30 Before 30: Sun-Dried Tomato and Cheddar Cheese Souffle (#3)

This is one of the easiest dishes I have ever made. It looks far too fancy for the amount of work you put in. I also love it because as it's a recipe for two, I don't need to scale it up or down. Mornings are meant for eggs and orange juice, not working with fractions. At least my mornings don't need that. I made this one again this morning with bacon and fresh rosemary. It is so easy to modify and it will make your brunch table a better place.

Sun-Dried Tomato and Cheddar Cheese Souffle via The Tillamook Cheese Cookbook:

Serves 2

1/4 c. butter

1/2 c. all-purpose flour

3 Tb. finely chopped, oil-packed, sun-dried tomatoes

1 c. milk, scalded

Pinch of salt

Pinch of nutmeg

Pinch of freshly ground black pepper

1/2 c. grated medium cheddar cheese

3 egg yolks

3 egg whites, beaten

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Combine the butter, flour, and tomatoes in a large saucepan.

Season the milk with the salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Add the seasoned milk to the tomato mixture and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Remove from the heat, and add the cheese, egg yolks, and egg whites, and mix together. Pour the mixture into greased and floured souffle cups. Bake for 10 minutes.

They puff up beautifully and taste like the fanciest scrambled eggs you've ever had.

Recipes Complete: 3

Recipes to Go: 27

Zucchini Bread Pancakes

Zucchini – that little summer squash that overwhelms gardens and CSAs everywhere. What should you do with all of those green guys that are filling up your produce drawer? Zucchini bread is an obvious choice, but when I saw this recipe from Smitten Kitchen about zucchini bread pancakes, I was intrigued. It’s a rad new way to do breakfast, use up some zucchini, and it’s not all that bad for you. Aaron even ate them and he is a long time zucchini hater. Not bad for a morning’s work. Deb has lots of options for many of the ingredients. Below are my choices. Check out the original to make your own or just do what I did because I can tell you that these are awesome.

Zucchini Bread Pancakes from Smitten Kitchen:

Makes 10 to 12 pancakes

2 large eggs

3 Tb. olive oil

2 Tb. dark brown

¼ c. buttermilk

½ tsp. vanilla extract

2 c. shredded zucchini (from about 9 ounces whole, or 1 1/2 medium zucchini), heaping cups are fine

½ c. all-purpose flour

½ c. whole wheat flour

¼ tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg

Butter or oil, for coating skillet

For the topping (optional) -

1 Tb. maple syrup

3 Tb. plain Greek yogurt

If you’re doing the topping, mix together the maple syrup and yogurt in a small bowl. There. Done.

In a large bowl, combine eggs, olive oil, sugar, buttermilk and vanilla until smooth. Stir in zucchini shreds. In a smaller bowl, whisk together flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg. Stir dry ingredients into zucchini batter, mixing until just combined.

Preheat oven to 200°F and place a tray on a middle rack. I skipped this step because even though it does ensure that your pancakes are cooked all the way through, it was already hot in my house and I couldn’t stand the idea of putting the oven on.

Heat a large, heavy skillet over medium heat. Once hot, melt a pat of butter in pan and swirl it around until it sizzles. Scoop scant ¼ cup dollops of batter in pan so the puddles do not touch. Cook until bubbles appear on the surface, about 2 to 3 minutes. Flip pancakes and cook another minute or two, until golden underneath. Repeat with remaining batter. Serve warm with maple syrup yogurt topping or butter and maple syrup or however you like your pancakes.

These do taste a lot like zucchini bread and you can almost pretend you’re being healthy. It’s pretty close.

Beet and Ricotta Gnocchi

Aaron and I recently started splitting a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box with our friends Corey and Brian. Most of it hasn’t put out a lot of surprises (I know what to do with apples. It involves eating them), we recently got a couple of beets. Fortunately for me, I still star a million things in my reader and this recipe came up not too long before the box did. Et voila! Something new and different and fun.

