It's French Friday with Dorie time again, and this week's recipe is Muenster cheese soufflé. Now, to make a Muenster cheese soufflé, I figure you must use Muenster cheese - am I right? Umm, unfortunately, I didn't have Muenster cheese, so I used Devondale Light Cheddar Cheese. Hey, it's cheese!I divided the recipe into a quarter so I could make one serve - as the proportions of ingredients are in odd volume measures, this was no mean feat. (Thanks to Kayte for my teeny tiny Oxo measuring cup.) Apart from my cheese choice, I also lightened this up by using margarine instead of butter, and using skim milk. I further thumbed my nose at the recipe by using black pepper - who needs two kinds of pepper in the house?And you know what? This was delish. I served it for breakfast with a handful of baby spinach leaves (not pictured), and it was really good. The only hard part was waiting for 25 minutes for the soufflé to cook.To see what the other Doristas thought of this recipe, visit the LYL section of the FFWD website.
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.
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.
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.
This week's Wednesday with Donna Hay recipe, Spinach and Cheddar Souffle, was chosen by Margaret. It comes from p8o of Modern Classics I.As expected, this souffle contains spinach, cheddar, eggs, milk, flour, butter, salt and pepper. I substituted the butter for margarine to try and be slightly more healthy, and I used frozen spinach. I didn't have any breadcrumbs to line the ramekins in which I baked the souffles, so I used semolina instead.The end result was nice enough, but I didn't find it very filling - it is not really a complete meal in itself. I probably won't make this again.To see what Margaret, Kayte and Chaya thought of this souffle, visit their websites on Wednesday US time.
Wednesdays with Donna Hay is back for 2013, and this week, I am kicking things off with Donna Hay's Bacon and Roasted Tomato Omelette. The recipe is online here.This is such an easy but terrific recipe - it has the key ingredients in a fry up, but is so much healthier because it is sans added fat. The only fat comes comes from frying the bacon, over which the egg and chive omelette mixture is poured. The cherry tomatoes are roasted in balsamic vinegar and sugar, giving them a lovely sticky sweetness. I skipped the rocket.I enjoyed this omelette as a light main meal, but it would also be perfect for breakfast or lunch, making it a truly versatile dish.To see what Chaya, Margaret and Kayte thought of this recipe, visit their websites on Wednesday East Coast US time.
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
After another fortnight's hiatus, I bring you this week's Baking with Julia recipe - Pizza Rustica, a recipe by Nick Malgieri. Our host for this week is Emily of Capital Region Dining. What is pizza rustica? Pizza rustica is more akin to an egg, cheese and bacon pie than a pizza - kind of a quiche with crust on top as well as below.The pastry for this pie ended up causing me the most grief, and it wasn't the bottom crust that caused it - in our warm weather, the very soft pastry strips broke when warm or cracked when chilled, so I ended up with a patchwork rather than a lattice of pastry on top of my pie: The pie tastes quite good, but is not something I would make regularly - it would be good picnic fare, I think. One thing I did find rather weird was the sweetness of the crust - it contains sugar, but I think it would have been better without it.To see what the other BWJ bakers though of this dish, visit the LYL section of the Baking with Julia website whenever it is Tuesday in North America - can't tell if it's East or West Coast time on that site, but my guess is it's East.
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
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
