breakfast – Page 2 – The Kitchen Illiterate

Sometimes you just need a quiche

Quiche is one of my favorite things. It’s something I remember my mom making when I was a kid, a special event brunch kind of food. I have memories of mom squeezing and squeezing so much defrosted spinach in paper towels, and I think quiche was one of the first egg-based dishes I ever actually liked. And when Smitten Kitchen featured spinach quiche a few weeks ago, it was all over. I had a craving, and I needed a quiche.

Thank goodness for all that leftover pie dough from my nectarine galette experiment. The pie dough is the only potentially tricky thing about quiche, and honestly? Most of the time I buy it pre-made, because who needs to fuss with that stuff in the morning anyway? Not that I think quiche must be relegated to breakfast. In fact, this quiche made several satisfying lunches and dinners for me. And thank goodness for tart pans. I never thought to make quiche in a tart pan before; I’ve always used 9-inch pie pans. But the tart pan, while it does produce a thinner quiche, halves the cooking time, which made me very happy when I was very hungry. Who woulda thunk it? Oh, yeah, Deb at Smitten Kitchen.
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Sun-dried Tomato and Caramelized Onion Scones

There is a little bakery across the street that consistently makes the Jamaica Plain’s Best list as the best local bakery, and frankly, I have no idea why. Sure, they make vegan cupcakes, and JP is just the sort of neighborhood where people will swoon for a vegan cupcake. And yes, there is a shortage of places to get a cup of decent, non-Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. But nothing, I tell you nothing about this bakery has ever impressed me. The pastries and pies look sloppy: I could frankly do a better job in my own kitchen. The croissants are not proper croissants, but more like bread dough shaped to masquerade as croissants. I ordered a sandwich once and the bread on which it was served was stale. At a bakery! And I won’t even get into the abysmal service.

For reasons unknown to me, however, I still occasionally visit this bakery, as though somewhere I can’t give up hope that my previous bad experiences were flukes, each and every one. I can’t account for my actions sometimes. What is they say about crazy people? On my last visit (the visit of the stale sandwich), I noticed some roasted red pepper, spinach, and caramelized onion scones in the display case, and the hamster wheels in my little brain immediately started spinning. “What a brilliant idea!” I thought. But I was not about to buy one of their scones (vegan, of course) only to be disappointed. No, I decided to go home and make my own.

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Southwestern Tofu Scramble

Tofu Scramble

I’m not always a big fan of tofu. The texture can be kind of funny, and if you aren’t liberal with the seasonings, you pretty much have a plate of bland. But I came across this recipe a few weeks ago and felt drawn to it, probably because I am drawn to anything that has the word Southwestern in its title. And I liked it so much that I actually made it twice in two weeks, which is something that just does not happen in this kitchen, as Miss Crystal can well attest.

I will admit, however, that the first time I made it I changed it up a bit, and the second time, I followed the recipe pretty exactly. And frankly, it was a little bit disappointing the second time, even with the addition of homemade quacamole. I don’t know what I was thinking, fiddling with something that was so perfect the first time around, but you can bet I’ve learned my lesson, and I’m here to provide you with the altered and (to my mind) perfected version. Aren’t I just so kind and generous? (Ha!)

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Caramelized Onion Tortilla Espagnola

Tortilla?

In keeping with our little household Spanish theme, the other night I decided to make Tortilla. The Spanish version of Tortilla (Tortilla Espagnola) is not in any way the same as the Mexican version of tortillas. In fact, Tortilla Espagnola is pretty much just a frittata with potatoes. But it is delicious. It’s a staple in any tapas spot, served either warm or room temperature, and it is awesome.

As I searched through recipes for Tortilla Espagnola, I realized one thing: They are all boring. The only ingredients listed were potatoes, eggs, and salt. Blech. Dull dull dull. Frittatas, the Italian version of the same thing, are often way more interesting, including all kinds of stuff like peppers and spinach and meat and cheese. I’m sure you can find Tortilla that includes some of this yummy stuff, but none of those recipes were available to me. The major differences I could see between a Frittata and a Tortilla were the cooking method and the fact that Tortilla always includes potatoes. Otherwise, they are pretty much the same dish, so I decided to try my hand at some kind of bastard child of the two. A Tortatta, if you will. Heh. I’m a dork.