Beet and Ricotta Gnocchi from Dixie Caviar:

Serves 2 with leftovers

1 medium or two small red beets, washed

1 lb. whole milk ricotta cheese

1 egg

1 c. grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for the table

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

2/3 c. all-purpose flour, plus more for dredging

8 Tb. (1 stick) unsalted butter

Fresh sage leaves

Place a cheese cloth-lined colander over a bowl and drain the ricotta overnight, or up to 24 hours.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Wrap beets in aluminum foil and place on baking sheet. Bake until tender, approximately 45 minutes. Remove from the oven, open aluminum foil and let beets cool. Slip the skins off with your hands. Your hands will turn pink. Don’t worry, they’ll just get pinker with the next step. Grate the beets into a mixing bowl on the large hole of a box grater. Add the ricotta, eggs, Parmesan cheese, and salt and freshly ground black pepper to the beets. Mix well with a whisk or wooden spoon. Add 2/3 cup flour to the ricotta mixture and whisk together to mix. Set the mixture aside for a minimum of 2 hours in the refrigerator. Can be made up to two days ahead. Wash your hands…for now they will be unpink.

Use a spring form scoop to measure out the dough. Or just grab some hunks. Use your palms to form dough balls about the size of a ping pong ball. Roll the ball into a bowl of flour, carefully turning to lightly coat all sides, tapping off any excess. Lay each dumpling on a parchment-lined baking sheet. I skipped this step and just lined them up on my cutting board. Continue forming the gnocchi until all the mixture is gone.

Add the dough balls into a pot of gently simmering salted water and cook for about 4-5 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove them from the water as they are done and place them on a platter. Use a paper towel to soak up any excess water.

Meanwhile, melt the butter together with the sage leaves in a skillet over medium heat. Let the butter lightly brown and the sage leaves become nice and crispy, about 10 minutes. Add the cooked gnocchi to the skillet and toss with the butter to warm them up a bit. Season with salt and pepper, if desired. Serve immediately with fresh Parmesan for grating.

These are really, really interesting. Even if you’re not a huge beet lover, I’d give these a try. They add an earthy flavor to gnocchi and make for a really fun and colorful dish.

Garlic Soup

The name of this blog is Better with Garlic and though I do bake a lot, I still love garlic. A lot. Above is the proper amount of garlic for a recipe. This soup is perfect for a number of reasons. It’s garlic, but not too assertive. I used the full amount possible for the recipe because for some reason, when someone says 12 garlic cloves, I say 15. It’s cheese, which is always good. And it’s soup, which in this wacky, up and down Portland weather is just what I need. I used veggie stock instead of water, but that’s because veggie stock is awesome. Make this soup, you won’t be sorry.

Richard Olney’s Garlic Soup from 101 Cookbooks:

Serves 2

4 c. stock or water
1 bay leaf
2 sage leaves
¾ tsp. fresh thyme
15 medium cloves garlic, smashed, peeled, and chopped
1 tsp. fine grain sea salt
1 whole egg
2 egg yolks
1½ oz. freshly grated Parmesan cheese
freshly ground black pepper
¼ c. extra virgin olive oil
Day old crusty bread and more olive oil to drizzle

Bring the stock to a boil in your beautiful Le Creuset (or other heavy bottomed soup pot) and add the bay leaf, sage, thyme, garlic, and salt. Heat to a gentle boil and simmer for 40 minutes. Remove the bay and sage leaves and take the soup off the heat. Taste and add more salt if needed.

 With a fork, whisk the egg, egg yolks, cheese, and pepper together in a bowl until creamy. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil, beating all the time, then add very slowly, continuing to whisk, a large ladleful of the broth. Stir the contents of the bowl into the garlic broth and whisk it continuously over low-medium heat until it thickens slightly. Olney states, "just long enough to be no longer watery." The author says they usually let it go a wee-bit beyond that - until it is the consistency of half-and-half or cream. I followed this advice. Place a handful of torn bread chunks into the bottom of each bowl and pour the soup over the bread. Finish with a drizzle of olive oil (I used my awesome Benessere garlic olive oil) and serve immediately.

