Simple Saturday Brunch

I've been making crêpes more and more recently, and had forgotten how much fun they are. For a recent Saturday brunch I made two different kinds of blintzes, folded in the pillow style rather than rolled in a tube. One has a cottage cheese filling and is topped with strawberries reduced in balsamic vinegar. The other is stuffed with wilted spinach, ricotta, ham, and topped with sour cream and cracked black pepper.

I don't have a proper crêpe pan, but I do have a skillet wide and flat enough to do the trick. If you make a dozen crêpes you'll quickly figure out what works and what doesn't, and if it's hot and dry (as it's been here in Memphis recently), you'll need to add some water along the way to make the batter thin again. Uniformity of thickness is really important, and if your pan has any curvature there's going to be a tendency to be thick in the middle and paper thin on the edges, which is still tasty but doesn't roll or fold well. There's no golden ratio of ingredients, but I've found the ones with more eggs to work better and taste better. In reality you're making something that's somewhere between a pancake and an omelette, and that soft, steamy, eggy dough tastes better when it's a little closer to the omelette side.

The wine pictured is my standard go-to sparkler when I'm out of bubbly samples: the NV Domaine Ste. Michelle Blanc de Noirs from Washington State. I've written about it so many times here that I'm not going to review it again, but will say that it's never disappointed me and went wonderfully with brunch.

Bolthouse Farms Green Goodness

Everyone has something different they need to get started in the morning. For some it's the Diet Coke, others have to have coffee or tea, and others guzzle down milk. As for me, I don't have anything that I chemically need first thing--caffeine doesn't do much for me, and I can live without it. My favorite thing is some sort of mass of ground up vegetables, like V8. These days there are a ton of such blends on the market, and of course people roll their own with juicers.

I recently became enamored of Bolthouse Farms Green Goodness. Full of wheatgrass, spinach, a bunch of fruits, and everybody's favorite cyanobacteria, spirulina. Basically pond scum, this little photosynthetic microorganism has been around for three billion years and is full of all sorts of goodies. If you've spent much time fishing and pulling algae off your line, the aroma is unmistakeable. (Lest you be concerned that you're not getting a full algal load, this beverage also contains an unnamed blue-green algae, Chlorella, a green algae, and Palmaria palmata, a red algae.)

Banana and pineapple aromas and flavors dominate, but there's a lot of grass and dirt. In fact, it reminds me a lot of mowing the yard. I know this sounds terrible, but if you've come to love and appreciate earthy and vegetal characteristics in wine, then it's easier to enjoy them in other foods as well. Plus, I never have to worry about The Roommate swiping any beverage that's the color of the paint used on tanks, Jeeps, and other Army equipment.

Breakfast for Dinner

For longtime friends and dinner companions, I'm happy to take requests or menu ideas. Sometimes it's to fix a favorite dish, or sometimes it's because I need some external inspiration to break out of a rut. A while back Lady A had requested breakfast for dinner, and I finally got the chance to put it in action.

The concept isn't that unusual, and I make omelets for dinner all the time. And brunch is an elaborate affair with tons of different dishes. But putting together a few courses is a little tougher. You can't go too heavy on various breads, and you can't just keep trucking out various egg preparations. And no, I wasn't going to serve an amuse-bouche of Froot Loops in a large spoon.

For the first course, I chose a spinach salad with hot bacon dressing. Very simple, just baby spinach leaves, crumbled bacon, sliced button mushrooms, walnuts, and a red wine vinaigrette mixed with hot bacon grease. Right before serving, toss everything together until the leaves just start to wilt and the mushrooms get just barely cooked.

It's hearty, but not too filling, and while not typically associated with breakfast, it was a fun way to fulfill the bacon requirement. Since this was a dinner thing, I skipped the traditional breakfast beverages in favor of wine. Here a crisp Chilean Sauvignon Blanc cut through the savory bacon grease. (I'm saving the full wine notes for a separate post.)

Next up, fruit and cheese to clear the palate...

