Adam’s Ultra Manly Scrambled Eggs September 20, 2008

My roommate Adam surprised me last night by bringing home two huge rib steaks because they were on sale. He devoured all of his, but after mine was cooked I cut it in half so I would eat a reasonable sized portion of meat. (A serving of beef should be about the size of your fist.)
For brunch, Adam suggested that we have some steak and scrambled eggs, so I figured out how to make this ultra manly brunch food.

1 portion of leftover steak, chopped into small cubes
2 tbsp red onion, chopped finely
Salt
Pepper
4 eggs, scrambled in a bowl
Cooking spray

1. Heat a large, non-stick pan, and spray in some cooking spray. Add your onion, and sauté until the onion begins to turn clear.

2. Add your beaten eggs, salt, pepper and steak chunks. Scramble until the eggs are cooked and steak is heated through.

3. Serve with BBQ sauce because you are a man!!

Easy Gourmet Tuna Sandwiches September 16, 2008

So, it’s late, and you’re tired and you have a nearly empty cupboard, and you want a new taste and no hassle, right? Right!

1 can tuna
1 tsp parsley flakes
2 tsp Dijon mustard
Bread

1. Drain tuna, and mix in mustard and parsley flakes.
2. Spoon tuna onto two slices of bread and toast under the broiler, or slap together and eat cold.

If you find just straight up Dijon mustard too intense, cut it with some mayo. Also, Dijon mustard is way lower in fat and calories than mayo, so you can pretend this is a healthy tuna sandwich.

Autumn Cauliflower Soup September 15, 2008

Ah! No posts for a while… Turns out the carpets in my apartment were being replaced, so I had to move all my furniture into the non carpeted areas of my house… The thing is, most of my place is carpeted, so you can see where this went.
Madness ensued.
It didn’t help that I also decided to paint my living room… Anyhow this is a soup I was planning to make for the better part of a week. It’s a nice, rich soup (similar to Mulligatawny, sort of?) that is good for two reasons: 1 – it’s like a creamy soup with none of the cream, so it’s healthy and 2 – if you use vegetable stock, this is a vegan friendly dish. Oh boy!
It’s also got the benefit of looking totally rotten when you’re making it, so you can gross out whomever you want to eventually feed it to. He he he.

Autumn Cauliflower Soup:
1 leek, thinly sliced white and light green part only
2 cloves garlic
cooking spray
1 tsp curry powder (I may have used as much as 1.5, I always just guesstimate…)
1/4 tsp turmeric
1 tsp olive oil
4 cups hot stock – I used chicken (use vegetable for a vegan friendly recipe)
1 head cauliflower, roughly chopped
salt & pepper to taste
1/4 tsp nutmeg (the secret ingredient!)

1. Sauté leek and garlic with cooking spray until translucent, but not browned in a large stock pot.
2. Add olive oil, curry powder and turmeric, and cook for about 1 minute more until spices are fragrant. Yum!
3. Add your hot stock and cauliflower, some salt and pepper to taste. Now, to use the technical cooking term, boil the ever loving crap out of that, keep the lid on the pot so all the stock doesn’t evaporate. Give it 20 minutes or so.
4. Mash up your cauliflower with a potato masher. If it gets crumbly and looks like brains, it’s done. Gross!
5. Whip out your trusty immersion blender and puree the soup until it’s thick and creamy.
6. Add a bit more salt if desired, and stir in the nutmeg.
7. Heat through and serve with crusty bread. Note: this soup is really thick and the bubbles tend to pop rather explosively. I warned you.

OPTIONAL: Top with crumbled prosciutto ham! Simply pan fry some slices of prosciutto until it’s crispy, and then crumble it over the top of your soup. This makes it un-vegan, but I love prosciutto.

Roast Lamb September 7, 2008

I was born in New Zealand, and I love Lamb, mainly because I was raised on the stuff. It makes a great Sunday dinner because it’s quick and easy to roast, and doesn’t require you to make a gravy for it. This recipe was adapted from one by Jamie Oliver.

Ingredients:
1 leg of New Zealand lamb, thawed
50 grams proschutto ham
Fresh rosemary
Salt
Pepper

1. Take your lamb, and make 10 to 12 thumb sized slits in the leg.
2. Take short pieces of rosemary about 1 to 2 cm long, and wrap them in chunks of ham, making little plugs of pure goodness.
3. Plug those holes! Gross!!
4. Sprinkle the lamb with salt and pepper.
5. Seat the lamb at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, then drop the temperature to 350 and roast for 20 minutes a pound. Your meat thermometer should read 150 in the thickest part of the leg to get a leg that has a nice mix of well done to medium rare meat.
6. Devour!! Graham and Adam got roast lamb with Boursin mashed potatoes, and I slivered up some lamb onto a raw spinach and cabbage salad. It was really, really good!!

Boursin Scramble with Home Fries September 7, 2008

I love the idea of food that is simply prepared, but uses the fanciest of ingredients. This is pretty foolproof, but it will make you feel like a gourmet chef when you serve it.

Home fries:
1 large russett potato
Sea salt
Pepper
Cooking spray

1. Poke some holes in your potato with a fork. Put it in the microwave on high for 10 minutes, or until cooked. Feel free to use a leftover baked potato and skip this step.
2. When it’s done, slice it up thinly and place the slices in a hot pan with some cooking spray, fry until golden on one side.
3. Sprinkle on salt and pepper to taste, add a bit more cooking spray, and fry the other side until golden brown.

Scramble:
4 eggs
2 tsps low fat boursin
1 tsp Dijon mustard
Splash milk

1. Combine all ingredients into a tall container, and whiz with an immersion blender until frothy. You really do need an immersion blender for this step, or it will not combine right, and you’ll get blobs of cheese and mustard. Plus your eggs will be extra fluffy. Seriously, get an immersion blender, they’re like $30 at Superstore.

Bits:
8-10 sage leafs
2 slices proschutto ham

1. Put ham in a hot non-stick frying pan, and fry until crispy.
2. Remove ham and set aside on a paper towel.
3. Add sage leaves and fry until just browned, set aside.

4. Add a bit of cooking spray to your hot non-stick pan, and add your egg mixture, giving it another whiz if needed. Crumble in your crispy cooked proschutto and sage.
5. Scramble the eggs until done.
6. Devour with home fries, serves two.

French Toast With Red Pear and Ume Syrup September 1, 2008

Ingredients:

6 slices bread
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp brown sugar

Sauce:
2 red pears, sliced
3 tbsp butter/margerine
1 oz Ume (Japanese plum wine)
3 tbsp brown sugar

Method:
1. Mix up eggs, milk, cinnamon and brown sugar very well and put into a shallow bowl. Set aside.
2. In a small frying pan, add sliced pears and butter, and sauté until soft.
3. Add sugar and plum wine, and cook on high heat (7 out of 10) until it cooks down into a sauce the consistency of maple syrup. Keep warm. (I put mine in a 250 oven in a bowl with tinfoil on top.)
4. Dip bread into reserved egg mixture and fry until the French toast is done.
5. Cut each slice in half diagonally and arrange on a plate. Top with half of your warm fruit and syrup mix, and whipped cream.

This is very fancy fare, and you can also serve the pear and syrup on top of ice cream. If you don’t have Ume, you can use Marsala.