Tag Archives: Breakfast Recipes
Breakfast in Bed: Baked Apples
Post by Alison Hein.
Please forgive me for starting this post with a national service message. The entire Northeast was recently ravaged by Hurricane Sandy. Many people who live in the area are still suffering from the aftermath, in need of shelter, clothing, and food. Please help by donating whatever you can at www.redcross.org. Every little bit helps!
Now, here’s an easy autumn breakfast recipe highlighting seasonal apples – just right for all those extras you got at the you-pick. Baked with granola for crunch, and topped with flavored yogurt for protein, these little fruit make a warm, comforting, nutritious breakfast. Use tart apples, like Granny Smith or McIntosh, for pie-like flavors. If you like, add some apple pie spices (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, mace or cardamom) for a deeper aromatic undertone.
Changing the type of granola you use can greatly alter the flavor profile of your baked apples. Experiment with different nuts, coconut, or dried fruit varieties. Or, refer to a prior Breakfast in Bed post for Lusciously Light Granola.
If you like, swap out the apple juice for brandy, and the yogurt for whipped cream, for an old-time, boozy dessert. Or, simply stick with the program for a warm, comforting breakfast in bed.
Ingredients
2 small, tart apples (about 4 ounces each)
¼ cup to ½ cup granola
¼ cup apple juice
1 to 2 teaspoons honey
4 tablespoons vanilla yogurt
Mint sprigs, for garnish (optional)
Preparation
Preheat oven to 325°. Core apples, leaving skin intact, and place in small baking dish. Fill cored center of apples with granola. Pour honey in bottom of baking dish and drizzle with honey. Bake 30 to 40 minutes until apples are cooked through and soft, and granola is lightly toasted.
Spoon yogurt over apples, garnish with mint, and serve while still warm.
Makes 2 servings.
Breakfast in Bed: Breaded Egg Fillets
Post by Alison Hein.
Hey, all you egg lovers out there – here’s a modernized take on a classic recipe adapted from Sarah Tyson Heston Rorer. What? You never heard of her? Well, Sarah was born in Pennsylvania in 1849, and during the course of her life, was a cookbook author, editor, columnist, cooking instructor and public speaker. She is considered America’s first dietitian due to her health-focused recipes and work with medical facilities. During the 1920s, “Rorer” became a household name. Sadly, Sarah lost everything in the Great Depression and relied on friends and family for support in her final days.
Sarah was also an egg magician, and I’m aiming to bring her name back to “household” status. In this unusual approach to cooking eggs, Sarah bakes a savory custard until it’s firm enough to slice. The slices are coated in more egg, then in breadcrumbs, and pan-fried to a crisped gold. Top the eggs with some white sauce and perhaps a slice or two of smoky meat, and you’re in for a delightful surprise with this classic, eggy breakfast in bed. Thank you, Sarah!
Ingredients
Baked Eggs
6 eggs
4 tablespoons vegetable or chicken stock
Salt and pepper, to taste
Cooking spray
White Sauce
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon flour
½ cup milk
Egg Fillets
1 egg
1 tablespoon water
1 cup panko breadcrumbs
2 – 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 to 3 thin slices of smoked ham or salmon (optional)
1 tablespoon chopped, fresh curly parsley
Preparation
Preheat oven to 350°. For the baked eggs, crack 6 eggs into large bowl and whisk together with stock. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Coat a small, 5-inch square baking dish with cooking spray. Pour egg mixture into baking dish. Place baking dish in a water bath on a strong cookie sheet. Bake for 45 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. This step can be done one day ahead.
To make white sauce, melt butter in small heavy saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in flour until smooth, thick paste forms. Whisk in milk and cook until slightly thickened, 3 to 4 minutes, stirring constantly. Set aside and keep warm.
To bread and fry egg fillets, cut baked egg into 6 equal slices. Beat remaining uncooked egg with 1 tablespoon water. Coat cooked egg slices thoroughly with beaten egg, then roll and coat in panko to fully cover. Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil to a heavy pan and heat over medium heat. Add egg slices to pan and cook slowly over medium to medium low heat, turning once, until panko is golden brown, about 2 to 3 minutes per side.
