Potato-Bell Pepper Frittata

'Frittata' is one of those words that's just a ton of fun to say. Frittata fri-tta-ta frittata. Anyway. From a busy cook's point of view, they're also easy to prepare and relatively fast. This makes the trusty frittata my go-to for situations where I'm cooking for people who aren't me, but I really don't have time for a huge fuss.

There are probably a million variations on this recipe, but this particular incarnation takes its cues from the fact that potatoes are maybe my single favorite food in the world. I love them in all their conventional guises, and quite a few rather unconventional ones. For example, I go nuts for calzones and pizzas with potatoes on them, which is actually where the inspiration for putting them in a frittata came from. I had my first potato calzone from a delivery place called DP Dough, which probably saved my life on a few occasions in college where I studied right through several mealtimes in a row and needed to find a place that delivered at three in the morning. And lo! there it was. Wonderful potato calzones to the rescue. With that kind of introduction to potatoes in strange places, I proceeded over the years to add them to everything from tortelini to tacos, often with delightful results. This is one such recipe.

Potato-Bell Pepper Frittata

1 lb russet potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1/2 inch cubes
2 red or orange bell peppers, julienned
2 cups onion, diced
1 tbsp dill
1 tbsp thyme
3 whole eggs
5 egg whites
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
(Optional) 1 1/2 cups cheddar cheese to top
(Optional) Salsa to garnish

In a medium skillet, add a dash of olive oil and the potatoes. Saute for 10 minutes over medium heat then add the onions and the bell peppers. Continue to saute until the onions are translucent and the peppers have intensified slightly in color.

In a large bowl, beat both whole eggs and egg whites together until fluffy. Add the dill, thyme, salt and pepper and beat again. Pour the egg mixture into the skillet with the potatoes and onions. Cook 5-7 minutes over medium-high heat. The goal is to cook the eggs through, so that the inversion step will be possible. If the frittata is not at least lightly cooked through (no runny whites on top), the next step will be nothing but a mess.

To flip the frittata, turn it out onto a plate, then slide it back into the skillet for another 5 minutes or so to finish it. This is the point that you would add the cheese in a layer on top to melt, if that's your thing. Serve with salsa for dipping. Frittatas actually are pretty good cold or reheated, so they'll keep for a few days in the fridge if needed.

Servings: 4-6

Bacon and Egg Pastries

One of the most popular trends I noticed while browsing cookbooks for ideas over the holidays was the use of muffin tins to craft individual servings. This isn't a new idea per se, but I saw it far more commonly than in the past. This was one of my favorites of the individual-serving recipes. It's surprisingly easy to make, and the final product gets a touch of cuteness from the idea of miniature tarts.

If you're into gilding the lily, you can use pie crust stamps to add leaves or whatnot as decoration, which will make these really look like something that might have come from a professional bakery. Just use the stamps to make shapes out of the dough left over from shaping the pastry crusts, and bake these extras for the last 10 or so minutes of the pastries' baking time. The decorations then get added to the tops of the finished pastries as soon as they come out of the oven. If you're really, really into going overboard, the bacon in this recipe can be switched for crabmeat (only use fresh, the fake stuff would be gross) for that uber-sophisticated touch.

Bacon and Egg Pastries

1 recipe Simple Pie Crust
6 slices bacon, cooked
6 large eggs
3 tsp dijon or whole grain mustard
3 tsp fresh basil, chopped
(Optional) 1 cup Cheddar Cheese, grated
Salt
Pepper

Begin by preheating the oven to 350F.

Using an upended bowl as a guide, cut out six circles of pie dough about five inches in diameter each. Spray a muffin tin thoroughly with non-stick spray, and line the cups with dough. Remember, the pie dough will shrink as it bakes, so be sure not to get it too thin, and to leave enough around the edges so the pastries won't end up short.

Spoon 1/2 tsp of mustard into each pastry, and crumble one slice of bacon into each. Break an egg into a separate cup and add the yolk to one of the pastries. Spoon in enough of the white to fill the pastry 2/3 full, and repeat until all the pastries have been filled. Sprinkle 1/2 tsp of basil on top of each pastry, and season all of them with salt and pepper. Brush edges of each crust with left-over egg white. Finish by sprinkling cheddar on top if desired.

Bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes. Allow pastries to rest for 2-3 minutes after removal from oven before carefully removing them from the muffin tin to serve.

Servings: 6

Huevos Rancheros

My take on a Tex-Mex tradition. This version is designed for brunch, specifically, thus the sausage-and-eggs combo, which I'm pretty sure isn't in the normal version. I don't really care if I'm mucking about with the usual way of doing things, though; this one tasted great, and that's what I cared about!

Huevos Rancheros

4 large corn tortillas (or alternately, 1 large bag tortilla chips)
8 eggs
1/3 cup cream
2 tbsp chopped dill
1 lb loose turkey sausage
1 1/2 cups pepperjack cheese, grated
2 tomatoes, cubed
1 can black beans
(Optional) Jalepeno pepper slices
1 recipe of Salsamole
Sour cream
Olive oil
Butter
Salt
Pepper

Crack the eggs into a bowl and whisk in the cream and the dill until reasonably homogenous. Add salt and pepper to taste. Scramble the cream-and-egg mixture over medium heat until the eggs are light and fluffy. Remove from heat and store someplace warm for a moment.

Warm the beans in a simmering pot. While the beans heat up, add a dash of olive oil to a saucepan and cook the sausage over medium-high heat. Salt and pepper the sausage appropriately. Drain the beans.

Assemble the huevos rancheros immediately prior to serving. In a large saucepan, melt a pat of butter over medium-high until faintly browned, then toss in a tortilla on top and shift the pan from side to side a few times to encourage the butter to brown as much of the tortilla bottom as possible. Once the tortilla has had a moment to toast, add about 1/4 of the eggs, sausage, tomatoes, and beans on top. Cook for 3-4 minutes just until the whole thing is warmed through, then slide the huevos out of the saucepan and onto an oven-proof plate with one smooth motion. If you do this correctly, the toppings should barely even be disturbed. Top the whole thing off with a generous handful of cheese, a drizzle of salsamole, and a few of the jalepeno slices if you like those. Place under a broiler in an open oven, and broil until cheese is melted and slightly toasted. Serve immediately, with sour cream and extra salsamole on the side.

Servings: 4-6

Hash Browns

I had these for supper tonight.

Sometimes I just want starch. I posted my easy potato chip recipe when I was on one of these starch binges, and now I'm posting one of my other favorite things to do to an innocent potato. I just can't leave well enough alone.

The thing about hash browns is that they're addictive. They're also kind of ubiquitous: appropriate for breakfast, lunch, supper, or a midnight snack. They go well with cheese, sour cream, even yogurt. Sometime I'll crack an egg on top of them as they finish cooking, to better imitate the throw-it-all-together-and-fry aesthetic of the greasy spoon diners of my youth. Because that's what hash browns are, at their heart: they're a throwback to the days when I was very little, and my dad would take me to breakfast bars run by ancient old short-order cooks who knew all the customers' names by heart, and who knew what you were ordering before you'd sat down at your regular stool. They remind me of giant flat-top griddles with a coffee-pot that lived on one corner of them, a row of hamburger molds across the back for shaping the fried eggs, and a trough across the front for all the scraps and scrapings, so someone could take them home to their pigs at the end of the morning shift.

Hash browns are meant to be greasy, crispy, and satisfying, and these are. Almost. I generally try not to murder my arteries, so I cut out most of the grease by using non-stick pans. They aren't made on a flat-top griddle, because all I've got it my home stove, but they are crispy and satisfying. I'm no ancient short-order cook, so I haven't quite mastered the authentic je ne sais quoi that comes with wielding a spatula for fifty years in front of one of those griddles. But they're still damn good, and they're fast comfort food for me.

Hash Browns

1 russett potato
1/2 tsp olive oil
Cheddar cheese
Salt
Pepper
Optional: Eggs for frying

Use the food processor to grate the potato. Take the potato-bits, and press them between two layers of paper towels to dry them out a bit. If your towels are soaked and the potato still seems really wet, you may want to repeat this process a few times.

