Chevré Eggs with Portobellos

For the kickoff of Portobello mushroom week at Casa Gordita, the following breakfast. Quick and easy to prepare, tasty and filling to devour!

Ingredients:
2 Portobello mushroom caps
2 eggs
2 T butter
2 oz chevré (goat cheese)
2 oz chopped bacon bits
kosher salt & fresh cracked pepper

Method:
Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat.

Remove the stems form the mushroom caps. Trim off stem ends and set aside. With a spoon, gently scrape off all of the brown gills from the underside of the mushroom caps. This is necessary on the Portobello because the gills will become a brown mess once the start to cook.

Once the butter is hot, place a mushroom cap in the butter gill side up. Cook until you see the edges just start to turn color, then turn over. Cook until tender. Repeat with other mushroom cap.

While you are cooking the caps, dice the reserved stems. Once the mushroom caps are done and plated, toss in the diced stems and cook int he butter until browned.

On top of each mushroom cap, I place an egg, sunny-side up. This is topped with the crumbled chevré and stem pieces. Pop under the broikler just long enough to melt the cheese, and add the bacon. Salt and pepper to taste.

Breakfast Bites - 'Bacon and Eggs To Go'

Here's to a different, but very tasty take on the lowly egg. There are thousands of recipes out there for evening finger foods and hors d'oerves - but what about breakfast? If you don't want pastry, you're out of luck - until now. Try these little babies, they're almost like breakfast tacos without the taco!

Ingredients:
12 eggs, hard boiled, prepared as in this post.
3 Tablespoons light canola or vegetable oil
4 Tablespoons water
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
2 Tablespoons sour cream
4 Tablespoons cooked and chopped: bacon bits, breakfast sausage or chorizo
salt & pepper
finely shredded mild cheddar cheese


Method:

Round up the reshaped eggs and a very sharp knife. Sure, you can make this recipe with round eggs, but they are less stable, and where's the fun in that?

Cut the above boiled eggs in half, around the largest diameter with a flat spot on each side. Remove the yolk form each half to a bowl. If you miss a little bit, it's not an issue.

Smash up the yolks and mix in the oil, water, onion powder and sour cream. Make sure this is well integrated. Once well-mixed, chop up and stir in the bacon bits.

Sample and adjust for salt and pepper to taste. Remove yolk mixture to quart sized zip bag.

Service:

Lightly warm the egg whites in microwave, and then warm the bag containing the yolk mixture. Snip off a small corner of the quart bag, turning the bag into a makeshift pastry bag. Use this new tool to pipe the yolk mixture into the waiting whites.

Lightly sprinkle the cheese over the eggs, and heat briefly in microwave until cheese just starts to melt. Serve immediately.

See... breakfast tacos without the taco!

Slenderize Your Eggs

Everyone has their favorite recipe for boiled/deviled eggs, but this isn't about that. This is about technique, not taste. What I find really annoying is that when you fill them, they get top heavy, and unless you want to put them into a fancy holder, the tendency is to for them to fall over.

Well, no more. If you add a few hours of resting time into your preparation planning, you can have very unusual yet stable eggs for your guests. What's fun is to see if anyone even notices...

Ingredients:
one dozen eggs (at least a week old makes for better peeling)


Method:
Place the eggs into a pot and cover with cold water. Over high heat, bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat and let lightly boil covered for 10 minutes. When time has elapsed, carry pot to sink and run cold water into pot to displace the hot water and cool the eggs.

Finally, I put the eggs into water and ice until cool. This not only cools them faster, but makes them easier to peel.

Peel the eggs carefully, removing all the shell but leaving the surface unblemished. Place the peeled eggs on a plate with a raised edge, so they don't skitter away. I leave them wet from the peeling process so that they can easily move around a bit.

Next, use a sturdy flat pan of some type or an inverted plate to cover the eggs. Weigh down the top plate with containers equaling 4-5 lbs. or so, placing them on top of the upper plate and checking to see that the weight is evenly distributed.

Over the space of a few hours, the matrix of the cooked egg whites will relax and allow the steady pressure to change the shape of the egg.

Give it 5 or 6 hours. Once you remove them from the fridge, they will be flat on both sides - just enough to keep them stable. Now when you prepare your eggs, deviled or otherwise, they will sit nicely and not roll or fall. Let everyone else figure out how you did it...

Italian Wedding Soup, another rendition

Zuppa Di Matrimonio

There are as many recipes for Italian wedding soup as there are mothers-in-law in Italy. Most of the ones I have seen or sampled are quite tasty, but yet thin and watery. With this version, I have corrected that little problem and still kept the calorie count down. Buon appetito!

Ingredienti

2 qt. chicken stock/broth
1 tablespoon basil
2 teaspoons minced garlic
2 bay leaves
1 10 oz. box frozen spinach
1/2 cup Parmesan or Parmesan/Romano mix grated cheese
2 eggs
1 medium to large onion
1 lb. meatballs
8 oz. orzo pasta
salt & pepper


Instruzioni
Place the chicken stock, basil, bay leaves, garlic and about a teaspoon of pepper in a large dutch oven. Bring to a low boil over medium heat. Once boiling, add in the thawed chopped spinach and stir to incorporate.
Ina 2-cup measuring cup, add the 1/2 cup of grated cheese. Add the 2 eggs on top of the cheese (without any shell), and add enough water to bring the amount to 1 cup. Using a whisk or fork, thrash the resulting concoction until well mixed.
While stirring the pot vigorously, slowly drizzle in the egg/cheese mixture, a little at a time stirring it in well. We are trying to avoid having lumps of scrambled eggs here.
Take 1 medium to large onion, peel and give it a rough chop, as below. Add the onion and the meatballs into the pot, stirring a bit to have them evenly distributed.
Let's talk about meatballs. I have a few good recipes for meatballs, but I didn't have all I needed here to make them. I defaulted to using frozen Italian meatballs I had purchased from Costco. They are certainly not fresh, but they're pretty good. Next time I'll make the meatballs and post the chosen recipe on here for you all. In the mean time - experiment!

What you have now is something that should look like the picture below. Add in the 8 oz. of orzo pasta, mixing it in well. Bring to a boil, stir well, then reduce heat to low and cover. Let simmer 15-20 minutes until pasta is cooked through.
While you are waiting, chop up about a cup of parsley. I used curly leaf, but flat leaf is fine too.
Once everything is ready to eat, taste for salt and pepper, adjust,add in the chopped parsley and serve immediately.