I've served something like this in the past--pears with a disc of soft goat cheese, drizzled with honey. Here I served the thinly sliced d'Anjou pears with a mix of ricotta, honey, sea salt, and topped it all off with a dusting of grated nutmeg. It's sweet, creamy, and a little rich, but not too filling. Again, my goal was to avoid a lumberjack-style breakfast. That kind of cooking is a lot better for large groups, where you can keep things warm in the oven and let people serve themselves.

The main course was the show stopper: Eggs Hussarde. It's a variation of Eggs Benedict developed at the legendary Brennan's in New Orleans, and I mostly followed their recipe. The main difference is the addition of marchand de vin sauce, a savory beef and wine sauce that gives it a deeper, earthier flavor. Making two classic French sauces for one course is a lot of work, but fortunately the marchand de vin holds pretty well when covered and set over the lowest setting on the stove.

From there it's pretty standard: poached eggs, Canadian bacon, and Hollandaise. I used English muffins instead of Holland rusks, and I put the marchand de vin directly on top of the toasted muffin slices. (If you pour it on top of the ham, it will run off onto the plate. Purely an aesthetic choice, because once you pierce the poached egg everything starts to run together anyway.) When I make Hollandaise I almost always make asparagus. You've already got a pot of water going for the double boiler, and the two taste great together, so why not? Eggs Hussarde is also traditionally paired with grilled tomatoes (sometimes tucked under the ham). The end result was amazing, but I can't imagine making it first thing in the morning. I paired this course with a Chilean Pinot Noir, which was a good balance, and since I used some of it to make the marchand de vin, it was nice to layer those flavors.

A couple of hours later we'd recovered enough for dessert, some delicious cinnamon rolls that Lady A brought along with her. All in all a success, and a fun change of pace. I think next time I might try something like frittata and stuffed crepes, or a lighter, more elegant version of the Full English breakfast.

Benito vs. Spam®

Fans sometimes e-mail me and ask, "Why don't you do more posts using normal food? I don't keep duck wings and hydroponic Greek turnips on hand all the time." Perhaps I've spent too much time digging through the biological diversity of the local ethnic markets in search of weird and wonderful flavors. So to bring things back to ground level, I present...



Oh yeah, I'm talking about the real thing, Hormel's pride and joy since 1937, the beloved canned meat of the Hawaiian Islands... Spam®.

I haven't eaten the stuff since my Scouting days 20 years ago, when it was the high class alternative to the bargain varieties like Armour's Treet and the gritty paté version known simply as Potted Meat. At some point I grabbed a can, stuck it in the pantry, and forgot about it. A year later, I decided to go ahead and eat it, but didn't know what to fix. What dish would best show off the individual characteristics, the subtle essence that is Spam®?

Fortunately the back of the can provided the recipe for Spambled Egg Muffins. If you'll note the difficulty scale, this is much closer to watching TV than building a TV. I've actually done repair work on older televisions, and worked in a cable TV studio in high school, but when it comes to using a tricky ingredient like this you want to keep it easy. A few changes in my version: I only had shredded cheese, which I melted on the English muffins. Also, I made the eggs omelet-style so they would rest on the bread more cohesively. Since this dish is based on the classic French breakfast dish l'oeuf mcmuffin, I was tempted to use a carefully poached egg, but didn't want to stray too far from Hormel's sage advice.

How was it? Surprisingly not bad. I've had far worse from gas stations, where this style of sandwich (using ham or sausage) sits on a heating tray for hours and you have to peel the hot plastic wrap off like it's the week after a bad sunburn. I think the biggest issue was portion size--a quarter of a can of Spam® packs a considerable amount of porky flavor, and it overwhelms the rest of the sandwich. I don't know if it's possible to slice and fry slices of Spam® thinly. Perhaps chill it like a terrine first and use a hot wet carving knife? I think you might end up with something a bit closer to Italian handcrafted mortadella from Emilia-Romagna.

For those who wish to challenge the upper echelons of culinary acclaim, Spam® Musubi is the highest calling for this oft-maligned meat.

