Hearty Breakfast Skillet

Oh man, this was the best breakfast EVER. Says the husband as I type this, "This was the best skillet I've ever had." I mean, you can't beat that kind of feedback, right? It was a blast, because we made it together - Joef taking charge of the bacon and veggie-chopping, me watching the potatoes, eggs, and putting it all together.

We both agreed that, considering all the different elements involved, it wasn't too much mess, either; and certainly, not difficult, especially with a cup of coffee in hand. I almost always order a skillet if it's on the menu - so why not make 'em at home?

Here's all you need (this would serve four if you added two more eggs - we had copious leftovers):

1 lb (or so) potatoes, cubed - we used these tiny little round guys, about the size of a bird egg, that came in a mix of purple, Yukon gold, and red! 

Butter

1/2 white onion

4-5 Thai green chiles

2-3 smallish bell peppers - we had purple, green, and yellow heirlooms, which were awesome - but you could substitute bells 

Rosemary, pepper, and salt for seasoning

1/2 lb bacon

1/2 large (green heirloom) tomato

Sharp cheddar cheese (Wisconsin, of course), shredded

2 eggs, over easy

Start by boiling the potatoes until they've softened, but still retain some firmness. In the meantime, you can chop the veggies and cook the bacon (here's where it's nice to have a helper!). When your ingredients are prepped, generously grease a large pan with some butter, and add the onions and chiles. Cook them on medium-high heat until the onions start to soften, adding a couple spoonfuls of bacon grease (oh yeah) from the bacon that's cooking. Add your peppers and let them saute and soften a bit as well. Add a few torn rosemary leaves, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Stir from time to time. Stir in the potatoes. A couple more spoonfuls of bacon grease sure doesn't hurt.

Cook until the potatoes and onions start to brown a little. Add in the bacon. Add the tomato at the very end. Remove from heat, then top with cheddar and a fried egg over-easy. Enjoy the glory of a full-on food coma!

Creamed Onion Gratin

from Saveur magazine

This summer, I started subscribing to Saveur magazine, and man, I just love getting that thing. Have I talked about this before? It's such a relaxing, fun treat for me. I haven't subscribed to a magazine in ages, partially because you can find just about all of the content online. (In fact, even though I originally found this recipe in the magazine, I used the identical recipe posted at www.saveur.com.) But there is something I just love about reading the magazine cover-to-cover. So there.

Anyway, doing just that helped me to know exactly what I wanted to make when our friends the Jacobs...Jacobses?...had a group of folks over pre-Christmas for a little holiday potluck. Saveur had a whole article on different types of onions (who knew?!), and associated recipes. Creamed onion gratin stood out as something not too hard, and also as something totally not in my wheelhouse. (Although, as it turns out, the sauce is basically a bechamel, so, you know, it at least has that in common with our family's lasagna!)

Ohhhhh man, this is soooo decadently, richly delicious. So wonderfully bad for you. The photo in no way does it justice - particularly since I took the photo before bringing it to the potluck, where I then quickly popped the dish under the broiler to make the cheese nice and golden and just a little crisp. A great side-dish, especially for the holidays. Great with a little bread.

SERVES 6–8
2 medium yellow onions, halved and quartered lengthwise
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tbsp unsalted butter
2 tbsp flour
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup dry white wine
Freshly grated nutmeg, to taste
1/2 cup finely grated parmesan
3 oz gorgonzola, crumbled
1/4 tsp paprika

Heat oven to 350. Toss onions with oil in a 9″x11″ baking dish and season with salt and pepper. Bake, stirring occasionally, until soft and lightly browned, about 1 hour, and then set aside. Heat oven to broil.

Heat butter in a small saucepan over medium-high heat; add flour, and cook, stirring, until smooth, about 1 minute. Add cream and wine, and cook, stirring, until thickened, about 5 minutes. Season sauce with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Pour sauce evenly over onions. Sprinkle with parmesan, dot with gorgonzola, and sprinkle with paprika. Broil until cheese is melted and golden brown on top, about 2 minutes.

