Puff Pastry Quiche

Adapted from Pam Anderson’s Meatless Meals

BAH Note: Feel free to use just about any vegetable.  Pam suggests sliced mushrooms, halved cherry tomatoes, thin asparagus, diced leeks, or even thawed frozen spinach.

• 1 sheet puff pastry, thawed
• 1 cup butter braised onions
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 2/3 cup evaporated milk
• 3/4 cup grated cheese

Place oven racks in the top and bottom position and heat oven to 400 degrees.

Roll the puff pastry out on a lightly floured surface until it is just larger than a 1/4 sheet pan.  Transfer the puff pastry to the sheet pan, trimming off any overhang, and docking the pastry all over with a fork.

Spread the butter braised onions, or vegetable of your choice, into a single layer on the pastry.  Bake on the bottom oven rack for 10 to 20 minutes or until the puff pastry is golden brown.

While the puff pastry bakes, heat the evaporated milk until it is just warmed.  In a separate bowl, use a fork to beat together the eggs, salt, pepper, thyme, and sour cream.  Once the egg mixture is completely combined, stir in some of the warmed evaporated milk, about a tablespoon at a time, to temper the egg mixture.  Whisk the rest of the evaporated milk into the egg mixture before pouring the egg and milk mixture into the puff pastry and evenly sprinkling the cheese on top.

Reduce the oven temperature to 300 degrees and place the sheet pan on the top rack.  Cook for 20 to 25 minutes or until the egg filling is just set.  Then set the oven to broil and allow the top of the quiche to brown for about 2 minutes.

Allow the quiche to cool slightly before serving.

Mushroom and Spinach Risotto

Adapted from Cooking Know How

BAH Note:  Leftover risotto can easily be reheated in the microwave.  For a single serving, add a tiny bit of butter to the risotto and cook for about 3 minutes on 50% – 60% power.

• 7 cups chicken broth
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large onion, diced
• 3 ounces shiitake mushrooms, caps only, thinly sliced
• 1 1/2 cups arborio rice
• 1/2 cup white wine or chicken broth
• 8 ounces baby spinach
• 1/3 cup grated parmesan

Place the 7 cups of chicken broth in a pot over low heat to warm.

Heat the olive oil in a dutch oven set over medium heat.  Add the diced onion and cook for approximately 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onion is beginning to soften. Stir in the sliced mushrooms and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the rice to the dutch oven and stir to coat the rice completely in the olive oil before adding 1/2 cup white wine or chicken broth.  Cook, stirring constantly, until the liquid has reduced almost completely.

Reduce the flame under the dutch oven to medium low and add the warmed chicken broth in 2/3 cup increments, gently stirring and allowing most of the liquid to cook down in between additions.

After about 30 minutes, start tasting for doneness.  You want the rice to become tender but still have a little bit of chew to it.  When the rice is chewy-tender, stir in the baby spinach and stir to allow the leaves to wilt and combine with the rice.

Remove the dutch oven from the heat and stir in 1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese.  Taste for seasoning and add kosher salt and black pepper to taste before serving.

After the underwhelming outcome of my egg experiment, I wanted to give it another try. So I tasked my friend Google to see what other recipes were out there. The short answer is a lot. Most of the ones that I found involved baking the eggs in the oven. But there was one from Williams Sonoma that was more like a poached egg. I liked that approach because poaching, as a gentler cooking method, gives me a little more wiggle room before I go from raw to rubber.

Now, if you’ve ever looked at the recipes in the Williams Sonoma catalog, they are basically vehicles to get you to buy their wares. And I’m sure the fancy-schmancy Breakfast Pan that is specified in the Eggs en Cocotte recipe is the bomb, but a little reverse engineering with a large sauce pan and some glass ramekins worked just fine and didn’t cost me $175.

So I made myself a nice water bath on the stove and got cracking. Unlike last time, I was pretty vigilant about checking the progress of my eggs. Since I was using improvised tools, my cooking times were slightly longer than what the folks at WS said to expect. But that’s ok because after about 15 minutes (10 minutes on the heat, 5 minutes off) the whites were perfectly cooked, the yolks were firm but still soft and creamy, and the cheese had melted into the eggs and ham. I tried to get one of the eggs out of the ramekin and onto a plate can state with all certainty that eating it directly out of the ramekin is a much better idea.

Another good idea? Don’t think that this is just for breakfast or brunch. I think Eggs en Cocotte, as WS likes to call them, is a great dinner option especially if you’re cooking for just one person.

Eggs en Cocotte

Adapted from williams-sonoma.com

I easily made two individual servings in a 4 quart sauce pan on the stove. If I were cooking more than four ramekins, I would probably put the whole thing in a large roasting pan, filled with simmering water to reach halfway up the ramekins, and bake at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes.

