FFWD - Sugar Coated French Toast

For French Friday with Dorie this week, our assignment was Sugar Coated French Toast.  I didn't want to splurge on brioche, so I used Viennese bread instead, and I topped my French toast with natural yoghurt and blueberries.

If you are interested, the recipe is available online here.

This was nice, but not sensational.  As this is only a sometimes treat, it is probably just as well that I didn't think it was amazing.

To see what the other Doristas thought, visit the LYL section of the website.

WWDH - Leek, ricotta and mushroom frittata

This week's Wednesday with Donna Hay recipe was chosen by Margaret, who selected Donna's leek, ricotta and mushroom frittata.

This was a simple and tasty breakfast for me - I halved the recipe and ended up with two serves.  I chilled the second serve, and I enjoyed the frittata better cold than warm.

My tip is to add plenty of seasoning to avoid blandness, but otherwise, this was pretty good.

To see what Margaret, Kayte, Chaya and Sarah thought of this dish, visit their websites.

WWDH - Bacon and Egg Pies

This week's Wednesday with Donna Hay is my pick.  I went for quick and simple, and chose Bacon and Egg Pies from p158 of Off the Shelf.

These little pies are so easy - just line a mini pie pan with puff pastry, brown some bacon in the oven, put a cheese and mustard mixture in the puff pastry base, put the browned bacon on top, and crack an egg over all of it, and bake for around 20 minutes in the oven.  (Donna uses two eggs and two pieces of bacon per pie, but I wanted something a little less hefty.)

These pies taste delicious, and are achieved with minimal effort.

To see what Kayte, Margaret and Chaya thought of these pies, visit their blogs tomorrow when it will be Wednesday their time.

FFWD - Creamy Mushrooms and Egg

This week's French Friday with Dorie recipe is creamy mushrooms and egg.  This comprises mushrooms cooked with shallot and cream and herbs (rosemary - I left out the mint - blech!), perched atop a piece toast (I used rye toast instead of brioche) and crowned with a poached egg.

The egg is the best bit - look at that gooey yolk:

To see what the other Doristas thought of this "recipe", visit the LYL section of the website.

Breakfast on US West Coast trip

 
Morning y'all.  Hope you are having a great weekend.  On a lazy weekend, I think the most important meal of the day is breakfast.  Weekends are the only time that I get to diverge from my milk and cereal routine, and it's time to let my inner chef out and have some fun.

I have already shared my take on lunches on the road while on the US West Coast, so fittingly for a weekend, I I going to share my brekky experiences.  You have already seen the Dennys pancake stack, but there were plenty of other things that I tried for brekky.

One of our first brekkies in downtown LA was at the Yorkshire Grill (610 W. 6th St., Los Angeles).  If you are looking for a hearty eggs and bacon breakfast in downtown LA, you can't go wrong with this old-fasioned diner style establishment. At the top of this post is my room mate's breakfast of eggs benedict, complete with potatoes ($8.95).  She loved it, although I have to say its richness makes me feel a little queasy. 

I went for the Sunrise Sandwich ($5.95):

 
Ham, egg and cheese on toast.  It was pretty good. 

The Yorkshire Grill can be a little hard to find among all the skyscrapers, so here's what it looks like:

 
On the morning that my room mate and I skedaddled to Disneyland, it was breakfast on the go at Union Station, LA.  I bought my breakfast from Famima!!, a convenience store chain which is all over the place in LA.  (Tip - it is a great place to buy cheap bananas on the go, 3 for $1.)  For breakfast, I selected a peach non-fat yoghurt: 

 
and a delicious bowl of fruit salad:

 
Then it was off to Anaheim and Disneyland, where fittingly, you can ride in a breakfast essential, a tea cup:

 
After a couple of Dennys pancake breakfasts in Arizona, it was on to Las Vegas, where I tried McDonalds Blueberry Banana Nut Oatmeal:

 
This was cheap and delicious, and one of my favourite breakfasts.  I also liked the ad featuring  a lady who was going to blog about her oatmeal with fruit.  McDonalds in Australia does not sell oatmeal, which is kind of disappointing, because I am never going to eat a bacon and egg McMuffin as a breakfast of choice - ever. Another bonus about McDonalds is that it has free wi-fi - yeah!

