Maple Custard

Morning people write breakfast cookbooks, I've decided. People who pop like toast out of bed. People who sing before they brush their teeth. People who don't hide behind the newspaper or the cereal box but are capable of carrying a conversation before draining the first cup of coffee.

I am often mistaken for a morning person. With good reason, too, for I am that annoying soul you see running past your window on a drizzly Saturday morning just after seven. Or my feet are hitting the carpet at eight and I'm thinking of bran muffins...I'm reaching for the bowl.

The truth is, for all the mornings I am Jekyll, I am Hyde.

Hyde growls in the morning. He paws through the house, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. His brain is sore and blurry as he brews coffee, forgetting to add the beans, or puts the milk in the cupboard. And his shirt is on inside out. He hasn't noticed. But a colleague will at ten o'clock in the staff room.

One morning, he left for work at seven thirty and the door wide open behind him. It was winter. The spouse was not impressed.

Hyde still likes breakfast.

Maple custard is the perfect Hyde breakfast. It's smooth, warm, comforting, and delicious. Let's just say it calms the beast.

Maple Custard

four servings

from Marion Cunningham's The Breakfast Book

1 cup milk (or half cream, half milk)

4 eggs

1/2 cup maple syrup

Butter four custard cups. Put a shallow baking pan, half filled with water, in the oven. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Beat the ingredients together and divide between the four cups. Put the cups in the hot water bath and bake for 20 minutes, or until the custard is barely set. Serve in the cup, or run a knife around the edges of the cups and turn the custards out.

Oatmeal Cake

Well, I don't have any food porn to offer - honestly Rach, I became a tad flushed when I read your last post; and I swear that since then, my heart beats a bit faster when I reach for the egg carton.

This post comes belated, Mike and I just returned from another weekend away in Seattle, this was in part to attend his belated birthday Decemberists concert, as well as an effort to pack in some time away before baby dictates our schedule (translate: 'my' schedule). The concert was good, the sleep-ins were good, the food was good, and the unusual Seattle sunshine all made for a lovely weekend. On return to our little monkeys, the happiness continued when I found a few pieces of oatmeal cake left in the fridge.

This is a cake that can be eaten at breakfast time, or can be nibbled on with a cup of tea to get you over that mid-afternoon slump. I can't claim that this cake was a revelation to me. I have a similar Lazy Daisy recipe that I make courtesy of More With Less. However, I liked the sound of nut-coconut-oatmeal topping for this particular cake. While tasty, I don't think this new cake differed dramatically from my original recipe, though the topping was a nice variation from my usual straight coconut variation.

Oatmeal Cake
(Source: A Real American Breakfast, by Cheryl Jamison & Bill Jamison)

Cake:
1 cup old fashioned oats
1 1/4 cup boiling water
11/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 baking soda
1 stick butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract

Topping:
1/2 cup evaporated milk (I used regular milk with great results)
4 T butter (I used 3 T, it was all I had left, and the topping still tasted great)
1/2 cup brown sugar (1/3 for the less sweet tooth)
1/2 cup old-fashioned oats
1/2 cups shredded coconut
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (I skipped the walnuts and doubled the pecans)

Pour the boiling water over the oats. Set aside. Stir together the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. With an electric mixer cream together the butter and the sugars. Add the eggs one at a time. Beat in the vanilla. Alternately beat in the flour and the oat mixture in thirds. Beat until only just combined. Spoon the batter into a prepared pan.

Bake for 32 to 35 minutes at 350 degrees. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, and then run a knife around the edge and unlatch the springform rim. Transfer the cake (still on the springform base) to a baking sheet. While I followed these directions, next time I will just leave the cake in the springform and put the topping directly on.

Prepare the topping by combining the milk, the butter, and the sugar in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil. I heated these ingredients together in the microwave Remove from the heat and stir in the oatmeal, nuts, and coconut.

Spoon the topping evenly over the top of the cake. Heat the broiler. Broil the cake on the baking sheet several inches below the heat source for about two minutes, until the topping darkens a shade or two and gets a bit brown and crunchy in spots. Watch it carefully so that you crisp it but don't burn it.

Eggs Benny Loves Bea

Psssssst. Love.

Huh?

Love.

What?

Love.

Who??

LOVE.

How?

Like This:

Two eggs slipped into a bubble bath. Towel dried. Enrobed in silky sauce. Bedded on toast. Bite by bite—Hold it. Stop right there. That’s all you need to know. And yes, it was very romantic.