Cheesy Scrambled Eggs with Veggies and Toast

I'm a big fan of eggs for lunch. Combine that with an urge to be better at eating vegetables, and an insatiable hunger after a (lousy) 10.5 mile run, and you have this meal. If you can, get the toast crispy enough so you can eat it like an open-faced sandwich (which I suppose it is), without a fork.

1/2 a bunch or so asparagus, quartered
A little white onion, chopped
Olive oil
3 eggs, beaten with dill
1/2 a small tomato, chopped and salted
Shredded cheese, to taste

Saute the asparagus and onion in olive oil over medium/medium-high until both have softened. Pour beaten egg into pan and slowly shift the mixture around, letting the egg turn and cook on all sides. Pour in the tomatoes, and mix them in in the same fashion. Near the end, add the cheese and stir gently to incorporate as it melts. Serve over toast.

Goat Cheese, Tomato, and Caramelized Onion Omelette

Here we go, another "recipe" whose name pretty much sums things up. But I've never actually successfully made an omelette, so this was an accomplishment for me. Plus, say you have leftover goat cheese from a certain salad, and leftover tomatoes from a certain fish dish...well, there you go.

3 eggs, beaten
Butter
1/4 cup (ish) cherry tomatoes, halved
1/4 cup (ish) white onion, sliced or chopped
A few sprigs arugula
As much goat cheese, crumbled, as you want

First, caramelize the onions: take a frying pan and grease the bottom with butter, then add the onions and cook them on medium until they begin to soften and brown. Put them aside.

Second, do the same with the tomatoes (will take less time).

Butter the pan again and pour in the egg (turn up the heat a tad). Lift the pan and shift the eggs until the bottom of the pan is covered; you can lift up the sides a bit and let the egg run under itself a little, too. Cook until the top is nearly not runny, then add the onion, tomatoes, arugula, and cheese to one side. Fold the other side over the filling, then flip. Repeat the flip until the cheese is melty and all the egg is cooked. You could even serve it with a little arugula salad on the side.

Mixed Green Salad with Goat Cheese, Green Apple, and Walnuts

OK, so posting a "recipe" for a salad is cheating a little. I mean, the title of the post is basically the recipe. Done. But hey - it doesn't hurt to share the idea, right? Particularly if it's a three-minute idea that tasted pretty dang good.

1 container/bag mixed greens, plus a handful of arugula, if you please
Crumbled goat cheese to taste
Small bag of chopped walnuts
1 green apple, chopped
3 large spoonfuls/tbsp olive oil
1.5 large spoonfuls/tbsp balsamic

Combine all the dry ingredients in a large salad bowl, then add the olive oil and balsamic, and toss!

Cacio e Pepe

(from Smitten Kitchen)

Ready for more pasta? Naturalmente! I am truly surprised by how good this is. I mean, it's just cheese and pepper...and I'm not even that wild about black pepper. But it really was tasty! Give it a shot - it takes about 3 minutes longer than it takes to cook the pasta.

(The recipe below again serves four; I halved it and have more leftovers for lunch.)

1/4 cup olive oil
1 lb spaghetti
2 tbsp butter
1/2 cup finely grated Romano cheese
1 1/2 tsp finely ground black pepper

Cook spaghetti in well-salted water in a large, wide-bottomed pot. (You can use this pot for cooking the whole dish.) Drain spaghetti, reserving 1 1/2 cups of pasta water.

Dry out your pot, then heat the olive oil over high heat until almost smoking. Add drained spaghetti and 1 cup of reserved pasta water. This is going to sizzle and spit like what, so watch it.

Add butter, cheese and ground pepper and toss together, turning the heat down a smidge. Add more pasta water if needed.

Serve immediately, sprinkling with reserved cheese and an extra grind or two of black pepper.

Spaghetti alla Carbonara

Ooh, this was a hit. If you haven't had this before, think of it as a breakfast pasta - except not gross, like that sounds.

