culinary flights of fancy

Home Cooking Adventures in Berkeley Heights

Category Archives: Breakfast


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Slowly Scrambled Eggs with Spring Onions and Parmesan Reggiano over Wilted Spinach

Creamy scrambled eggs over wilted greens is a quick and easy way to have a meal that tastes great and is easy on the budget.

Creamy scrambled eggs over wilted greens is a quick and easy way to have a meal that tastes great and is easy on the budget.

People often ask me what we normally have for dinner.  We do eat some special meals at home as I experiment around in the kitchen in order to write this column, etc.  However, usually a day to day meal for us really is something simple.  Vegetables, salads, beans, lentils, roasted chicken, and simple egg dishes are all pretty common dinner components during the week.  I love making eggs and breakfast dishes in general for dinner.  It’s usually rather quick from a time perspective and if you purchase good quality eggs from the farmer’s market or the grocery store, they are also quite tasty.  Eggs are also one of the few foods that contain a complete protein.  As an extra bonus, even if you purchase pricier eggs at the farmer’s market, they are still one of the most economical sources of protein available given a dozen eggs will likely yield at least two meals for most and, even if your family is larger and a dozen only works for one meal, $6-$7 for protein is still less than almost any other meal you can make.  Further, there are literally tons of different things you can do with them.

I make eggs for dinner in a number of different ways.  Usually I will fry or poach them.  However, every once in a while, I will slowly cook the eggs, scrambling them as they slowly simmer until they are just a little underdone and still creamy.  Sometimes I leave them as is with just a touch of salt while other times I will add in cheese and other vegetables.  In this case, I added a bit of spring onion at the end of cooking and grated just a touch of parmesan reggiano over the top to finish.  I spooned the eggs over freshly wilted spinach from the farm.  If you wish, you could spoon the eggs and spinach over toasted or grilled bread.  We enjoyed this simple dinner just as pictured.  Recipe follows after the jump… Continue reading →


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Classic Croque Madame

Ham, gruyere cheese, bechamel, and a fried egg with crispy, crusty bread...what could be better!?!

Ham, gruyere cheese, bechamel, and a fried egg with crispy, crusty bread…what could be better!?!

Classic Croque Madame:

This is a definitely a ‘go-to’ sandwich we love.  I love to use leftover fresh ham for this but any smoked and cured ham will do.  Likewise, prosciutto works well with this dish.  I think the key with the ham component is to use any that you like as long as you stay away from sweetly glazed or cured hams.  I think it is much better using a simple smoked and cured ham instead.  Otherwise, how could this not be great?  It’s ham, gruyere cheese, crusty bread, and a fried egg with béchamel sauce!  I mean, come on…it’s going to be pretty great.  Sometimes, we make these without the béchamel because we want something less heavy but let’s face it…it really is better with the béchamel.  Also, classically this sandwich is made with two pieces of bread with the fried egg over the top.  However, we often serve them open-faced with one piece of bread.  So, do as you prefer…

This is a pretty heavy, filling sandwich so we usually serve this with a large, simple salad with lots of greens and veggies.  Hint…eat a large salad first and then tackle the sandwich as it will fill you up more quickly and ensure you eat something healthy first before partaking in the less healthy sandwich.  Then if you end up eating the entire sandwich after that, then at least you can feel good about eating a decent amount of vegetables along with it!

Oh, just in case…béchamel is a French Mother sauce and their version of a white sauce.  It’s not made with cream, however. Instead, you make a roux with flour and butter and then slowly add milk until a sauce is formed.  Season it with salt, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and some freshly grated nutmeg and you are good to go.  It’s really great and a handy and fairly easy sauce to pull together for all sorts of things including a pretty incredible macaroni and cheese!  Recipe follows after the jump… Continue reading →


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Vegetable Hash with Fresh Cranberry Beans, Greens, Mixed Vegetables, and Lardons

For a heartier dinner, add an egg, either poached or fried, over the top. It will add a nice creaminess to the vegetables.

For a heartier dinner, add an egg, either poached or fried, over the top. It will add a nice creaminess to the vegetables.

Laronds add a nice smoky flavor and a meaty texture to this otherwise vegetable oriented dish. Skip them if you want to keep it completely vegetable based.

Lardons add a nice smoky flavor and a meaty texture to this otherwise vegetable oriented dish. Skip them if you want to keep it completely vegetable based.

