sweet and savory breakfast mini-tartines

Note: This post was previously published here as a part of my freelance work, and was written by my darling boyfriend, Adam. 

This week’s CSA provides the makings—gloriously fresh and local as always—for a truly awesome breakfast. With this recipe we departed from the conventional in an attempt to class-up the most important meal of the day, and made breakfast tartines. These dainty little morsels are a supremely elegant way to enjoy your Philly Muffins.

For the first tartine, we riffed on the classic lox breakfast, using smoked salmon, cream cheese and capers.  We pureed beets into the cream cheese to create a spread with vibrant visual appeal and sweet earthy flavor.  We added orange juice (squeezed from oranges we picked up at the farm stand) to drastically enhance that beety flavor we all love.  The addition of citrus also helps to brighten the salty profile of the lox.

Next we used our CSA onions to make a caramelized onion marmalade, and paired it with Greensgrow-sourced Cameo apples and Milkhouse Creamery’s Witchcraft cheese.  This marmalade packs a potent punch of flavor, and would be great company with your CSA bacon.  We garnished with orange-zest and rosemary to really tart up these tartines.  

Beet Cream Cheese

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

3 baby beets

8 ounces cream cheese

1 1/2 oranges, juiced

Salt to taste 

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 F.  Toss beets in olive oil and salt and roast for 30 minutes or until tender.  Allow them to cool, then peel off the skins using a paring knife.

Squeeze the oranges into a blender (we use a Magic Bullet) and puree the beets.  Add a splash of water if the beets are reluctant to puree.

After the puree is smooth, add the cream cheese spoonful by spoonful to slowly incorporate it into the puree.

Transfer from the blender and season with salt to taste.

Onion Marmalade

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

3 medium onions

1 orange, zested and juiced

1/4 cup honey

1 Tbl white wine vinegar

3 cubes candied ginger 

2 cloves black garlic

Directions:

Slice onions and sauté in olive oil over medium-high heat.  Cook hard, stirring frequently until they begin they brown and caramelize.  Add splashes of water occasionally to deglaze and loosen the fond (the brown stuff that collects on the bottom of the pan).  Scrape the fond using a wooden spoon and stir back into the onions.

After 15 or 20 minutes the onions should be fully caramelized.  Add the orange juice, vinegar, black garlic, ginger and honey and cook for another few minutes until it the liquid becomes syrupy.

Transfer to a food processor and buzz with the orange zest until it has a jam-like consistency. 

johnny's old fashioned corn cakes

New Years day was perfect. We slept in and spent most of the day recharging. We couldn't help but enjoy our cozy home and most of our time was spent cooking away in the kitchen. Call it our meditation, our unwinding, our therapy...

To start, we reached for a bag of corn cake mixture that's been patiently sitting in the cupboard for sometime now. Much like a pancake, corn cakes are made with a mixture of corn flour, wheat flour, and rye flour. We threw in frozen berries and drizzled them with New York State maple syrup. It was a true breakfast of champions. And we got to enjoy it in the comfort of our own home.

Over corn cakes, eggs, and greens we smiled and dreamt about the future.

Happy 2015!

Ingredients:

2 Cups Johnny's Old Fashioned Corn Cake Mix

1.5 Cups Milk

1 Egg

2 Tbs Cooking Oil

1/2 Cup Frozen Berries

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F 

2. Mix ingredients until smooth.

3. Bake on a hot griddle until golden.

4. Lay out on a cookie sheet.

5. Bake in oven for 10 minutes.

6. Enjoy!

cremini mushroom & collard green whole wheat galettes

Note: This post was previously published here as a part of my freelance work.

Pie crust is one thing many cooks strive to perfect in their lifetimes. It’s finicky and temperamental, but when you get it right, that flaky melt-in-your-mouth deliciousness makes it all worthwhile. Add in the desire to make it wheat, and you throw a whole new curve ball into the game. 

Here, I adapted a galette crust from the folks at Tartine, and filled it with delicious local cremini mushrooms, collard greens, leeks, tarragon, and horseradish quark. I love the Tartine books, but I will admit that they are not for beginners. Their methods get so precise, and often a little tool pretentious. Ultimately, they do know what they’re talking about though, and even if you don’t get each step precisely as they describe it, you still end up with something that’s pretty darn good. 

The meaty mushroom filling in these particular galettes sings tastefully against the nuttier whole wheat crust. Folded up into individual portions, they make a beautiful treat for guests. Serve them for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and they will make sense. Deep into fall and heading into winter, they are a nice hearty treat.

Ingredients:

For the crust:

1 lb. unsalted butter

1 cup water

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 1/4 cups whole wheat flour

For the Egg Wash:

2 egg yolks

2 tbs half & half cream

For the Filling:

1 lb. cremini mushrooms, sliced

2 1/2 cups chopped collard greens

2 large leeks

2 lg garlic cloves, sliced thick

1/2 cup water

2 tbs chopped tarragon

2 tbs champagne vinegar

3 tbs horseradish quark

3 tbs coconut oil

salt & pepper to taste

Directions:

For the Dough:

1. Slice butter into one inch cubes, dissolve salt in water, and stick everything into the freezer to chill for 10 minutes. Keep the water and the butter in separate dishes.

2. On a clean working surface, portion out your flours and mound them up into a square, about 1/3 inch thick. Don’t worry about throughly mixing the flours. It will inevitably happen once you get working.

3. Lay butter cubes evenly on top of the square, and sprinkle with some more flour. Using a floured rolling pin, begin to roll the butter until it warms up enough to make long little sheets. As you do this, intermittently scrape up the sides of your square to return it to the size you first began with. Repeat rolling and reshaping the square 3 or 4 times.

