eggs – The Kitchen Illiterate

Dorie’s Cheese Souffle

Whew. The last two weeks, nay, the past month has been crazy nuts. We have been BUSY. There’s been traveling, and hiking, and visiting with friends and family. There’s been working and more working. There has been stress, but thankfully, there has also been plenty of laughter to alleviate some of it, and there has also been some darn good food here and there along the way.

Like this souffle. I made this weeks ago, right before things got hectic, and I’ve been waiting, sometimes less than patiently, to share it with you. If you’ve ever thought of making a souffle, and pushed the idea aside thinking it’s too hard, think again. I, too, left my souffle dreams unfulfilled because I thought I wasn’t up to the task. They have a reputation as demanding and persnickety, and I’m not always good with persnickety. But this was surprisingly easy. And wow, delightful. It made an ordinary Sunday night dinner feel so special.
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Greek Frittata

Frittatas are like the easier version of quiche. Just as much eggy goodness, no need to roll out pie dough. They make for a simple, quick dinner, and are perfect paired with a light green salad. You might be more familiar with the frittata’s role at the brunch table: I assure you, it plays well at any meal. What makes this such a stellar workhorse? You can do anything with a frittata. You can throw in whatever bits and pieces you have floating around in your refrigerator and chances are it will be delicious. Versatility is the name of the game.
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Shakshuka!

When I was growing up, eggs for dinner were usually a sign that money was tight. Maybe my brothers and I needed dental work that month, or we’d just had to go shopping for new clothes and school supplies, or the car has broken down. As a child, I wasn’t completely aware of my parents’ financial situation, but I could usually read the dinner table to to get a sense for how comfortable we were at any given point. And even more so by whether my parents were joking about it, or serving us pancakes at night with grim faces. We weren’t by any means poor, but my parents were young, and just getting started out in life. There were times when eggs for dinner were a necessity.
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Pesto and Egg Potato Salad

Despite the fact that I’ve been trying to stop buying books lately, I picked up two new cookbooks shortly after we moved into our house. I figured they were worth trying to find the space for, and I was right. At first glance, Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty: Vibrant Recipes from London’s Ottolenghi
and Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Every Day: Well-loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen are very similar: they are both vegetarian cookbooks full of innovative ideas, with a very similar design sensibility. And yet, I’m glad I bought both, because they are so inspiring! Not to mention just lovely.
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Cauliflower and Caramelized Onion Tart

I saw this glorious tart on Smitten Kitchen a few weeks ago and was instantly obsessed. She made it sound transcendent, and I knew it would have to grace my kitchen at some point. But it sounded so rich, so decadent that I just wasn’t sure when. Well, this past weekend a girlfriend of mine was coming to the Walla Walla for a visit and it just seemed like the right time. I gathered all the needed ingredients, even ordering truffle salt online to be sure the tart could reach the peak of deliciousness that the recipe promised. And then we went wine tasting, and by the time we got home and I was ready to make dinner, I realized a complicated recipe like this was just not going to happen. I made some Puttanesca instead and we called it a night.

I couldn’t stop thinking about this tart, though, and I did have all the ingredients. So I decided to make it Sunday for a late afternoon lunch instead. And yes, it lived up to its promise. In fact, it lived up to its promise so well I really, really wished I’d found a way to make it for my friend. This meal is truly a treat, an indulgence of the highest order. It would have been perfect after an afternoon of wine tasting. If I’d only thought to make it ahead of time…
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Swiss Chard and Red Pepper Gratin

What? Another gratin? Has the kitchen really gotten this boring? Well, actually no. This gratin couldn’t be more different from last week’s Sweet Potato and Spinach Gratin. In fact, I’m not even really sure that this is a gratin. It seems a lot more like a frittata, but if the New York Times wants to call it a gratin, who am I to argue?

I bookmarked this one a year and a half ago, and every time I came across it subsequently, it just didn’t catch my attention the way it had at first. But this week, for some reason, it stood out. I think it was the red peppers. I buy red peppers so infrequently in the winter that I can’t even remember the last time I had them. But the red peppers at the produce market last weekend were so brilliantly red I couldn’t resist them. And I was intrigued by what looked like a frittata with rice, which I’ve been eating a lot more of lately, so I decided I had to try it. I only wish I’d tried it sooner.
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Laura’s Mike’s Mess

My first year of college I wasn’t quite ready to leave the comforting embrace of my small hippie college town. Unfortunately, I found it a little bit tricky to find a job in that town. I graduated during the last serious plunge in the employment rate, in 2001, and it was not a good time to be a newly graduated Lit major, I can tell you that. I ended up working in various coffee shops and restaurants before I finally landed that first desk job, and while I was certainly extremely poor and had to defer payment of my student loans for too, too long, I wouldn’t exchange the experience for anything. I met great people, I had a lot of fun, learned to carry multiple cups of coffee at once, and I discovered what remains to this day my favorite breakfast: The Mike’s Mess from Zachary’s, in Santa Cruz, California. This year, I decided I need to try to make it myself.
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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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I’m talking about some savory bread pudding

I promised it, and here it is: Spinach and Mushroom Bread Pudding. And it was just as awesome as I thought it would be. Of course, someone at work pointed out to me that it’s pretty much strata, so all my excitement about the crazy innovation of making a savory bread pudding was kind of depleted. But my excitement about eating it was not. Strata, bread pudding, who cares? It is delicious.

I want to experiment with other additions: different vegetables, different bread, different herbs and spices. Maybe some meat (I’m telling you, everything is better with sausage). The basic recipe can be a great blank slate for all kinds of wildness. I am thrilled with the possibilities, and for once, I’m actually kind of happy that we still have some cold weather ahead, because this puppy requires the oven to be on for over an hour, and that’s just not a good thing in August.

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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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