Santorini Assyrtiko & Crabs Benedict

I spied with my little eye a delicious photo posted by Kate of Accidental Hedonist. It looked tasty, so I posted a link to it on my Facebook page.

Throughout the rest of the day a bunch of people wanted to know the recipe. But I didn't know precisely what was going on with the photo, so I commented on the originating post. Questions kept piling on my side of things, so I decided to go right to the source. Since I reviewed her whiskey book and interviewed her last year, I shot her an e-mail asking for more information on this delectable dish. She kindly provided as many details as she could. It was a brunch item served at Fresh Bistro in West Seattle, described thusly:

Sweet Potato-Dungeness Crab Eggs Benedict $15
Shredded sweet potato cakes, Dungeness crab leg, chipotle hollandaise, fresh baby arugula salad, sautéed veggies

Kate gave me a few more hints on the structure and I decided to give it a shot. I ran a sweet potato and shallot through the mandoline, bound it all with an egg and a little flour, and made a few sweet potato hash brown cakes. For the sauce, I made a straight hollandaise and added a little adobo sauce from a can of chipotles, just enough to season but not make it hot. Instead of Dungeness, I used some decent canned blue crab meat (hey, I'm a long way from the Pacific), and decided that as long as I'd whipped up a batch of hollandaise I might as well steam some asparagus instead of making a salad.

It's certainly an amazing flavor combination, but very rich. I think I'd prefer it with an English muffin base instead of the sweet potato, or perhaps as a much smaller course using little sweet potato cakes and a quail's egg. It's also a lot of work for one person in a home kitchen. I had a pot going with steaming water for the asparagus, and I was whisking my sauce over the heat coming off the top. I had a skillet going with the sweet potato cakes and jostled around to make some room for another skillet to poach some eggs. Almost forgot to add the crab as I was assembling everything. It takes some experienced juggling to have everything at the right temperature and texture mere moments before serving.

I had the perfect wine to go with this meal, and it curiously enough came from yet another blogger. Constance sent me a bottle of the 2008 Santorini Assyrtiko from the volcanic archipelago of Santorini in the Aegean Sea. 100% Ασύρτικο/Assyrtiko. $15, 13% abv.

I've mentioned this before, but Greek wine labels are getting better and better. Design-wise this could easily be mistaken for an Italian wine on the shelf. I'm not saying that the Greeks need to hide anything, but the older labels tended to be wholly unreadable to someone unfamiliar with the language/alphabet, with perhaps some poorly translated explanation on the back label. You can actually witness this evolution with labels just in the past 15 years. Different companies here, but look at a pure Greek label probably designed in the 60s and used for 40 years, to a hybrid label that still doesn't do much for the English audience, to a more modern layout that very obviously says, "This is a normal wine, nothing to be afraid of." If you can't figure out if the contents of the bottle are wine, a liqueur, a spirit, olive oil, or floor polish, you're going to be less likely to buy it, or even open it if someone brought it back as a gift from vacation.

The wine itself reminds me of Semillon. There's an earthy, honey-like tone to it, with a tart, crisp green apple finish. Hint of juniper on the nose. Absolutely gorgeous golden color. Totally dry, very short finish. It practically disappears after the sip. Should go great with any seafood dish, and the simpler the better. Think little fish grilled and spritzed with lemon juice, or a big bowl of freshly steamed mussels. Even oysters, though maybe not something oily and strongly flavored like mackerel or bluefish.

Big thanks to Kate and Constance for providing all the inspiration for this delicious meal, and to my Facebook readers for pushing me to try it out. Kind of makes me want to send a few categories to different bloggers and try a Mad Libs-style post in the future. "For dinner, Benito had a chicken liver omelet with a side of Doritos salad, pepperoni ice cream, and a glass of Purplesaurus Rex Kool-Aid." Or perhaps not.


Note: This wine was received as a sample from Santo Wines.