Eventually we ended up back in downtown LA, and I again sought out a chain that I would never go to for breakfast in Oz -Starbucks.  There, I bought their peach raspberry yoghurt granola and a passionfruit raspberry iced tea lemonade:

This combination was light and delicious - a perfect way to start the day.  Starbucks in Australia does not sell these things (as far as I know).

I hope that you are sitting back and enjoying a leisurely weekend breakfast yourself.  Enjoy!

FFwD - Corn Pancakes

For this week's French Fridays with Dorie, we were asked to make a dish which seemed all American rather than French - corn pancakes.  However, I will have to take Dorie's word for it that they are indeed of French origin.

These little pancakes consist of nothing but corn and flour and egg and salt - seriously. You blitz the ingredients in a food processor, and fry small spoonfuls of the thick batter in a skillet of hot oil.  Definitely not hard or time consuming.

I made a half batch and ate it for a weekend breakfast.  I simply spread my pancakes with honey.  The recipe said it serves six, but I gather this is when you serve the pancakes as a side with other things, so I don't think that eating a half batch myself was particularly gluttinous, bearing in mind that these pancakes are tiny. 

The verdict?  Pancakes are pancakes - these were neither better nor worse than any other pancakes I have ever had, but may be nutritionally better for you than the normal flour egg and milk version because of the corn.

 Here is a pancake breakfast that I had at Dennys in Scottsdale, AZ while I was on holidays:

Dennys became the eatery of choice for many on our bus tour because of the generous servings and afforable price.  Our tour director called it "Chez Denays". These pancakes stumped me - I got two whole-wheat pancakes, which came with sides of maple syrup, whipped butter, two pieces of bacon, two eggs (sunny side up in my case) and potatoes.  I became all flustered when ordering, as I could have also added add-ins to the pancakes (such as bacon bits or chocolate chips), and ordered another topping (strawberry syrup anyone?).  This was the standard serving - I did not ask for all of this with the pancakes.  Wow!  I think it cost $5.95 - you'd never get this for that price in Oz.

To see what the other FFwD people thought of the corn pancakes, visit the LYL section of the FFwD website. 

Have a great weekend folks.

Wednesdays with Donna Hay - Soft Poached Eggs with Sweet Potato Hash Browns

This week's Wednesday with Donna Hay recipe was chosen by Margaret of Tea and Scones.  She chose Soft Poached Eggs with Sweet Potato Hash Browns.

This dish contains two of my favourite savouries - asparagus  and sweet potato - and one cooking nemesis - the poached egg. 

I didn't even try to poach my egg the whirlpool water way - I used a plastic egg poacher.  Sure, the shape isn't as lovely, but then again, if you had seen my past attempts at whirlpool water poached eggs, you'd think the egg poacher version was marvellous.  I burst the yolk when loading the egg onto the hash brown, hence the reason why the yolk is all over the plate.

I don't have and have never purchased horseradish, and didn't want to use fatty boombah sour cream in the sauce, so my sauce was low fat yoghurt, lemon juice, salt and pepper.  If I had curry or mustard powder, that may have been good in the sauce in place of horseradish, but I had neither on hand, so I went without.  Honestly, I was happy with my sauce as is.

My hash brown is not a work of art, because I only used a thin coating of oil in the pan rather than deep frying.  It stuck a little, and was a little browner than a deep fried version may have been, but tasted fine.

This was a nice change for breakfast, but a little heavier than my usual breakfast preference of cereal and fruit.  It's definitely a weekend breakfast, because it takes a bit of work.

To see what Margaret and Chaya thought of this dish, go visit their blogs on Wednesday their time. (Kayte is currently on hiatus.)

Next week:  Roasted Capsicum and Chicken Bruschetta

Wednesdays with Donna Hay - Bacon and Roasted Tomato Omelette

There's nothing like a hearty weekend breakfast - I like to steer clear of the working week cereal and fruit on weekends, so this week's Wednesdays with Donna Hay dish of a bacon and roasted tomato omelette, chosen by Kayte, was very welcome.

Basically , this was an ordinary omlette topped with balsamic roasted cherry tomatoes (yum!), bacon, and rocket. It was very hearty and very tasty - 'nuff said.

To see what Kayte, Margaret and Chaya thought, go visit their websites when it is Wednesday their time.