To assemble, arrange 2 or 3 panko-coated egg slices on a plate. Top with sliced ham or salmon, if using. Drizzle with a couple of tablespoons of white sauce. Garnish with fresh, chopped parsley and serve immediately.
Makes 2 to 3 servings.
Breakfast in Bed: Buckwheat Honey Waffles with Apple Compote
Post by Alison Hein.
Enter autumn, with a cornucopia of glorious bounty. Kick off your fall with these lightly sweet, aromatic buckwheat waffles. Top them with homemade apple compote, and you’ll want to curl up with a good book in front of the fire. Well, after breakfast anyway. 😉
Despite its name, buckwheat is gluten-free and unrelated to wheat. Rather, it’s a herbaceous plant related to sorrel, knotweed, and rhubarb. Its name derives from the German “Buchweizen,” meaning beech-wheat, because buckwheat’s unusual triangular seed resembles the much larger seeds of the beech tree.
Some of the world’s most richly satisfying dishes – galettes from Brittany, Japanese soba, and Russian blinis – are made with buckwheat. In this recipe, rich, smooth batter almost glides across a hot waffle iron, and toasts up in minutes to a hardy crisp. Sweet, seasonal apple compote makes a simple complement to the burnished buckwheat for a glorious, bountiful breakfast in bed.
Ingredients
Buckwheat Honey Waffles
2 ½ cups buckwheat flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups milk
2 eggs
¼ cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla
¼ cup vegetable oil, or butter, melted and slightly cooled
½ cup sour cream
Cooking spray
Apple Compote
1 apple (tart varieties such as Granny Smith work well)
¼ cup of water (add more for a thinner topping
2 tablespoons honey
¼ cup golden raisins
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ cup slivered almonds (optional)
Garnish
Dollop of sour cream
Mint sprigs
Preparation
Combine flour, baking powder and salt in large bowl. In separate bowl, add milk, eggs, honey and vanilla and beat until frothy. Pour oil or melted butter into liquid mixture and stir well. Using a wooden spoon or hand mixer, gradually add liquid mixture to dry ingredients until batter is smooth. Stir in sour cream.
Spray waffle iron with cooking spray and heat to high. Pour ½ cup to ¾ cup batter into center of iron, making sure you have enough batter to evenly spread across the surface of your waffle iron. Cook until golden brown and crisp and waffle pulls away easily from iron, about 3 minutes. Serve warm with apple compote. Garnish with a dollop of sour cream and a sprig of mint.
Makes approximately 6 waffles.
To make compote, pare, slice and finely chop apple. Place in small, heavy pot and add water, honey, golden raisins, vanilla and cinnamon. Stir in slivered almonds, if you like. Bring apple mixture to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat, cover, and let simmer until apples are cooked through but still hold their shape, about 15 minutes.
Makes approximately 1 cup apple compote.
Breakfast in Bed: Zucchini Harvest Pancakes
Post by Alison Hein.
Time to pack up the beach chairs, get sweaters out of storage, and go back-to-school shopping. It’s also time to say goodbye to fresh, homegrown fruits and vegetables. But, in between the first frost and the last tomato, a harvest bounty of zucchini still thrives in neighborhood gardens. The fruits of this hardy, prolific vine have the tendency to ripen all at once, leaving us with the quandary of what to do with this over-abundance.
A quick look online yields a multitude of savory summer squash options – cut in rounds and served over pasta; sliced ribbon-thin and quickly sautéed with yellow squash, carrots, and lemon zest; or carved into little boats and stuffed with seasoned breadcrumbs and mozzarella cheese.
There are also many, many sweet zucchini bread and muffin recipes out there. I’m sure you all have your favorites. But what about pancakes? It might seem like an odd notion at first, but you may change your mind after digging into your first feathery light, green-specked flapjack.