2006 Aurielle Cabernet Sauvignon

My brother works nights, and although he only lives 20 minutes away we don't see each other often. I've worked weird hours before, and your options are either terrible fast food or trying to cook something without waking up the "normal" residents of your domicile. With The Roommate out of town and the house to myself, I came up with a crazy idea. "John, why don't you drop by my place after you get off work and we'll have dinner." "I'll see you at 4:30." And that's how I ended up pulling an all-nighter and making Hollandaise sauce at four in the morning.

I thought a New Orleans-style brunch would be a good model for such an odd occasion. I considered making Eggs Hussarde, but I had no desire to make the Marchand de Vin sauce for just two people. (My brother can have one of my kidneys if he needs it. No Marchand de Vin in the small hours of the morning.) So this is basically Eggs Benedict with a slice of Cherokee purple tomato under the ham. Next up on the plate, baby Brussels sprouts with sautéed mushrooms, and a bacon-wrapped 4 oz. sirloin. I thought Bro John was going to break out in tears when the spread was presented to him.

By the way, this was my first time using the plastic wrap method of making poached eggs. I'm now a convert.

My initial plan had been to serve a light white wine, but there were enough strong flavors on the plate to stand up to a red, and my brother's birthday is coming up. So why not pull out something nice? There's a lot of wine out there that gathers dust and eventually spoils because people keep waiting for the perfect occasion. Well, sic transit gloria mundi, you've got to take advantage of these things during that window of opportunity. What's more special than a delicious dinner with your brother before the sun rises? I know that it's now a meal neither of us will ever forget, and with the help of wine, a cherished memory is forged.

The 2006 Aurielle Cabernet Sauvignon is the inaugural release from Aurielle Vineyards. The grapes for this wine came equally from the Howell Mountain and Mount Veeder appellations of Napa Valley. 98.5% Cabernet Sauvignon, 1% Cabernet Franc, and .5% Merlot. $90, 14.9% abv. All French oak, 300 cases made. Lovely balance all around, with an initial nose of blueberries, plum, and a touch of spice. Medium tannins and a round body, with a smooth, lingering finish. Over time, hints of nutmeg, leather, and blackberries show up on the tongue. It's got that serious structure to it that makes you pause and contemplate before taking a sip. The wine is great now, but I'd really love to try it in about five years.

This may have seemed like an unorthodox pairing, but it's quite French in its execution. A little extra Hollandaise was wonderful on the sprouts and steak. I'm curious to try this wine with something like a rack of venison or wild boar--those luscious dark fruits always make me think of game.

P.S. For my math, art, and architecture fans, the logo of this wine is a representation of the golden mean or φ. You can find these proportions in nature, in doorways, in statues, all sorts of things. This is also reflected in the name Aurielle, of Latin derivtion for golden.

Breakfast for Dinner

The Girlfriend requested breakfast for dinner, and I was all too happy to oblige. Specifically, she was looking for a sort of Greek omelet: spinach, lamb, and goat cheese, but she wanted something other than spinach. I love these kind of challenges, so here's the menu I created.

First off, let's look at spinach alternatives. While here in the South there are plenty of greens available, I generally substitute rapini (broccoli raab) or Swiss chard. I settled on the latter this time. Now, if you've never purchased this relative of the beet, it can look a little odd at the store. The stalks and veins are white, yellow, pink, and red, and the leaves are often wilted and droopy. I've never had problems in the past, but this time I decided to cut a half inch off the bottom of the stalks and allow capillary action to soak up some water while the leaves sat in a glass. The next morning the chard leaves were all standing at attention, but since the standard method of cooking involves getting rid of as much water as possible, I realized that I hadn't really accomplished anything.

When prepared as a side dish, I chop the stems, sautée them until soft, and then add the chopped leaves and cook those until wilted. Here I just used the leaves, wilted in a small bit of oil. A huge bunch of leaves condenses down to a very small final product--keep that in mind.