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Andouille Sausage Cornbread

I woke up this morning with an intense craving. The other day I read Laurent’s post about sausage cornbread and I couldn’t stop thinking of it. It had to happen, and today was the day. The day of sausage.

It seemed a shame, as Mr. X had finally remembered to bring home more of the awesome bacon. I considered whether this sausage cornbread could become bacon cornbread, but the allure of the meaty sausage was too much for me. The bacon would have to wait. I rushed right out to the market for provisions, and left Mr. X sleeping and unsuspecting.

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Mini Croques-Monsieur

Baby croques

Mr. X had a brilliant Sunday morning breakfast idea for the leftover ham: Miniature Croques-Monsieur! Despite being a relentless francophile and ham lover, I had never actually had a croque-monsieur before. Now I am fully ready to acknowledge that this might be the most brilliant sandwich idea ever. My internet searching tells me that the croque-monsieur isn’t much different from the monte carlo, which I thought was the most disgusting sandwich I’d ever had, but maybe that’s only because I ate it at Bennigan’s.

Mr. X’s version was simple and perfect. And miniaturized, because everyone loves tiny food. Despite their tinyness, they certainly filled me up for the rest of the day. And convinced me that I shouldn’t eat anything but soup and carrot sticks for the rest of the week (which hasn’t been hard because I literally have $0 in my bank account until tomorrow). If you’re feeling indulgent some weekend morning, though, break out the baguette and cook yourself up some croques-monsieur. Then, walk around for the rest of the day with a bad french accent.

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Eggs and Champagne

pseudo-Mike’s Mess

Mr. X and I didn’t really have a plan for New Years’ Day, besides Drink Champagne and Be Naked, so our trip to the grocery store to stock up for provisions was a bit haphazard. Too bad we didn’t think before hand, because Mr. X had a brilliant idea that morning that would have been even more better with a little advance planning: recreate the Zachary’s Mike’s Mess.

The Mike’s Mess was a staple of my post-college years. I waited tables at Zachary’s for about a year, and probablyate one of these things a week: a huge frittata-like dish with eggs, bacon, the Zachary’s signature home fries, and mushrooms, topped with tons of cheddar cheese, sour cream, tomatoes, and green onions (and Miguel’s special salsa, when I order it, because I’m spicy like that). The Mess has a special place in my heart, and it truly was inspired to attempt to recreate it. Inspired, but not so easy, seeing as we were lacking about half the ingredients.

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Orange Cocoa Apple Bread

appley apple bread

Perhaps it is not particularly wise of me to experiment with bread baking before my first cup of coffee, but I’m just a wild risk taker. Danger girl, that’s me. Of course, my non-coffee-wakened mind just misread the butter wrapper and thought that 1/3 of a cup of butter was marked as the equivalent of a little more than a tablespoon. There I am, trying to cream together a tablespoon of butter with a cup of sugar, wondering how on earth it’s going to be creamy, when it finally occurs to me that 1/3 of a cup of butter should look like a lot more than that.

After the apple pie making on Friday, I had about a cup left of pie filling, and decided to make some kind of apple bread this morning. Not having an apple bread recipe, I decided to pretty much make something up, after reading a few recipes online. This could be disastrous, people.

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Bacon and Egg pie

Bacon and Egg Pie

Vegetarian Times featured this cool egg recipe in their January 2007 issue (which I can’t get online yet) and I immediately wanted to try it. Of course, I had to add bacon, thus rendering it inedible for actual vegetarians, but whatever.

Their version involved using tiny ramekins, and breaking an egg, unscrambled, into each ramekin, but Mr. X only has one big ramekin, so I had to improvise a bit. Plus, I didn’t have the recipe with me, so I had to reconstruct it from memory. In future, I think there are a few small changes I would make, but otherwise this was totally easy and awesome. I cooked it up with some sliced fingerling potatoes for a twist on a traditional Sunday morning breakfast.

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