Baked Pasta with Eggs, Ham and Cheese

This is my take on traditional Schinkenfleckerln that is so popular in Bohemia (Czech Republic) and Austria. In original Schinkenfleckerln, pasta being used are short and flat flakes, sort of like broken wide noodles, or Fleckern. I used spaghettini instead because I had leftovers from my Salmon and Pasta dish that I cooked previous day. Also, instead of traditional baking pan or casserole I used large 8oz. non-stick muffin pan. The reason for this change was that it gave me 4 times more surface area that had a nice crunch, the best part of this meal, as far as I am concerned. My brother and I were always fighting for the corner portions because they were the crunchiest, we have shunned the middle, soft parts.

Another very easy meal to make, especially if you have leftover pasta on hand.

Ingredients

4 shallots or 1/2 medium onion
4 cups cooked pasta, room temperature
4 eggs
1 cup chopped ham
1/2 cup grated cheese
Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 °F and place rack on middle shelf.
Sauté the shallots in little bit of butter until soft, about 5 minutes and let cool.
Chop the cooked pasta into 1/2 inch pieces.
In a mixing bowl beat the eggs until whites and yolks are well combined, add pinch of salt and pepper, cooked shallots, ham, cheese and pasta and mix so that all the pasta pieces are well coated with eggs and all ingredients are well combined. Pour into buttered muffin cups or casserole, cover loosely with aluminum foil and bake in oven for 30 minutes. Remove aluminum foil and bake additional 15 minutes or until top is golden brown. Remove pasta from pan by turning it over on a baking sheet and serve with pickles or/and lettuce. It can be served as a light lunch at room temperature.

Big Breakfast at Night

I have posted similar “All Day Breakfast” before but it is so good that it is worth to post another version.
As I noted before, this meal is a snap to make in restaurant or diner environment with their big steel hot plate and deep fryer always at ready but at home it involves quite a juggle act and few utensils. However, this time I cut it down to just one small sauce pot for canned maple syrup beans even though they could have been heated up in microwave oven and one large (12” flat bottom) non-stick frying pan that comfortably cooked 3 pineapple rings cut in half, 2 thick slices of smoked ham, 3 large cremini mushrooms cut in half and 3 eggs (scrambled). Frozen and seasoned potato quarters were crisped up in toaster oven. From start, including all the prep, to plating in under 30 minutes, a lot faster than my previous version and a definite repeat. That big frying pan was a huge asset and so was the fact that ham, pineapple and mushrooms could be cooked on same heat and at the same time and that the eggs were scrambled just at very end in the same pan. Of course, I had to move the ham, pineapple and mushrooms to one side.

Pasta Frittata with Garlic Scapes

Frittata of any kind makes great breakfast, lunch or even dinner. It can be as light or as substantial (read “fat”) as you want to make it. In this version I used very little grated Parmigiano Regiano cheese and just one tablespoon of heavy cream so as far as frittatas go I can consider this leftover spaghettini version quite light.

Ingredients (for 9” non-stick skillet)

2 – 3 cups spaghettini or spaghetti, chopped to 1” pieces

6 eggs

1/3 cup chopped scapes or green onions

1 Tbs. 35% cream

2 Tbs. grated Parmigiano Regiano cheese

Salt and pepper to taste

1 tsp. olive oil

Directions

Beat eggs and whipping cream in a larger mixing bowl then add pasta, cheese and salt & pepper.

Heat skillet over moderate high heat, add olive oil and chopped scapes.

Cook till scapes soften, then mix them in pasta & egg mixture.

Reheat the skillet with a bit of extra oil and pour in the mixture.

Cover and cook on medium till top feels dry.

Slide onto a large plate, then place same skillet upside down on top of frittata, turn plate with skillet on top over, remove plate and put back on burner.

Cook another 2 minutes or till eggs are cooked through.

Slide onto serving plate, cut into wedges and serve.

Frittata can be eaten as is or with a toast, hot, warm or room temperature.

Ingredients that you can add are entirely up to you. Crispy bacon, caramelized onions and shredded mozzarella and/or Provolone comes to mind. There are no rules so be creative.

Japanese Egg Custard - Chawanmushi

Very first time we ate this dish in our favorite sushi restaurant we felt in love with it. It is the lightest egg custard you can imagine and so easy to make. As far as what goes in beside egg and dashi stock is up to you. The classical version has just shrimp, shitake mushroom, ginkgo nuts and sometimes piece of chicken breast. I didn’t have gingko so I substituted with sweet fresh water chestnut and instead chicken I used ham. Also I didn’t have fresh shitake so I soaked dry mushroom and then simmered in sweetened teriyaki sauce for 15 minutes. I have also added parboiled green beans. If you don’t have a special Chawanmushi bowl with lid you can use coffee mug and cover it with aluminum foil. For each cup, mug or bowl you will need:

Custard:

1 egg

1 cup dashi or chicken stock

Ingredients:

1 shitake mushroom, sliced into strips

2 large raw shrimps,  peeled and each cut into 4 pieces

2 green beans, parboiled and cut in half

Small piece of cooked chicken breast

Directions:

Beat the egg in a larger bowl and then add cool stock.