Deviled Eggs

Last year Carrina and her husband, Mike, came over for Thanksgiving and brought deviled eggs. Now I really love deviled eggs, but these are in a category all their own. These are really, really good. So we had to have some again this year, even if they were elsewhere.

And really hard to make pretty! Seriously, even with help peeling the eggs, more than a few tore. Good thing I’m not always going to looks around here. The flavor is definitely there and the process, overall, isn’t that hard. I doubled the recipe below and it was fantastic. Sorry about the blurry picture. I didn’t realize it was blurry until typing this up now and they are definitely all gone.

Classic Deviled Eggs from Cooks Illustrated via Carrina:

Makes 1 Dozen Filled Egg Halves

7 large eggs (cold)
¾ tsp. grainy mustard
3 Tb. mayonnaise with olive oil
1½ tsp. apple cider vinegar
¼ tsp Worcestershire sauce

If all of your egg white halves are in perfect shape, discard two. During testing we found it usual for a couple to rip at least slightly (haha, or in my case, many and a lot), which worked out well because it meant the remaining whites were very well stuffed.

Place eggs in medium saucepan, cover with 1 inch of water, and bring to boil over high heat. Remove pan from heat, cover, and let stand 10 minutes. Meanwhile, fill medium bowl with cold water and ice cubes. Transfer eggs to ice water with slotted spoon; let sit 5 minutes.

Peel eggs and slice each in half lengthwise with paring knife. Remove yolks to small bowl .This part was super easy. They just popped right out. Arrange whites on serving platter (or a plate), discarding two worst-looking halves. Mash yolks with fork until no large lumps remain. Add mustard, mayonnaise, vinegar, Worcestershire, and salt and pepper to taste; mix with rubber spatula, mashing mixture against side of bowl until smooth. I used a fork the whole time and it was fine.



At this point, the recipe gets obsessed with using pastry bags and star tips. Carrina didn’t do this last year and advised me to just scoop the filling in with a spoon. I’d advise the same. Serve at room temperature.

And try not to eat them too quickly. They are that good.

Fried Rice and Teriyaki Chicken

The other night Aaron and I had our friends over for dinner. Earlier in the day Aaron had asked me what I wanted to make so as to run it by our friends before we went shopping and got started on the whole thing. I panicked and couldn’t think of anything, even though I was staring at my huge to-cook list. Fortunately for me, Aaron stepped in and he decided that he would cook dinner. Tasty dinner made by Aaron and I only have to do prep? Brilliant!

Aaron has done fried rice before and, as he puts it, he improvises as he goes along, so it might be a little inexact. There was some help from a few epicurious recipes, past experience, and our 1000 Chinese Recipes cookbook. The teriyaki has an actual recipe though. Initially we had the fried rice and the chicken separate, but the chicken got mixed into the leftovers, which is what you see as the final picture. I was so hungry that I didn’t even take a photo of the food before I ate it Wednesday night. It was quite tasty too! My leftovers got a bit of extra pineapple, but that’s because I’m pineapple obsessed.

Vegetable Fried Rice and Teriyaki Chicken from Aaron’s brain, 1000 Chinese Recipes, and epicurious.com:

Serves at least 6

For the teriyaki:
1/3 c. soy sauce
2 Tb. mirin (Aaron subbed in citrus sake)
2½ Tb. cider vinegar
2 Tb. sugar
1½ Tb. chopped peeled fresh gingerroot

4 chicken breasts, roughly chopped

For the rice:
5-6 c. cooked rice (eyeballed by Aaron)
3 eggs, whisked
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 carrot, finely chopped
½ sweet onion, finely chopped
3 small heads of broccoli, chopped
6 pineapple rings, chopped
½-¾ c. scallions
Decent splash of soy sauce
Oil



For the teriyaki sauce, simmer sauce ingredients, stirring until sugar is dissolved, until reduced to about 1/2 cup. This simmered and reduced for forever, but didn’t quite get thick enough. We will have to try it again. It was still quite good. Strain out the gingerroot and set aside.

