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Quiche
by: Renée via We Cook Together on Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:22:00 -0600

Keywords: quick , Quiche , Julia Child , Eggs

Julia Child's book has a great section on Quiche. I have made a variation of the basic recipe 4 or 5 times now. I made two different versions on Sunday to take over to Uncle Richie's birthday brunch. One was Jalapeno, Sweet Red Pepper, Homemade Sausage and Cheddar and the other was Baby Zucchini, Jarlsberg cheese and Homemade Sausage. (Sorry no pictures, there was an Incident Regarding The Number Of Eggs In The House which took up all my photo taking time. You can blame Chris :P) The Jalapeno version was SO good. We will definitely be making that one again.

I had some left over pie dough from Sunday so last night for dinner we made little quiche cups. I cut dough rounds to fit the bottom of my ramekins, pricked them with a fork and baked them in the ramekins for about 7 or 8 minutes. We added crispy bacon bits on top of that and pressed them into the crust (Julia suggests doing it this way). Then we added the egg mixture on top (eggs, cream, milk, salt, pepper, nutmeg) which had some Jarlsberg and sweet yellow and orange peppers. They baked for about 25 minutes. I did forget to dot the tops with butter the way Julia says to (which in all honesty might not be necessary but it sure does make it taste goooood). They came out great. It was a quick and delicious dinner for Chris and me. We made six and each ate two.

I really recommend making a quiche using Julia's recipe. Especially if you have friends coming over for brunch. You can put it in the oven and let it bake and serve it with some toast or bagels, maybe a pastry or two and you don't have to stand over the stove cooking while your company waits for you (because really you can't cook eggs early, they get cold and gross or dried out and gross if you try to keep them hot). You really can put whatever you think sounds good in there too. My only tip would be that if you are going to use something that is a little wet (like my shredded baby zucchini), you want to dry it out or drain it in a paper towel before adding it, or your egg mixture might become too watery. MMMmmmMMM! Yum!
Breakfast Monte Cristo - Cheesecake Factory Style
by: Renée via We Cook Together on Sun, 28 Sep 2008 16:12:00 -0500

Keywords: Chris , Breakfast , French Toast , Eggs

A few weeks ago Chris and I were headed out for the day and decided to go to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch. I wanted breakfast but since it was Sunday we were in luck because Cheesecake has an awesome brunch, only on Sundays. I decided to get the Breakfast Style Monte Cristo, which was scrambled eggs, bacon, Canadian bacon and Swiss cheese on French Toast. Let me tell you that it was so friggin' good. Their French Toast had corn flakes masterfully integrated onto the outside, forming a delicious crunchy crust on the French Toast. Upon seeing and tasting this, Chris immediately said 'I have to try and make that at home'. Fast forward a few weeks and here were are:

We decided to skip the two kinds of bacon and go for ham instead. Since the Jewish Holiday of Rosh Hashahna was coming up, we were able to get some beautiful, fresh Challah bread at our local supermarket. Along with your regular French Toast Fixins (a technical term) of vanilla, cinnamon, eggs and milk, we had our new additions of corn flakes, Swiss and ham. Don't forget your favorite tea!
We did the usual method of scrambling some eggs with a little milk, vanilla and lots of cinnamon, dipping in the bread and letting each side soak for a little bit (around 20-25 seconds since our bread was sliced pretty thick). Then it was a quick dip in the crushed up corn flakes and into a buttered, hot pan. We found that crushing up the corn flakes cooked more evenly and gave us a golden brown finish. See below:

Yummy!

It came out so good! Not exactly like the Cheesecake Factory but very close. Molto Bene! Note the finish of powdered sugar that Chris put on. It was VERY filling. I only ate one slice of the bread and most of the stuffing parts and I was absolutely stuffed. I cut up the rest and spread it around my plate so it would look like I ate more than I did. Shh! Don't tell Mom!
Two Ways With Poached Eggs
by: Renée via We Cook Together on Sun, 31 Aug 2008 18:01:00 -0500

Keywords: Renée , Breakfast , Poached , Eggs

Ever since Chris and I went to California to visit Danny and Tiffany in the summer of 2005, I have been ordering my eggs poached (in a cup!) when we go out to breakfast. This is because Danny let me have a bite of his Eggs Benedict one morning and explained that poached eggs were just like over easy eggs but without the butter used to fry them. Until this summer, when Danny came to visit us in NY, I had never attempted to make poached eggs at home. There was an episode of Good Eats on our dvr in which Alton Brown makes everything from poached eggs to poached fish and there are explicit instructions in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. So one morning, I jumped in with both feet and made some for Danny and myself. They came out great. Here I have two different breakfast choices that I've made recently. The first was made on 8.28.08 and the second was made on 8.31.08.

The trick is to not boil the water. I use a 10 inch sauté pan and heat it over medium high flame until the bottom is covered in little bubbles. Like this:

Both Alton and Julia talked on the use of vinegar if your eggs are not super fresh as a means of holding the whites together. In the first experiment, (which are all of the pictures in the pan) I did use vinegar to see how well this theory works. Another choice would be to crack the egg into a ladle held in the hot water and dipping it a bit to allow some water to come in. Once the eggs has set a little bit you can slip it out into the pan. I prefer to crack the eggs right into the pan, but it must be done slowly and with full attention.

I usually use my slotted spoon to flip the eggs over once in the water. I have no idea if this does anything or not to effect cooking, but it makes sure that they don't stick to the bottom of the pan.