• 1/4 cup cooked bacon or ham (I used canadian bacon), diced
• 1/4 cup, plus 4 teaspoons, shredded cheese
• 4 eggs
• 8 teaspoons heavy cream (I used half and half)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• fresh chives or other herb

Fill a large sauce pan with water (I put my ramekins in the pan, added enough water to reach halfway up them, and then removed the ramekins). Cover the pan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Reduce heat to low.

Lightly coat ramekins with olive oil or butter. Put 1 tablespoon diced bacon or ham in the bottom of each and top with 1 tablespoon of cheese. Break one egg into each ramekin and top with 2 teaspoons cream and 1 additional teaspoon cheese.

Place the ramekins in the simmering water. Cover and cook until whites and yolks are set. The recipe said 6 to 7 minutes for runny yolks and 9 to 10 minutes for firmer ones. Don’t be afraid to test the whites with a fork because after 10 minutes the whites were not cooked. So I let the pan sit, covered, off the heat for another five minutes or so until the whites had cooked and the yolks were soft set.

Carefully remove the ramekins from the pan, season with salt, pepper, and herbs.   Serve immediately.

{Printable Recipe}

Turmeric Chicken with Basmati Rice

Adapted from a website that my dial up connection took me to back in the early days of the internet.  My apologies for not being able to credit an actual source.

BAH Note:  IF I recall correctly, this recipe was part of some Cooking For One feature…maybe in the Baltimore Sun or Washington Post.  I found it back in my days of when I was cooking for one.  But it is beyond easy to scale it up to serve however many mouths you’ve got to feed.  The ratios I use below makes enough for The Mistah and I and have leftovers.

• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 medium onion, chopped (approximately 1 cup)
• 2 teaspoons ground turmeric
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1/2 cup currants
• 1/4 cup mango chutney
• 6 pieces bone in chicken thighs, skin removed
• 1/2 cup basmati rice
• 1 cup chicken broth, heated

Heat the oven to 325 degrees.

Melt the butter in a dutch oven over medium heat.  Add the onion and cook until it begins to soften, approximately 5 minutes.  Add the turmeric, lemon juice, currants, and chutney and stir to thoroughly combine.  Place the chicken pieces in the dutch oven and use tongs or your hands to completely coat them in the onion mixture.  Add the rice and hot chicken broth to the pot, cover, and place in the oven.

Bake for 60 – 90 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through and the rice has softened.

I’ve been struggling to decide what to do with this space.  Lately, I have not been enjoying the process of cooking, shooting, and writing and I always told myself that I would stop blogging when I no longer enjoyed doing it.

While I’m not ready to completely pull the plug on BAH, I definitely need a break.  A sabbatical. A time out.  So I’m going to take one.  I’m going to dig into my “drafts” folder and post the recipes that I’ve been sitting on for months. I need to warn you, it’s not going to be pretty.

There are no pretty food photos.  Some drafts may have bits and pieces of the story I had hoped to tell.  Most are just the recipe that I managed to type up in order to remind myself to talk about it, without a single bit of narrative.

I don’t know if purging this backlog will do the trick and get me out of my rut.  I hope it will but only time will tell.

if loving this is wrong, i don't want to be right.

Before 2012, the only Sloppy Joe I ever knew came out of a can.  It had been years since our last meeting and honestly, I hadn’t given Joe much thought since then.  Joe was just a piece of the past…a cheap means to a quick end when dinner had to get on the table.  It was survival cooking which I hope I have left far, far behind me.  But there’s no reason for me to snub Joe now because our past relationship was not healthy.

In most relationships, you can’t change your partner.  All you can change is your own expectations and reactions.  My relationship with Joe is one of the exceptions.  Joe yielded completely to my wishes.  Without argument Joe became exactly what I asked. No longer defined by a list of chemical and preservatives with dubious nutritional value, Joe went natural.

I won’t lie, it wasn’t quick.  It took time.  And patience.  But now Joe is hearty and filling on my terms.  With some planning by me to identify a block of time for Joe to do his thing in the crock pot and a little work to clear freezer space for him to chill out in afterwards, I now have a healthy relationship with Joe.  Without much more effort required to brown my ground beef and open a can, I still have budget friendly means to an easy meal.

Crock Pot Sloppy Joe

Adapted from Foodie With Family

BAH Note: If you don’t have at least a 12 inch frying pan to work with I recommend browning the ground beef in batches.  I was going to say scale the recipe down by half but these are too good not to make the whole batch and stash some in the freezer.  Really.  That good.  I promise.