Reminiscent of zucchini bread, these pancakes have an appealing, sweet hardiness – the tender squash providing both depth and moistness. I like to shred the zucchini finely enough to cook quickly, but large enough to retain texture and color. If you shred and freeze zucchini in small batches, you can enjoy harvest breakfasts in bed all year long.
Zucchini Harvest Pancakes
2 cups flour
¼ cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups milk
2 eggs, separated
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup zucchini, finely shredded
4 ounces (one half stick) butter, melted and slightly cooled
Additional butter for frying
Preparation
Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt in large bowl. In separate bowl, stir together milk, egg yolks and vanilla. Gradually add milk mixture to dry ingredients. Fold in zucchini. Slowly add melted butter to batter. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form and fold into batter. Place pan or griddle on burner over medium to medium high heat. Melt a small amount of butter in the pan for the first pancake. Ladle batter by ½ cupfuls into pan and cook until small bubbles appear throughout pancake. Flip once with spatula and continue cooking until golden brown, one to two minutes, adding more butter and adjusting heat as necessary. Keep warm while making the remainder of pancakes. Serve hot with real maple syrup.
Makes 12 to 14 4-inch pancakes
Breakfast in Bed: Chestnut Poached Eggs
Post by Alison Hein.
When new inspiration is needed in the fashion world, designers look to the past. Suddenly, “retro” means “in style,” hemlines swing dramatically up or down, and department stores are filled to the brim with tie-dyed or shoulder-padded outfits.
So, I thought, in our new gluten-free, paleo world, why not apply this concept to food? You may recall I very recently shared a recipe for Chestnut Pancakes, a gluten-free, earthy delight. Since that time, I have been doing a lot of research. You may not know that this country was once filled with mighty Chestnut trees, tall giants reaching as high as 150 feet, and as broad as 14 feet in diameter. Sadly, blight destroyed 3.5 billion American Chestnut trees during the first 40 years of the 20th century.
A lot of information, I know, but here’s where I get back to food – many older American pre-blight cookbooks contain recipes for chestnut dishes. I turned to one of my favorite old cookbooks by Sarah Tyson Rorer, published in 1912. Sure enough, I found (old) new inspiration and adapted this Chestnut Poached Eggs recipe from her original.
Roast chestnuts and purée them yourself, or take the easy route, and purchase canned. The purée quickly cooks to the consistency of hot cereal, like cream of wheat or rice. Topped with a steamy poached egg, a scant portion of rich, nutty chestnuts is surprisingly filling.
So why not give something “new” a try, for a retro, yet in-style breakfast in bed?
NOTE: Good news! Several foundations are working hard to develop blight-resistant varieties, and to restore the American Chestnut to its natural habitat in our Eastern forests. Many chestnut growers are popping up on the West coast as well. If you would like to read more about chestnuts, take a look at my chestnut article (http://mixerupper.com/2012/08/01/chestnuts/ ) .
Ingredients
1 ½ teaspoons butter
½ cup chestnut purée
¼ cup milk
¼ teaspoon salt
Dash of white pepper
2 eggs
Salt and pepper, to taste
½ teaspoon dried parsley, finely crushed
Preparation
Melt butter in a small, heavy saucepan over medium heat. Add chestnut purée, milk, salt and pepper. Stir until smooth, and heat until warmed through. Mixture will be the consistency of hot cereal such as cream of wheat or rice. Reduce heat to low, cover and keep warm while poaching eggs.
Eggs should be as fresh as possible for perfect poaching. To poach eggs, fill a heavy saucepan with enough water to cover eggs (3 to 4 inches) and heat until very hot and simmering, but not boiling. Break eggs into individual small dishes. Or you can use an egg poacher. Carefully pour the first egg into the simmering water. Immediately use a wooden spoon to wrap the cooking white around the egg yolk to prevent the white from feathering. Repeat the process with the second egg, and cook for about four minutes, until the white is firm but the yolk is still soft. Remove from pan with a slotted spoon and drain. Trim edges if necessary.
Spoon chestnut mixture evenly onto two small dishes. Top with poached eggs, dust with salt and pepper and sprinkle with parsley. Serve immediately.
Makes 2 servings.