Place all other ingredients in individual bowls and pour egg mixture on top leaving about 1/2” space from top.

Cover the bowls and place in a steamer and steam for 15 – 20 minutes or till custard is set but still moist.

Serve immediately.

Ready for egg and stock mixture.

Potato Pancake with Broccoli and Curry

Yesterday I have received a fine shredding disk for my Cuisinart 11 cup Pro food processor (great for making pizza dough) and somehow got craving for latke. What a timing! I had baking potato so all I needed was egg and little flour. When I reached for egg carton I got glimpse of broccoli and decision was made. Since I always add little curry into my cream of broccoli soup I thought that it will go well in pancakes. Great decision! Since it is so quick to make now that I don’t have to grate by hand it is a weekly snack for sure.

To make 2 large or 4 smaller pancakes:

1 large russet baking potato, finely grated

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup broccoli, chopped

2 Tbs. flour

1 tsp. Malaysian or Indian curry

Salt and pepper to taste

2 Tbs. olive oil

Preheat non-stick frying pan on medium high heat with oil.

Mix grated potato with salt, pepper and curry.

Add egg and broccoli and mix till well combined.

Mix in flour and combine.

Pour 1/2 cup of potato mixture into hot pan and spread about pencil thin.

When golden brown on bottom, about 5 minutes, turn over and crisp other side.

Repeat till done.

Serve as is or with yogurt or sour cream.

Fresh Egg Pasta

Made With Food Processor
If you have never made fresh pasta, give it a try using this recipe, it is so easy. There is such a big difference in taste and especially texture between fresh egg pasta and store bought dry pasta. Now, that I found this recipe (on Internet, of course) I will make my own much more often but in smaller batches.

Ingredients:
2 eggs
1 tbs olive oil

1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup semolina flour, whole wheat flour or white flour
1 cup  (or more) white flour
This simple, painless and quick method of making fresh pasta using a food
processor is much simpler than the length of the instructions, which include directions for dealing with problems, would lead you to believe.
This technique solves the basic problem in pasta making: getting a dough with just the right amount of moisture so that it's neither too soft and sticky nor too dry and hard to work. You start with the moist ingredients (egg and olive oil), then add just enough flour that the dough first gathers into a ball, then breaks up into granules, then gathers itself up again. When that happens, you know you've got just the right moisture content, and you can reward yourself by letting the processor do the kneading for you. The semolina or whole wheat flour that is added first can be used to give the pasta more body (semolina has more gluten than standard flour) or make it more wholesome. They're added first to give these hard-to-work ingredients more chance to dissolve in liquid. You can use as much of them as you like as long as the mixture is still a batter, to give the processor a chance to do its thing.
The first time you make pasta this way, add flour in smaller increments. With experience you'll get a better feel for how fast to proceed, and after three or four batches you'll have a batch of noodles ready in under 10 minutes. Also with experience, you will determine the capacity of your processor; too large a batch will always gum up the works.

Instructions:
Place the eggs, olive oil and salt in the bowl of the food processor and whirl briefly to blend. If using semolina flour or whole-wheat flour, add and process for 15 seconds. This mixture is supposed to make a thick batter, so feel free to add extra flour at this point.
Add remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time until dough forms a ball. Continue adding flour, 1/4 cup at a time, until the ball breaks up into bead-like granules. If the blob doesn't break up and it doesn't absorb the flour either (that is, you wind up with a blob of dough and flour whirling around in the bottom), then take out the dough and, with the processor running,
feed inch-size pieces of the dough back through the feed chute so that they break up on impact. If the dough is really sticky, add a couple tablespoons of flour first.
If the dough has just the right amount of moisture, it will break up, whirl around for a few seconds, then start gathering itself back up into a ball, ultimately picking up all the stray pieces and rolling around the inside of the processor bowl, making a terrible racket and causing the processor to walk across the counter. When that happens, congratulations! Let it knead itself this way for 15 seconds, then stop the processor, remove the dough to a covered bowl and let it sit for 15 minutes. Proceed to roll it out with machine or rolling pin for the pasta dish of your choice.