Once the eggs are cooked (which only takes about 2-3 minutes) you can lift them out with your slotted spoon, wait a few seconds for them to drain and then plate. If you used vinegar, you want to rinse the eggs before serving to get off the vinegar. Usually what I do is set everything up first. I take out the toaster, put the bread in (but I don't turn it on yet), if there is any meat to be cooked or anything like that I do that first while the water is heating up. Once I am ready to cook the eggs, I put the toast on, crack the eggs into the water, stand there and watch them, flip them once and then take them out. By then the toast has popped, I grab it, throw it on the plate and top it with the eggs. If I have other ingredients to construct on top of the toast, I put the eggs into a bowl with enough room so that they aren't on top of each other.

The first plate is a buttered English muffin with poached eggs on top and sprinkled with cracked pepper. The eggs did hold together very nicely with the addition of the vinegar, however, I either didn't rinse them enough or I just didn't like the taste of the whites because of the vinegar.

The second plate is an Arnold Sandwich Thin (I really love those) topped with a slice of swiss cheese, ham that was heated for about 30 seconds in a pan, poached eggs with cracked pepper and a side of Potatoes O'Brien. You can find Potatoes O'Brien in the frozen french fry section of the supermarket. It is basically home fries with onions and peppers. I add a little black pepper and thyme to mine for some flavor. This is the batch that I didn't use the vinegar with and the eggs were definately more tasty, although they were smaller.
Danny's Diner Style Cinnamon French Toast
by: Danny via We Cook Together on Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:22:00 -0500

Keywords: Danny , French Toast , Eggs
I'm guessing you can probably make french toast already. So, I'm sure you're saying to yourself, "why did this guy waste his time posting an entry on how to make french toast?" It's because:

This recipe is subtle!

It's easy, in theory, but takes practice to get right ("wrong" = "it's good"; "right" = "extra fluffy and tasty").

Ingredients:
- eggs
- bread (normally "white" bread, but if you want to experiment --go for it!)
- butter/oil (your choice)
- milk
- cinnamon
- syrup (make sure you have some before you start :)
How much of each ingredient? Figure 1 egg per slice of bread (2 triangles).

Here you can see I've got 3 slices of bread which means I'm using 3 eggs. I put them in a plate, not a bowl. This is how we did it when I was working at the diner. They don't have some giant bowl of pre-mixed eggs, they just whip out a plate, crack in a few eggs and make 1 order of French toast.

I also encourage you to NOT crack open more than 4 eggs into the plate at a time. There's no need to make an overflowing plate of eggs. Crack a few eggs, make a few slices of bread, then crack in a few more as you go.

What's great about this is, it's easy to NOT waste food. Rather than mix-up a bunch of eggs only to find yourself with left overs as people get full, you can stop adding eggs the moment you feel you have enough French toast for everyone --or you can run back to the kitchen and make a few more without mixing up another giant batch of eggs.

Also, look back at that splash of milk. Realize that in the picture, the milk had time to spread some before I could grab my camera, that looks like more milk than it is. Imagine how much milk you put in coffee via those half-n-half creams you see on the table at restaurants. I put in the same amount of milk as liquid in 1 of those little half-n-half containers. One container's worth per egg.

Here's the first subtle part! DON'T BEAT THE EGGS! Lightly scramble them with the fork. I broke the yolks and then pass the fork through the eggs about 10 times. That's it. Not 50 times and not at some high speed blender rate. Lightly scrambled. See the big patches of egg white in the pictures? *Lightly.*

Here's the part you'll be repeating. Cover the top with cinnamon. Lightly mix it into the eggs. Then put a few triangles of bread in the eggs. This is another subtle part. The next subtle part: leave the slices in for 10 to 15 seconds per side --not 30 seconds or a minute per side. The bread will absorb the eggs if you just give it some time, you don't have to over compensate but you do have to give it a moment.

I find that the best result is when the eggs are NOT soaked through all the way to the middle of the slice of bread. When you get them that soggy, the middle doesn't cook very well and you end up with soggy, raw-egg middles while you're eating.

Remember, Here's what you repeat:
1. put some oil or butter in the pan
2. make sure you have enough eggs in the plate
3. sprinkle on some cinnamon and lightly mix in
4. 10 to 15 seconds a side.
5. go directly into the pan.
Don't sprinkle any cinnamon over the pan. It will just burn and make later slices of French toast taste burnt as well.

I use triangles because they are easier to fit in the pan and easier to share when you put a big stack of french toast on the table for a group of people. Above I have 3 triangle because I wanted to cook half at a time. If you take the corners that are 90 degrees (the original corners of the bread that were not cut in half) and put them in the center of the pan, you can easily fit 4 triangles in the pan with the longest, cut edges facing outward.

The last subtle part: Cook until golden brown? No, cook until golden brown -buts still white. What's that mean? Look back at the picture. See how you can still see the white of the egg even though a lot of the toast is golden brown? That's what I mean. It's easy to over cook them and make the whole side golden brown, which actually ends up tasting a little burnt. It's also easy to over-brown one side which still effects the overall taste. So stay with them and watch *both* sides carefully.

Here's my assembly line. In the next picture, if you look closely at the slices in the center, they are overcooked because I was busy taking that last picture while they were still in the pan. See the subtle difference in color?

As they finish, I stack the triangles directly on top of each other to keep in the heat. Right before they go out is when I arrange them on the plate to look nice. This way they are usually steaming when they're placed on the table.

If I'm at your house, please don't put a big pat of butter on top of mine at the last second. I don't like that very much. You may want to ask your guests how they feel about it before you add the final pat of butter, or you can let them do it themselves at the table.

Variation: Omit the bread and just make lightly scrambled eggs with cinnamon. They're a little sweet and go great with bacon.

Enjoy!
~Danny