Once you've dried your potato appropriately, set a large saute pan over a burner on medium high. Add the potato gratings in piles (I usually do four or five medium-sized piles per potato). Depending on the size of your pan, you may not be able to do the whole thing at once: the goal is to keep the piles pretty well separate from each other, so that they don't steam each other as they cook. Use a spatula to smoosh the piles flat, into hash brown shaped pancakes. Salt these to taste. Let them cook for about two minutes, then add the olive oil and swirl the pan to get it under all the hash browns. Let the hash browns continue to cook, smushing them to the pan occasionally to help them sear, until the pan-side of the hash browns is a deep golden color. By this time you should be able to flip them without them falling apart, so flip them each, and cook the other side in the same manner until it too is deep crispy brown.

Remove the hash browns to a plate, and grate cheddar cheese on top of them to finish them off.

Alternate way to finish off hash browns: once you've completely crisped both sides of your hash brown, crack an egg over the top of it and fry the egg on and into the hash brown. You get an egg that's really satisfyingly crunchy, and if you add cheese on top of the egg, it's kind of the perfect breakfast all in one little pile.

Servings: 1-2, depending mostly on the size of your potato

Quiche

This recipe is designed for a deep-dish quiche. I use a deep pie dish when I make my crust, and that gives me enough room to just barely manage to fit all the filling in. A shallower dish would still make a good quiche, but you'd have some egg mix left over, and you'd miss out on the unique texture the custard in the quiche takes on when you get it to a certain thickness.
Quiche

1 Simple Pie Crust, set and cooled to room temperature
Filling Ingredients, cooked until ready (i.e.: if you want your quiche to be a mushroom and onion quiche, you would need to saute the mushrooms and onions. For ham, you'd need to cook the ham)
5 eggs
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup milk
2 tsp salt
Pepper to taste (a little less than 1/4 tsp is generally what I use)
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
Approx. 3 cups coarse grated cheese, loosely packed (I like a mixture of cheddar and Jarlsberg for this)



Preheat the oven to 325F.

Begin by scalding the cream and milk. Heat them in a pot over medium heat until a thin film forms on top of the mixture, then remove them and let them sit for 10 or so minutes to cool (if they're too warm they'll cook the eggs when you try to mix them).

In a large mixing bowl, combine the eggs, milk mix, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and vanilla. Whisk as quickly as you can for three minutes. The goal here is to produce a fluffy quiche by incorporating as much air into the egg mix as possible. Let the egg mix rest for a few minutes, and saute your filling. When the filling is finished with its saute, collect the egg mix, the pie-dish with the crust, the cheese, and the filling in one location.

Assemble your quiche. Sprinkle about half the cheese evenly over the bottom of the crust. Top this with about half your filling ingredients. Whisk the egg mixture vigorously for another two minutes or so, then pour in enough of the egg mixture fill the crust half-way. Sprinkle most of the remaining cheese in another layer, followed by all the remaining filling ingredients. Pour on enough egg mixture to completely fill the crust. You may not use all the egg mixture, but get as much of it in as you can. Sprinkle the remaining cheese on top of the whole thing.

Carefully put your quiche in the oven, on a rack in the center. Bake the quiche for 7 minutes. The fillings and egg mixture should settle and deflate a little, so pull it out and fill it back up to the top with any of the remaining egg mixture. Again, you may not use all of it, depending on things like the thickness of your crust and the depth of your pie-dish. Slide the filled quiche back into the oven, and cook for another 1 hr and 15 minutes. The quiche is finished when the top is an even, deep golden color, and the center is set relatively firmly (it should only jiggle a very little when you wiggle the dish).

When the quiche is finished, remove it from the oven and sit it on a cooling rack for 15 or 20 minutes. It will deflate a little, this is to be expected. Serve warm, or (if you're making this in advance) refrigerate and serve chilled later.

My Favorite Filling Ingredients, and how to prepare them:

- Shitake mushrooms (approx 10 large mushrooms) and red bell pepper (1 pepper): Wash the mushrooms and remove the woody stems. Slice the mushrooms into 1/4 inch strips. Remove the seeds from the bell pepper, and slice it into quarters lengthwise. Slice each of the quarters into 1/4 inch thick strips, then cut these long strips into more bite-sized pieces (aim for the pepper pieces to be the same size as the mushroom strips). Saute the mushrooms in 3 tbsp olive oil for 5 minutes (or until soft), then add the peppers and saute for another 3 minutes.

