

They were good. I served them with sour cream and salsa. I feel like they would have been better with beans, and salsa mixed in. They were a little dry and bland to be honest, but they felt pretty nourishing for a breakfast.

I’m trying something super complicated this week, and I’m already wishing I had some easy casserole in the oven and my feet up. Stay tuned!

Fancy Breakfast Friday: Big Buttermilk Biscuits

This recipe is from Oprah magazine and I found the baked egg aspect intriguing. This was supposed to make 12 huge biscuits, so I decided to follow my brilliant plan from the bagels last week and half the recipe and then stretch it to 8. My old theory use to be, “As long as I am baking or cooking I might as well make 1000 of everything.” That explains why I would only make cookies once a year. Once, right after I had given away all my cookies someone asked me to make 2 dozen cookies for the teachers. I begrudgingly did it and I learned a valuable lesson. It’s a lot easier and less time consuming to make a smaller amount of something. Especially something that may not be the healthiest thing in the world to have around the house. Long story short (too late) I halved the recipe.

This recipe calls for a 3″ biscuit cutter, which I do not have because until this point in my life I have exclusively made drop biscuits. I used a large jar. And guess what? I ended up with 12 biscuits. The only thing I can figure out is that I rolled the dough to half the thickness I needed. Otherwise the math doesn’t work out.

I only made 4 biscuits with an egg in them because I thought they would be gross as leftovers. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure how they’d be fresh out of the oven either. The non-egg biscuits came out looking golden and gorgeous. I left the eggs in a little longer because they hadn’t really turned golden and the eggs looked very runny. Finally I tapped one of them to see just how runny they still were and my finger bounced right off. They felt like rubber. The boys found the egg inside the biscuit to be quite fascinating, and fun. They tasted good, the biscuit was very buttery and the egg had a kind of hard boiled quality to it.

Everybody got a biscuit with an egg baked in, some bacon, and half a burnt grapefruit. For the grapefruit, I put some sugar on top and caramelized the sugar with my creme brûlée torch. Fancy, I know. (This idea came from Centro, which used to have my favorite breakfast in town before they changed chefs.)

This was a fun breakfast. I would make it again if it was requested.

Fancy Breakfast Friday: Portable Baked Eggs

Last Friday we were lounging in our hotel room, easing into a day of baseball games. By “we” I mean Jack and I. Luke and Dave had to get up around 5:30 am. Jack and I took the leisurely route and showed up for the second inning, or sometimes the second game. I knew our hotel didn’t have a free continental breakfast, but did have a restaurant. I was feeling thrifty and organized, so I pre-made some FBF before we left. Then I beautifully arranged them on a plate for a photo before I put them in a tupperware and then into a cooler for our trip to Steamboat Springs.

I have to admit that I was feeling a little cheap by pre-baking breakfast, but it worked out really well. Hotel restaurants aren’t super highly efficient at 5:30 am, and even if they are, who has time for a sit down meal before an 8:00 am game, with a 7:00 am warm up that’s a 45 minute drive away? Long story short, Fancy Breakfast Friday saved the day.

I didn’t want to do a pastry because I was looking for something a little more substantial. Baseball games can be exhausting so protein is important. I turned once again to Feed Zone Portables. Last time used this cookbook, I made frittata, but I wanted to go for something with more kid appeal. (no veggies) This recipe is basically just 6 eggs baked in a muffin tin. I did three scrambled and three unscrambled. A little salt and pepper. When they came out, I topped them with bacon and parmesan cheese. In the hotel we reheated them one at a time for about 30 seconds in the microwave. I had to eat them between a bagel, but Luke ate his “as is”. These were not eaten off china but rather with a paper towel as a plate, over a snack strewn hotel table, surrounded by exploded suitcases. It wasn’t pretty. But guess what? SO GOOD! And I wasn’t eating my lunch before the second game started. Hearty. Total win. For the breakfast – the team went 1 and 3.

I recommend Feed Zone Portables.. It’s a great book for healthy snacks. (If you like homemade rice cake. It’s heavy on the rice cake recipes. Last time Jack took one of the rice cakes to school for snack, his teacher was so impressed that she said, “Your dad must be an amazing cook!” But what about meeeeee? I’m the amazing cook! But Dave does make the rice cakes. I need to make more rice cakes I guess.) The cookbook does mention that the eggs will be hard to remove from your non-stick muffin tin. That is a true fact. I greased the tin with butter and bacon grease and still had to work so hard to clean the pan that I thought I burned more calories than the baked eggs could possibly supply. But I still think I will make these again. It always seems like a great idea to bring hard boiled eggs on camping trips or road trips, but then no one feels like eating them when the time comes. These were good.

I also brought homemade granola, yogurt, and garden strawberries. Jack got a yogurt parfait for breakfast because he lives on oats and yogurt.

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Fancy Breakfast Friday: Eggs Rothko Fail

Here is a pretty picture I took during a hike in Rocky Mountain National Park. So much prettier than the Eggs Rothko, aka toad in the hole, aka one eyed Jack. It’s eggs in a piece of bread with melted cheese. The recipe is from Breakfast Recipes to Wake Up For. Or, as I like to call it, Breakfast, recipes for which you should wake up. It’s a little clunkier that way, but what can you do?

The problem was that I took a really simple recipe and tried to improve it or complicate it by making my own bread. And to do that I have to overcome two major obstacles – altitude and the fact that sometimes I don’t let the bread rise enough. Long story short, I had to make a small hole for the egg in my too short bread. It spilled over and was a giant mess. The end.

Ok here’s a picture.

Fancy Breakfast Friday

Wow! This week went by so fast and I am not sure what I have to show for it! But I did go all out for #FBF last week – at Jack’s request we had breakfast burritos. I made bacon and fried some potatoes (cheated with the store bought and I’m not sure it was a time saver). I also had red and green peppers, pickled onions, and refried beans, and scrambled eggs. I got the tortillas at Costco that are uncooked and you cook them as you need them. They are so so delicious and I have been eating a lot of quesadillas for lunch lately.

Once the boys were up they told me what they wanted in their burrito and I cooked their tortilla and assembled it to order. So good.

Then Monday we had a little “last breakfast” for Luke because he got a new orthodontia thingy that makes it hard to eat. I mixed everything (eggs, sausage this time, cheese, red and green peppers, and potatoes) together and pre made the burritos so they were ready when the boys got up – Monday’s are not leasurely. Consequently Jack didn’t want his, which was fine with Dave and I because we both secretly planned to eat it later. I tried to make Luke eat two burritos Monday before he had to subsist on smoothies, applesauce and pudding. He only managed 1.5, but I had him finish the other half on the way into his appointment.

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