My bruh ha ha (guy, lover, main squeeze) loves bennies. L-O-V-E-S bennies., but only eats them in restaurants. Why? Because I don’t make bennies. And I still don’t. But this Valentines I introduced him to a new chick, Eggs Beatrice.

She’s swanky, Beatrice is. A little simpler than Ben with her base of toast, but comfortable with a few pieces of ham nestled beneath her goods.

I found this recipe for Eggs Beatrice in my study of Marion Cunningham’s The Breakfast Book. Marion describes Eggs Beatrice as a “lighter and more delicate version of Eggs Benedict” (p.146). Her description is apt, of course. Marion has a simple way of stating things perfectly and honestly.

The recipe involves three main steps:

1. Making the hollandaise

2. Toasting the bread and ham

3. Poaching the Eggs

Eggs Beatrice for Two

Modified from Marion Cunningham’s The Breakfast Book

Making the Hollandaise

You can make this sauce in the blender. I don’t have a blender. I have a food processor. The bowl of a food processor is too big for this sauce. Instead, I used an immersion blender and a narrow bowl with high sides. If you are horrified by the richness of this sauce, remember, you only use a portion of it for your Eggs Bea. I put 2 Tbsps of sauce on each Eggs Bea.

1 egg yolk

1 Tbsp boiling water

½ cup butter, melted and hot

2 Tbsp lemon juice

Salt to taste

Put the yolk in the bowl. Blend it with an immersion blender (or make the sauce in your blender). Add the water and blend. Then, very slowly, dribble by dribble, add the hot butter while blending. Add the lemon juice and some salt. Taste and season.

Cover the bowl. Don’t worry if it cools a little. No one will notice as your eggs will be nice and hot.

Toasting Eggs and Ham, I am

Put 2 pieces of bread in the toaster and the ham in a pan on low. The ham should just warm up a little.

Poaching the Eggs

I love Marion’s tip for poaching eggs! Marion says to boil the eggs in shell for thirty seconds before poaching. This causes the yolks to cook a little so the eggs hold together perfectly when entering the pan. Although, I still insist on cracking the eggs into a small vessel such as a cup or ladle and sliding them into the hot water. Brave Marion just cracks them right into the pan.

2 eggs

1-2 tsp cider vinegar

In a smaller saucepan, heat enough water to cover the eggs. When the water boils, add the eggs for thirty seconds. Remove.

In a wide sauce pan, or deep frying pan, heat the vinegar and enough water to cover the eggs. Bring the water to a boil then reduce the heat so that the boil slows to just barely a simmer. Crack one egg into a cup or a ladle and slip it into the water. Repeat with remaining egg. Let the eggs poach for 2 minutes and you should have a firm white with a runny yolk inside. Keep an eye on the pan as you may need to increase the heat to keep the slow simmer consistent.

Remove from the water with a slotted spoon.

Assemble:

Put one toast on a plate. Cover with ham top with egg. Cover with 2-3 Tbsp of hollandaise sauce. Repeat.

Note: For big eaters, poach two eggs per toast.

Brown-Butter Scramble with Avocado

I approached our latest challenge with some trepidation; the idea of tackling one cookbook had excited me when Rachel proposed our new blog challenge, but the actual reality of selecting and executing a recipe was surprisingly scary. I'm still grappling with the root cause of this fear- I have a big, beautiful cookbook, The American Breakfast, full of glossy photos and yummy-sounding recipes, but still the anxiety was there.

While my breakfast philosophy aligns more with Rachel and Marion (see previous post), the Jamisons have dug their heels in and share the whole range of American breakfast tradition. My latest self analysis (staying safely in the zone of food neuroses) has made me realize that I have a definite breakfast comfort zone - a daily bowl of oatmeal and blueberries, getting a little crazier on the weekends with pancakes, scones, and muffins. These are baked goods that I can produce with only one eye open, usually with the help of a scattering a handful of dried cereal on baby's highchair tray to keep her hunger at bay. This demand for new recipe creativity - exotic sausages and complicated hollandaise sauces- at such an early hour seemed daunting.

So I need to confess, my first contribution was made as a lunchtime enterprise. No, actually, that's not true. My first try was a breakfast attempt - but I have deemed it not postable, I tried making the Jamison's variation of a Dutch Baby pancake - hoping for glorious airy deliciousness. The pancake was suitably puffy, but had the taste and texture closer to an omelet than a pancake. I don't blame this entirely on their recipe, I am going to give it one more attempt. But in the meantime I needed to produce a post-worthy creation. My next attempt, the brown-buttered eggs and avocado were scrumptious. Browning butter, swirling in eggs - adding copious amounts of avocado - just easy enough, and exotic enough, for me to tackle before nap time.