A while back I wrote a recipe for corned beef hash that had a number of different vegetables in addition to the usual suspects present in a hash.  In that post, I mentioned that hash is great with just vegetables or almost all vegetables.  Here, hash is lightened up with a mix of potatoes including sweet potatoes, fresh cranberry beans (which are in season right now), Tuscan kale, and a myriad of other vegetables all brought together with a bit of lardons and topped with a fried egg.  This is an easy ‘go-to’ dinner that Tara and I have not too infrequently.  It’s filling and fairly quick as it takes just under an hour or so to pull together.  I didn’t make this with an egg but usually will serve this with either a poached egg or fried egg on top.  I can’t remember why we decided against the egg the night I made this…we probably figured the hash was enough.  However, we love eggs and love eggs for dinner and this dish is a perfect canvas with which to use eggs.  So, it works for us on a number of levels…eggs or not!  Couple all the vegetables with the high fiber and protein of the fresh beans and this dish really packs a lot of nutritional punch.  Really, you can just look at the picture of the dish with all the various colored vegetables and you know it’s at least somewhat good for you.  They say eating the rainbow is the best way to get all of the various nutritional elements needed in your diet.  This dish succeeds in that regard.

If you are wondering what lardons are, it’s simply slab bacon that is sliced thick and then the thick slices are cut into thick matchstick-like shapes.  They are sweated over low heat, releasing the fat from the bacon.  They shouldn’t be overcooked and turned into little bacon bits.  Rather, they should be slightly chewy with some of the fat remaining on the inside while still having an ever so slight crunch on the outside.  They are very tasty and classically, they are used in frisee salads with a poached egg in French cuisine (and in other classic dishes as well).  If you can’t find slab bacon (unsliced), skip it.  There’s not need to use regular bacon here.  Just use grapeseed oil or some other vegetable oil.  Likewise, if you prefer to keep the hash completely vegetable based, just skip the lardons.  It will be great either way.

P.S.- Parboiled means partially boiled and for potatoes, typically that takes between 15-20 minutes.  Bring the water to a boil, place the potatoes in the boiling water and cook 15-20 minutes or until you can put a fork into the potato easy but still meet some resistance in the middle.

Recipe follows after the jump… Continue reading →


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Corned Beef Hash with Mixed Vegetables

Lighten up a traditional corned beef hash by added greens, different types of potatoes, herbs, and other vegetables.

Lighten up a traditional corned beef hash by adding greens, different types of potatoes, herbs, and other vegetables.

Use a heavy bottomed pan or cast iron pan to cook the hash.

Use a heavy bottomed pan or cast iron pan to cook the hash.

If you are like Tara and I, then you celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in some way.  For us, that meant homemade corned beef and cabbage last week.  If you ended up making or buying corned beef, you likely had at least a bit of corned beef left over.  I love left over corned beef as it makes great Reuben sandwiches as well as awesome hash.  Often we have breakfast for dinner and this is a dish we would definitely make for dinner.  However, it certainly could be used for brunch or a hearty breakfast.

Traditionally, corned beef hash consists of shredded corned beef with cubed or hash brown potatoes and some onion and served alongside a fried or poached egg.  This dish definitely has all of that, but I tend to take a kitchen sink approach to it in terms of adding additional vegetables.  I like to add greens, peppers, a mix of potatoes, and any other vegetable that I might have on hand that needs to be used.  By preserving the crispy potatoes and corned beef as a base, adding additional vegetables simple adds complexity, color, and more nutrition to the mix.  It also lightens it up.  Make no mistake, this is still a hearty dish.  However, it just is not quite so meat and potatoes focused.

In order to make the potatoes crispy, there are really a number of ways to go.  One, you can cube the potatoes and cut them very small, thus shortening the cooking time in the pan (so that the potatoes brown and crisp at the same time they cook through…otherwise you can end up with browned potatoes that are not cooked through or black potatoes that spent too long in the pan, so they burned).   Another way you can go is to shred or grate the potatoes and then wring out the excess water, which allows for improved browning.  I decided to go a different route and keep the potatoes in relatively larger pieces.  You can do that while at the same time avoid burning them by parboiling them.  That is, cooking them in boiling water for 10 minutes or so (depending on the size of the potatoes) until they are half cooked.  I then dunk them in ice water, which stops the cooking.  From there, you simply dry them off and cut them in larger sized pieces.  This allows the potatoes to finish cooking in the hash pan, browning them as they finish, without risking burning them (or at least reducing that risk).

If you don’t have corned beef or if you don’t care for it, you can certainly use sausage, bacon, ham, or any meat you’d prefer.  If you want to make this a vegetarian meal, skip the meat completely and stick with the vegetables or add cooked beans or lentils at the very end for additional protein, fiber, and flavor.  At any rate, you can’t go wrong with hash and you can certainly make it your own based on your personal tastes while using ingredients you have on hand.

In programming notes, a Reuben recipe using the leftover corned beef is coming tomorrow.  That will be the last of the corned beef for a while and I don’t know about you, but I am definitely glad (though it was good).  Also, later this week a veggie hash with fresh cranberry beans, a Croque Madame recipe, and not too far on the horizon, a double veal chop coupled with spring vegetables in a white veal stock and cognac sauce.  So, stay tuned!  The recipe and more pictures follow after the jump… Continue reading →