For a wine, I decided on an Italian Prosecco. The NV Cantine Maschio Prosecco Brut is a crisp, dry sparkling wine that has a nice touch of acidity but isn't overwhelming. The Girlfriend mixed hers with some orange juice for a little mimosa action. I demurred from the cocktail, but at $12 this wine would be great for brunch or bellinis or even fried chicken/BBQ: two of my favorite foods with sparkling wine. I find that generally if you can't figure out a good match for something, a sparkler or a rosé often works well.

Since I didn't have any leftover roast leg of lamb on hand, I instead chose to trim the bones off a rack of lamb and roast it. The bones and attached meat were roasted in the oven and then simmered with organic chicken stock for a few hours to create a little easy lamb stock, which after cooling went into the freezer for future use. The resulting log of meat looked much like a pork tenderloin. I dusted it with some sea salt and fresh ground pepper and then seared the little ribeye roast in a stainless steel skillet. After it was nicely browned, I threw it into a 350° oven until it reached a medium-rare internal temp of 135°. Then a rest period, followed by slicing the roast into little half-inch steaks. The end result combines the delicious flavor of lamb with the look and texture of prime rib.

Lamb ribeyes aren't an original idea; aside from having it at the Brooks recently, there's a good recipe on the Stags Leap website. On the side I made some sweet potato hash browns, and freshly sliced cantaloupe was also provided. As for the overall meal, it was a nice variation on the old steak and egg special at Waffle House. The lamb ribeyes were delicious and so easy that I can see using them for appetizers and other purposes. The omelet was one of the best I've ever had, and the sweet potatoes provided a nice touch of sweetness and less starch than your standard white potatoes.

Eggs and Bubbly

A few weeks ago I saw a link to a video of Gordon Ramsey cooking eggs. It looked pretty good--sort of a modified English breakfast without the beans or sausage and somewhat more appetizing. That's not to deny the glory of the full English--when I've gone to Europe I would occasionally have the English breakfast when I wanted a break from coffee and a buttered roll. I'm also surprised that pork & beans has never really caught on in the South as a breakfast food.



I love that video, by the way. He doesn't measure anything, he burns the toast, and in a few short minutes he's got an awesome dish. When my craving couldn't hold back any longer, I decided to make this for dinner the weekend before New Year's. I substituted sour cream for the crème fraîche and though not pictured, I did have a slab of applewood smoked ham with the rest of it.

Frederic is celebrating "Twelve Days of Christmas with Champagne and Sparkling Wine". After reading a few posts I thought, damn, that Ramsey recipe would be great with a sparkling wine. So I when I made this I decided to pop open a bottle of the 25th Anniversary Roederer Estate Brut NV, an Anderson Valley, California sparkler made from 60% Chardonnay and 40% Pinot Noir. It's got a slightly yeasty, toasty nose with tons of bubbles. In fact, the crackling of the bubbles is audible--I thought I had static in my speakers until I isolated the source. (Though it's a little late, I was listening to Vince Guaraldi's soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas. Those brushes on the drums create a bit of a hiss anyway.) The wine has a crisp acidity, with hints of strawberries and lemon. The aftertaste is amazing, and it's always nice when you can lick your lips after a sip of wine and recapture the flavor.

Note that rather than expensive crystal, I've poured the wine into a $2.00 grocery store novelty flute with stars and "2008" stamped on it. The glass is also pretty thick, and it never hurts to have some sturdy Champagne glasses on hand.

Back to the food: I left my eggs a bit more runny than Gordon did--I prefer mine a little underdone. But Lord Almighty, this was delicious. It's the first time in recent memory that I've literally attacked a plate of food, and it's a good thing that I was dining alone. The eggs are a whole other texture and flavor experience than you're used to, and the roast tomatoes burst with flavor and juice that runs down your chin. Had one of my dogs nudged me during this feast I likely would have growled and snapped in his direction.

A tip: the chef pulls this off in what appears to be a stainless steel pot, and I used the same. It was a mess afterwards, and I think you could probably get a similar result with non-stick, which is normally what I use for eggs.