This is my mom's favorite dish when we visit Rome. I gotta say, she's got good taste. This was my first stab at making this meal, and I'll definitely make it again. I made it up as I went - I added shallots, for one, which is probably a no-no in Rome - but hey, it tasted good, and that's really what this is about, right? Oh, and it's fast. It's about that, too.

Timing is somewhat important with this - you want the pasta to be hot when you add the egg to it, so the pancetta and shallots should be ready by the time the pasta is done.

So, here's what you need:
1 lb spaghetti
4 eggs
A few splashes half and half
1 tbsp olive oil (roughly)
1/2 or 1 whole shallot, minced
3 oz pancetta, diced
1/2 tbsp butter (roughly)
1/4 or 1/2 cup pasta water
3/4 cup parmesan cheese, grated (or romano, or a blend)
Ground black pepper, to taste
Red pepper flakes, if you're Joef

And here's how it goes together:
Start the water boiling for the pasta, add pasta when boiling. In the meantime, whisk the four eggs together in a separate bowl, and mix in a few pours of half and half. Set that aside. In a saucepan over medium-high heat, add the olive oil and butter and heat until the butter melts, then add the shallots and the pancetta and stir. Add a little black pepper, let it cook a bit, then turn to low so that the bacon can render its fat. When the spaghetti is done and drained, add it directly to the pancetta in the pan (it can still be on low heat, if you're paranoid about the egg like me), and immediately add the egg mixture, pouring it over the pasta in the pan. Now mix that all together, watching the egg cook as it coats the pasta. When that's all mixed, mix in the cheese and the pasta water to keep it from getting too dry, again coating all the pasta. Top with ground black pepper to taste.

Gorgonzola Mac 'n Cheese

(Adapted...nah, just downright stolen from...Mark Bittman/The Minimalist)

And the secret ingredient is...you guessed it, arugula! Hey, I'm actually really proud because I was able to make this all from ingredients we already had in the house, left over from things we had already made! We are terrible grocery shoppers, so this almost never happens. While Joef is "melting" in the "blast furnace" of a lovely 75-degree evening, it's been a good night in that we worked out, Modern Family was on, and we were introduced to a new beer (Gouden Carolus - Cuvee Van De Keizer, 2008), a blond Belgian, which was absolutely fantastic. And we ate this.

So...right, the recipe! Extremely easy and quick:

3/4 lb pasta
1/2 package cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
A few handfuls of (here it is, folks) arugula
1 cup milk (I use skim)
1 cup crumbled gorgonzola cheese
Ground pepper to taste

Start boiling the water for the pasta. At the same time, in a small saucepan, combine the milk and the gorgonzola and slowly melt together (it's OK if it's a little chunky), at first over medium heat, but then turning to low while you wait for the pasta to cook.

Once the pasta is done and drained, simply add in the halved tomatoes, the arugula, and pour the still-hot melted cheese over all of it. Stir to mix it all together - the arugula will melt. Serve topped with a little ground pepper, to taste.

Cheeseburgers!

Well, it's April 1 and in the 70s in Madison - definitely time for the first grill of the season.

I have to say, Joef and I make a pretty mean burger. I mean, these things are really good. I think the onion salt is the key. Maybe it's just the joy of being able to be outside for sustained periods of time at 9pm at night without catching frostbite. Maybe it's listening to Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings on record as we prep the meat. Heck, maybe it's just the beer.

In any case, it's definitely:

PATTIES:
1 lb ground beef, lean
Onion salt to taste
Minced garlic to taste
Minced jalapeno to taste

TOPPINGS, in this particular case:
Prosciutto
Goat brie (me), or cheddar (Joef)
Arugula
Sliced tomato
Hawkwind HEAT mustard (made locally, in Baraboo!)

And, of course, the bun.

We mix the onion salt, minced garlic, and jalapeno together in the patty. Then throw it on the grill. Best if you can melt the cheese on the burger while it's still on the grill, at the same time as you're lightly grilling the buns. Joef gets full credit for all the grilling.

What a wonderful way to start the spring.