• 3 pounds ground beef (I used 2 lbs 90/10 and 1 lb 80/20)
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 large red pepper, diced
• 2 carrots, peeled and grated
• 18 ounces tomato paste (that’s 3 cans)
• 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon paprika
• 2 teaspoons dry mustard
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1/4 teaspoon hot sauce (optional)

Cook the ground beef in a large frying pan, working in batches if you need to, over medium heat until it is lightly browned (no longer pink).  Transfer the ground beef to the insert of your crock pot, straining off and saving the juices and fat from the pan.

Combine the onion, red pepper, carrots, and beef juices in a large microwave safe bowl. Cook on high power for 10 minutes, stirring halfway through.

While the vegetables soften in the microwave, combine the tomato paste, vinegar, sugar, and spices in a bowl.  Stir until they are thoroughly combined.

Add the softened vegetables and tomato paste mixture to the crock pot, stir to completely combine all the ingredients, cover, and cook on low for 6 hours.

{printable recipe}

In a perfect world, we would have had the deviled egg spread conversation right before Easter.  Because really, what happens to all those eggs that have been dyed and decorated after the egg hunt is over?  I wish someone could give me a statistic about egg sales in the two weeks before Easter to gauge the order of magnitude of how many people have hard boiled eggs giving them the stink eye from their fridge in the days after Peter Cottontail has gone hippity hoppity down the lane.

In my not-so-perfect world, this jem has been in the pile to tell you about for months.  That’s horrible, I know.  It’s not that I’ve been hoarding this information.  On the contrary, I gladly shared it with our dinner guests @Yinzerella (Emily) and her fella (Cleve) who were unknowingly my official testers for this dish.  After the deviled egg spread got lots of yummy noises and thumbs up as the hors d’oeuvres du jour for that dinner party, I intended to tell you about them right away.

But my brain, post 40, ain’t what it used to be.  I’ve been distracted by the entire first season of Ink Master, a few cringe worthy episodes of Dance Moms, the return of both Mad Men and The Killing, weekly visits to the yoga studio, and some evenings and weekends working with the ladies of Phi Mu.  There’s just not enough space in my head to keep everything straight….and it appears that deviled egg spread took the hit in this instance.

Let me throw an aside out there to you, the reader.  If you happen to fall in that demographic that makes advertisers drool, ie 18-24 or 25-34, you may be (arrogantly) thinking that this kind of thing will never happen to you.  You think that youthful perfection will always be on your side.  You can not image a day when you will be betrayed by your brain mid sentence when words just disappear or you spend 15 minutes searching for the car keys only to realize they have been in your hand the entire time.  In your mind, hell will freeze over before you will look in the mirror at the end of the day and realize that some crazy hair has been sticking out of your chin for christ knows how long (and nobody bothered to tell you).  Allow me to break the news to you gently….this IS your future.  Enjoy the youthful blessings of perfect recall, flawless complexion, and high metabolism.  Because one day, you will wake up and realize that you’ve become THAT person….the one that you mocked back in your younger days.

I say this from my own stroll down this path…Karma is a bitch and her memory is long.

Now that my public service announcement is over, let’s get back to deviled egg spread.  Because I may have missed my opportunity to get you on board with deviled egg spread in time for Easter, but we’re moving headlong into prime brunch, picnic, and potluck season.  Look at the calendar…Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, 4th of July and Labor Day are all lined up.  These occasions were made for deviled egg spread.  Whether you make bitty finger sandwiches to take to brunch or stand in the middle of your kitchen and enjoy a a slice of Wonder bread slathered with the spread, deviled egg spread is the right answer.

It is spring weekends served on toast points and summer holiday licked from the back of a spoon.  In an ever changing world, it is one of my constants.

Deviled Egg Spread

BAH Note:  I used small biscuit cutters to get those pita rounds I used to serve the egg spread.  There were dainty and polite for our company but truth be told, I would have happily used my hands to shove this spread in my mouth.

• 6 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1 1/2 teaspoons yellow mustard

Place the eggs in pot large enough so that you can cover the eggs completely with water with about an inch or so of water above the eggs.  Add the vinegar to the pot and cook over high heat until you reach a boil.  Once the water boils, cover your pot and take it off the heat.  Allow the eggs to sit in the water for 15 minutes before you carefully remove the eggs from the hot water and cool them in a bowl of cold water.

Once the eggs are cool, pour off the water.  Peel the shells and cut the eggs in half.  Roughly chop half of the eggs.  Place the remaining half of the eggs in the food processor.  Add the mustard and mayo and pulse until smooth.  Transfer the smooth egg mixture to a bowl, stir in the chopped eggs, and season to taste with salt and pepper.

{printable recipe}