Brown-Butter Scramble With Avocado
(Source: A Real American Breakfast, Cheryl Alters Jamison & Bill Jamison)

6 large eggs
3 T whipping cream or half and half (I used half and half)
2 minced garlic cloves, roasted in a dry skillet until soft
Splash of hot sauce (Optional)
Salt and freshly milled black pepper to taste
4 T unsalted butter
2 medium avocados, cut into bite-sized chunks

Crack the eggs into a bowl and add the cream, garlic, hot sauce (if desired), and salt and pepper. Whisk just long enough to combine, you should still see large bubbles. Set aside.

Warm the butter in an 8 to 10 inch skillet over medium-low heat. Cook until the butter turns from pale yellow to light nutty brown, about 5 minutes. Immediately pour in the egg mixture. Cook, frequently stirring up from the bottom with a spatula, until the eggs form soft curds and are lightly set but still look a little runny, 3 to 4 minutes. Do not overcook. Fold in the avocados and remove from the heat. Stir an additional time or two to cook through before serving immediately.

Options: You can add 2 to 3 slices crumbled bacon, or perhaps some grated cheese.

Crumpets and Coffee

Marion Cunningham is a morning person. If you’re not sure who Marion Cunningham is, allow me to introduce her.

Marion is wholesome.

Her picture tells me this. Imagine: side part over a broad forehead,bibbed dress, braided necklace, smile that crinkles the eyes. Here recipes also tell me this. Consider: oatmeal custard, welsh rabbit with beer, cinnamon butter puffs, Creek Bank potatoes, date raisin condiment. Those are just a few.

Marion Cunningham is kind. She bakes for people. Period.

Marion Cunningham is my guru. She will remain my guru for the next two months.

Haley and I have decided to explore various ingredients, cooking styles, flavours, and meals as we blog. For the months of February and March, we will focus on breakfast. Our study goes this way: Haley will jump, leap, dive (actually) into the big beautiful book titled, “A Real American Breakfast.” I will wander through a slimmer volume, Marion Cunningham’s “The Breakfast Book.” As you can imagine, I’m already quite taken with Marion. I also like her opinions on breakfast.

Here are a few:

Breakfast…involves no alcohol and usually consists of grains, dairy products, fruits, and maybe eggs or a little meat or fish.
I agree. Alcohol at breakfast? Marion and I perish the thought.

Gathering at the table for breakfast allows us to weave our lives with others--and that should be a daily pleasure.
Very nice.

I…love eggs…I can only eat one hard-boiled egg, but if I’m soft-boiling them I do it by twos, mash them up in a bowl, sprinkle salt over them and a little bit of pepper, and eat them with toast--and that suffices for hours.
Marion knows her mind, which I love. And pays intense attention to detail, another excellent trait in a guru. Besides, I could use a breakfast that suffices for hours. I'm usually starving by nine.

Lead, Marion I will follow.

Crumpets is the first place Marion led. I thought, I want to try the English Muffins! But Marion explained that crumpets were the ones with all those nice little holes. This is because of the baking soda.

Marion also says that you must split and toast the muffins, even hot off the griddle, and spread them with butter or jam or honey.

Marion was right. Yum.

Crumpets
Interpreted from Marion Cunningham's The Breakfast Book
one dozen round crumpets

1 package dry yeast
¼ cup warm water
1 tsp sugar
1 ½ cups milk, warmed
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
½ tsp baking soda
¼ cup warm water

Sprinkle the yeast over the water in a large bowl. Add the sugar, stir, and let sit for 5 minutes. Add the milk, flour, and salt. Beat until smooth. Cover the bowl and let stand for one hour. Stir down. Dissolve the baking soda in the remaining ¼ cup water and stir into the batter. Cover and let rest for 30 min.

Heat a pan, or two pans, (I used a large griddle) and grease some 3 inch rings (Marion says you can use tuna tins with the tops and bottoms removed. I used 2-inch high canning jar lids.) When the griddle is hot, place the rings on it and fill each with three tablespoons of batter. Lower the heat and cook slowly until the crumpets have lost their shine, and are dull and holey. This takes about ten minutes. (Marion says not to flip the crumpets over but to just cook them on one side. I did flip my crumpets and I thought it finished them nicely.)