Heat a wok and oil over high heat. Throw in chicken and cook through, about 5 minutes or so. Set aside.

In a separate pan, cook eggs over high heat and scramble into small pieces. Set aside.



(look at how gorgeous my broccoli was!)



Heat oil in the wok again and add garlic. Cook until brown or fragrant, less than 1 minute. Add the rice and then the veggies. Cook for about 5 minutes, turning frequently. Aaron eyeballed this whole process. The more you do it, the easier it is to tell when it’s ready. Add soy sauce, cook for about 1 minute to add flavor and color. Throw in scallions and egg at last minute and toss thoroughly.



Toss chicken with teriyaki sauce. Serve rice and chicken immediately. This whole meal was super tasty and quite filling. We’ve had it for lunch a few times as well. This makes a ton and is quite the crowd pleaser.

Raspberry and Cream Cheese Bread plus French Toast

This delicious bread recipe comes courtesy of my ambitious list of recipes that I am slowly working through. Originally called Blueberry and Cream Cheese Bread, there is a note underneath that says raspberries, strawberries, or blackberries can be substituted, which is what I did. I think the marbled red with the whiteness of the bread is so pretty and it is very, very tasty.

The main reason I did this recipe, though, was due to the other half of the note which states “this marbled bread makes terrific French toast.” So that’s what I did (and documented!) and it was quite terrific.

The only issue I had at all was the top of the bread being a teeny bit burnt. I did it on the low side of the bake time and should have been checking on it due to all the mushy fruit on top. It was only a little burnt, though, and hardly affects the flavor. Just be more careful than I was!

Raspberry and Cream Cheese Bread modified from Blueberry and Cream Cheese Bread from Flavored Breads:

Yield: 1 loaf

8 oz. cream cheese
2 Tb. sugar
2 Tb. butter, softened
2 eggs
1 c. lukewarm water
2 tsp. active dry yeast
4 c. bread flour
1½ tsp. salt
2 c. raspberries (I used frozen, defrosted and drained)

In the bowl of a heavy-duty electric mixer fitted with a flat beater, cream together the cream cheese, sugar, and butter. Add the eggs and cream for 1 minute longer.

Place the water in a separate bowl. Sprinkle the yeast over the water, stir in, and let sit for 2 minutes. Add the yeast to the cream cheese mixture. Add the flour and salt (I mixed the two together beforehand) and mix with a dough hook (or knead by hand) for 4 to 6 minutes, or until dough is smooth and elastic. As usual, I started this in the mixer and finished it off by hand. It goes faster and you still get the joy of kneading bread.

Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled bowl (for example, a cleaned out mixer bowl that you just used) and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm place for 1 hour, or until approximately doubled in volume.



Carefully fold in the raspberries into the risen dough until evenly incorporated. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface. From here he goes on to have you form a round loaf. Instead of doing this, I just shaped it square and dropped it into a square baking pan.

Anyway, shape the loaf how you please (it’s really only a suggestion) and lightly butter or oil a 10-inch square baking pan or cake pan with sides at least 2 inches high and dust with bread flour. Place the loaf seam side down in the pan. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place for 20 minutes, or until approximately doubled in volume.



Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Uncover the loaf and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until dark brown. Let the bread cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Turn the loaf out onto a rack to finish cooling. I left mine in the pan because when I tried to take it out, it bent funny and raspberries got all over the counter. It was fine.