Garlic-Tabasco Savory Waffles

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned Garlic-Tabasco Savory Waffles (photo at right from December '05 from my old personal site), and figured I ought to explain what I was talking about. Fredric showed some interest, and by the way you ought to check out his latest article on his more formal website, involving a scrumptious Alice Waters recipe.

For the base, I use this recipe, which yields a good bit of yeast batter that has to rest overnight. Boxed waffle mixes (such as Krusteaz) will work OK, but generally a yeast batter tastes better and the waffle has a structure closer to bread, with good gluten and large bubbles. Mixes tend to be sort of granular, more of a shortbread consistency.

Once you've got the batter, you can do a lot of different things. Many people like chocolate chips or blueberries or other sweet items, but I like to make them savory. For instance, finely dice a few cloves of garlic, add in a few dashes of Tabasco sauce, and then make your waffles. Or perhaps some basil, sun-dried tomatoes, and sharp cheddar. Or tiny bits of cooked or cured sausage with green onions. The main thing is to make little pieces of whatever you're going to use, and you don't have to use all of your batter for one style: split it up in separate bowls and experiment.

Savory waffles taste great on their own, and might benefit from just a bit of butter. Don't go slopping syrup on them, save that for the regular or sweet waffles. When I get in a waffle mood, I usually make a dozen or two, and freeze the majority of them for use later. Though they look strange on the plate, they make a good substitute for the dinner roll or sliced baguette. Imagine a grilled chicken breast or medallions of pork tenderloin with any of the above suggestions.

P.S. One night after making a bunch of waffles, I got curious and scrambled two eggs and then dumped them on the waffle iron. I was rewarded with a perfect, fluffy waffle made entirely of eggs. It was an impressive sight for about fifteen seconds until it wilted and shriveled into a pathetic shadow of its former glory. Yet I remain confident that a fast food chain will someday find a way to make this work and earn millions off it.

Combinations #9: Paprika and Chorizo Baked Eggs

Andrew wrote to remind me of the latest Combinations challenge: Paprika and Chorizo Baked Eggs. For newer readers, this is a game in which one person posts a recipe, and the participants have to cook it and choose a wine to pair with the dish. Andrew makes mention of sparkling wines as a traditional accompaniment for breakfast-style egg dishes, but as I enjoy a good omelet as a quick and tasty dinner, I've got a little experience here.

As for the recipe, I made a few changes and substitutions. I don't have any small ovenproof containers similar to what was described, nor was I feeding many people, so I simply cut everything in half, made conversions from metric, and cooked the whole thing in my smallest Pyrex dish. I felt some canned chipotles in adobo would go better with the chorizo than fresh red pepper, and made some additional seasoning changes to pump up the heat. ½ teaspoon of Tabasco for four people? I've splashed more than that in my eye while punching up a bowl of soup.

And the wine? My first impulse was to go with a Spanish white, like an Albariño. But while at the wine shop I noted the 2003 Serengeti Pinotage from the Swartzland region of South Africa, about $11. Curiously, the Serengeti is located much father north in Tanzania, though the crash of rhinoceroses pictured on the label are native to parts of South Africa. Pinotage is that odd South African grape that was crossed from Cinsault and Pinot Noir. Some people love it, some hate it. The argument has gone on for a while. I fall into the first category, and felt that it would be a more acceptable match for the strong flavors involved. Some vegetal aromas and flavors, just a touch of that characteristic Pinotage wood ash. Medium tannins, long finish where bright cherry flavors can be appreciated, particularly after some breathing. There's a few bitter notes along the way, but those are quickly subdued by a pairing with food.

When looking at this, I was aiming primarily at the chorizo as the major flavor component of the dish (and Lord knows, I love chorizo--fresh, cooked, smoked). By that yardstick, the Pinotage and sausage matched exceptionally well. Everything together is perhaps better suited to late-night bachelor cravings, but the dish on its own would be ideal for breakfast or brunch. Just a word of caution: if you make it like I did, it will be quite hot.