Toast, slather, and eat.

Banana Pops

Rach -

It's only a matter of time before we develop webbed feet and gills over here in Chillwack. As the rain comes down the kiddies and I have turned to kitchen pursuits, dance parties, and indoor playgroups to maintain our sanity. Yesterday we made your latest bread offering, and I am already adding it to our regular rotation. I was out of maple syrup so I swapped honey with fabulous results.

Finn and I have developed a new treat - banana pops. This is a child-friendly, though definitely not mess-free, activity.

To make 4 pops:
(this only makes enough for 2 people - it's impossible to have only one each)

1) Cut 2 bananas in half. Insert a popsicle stick or a popsicle holder into the cut sides.

2) Melt 1/3 cup of chocolate chips and 1/3 cup of natural peanut butter together in the microwave.

3) Dip/spread bananas in the chocolate-peanut butter mixture.

4) Roll in coconut (could also use chopped nuts or crushed cereal)

5) Freeze on parchment - I use silicon liners.

6) Barricade the freezer from yourself and any little ones - better yet, spend 20 minutes getting everyone in to rain gear, 15 minutes splashing in puddles, and another 10 minutes changing into dry socks and pants. The pops won't be quite frozen solid yet but at that this point you won't care.

Right, Rach, talking about myself again. I'm sure Caleb can get on his own rain gear.

Back to Food..

Rach-

Sorry about the long absence. As you know, December, typically a favourite month of mine, was a rough time. Food lost its appeal. Smells hit me with a staggeringly nauseating force. Chocolates and treats remained untouched- an entire box of Purdys is languishing in our pantry. As you know, I'm pregnant again. Fortunately, food and I are reconnecting. We're both playing coy - I'm being a bit fussy, and my pantry is still sending out some pouty neglect vibes - but no one said that the road to reconciliation was easy.

With the worst behind me, and finally after an ultrasound yesterday, a due date confirmed (August 1), I'm ready to get back to some normalcy. I'm back in the kitchen. This week was the week of the chicken enchilada. I made a giant batch on a Tuesday, and Finn munched through that Pyrex dish for multiple meals afterward. Chicken Enchiladas are another recipe that I can't actually provide you with a recipe for. No, this is another 'method' meal. My filling is never the same, and my sauce is rarely either, but they never fail to taste fabulous. The photo doesn't convey the true glory of this meal. I've made a few blog-worthy dishes in the past few weeks but somehow managing to get a photo is another story. This shot was captured mid-devour.

1 - You need chicken. For a 9 by 13 casserole dish, which I can squeeze about 8 good sized enchiladas into, you need to have about two to three cups of shredded or finely chopped chicken. You can use leftover roast chicken or just cook up a few chicken breasts. I like save time and make this dinner with leftover chicken, so I usually just plan a chicken meal and cook extras earlier in the week. You can use a bit more chicken if you want just chicken in your filling, or less if you like to add lots of extras.

2 - Filling time. Next, you need to look through your fridge and see what veggies you have on hand. On this occasion I finely chopped: one good sized onion, one red pepper, and a few cloves of garlic. I sauteed these over medium heat in a tsp of canola oil and then when they were cooked I added a cup of leftover rice, the shredded chicken and a cup of salsa. I added salt and pepper, a dash of cumin and a dash of chipolte powder (chili powder would work too). I also added about 3 ounces of cream cheese (optional) and stirred this over the medium heat until the cream cheese was melted. I then added aprox 1/3 cup of water to keep the mixture moist. Black beans, corn, and olives would be other filling ideas.

3-Prepare the enchilada sauce. I combined one cup of salsa, one cup of tomato sauce, one cup of chicken stock (water would substitute) and one cup of sour cream. I seasoned with another dash of cumin, and chipotle. The sour cream is optional. Basically you want a tomato sauce with a runny consistency. This is going to soften up your tortillas and make them melt in your mouth. Pour enough sauce into a large baking casserole to cover the bottom.

4- Assembly time - Put about half a cup of filling onto one tortilla with a sprinkle of shredded cheese. Roll each tortilla and place seam-side down in the sauce. When all your tortilla rolls are nice and snug in your dish then pour over your remaining sauce. Cover the pan and then bake these for 45 min at 300 degrees. Take the cover off for the last 10 minutes and then sprinkle them with shredded cheese.

5 - Enjoy! Serve with sour cream, salsa, and or guacamole.

Sorry to those friends who I should have informed personally about our latest addition - Third child neglect is already becoming a reality..