If the dough doesn't gather itself up again, it's usually either because it is too dry (it stays granular) or because the gathering process didn't get started properly (it sticks to the inside of the bowl and eventually stops whirling entirely). If the former, add water through the feed chute with the processor running, a tablespoon at a time, until the dough gathers. If
it gathers on the side of the bowl instead of in a ball, then stop the processor, grab some out, form it into a ball, return to the bowl and start the processor again. This will usually pick up the rest of the dough, and off you go. If not, add a tablespoon of flour, process it for a second, and repeat.

Original recipe by Steve Upstill on Chef2Chef Culinary Portal

My pasta machine is driven by commercial 8 quart mixer equiped with foot pedal for easy control.

 This dough needs another tablespoon of flour.

Dough has to be rolled by hand first to fit into rollers.

Sheets of pasta are ready for final processing.



Frittata with rice vermicelli leftover

I consider this the best way to recycle leftover of “Rice vermicelli with vegetables”. The ratio of leftover and eggs was about 2:1. I used 5 eggs and 2-1/2 cups of vermicelli, veggies and meat. Just beat the eggs with little salt, mix thoroughly with leftovers, pour in fairly hot non-stick frying pan and cover. Lower the temperature and cook till top of frittata is set. Now you have two options: slide it on a plate and turn over back to frying pan or slide frittata on steel preheated pie pan and place under broiler (my option, using toaster oven set at 450 °F broil). When eggs are cooked through it is ready to serve. As with any frittata this one is even better at room temperature.

Almost ready for broiler.

Rice vermicelli with vegetables

 

This is another Chinese restaurant and shopping mall food court favorite and now you can even find it in a supermarket deli counter. And no wonder. It is fairly healthy, depending on amount of oil used, and quick and easy to prepare. As with most Chinese dishes the hardest and most tedious part is julienning all the vegetables. If you want a decent looking dish it just has to be done by hand. If you don’t care what the dish looks like a grater does a decent job. I use my trusty super sharp 40 year old Chinese clever and have it chopped in no time. Again, use any vegetable you have on hand but every version should have carrots, green and cooking onions, ginger, garlic and scrambled eggs.

Ingredients in today’s version:

Chopped: Ginger, garlic, coriander

Sliced: Cooking onion, green onions, Napa cabbage leafs

Julienned: Carrot

Egg, sesame oil, peanut oil, Hoi sin sauce, soy sauce, stock (few tablespoons) sugar, hot sauce (optional)

Rice vermicelli

Method:

Soak vermicelli in very hot salty water for 15 minutes, drain, separate strands and sprinkle with sesame oil and toss to coat.

In a hot wok or non-stick frying pan heat 1 tsp of peanut and few drops of sesame oil. Pour in egg beaten with little salt and scramble. When egg is still moist remove to large preheated bowl and reserve.

Add another scant tsp. of oil into wok and stir fry carrots for 2 minutes then add cabbage or bean sprouts, cooking onions, half of coriander and half of green onions. Add Tbs. of Hoi Sin sauce, 1 tsp. sugar, 1 Tbs. soy sauce and 1 Tbs. stock or water.

When hot, add vermicelli and combine all ingredients. Stir fry till vermicelli are soft but still with a lot of bite. Add stock or water as required. Remove to bowl with egg and combine.

Serve and sprinkle with remaining coriander and green onions.

Another Breakfast Idea

This morning when I opened fridge door and saw some asparagus, Swiss cheese and eggs I saw a breakfast.

So simple and utterly delicious. I just peeled bottom half of asparagus stem, nuked it in wet paper towel for 1 minute and then wrapped in 3 thin slices of Swiss cheese and broiled in toaster oven till cheese melted. While this was going on I scrambled 2 eggs plus 2 egg whites that I had leftover from other meal, toasted and sliced English muffins, plated it (on preheated plate as usual, of course) garnished with a sliced tomato and bingo! Breakfast done in about 5 minutes.

Next time I’ll wrap the asparagus in cheese and then slice of ham. My first choice would be prosciutto but no prosciutto for sale in our town.

Pickled Eggs

Pickled eggs are almost a necessity for preparing snacks, sandwiches, potato salads, or any salad for that matter. I t is hard to imagine any celebration table without a food that doesn't include at least one dish that has hard boiled or pickled egg in it . Use older eggs, they will be much easier to peel; very fresh eggs do not have a membrane between shell and whites. Easy and foolproof test for freshness is to drop egg in a tall glass full of water. Fresh egg will lay down on its side on the bottom, older egg’s pointed end will rise.

12 large eggs

1-1/2 cups cider vinegar

1-1/2 cups water

1 tablespoon pickling spice

1 clove garlic, thinly sliced

1/2 sweet onion, thinly sliced

1/2 cup sugar

2 t. salt

Place eggs in a pot and cover with about 3” of cold water above the eggs. Bring to boil, cover, turn off the heat and let stand for 8 minutes. Drain and cool immediately under cold running water, peel and set aside.