So! French toast. It’s delicious. In case you don’t know how to do it, it’s really easy, and it makes good use of stale bread. Or this bread. Anyway, this is what I did for 2 people:

2 eggs
¼ tsp. salt
½ c. milk
Splash of vanilla extract
Dash of cinnamon
3 slices of raspberry and cream cheese bread, cut in half



In a pie pan (this work out perfectly, but any flat dish with sides will do) beat eggs slightly, add salt and milk, flavor with vanilla extract, and add cinnamon to taste. Dip the bread into the mixture, coating on both sides. I like to let one set sit while I cook another and the flip them when I flip the ones in the pan.



Brown the bread, each side, on a hot, well-buttered griddle or pan. It only takes a couple of minutes for each side. Serve hot with your choice of syrups. It’s a very sweet way to start a day and I love that. Daaang! So good!

Crab Cake Benedict

I really wanted to start the New Year off well, so I decided to make a fancy breakfast for my husband and me this morning. Last night I made some murmurings about eggs benedict before bed and my husband kindly reminded me this morning. I’ve made hollandaise before, but never really attempted poached eggs. Some books make it sound so complicated, but as I learned today, it’s really not that hard.

To make it a little more fancy (and also based on what I had on hand this morning), I decided to go with crab cakes benedict. One of my most favorite breakfast places in Portland is Milo’s. If you haven’t been, go now. They do delicious benedicts, including a wonderful crab cake version. I was inspired by this as well as by a recipe in one of my new cookbooks, The Fiddlehead Cookbook, which is filled with recipes from The Fiddlehead Restaurant, a delicious place that used to exist in my hometown. Their description of poached eggs is how I was finally able to figure it out.

It was a good morning. I highly recommend eggs benedicts for fancy breakfasts. It takes a little time, but it looks beautiful and tastes amazing.

Crab Cake Benedict inspired by Milo’s/Crabby Eggs from The Fiddlehead Cookbook:

Serves 2 with extra sauce

Hollandaise Sauce-
3 eggs yolks
2 tsp. lemon juice (I used closer to 4 as I, like my friend Lindsay, prefer a very lemony sauce)
1 c. (2 sticks) butter, cut into small pieces

4 eggs
1 Tb. white wine vinegar

4 small slices of bread or 4 english muffins (I used slices of no-knead bread. It was perfect.)

4 crab cakes (I used this recipe, slightly reduced to make 4)

Prepare crab cakes first. Keep them warm on the pan or in the oven. I was also making country fried potatoes and needed the stove space.



Start the hollandaise. Prepare a double boiler with gently simmering water over low heat. Place egg yolks in top of double boiler and add lemon. Whisk until egg mixture is fluffy, about 1 minute. Continue to whisk gently, adding butter about 1 teaspoon at a time. When at least 6 teaspoons have been added, begin to add butter by tablespoons. This allows it to emulsify properly. If you add too much butter too quickly, it creates too much liquid and won’t be the right consistency for the sauce. Thoroughly incorporate each addition before adding more. I generally remove the top of the double boiler about half way through the butter process to ensure that the sauce does not become too warm and separate. Cover and keep warm until ready. You may need to whisk it a couple more times just before serving.



Lightly oil a large pan and fill with water to a depth of about 1 inch. Add vinegar to pan and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to a very low simmer. Crack each egg into a small bowl and gently slide it into the barely simmering water. Cover the pan and cook for 4 minutes. You can do it longer if you like harder yolks, but I don’t.

While the eggs are poaching, toast your bread/muffins.



Remove the eggs from the water with a slotted spoon and place on plate/tray lined with absorbent towels. Trim the ragged eggs, if you so choose.



To assemble, place a crab cake on each slice of bread/muffin and add an egg on top of the crab cake. Spoon hollandaise over the top and serve at once with your favorite breakfast side dish, like fried potatoes.

As for the extra sauce, it can be refrigerated and reheated later. To do so, place the sauce in a double boiler and reheat in the same manner it was made: slowly over simmering water. Don’t do it too quickly or it will separate. Hollandaise is great over vegetables or other, simpler breakfast meals. Try it on a breakfast sandwich! It’s just so dang tasty.