4. Now, make a whole in the middle of the dough, and fill it with the chilled salt water. Using a bench scraper, knife, or pastry blender, scrape the edges of the square into the center, cutting and mixing the water into the dough. It will start to look like a shaggy mess.

5. Shape the dough back into a square, and roll it out, so that it’s roughly 10 x 14 inches. Sprinkle with flour, fold in on itself, and re-roll 3 or 4 times.

6. Transfer the dough to a baking sheet, cover with plastic wrap, and chill for at least one hour. I chilled mine overnight.

7. When you are ready to roll out the dough, cut it into 12 even squares. Flour your surface and roll each square into a circle that is about 1/8 inch thick. Trim edges to make it round when necessary. 

8. As you finish the circles, fold them into quarters, and set them aside on a lightly floured surface. Stick everything back into the fridge for at least 10 minutes of chilling once all are rolled out.

For the Egg Wash:

1. Whisk ingredients together & set aside.

For the Filling:

1. Cut leeks in half length-wise, turn, and continue to cut into 1/4 inch strips along the short direction.

2. Heat coconut oil in a large pot, and add leeks.

3. Once the leeks begin to sweat, add garlic and tarragon, then sauté for about 1 minute.

4. Add collard greens. Stir around for 1 minute, and then add water, keeping the heat high. Let steam for about 10 minutes

5. Add in the sliced mushrooms. Cook for another 10-15 minutes, until most of the liquid is cooked out.

6. Add vinegar, and cook for 1 more minute, then kill the heat, season, and let chill.

Assembly:

1. Preheat oven to 350F

2. On a lightly floured surface, lay down your first circle of galette crust. Pile on filling, so that you have a 1 inch perimeter of crust, and so that it piles roughly 1/2 inch high.

3. Sprinkle with horseradish quark.

4. Fold the dough up around the edges, pressing it down to make sure that no liquid will escape.

5. Repeat until you’ve filled all of your galettes, You will probably have left over crust. This can be frozen and used at a later date.

6. Give your egg wash one last whisk, and then paint it overtop each galette, covering the crusts evenly.

7. Bake for 45-60 minutes, until lightly browned.

8. Serve warm.

superfood cereal: hot quinoa, blueberries, maca, and ginger

About a year ago, I used to eat hot quinoa with maca powder for breakfast on the regular. Over the summer I somehow forgot about it, but I'm happy to say that it has recently reappeared on my menu. It all happened because I got these blueberries in my CSA box. I decided to prepare them as filling for homemade poptarts for Kristina's birthday. I am not a baker, though. My wholewheat pie crust failed, and I was left with this jar of awesomely sweet, ginger blueberries. I needed a new purpose for them, and I thought they would go great with breakfast. And so, the hot quinoa cereal popped into my mind, and made its reappearance on the scene... 

Combined with the ginger blueberry mixture, this is probably one of the best things you can eat for breakfast. Quinoa is protein loaded while blueberries give you a kick of antioxidants, ginger balances your digestive track, and maca powder loads you up with vital minerals. Essentially, this cereal will give you energy, keep the toxins out, and make everything run smoothly. It's also warm and comforting, perfect for those winter months. 

Now, what better way to start off the day?

Ingredients (serves 2):

1 Cup Quinoa

2 Cups Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk

Blueberry Ginger Ingredients (makes 1, 8oz jar):

1.5 Cup Frozen or Fresh Blueberries 

1/2 Cup Cane Sugar

2 Tbsp Agave Nectar

1 Tsp Vanilla

1/2 Inch Ginger, peeled and finely grated

Juice from 1/2 a lemon

Directions:

1. At least 2 hours before you want to make your cereal, stir blueberry mixture ingredients together in a jar, and let it sit in the refrigerator to take on flavor.

2. Place quinoa and almond milk into a sauce pan. Over a medium/low flame, simmer for 15-20 minutes, until the quinoa is cooked, but is slightly soupy. Stir it every now and then during the simmering process.

3. Pour quinoa into bowls and then spoon desired amount of blueberry mixture over top.

4. Mix up and eat.

popover recipe

Often times at work I'm checking out blogs - looking into their follower counts, assessing their brand appropriateness, you know, the standard. A random day about a month ago, my eye was caught while doing so. Fluffy delicate popovers flowed over a basket while soft melty butter tauntingly rested beside it. It could safely have been called food porn. So hypnotized was I, that I immediately remember an unused gift card to Amazon. Right then and there, I went on to buy the first popover pan I saw. Back to work.

In classic Amazon fashion the pan arrived two days later (Prime!). I what? I bought a popover pan? I guess I had to make some.

For weeks I said I was going to make breakfast. There kept not being enough time, or not enough energy to run to the store for that last missing ingredient. When I finally got around to it, I did it right. I baked those babies golden, served them in a pretty arrangement, and doled out slabs of butter alongside local strawberry jam. It was the simplest, most self indulgent breakfast I've had in a long time. I think it might just be my stable from now on - whipping up popovers anytime I feel.  

Ingredients (makes a dozen):

1 1/4 Cups 2% Milk

2 Cups All-Purpose Flour

1/2 Tsp. Salt

1/2 Tsp. Baking Powder

3 Eggs

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450F and grease your pan

2. Sift together dry ingredients in a small bowl, set aside.

3. Heat milk for 2 min in the microwave.

4. Using a hand blender, whip your eggs until foamy, and then slowly add in milk, then dry ingredients.

5. Fill popover pan so that each cup is mostly full.

6. Bake at 450F for 20 minutes and then lower to 350F for another 20.

7. Eat warm with lots of butter and jelly