Servings: 8-10

Eggs Benny

Eggs Benny is my hippy-ified take on the classic eggs Benedict. I love the idea of eggs Benedict for a brunch or light lunch, because they're so versatile. Forget sticking to the traditional 'poached egg, ham, English muffin, cheese, Hollandaise' routine, in my kitchen eggs Benedict becomes a great excuse to throw together some of my favorite flavours and experiment! Think poached eggs over a traditional Southern biscuit, with leftover sirloin strips, sauted mushrooms, gruyere, and red-eye gravy instead of Hollandaise. Or, if I'm not feeling the calories that day, the poached egg goes over a light English muffin topped with fruit slices (avocado, apple, or even grape is good), and maybe leftover strips from a rotisserie chicken. For a sauce on those days, I sometimes use a light yogurt dressing with maybe the faintest hint of curry, or even no sauce at all (because a properly poached egg has a yolk that can be a sauce all its own, and who wants to mess with that kind of goodness when you're playing with simple, clean flavours?). So here is a health-conscious version of my favorite egg brunch. This is Benedict being good (very, very good!), both for your waistline and your tastebuds.

Eggs Benny

4 refrigerated biscuits (I use Pillsbury Grands Buttermilk with layers, but whatever cranks your tractor)
4 large eggs
2 tbsp white vinegar
Water
1 ripe avocado, sliced fairly chunky (how to choose an avocado)
1 ripe apple, thinly sliced (I use Fuji usually, but Granny Smith are very pretty too)
1 cup rotisserie chicken, in strips (I usually make this recipe with leftovers, since I rarely eat a whole chicken when I bring one home from the grocery)
1 cup plain yogurt (preferably full-fat, but if you're really thinking light, the skim kind works okay too)
1 tbsp fresh lime juice
1 tsp curry paste (I use Thai red curry, but I bet green would work and be pretty too)
1 1/2 tbsp unsalted sweet butter, melted
Salt
Pepper

Prepare the biscuits according to the package directions. While the biscuits are baking, make the yogurt sauce by combining the butter, yogurt, lime juice, and curry paste in a medium mixing bowl, and whisking until it's all mixed together. The sauce should be fairly thin, to mimic the properties of Hollandaise, but if you want it thicker (as I sometimes do), cut down on the lime juice and leave out the butter altogether. When the sauce is done, set it in the fridge and slice the apples and avocado.

When the biscuits have about five minutes left, fill a saucepan with water and put it on over medium heat to simmer. The goal is to bring the water to a bare boil, then turn the heat down until the temperature is just below a boil, on a high simmer. Add the vinegar to this water. This is the base in which you will poach your eggs.

Crack an egg into a smallish container (I use a 6oz ramekin, but friends use a small glass or a mug). Lower this container into the simmering water, and in one smooth motion, pour the egg into the water. The egg should form filmy trails, and begin to cook. I find that a quicker pour here is better, because my eggs tend to move around less in the water bath with a quicker pour, but this is something that everyone has to feel out for themselves. Repeat this process with the other three eggs, allowing the first egg to settle a bit before adding another one, and disturbing the water as little as possible with the addition of each egg. The eggs should not be touching each other (or they'll cook together), and after the eggs have been placed in the pan, you should attempt to keep the water as still as possible (no stirring, no shaking the pan, etc).

How long you cook your eggs will depend on how firmly you like them poached. 3-4 minutes is sufficient if you like your yolk very runny, but I usually end up poaching mine for more like 7 minutes, so that the yolk still runs a little, but also has some substance to it. Again, experiment around. There's really no 'right' or 'wrong' here. When your eggs have finished poaching, remove them with a slotted spoon. I usually rest my eggs briefly on a paper towel to absorb some of their outside moisture, so that they won't make the biscuit soggy.

While the eggs are poaching, your biscuits have probably finished baking. Remove them from the oven and slice them in half, to make a sandwich-style top half and bottom half. On the bottom half, add a layer of chicken, a layer of avocado, and a layer of apple, distributing these ingredients evenly across your four biscuits. When the eggs finish, top each biscuit-stack with an egg, and pour yogurt sauce over the egg a la Hollandaise with the traditional eggs Benedict. Finish by placing the top half of the biscuit over the whole thing to make a sort of loose egg-apple-avocado-chicken sandwich. If you've got any yogurt sauce left over, you could pour it on top of the 'sandwich', but I usually don't have any left over at this point. Serve immediately, while the egg is still very hot (a cooled poached egg isn't nearly as much fun).

Servings: 4