Next week: Beef burgers

FFwD - Nutella Tartine

This week's French Friday with Dorie recipe is an unlikely combination that I would never have chosen on my own, but which I quite enjoyed as a guilty pleasure.  It is Nutella Tartine.  Initially I conjured up an image of a tart shell filled with nutella, but no - Nutella Tartine is brioche that has been lightly toasted under the broiler, then brushed with melted butter, topped with a spread of marmalade, drizzled with Nutella, then topped with chopped roasted hazelnuts. 

I made quite a few substitutions to this recipe to suit what I had around the house.  The brioche became challah (as that is what my supermarket sells), the orange marmalade became grapefruit marmalade, and the chopped roasted hazelnuts became raw sliced almonds.

I didn't think much of this recipe when I read it, but when I had it for brekky - kapow!  It won't win any awards for nutritional value, but as an occasional breakfast treat, it is surprisingly delicious, and I will definitely make this again (but using plain old white bread, a much less expensive option).

Visit the LYL section of the FFwD website to see what the other Doristas thought of this recipe.

Wednesdays with Donna Hay - Puffed Cheese Omelette

This week, for Wednesdays with Donna Hay, Kayte of Grandmas's Kitchen Table and I made the Puffed Cheese Omelette.  This is a delicious omelette made with fluffy whipped egg whites folded into the yolks which have been beaten with cream (I used light cream).  The omelette is cooked on one side in a pan coated with sizzling butter (in my case, margarine)before being filled with a mixture of marscapone (I used light ricotta) and chopped chives.

I made it for breakfast - and it was delish:

I would definitely make this again - easy and tasty.

Go see what Kayte thought of this omelette in 16 hours time. 
Next week: Potato and parmesan soup with parsley pesto

Wednesdays with Donna Hay - Roasted Pistachio and Honey Yoghurt and Smoked Ham and Cheese Toasties

Hooray!  I am so excited, because my blogging buddy, Kayte of Grandma's Kitchen Table, and I are going to be making Donna Hay recipes together this year, and posting the results on Wednesdays.  Kayte is from Indiana in the US, so it will be double the fun to watch her post exactly the same thing as me all those miles away and approximately 16 hours or so apart!  (As I write this on a Tuesday evening, it is currently an obscenely early hour on Tuesday morning in Kayte's part of the world - hopefully she is still asleep.)

Kayte first suggested last year that if I had the same Donna Hay book as she did, we could both make things together out of it.  I didn't have the book, so time ticked by, but the end of Tuesdays with Dorie gave me the kick I needed to raise it again with Kayte.  In time, we may go to one of Donna's fabulous books, but for now, we have decided (Kayte's suggestion) to cook recipes from Donna Hay's website.  For the uninitiated, Donna Hay is a phenomenal Aussie foodwriter, food stylist and cook; you can read more about her here.

On to the recipes!

Week 1 is breakfast, and was actually last week, but I was away from my own kitchen, so I am catching up this week.  Kayte chose Roasted Pistachio and Honey Yoghurt - you can see Kayte's post, which includes the recipe, here.

My version is pictured at the top of this post, served in a martini glass a la Mad Men (I would love to look like Joan Holloway in another life!).  I used roasted pistachios and passionfruit yoghurt.  I may have been a little heavy on the honey, as my nuts sank right into it.  (See Kayte's version for nice layers.) 

My Christmas present to me was a DSLR camera - you can see from the yoghurt shot that although my photos should get better, I have a way to go.  (Gotta love the auto-focus though - makes life so much easier.)

This week's Wednesday with Donna Hay (it rhymes!) is lunch - and I chose Smoked Ham and Cheese Toasties:

You can't see it that well in the photo, but these decadent toasties have Dijon mustard, smoked ham and grated cheese on one side, and cheese sauce on the other side - oh so good!  I had to flood the pan with the leftover cheese sauce, because I kept dipping my finger in to eat it as is! I used light Coon cheese instead of Swiss cheese, but otherwise made the recipe as suggested. 

The only catch with these toasties is that you need to make my nemesis, the roux, to make the cheese sauce.  I tried to use an ordinary saucepan first up to make the sauce instead of a heavy bottomed pan (because I didn't have a small one).  This was a disaster - the roux burned.  Luckily, I was making this recipe for one and didn't get past the first step, so there wasn't any harm done, and I ended up making the tiniest amount of cheese sauce in a whopping great pan.

Go visit Kayte in a few hours time to see what she thought of these toasties - and check out her fab nutty honey yoghurt.

Next week: Dinner - Sticky chicken parcels