Boil rest of ingredients for 5 minutes, add sliced onions and let cool before pouring over eggs. Keep refrigerated.



Cherry Sponge Cake (Bublanina)

Cherry sponge cake is pretty much the only sweet dessert that I will eat. I just don’t like sweet stuff besides nice braised or barbequed ribs, of course. This is a classical Czech cake and one of few recipes that I follow to the letter. Well, almost. I thought that I could reduce amount of sugar, and I did, but I can only go so far. Since the batter is basically meringue mixed with egg yolks and flour, then of course, no sugar, no meringue. After all, for soft meringue there is a minimum of sugar to egg white ratio of 2 tablespoons of sugar to each egg white so that 3/4 cup of sugar is bare minimum. OK, here it goes:

6 eggs, separated

3/4 cup fine granulated sugar

3/4 cup flour

Lemon zest and juice from 1/2 lemon

1 t. vanilla extract

1-1/2 cups canned pitted sweet cherries

Pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 350 °F. With a pastry brush or paper towel butter bottom and sides of 9” X 12” cake pan or spray with Baking spray (my option).

In a large stainless steel bowl beat egg yolks lightly with fork then mix in lemon zest, lemon juice and vanilla extract. Set aside.

With electric beater or wire whisk beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until they foam, then beat in the sugar, a tablespoon at a time. Continue beating until the whites form stiff unwavering peaks when beater is lifted from bowl. Do not overbeat.

Note: It is important to have a super clean bowl for whipping egg whites. Smallest trace of fat or grease will ruin your meringue.

Mix about 1/4 of the beaten egg whites into egg yolk mixture then reverse the process and mix with remaining egg whites.

Sprinkle flour on top and with spatula fold until no traces of the flour and whites remain.

Pour the batter into pan and spread cherries evenly on top. Smooth the top and place on middle of the preheated oven for about 40 minutes or until cake is nice golden brown and springy to the touch. Cool in pan before serving.

So moist and good!!!!

Baked Pasta with Ham and Eggs

This is my favorite dish to bring for potluck gatherings and I am sure that once you try it, it will be yours as well. It is delicious, simple, inexpensive and takes less then 90 minutes from prep to plating. Again, you can make it as spicy or mild as you wish. You can even use cooked chicken or turkey.

For 13” X 9” baking pan:

5 c. cooked pasta, (3 c. dry) Conchigliette, small shells or small elbows

2 c. cooked ham or meat from smoked pork hock (my choice!), shredded

6 eggs, lightly beaten

Salt, pepper and paprika to taste

Preheat oven to 400 °F.

Mix all ingredients till well combined, pour into buttered baking pan, shake and tap it on counter top to even the top and place on middle rack of preheated oven.

Start checking after 30 minutes. Bake till golden brown on top.

Let cool and with spatula cut along pan and then carefully lift from bottom. Place on cutting board and cut into serving pieces: small squares/rectangles for potluck or as appetizer and larger pieces for starter or light lunch. It can be served hot or room temperature. If you intend to serve it for a hot lunch, after 30 minutes remove from oven and sprinkle grated cheese of your choice on top, put back in oven and melt till cheese bubbles. Serve with pickles or Cornichons.

All Day Breakfast

When my day is very busy and I don’t have a time to cook I usually go for ADB (All Day Breakfast). In our case it means caramelized smoked ham and pineapple, Maple Syrup beans, eggs and toasted English muffin. Great comfort food any time of a day with one drawback: too many frying pans! One for ham and pineapple; one for eggs and a pot for beans. In a restaurant everything is cooked on a hot griddle, it is quick and easy.

I don’t think that I have to write a recipe; picture is worth a 1000 words, right?

Shakshuka (Eggs Poached in Tomato Sauce)

I can imagine how many people would be uneasy to try this recipe because of the name. It is simple dish loved by Israelis and with Lebanese origin. So simple yet so delicious. I have prepared it tonight and according to Marjo it will be on menu at least every other week if not more often. Again, thanks go to Saveur online newsletter.

Eggs Poached in Tomato Sauce

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
5 Anaheim chilies or 3 jalapeños, stemmed, seeded, and finely chopped
1 small yellow onion, chopped
8 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tbsp. paprika
1- 28-oz. can whole peeled tomatoes, not drained 
Kosher salt, to taste
8 eggs
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
1 tbsp. chopped flat-leaf parsley
Warm pita, for serving

1. Heat oil in a 12" skillet over medium-high heat. Add chilies and onions and cook until soft and golden brown, about 6 minutes. Add garlic, cumin, and paprika, and cook, stirring frequently, until garlic is soft, about 2 more minutes.

2. Put tomatoes and their liquid into a medium bowl and crush with your hands. Add crushed tomatoes and their liquid to skillet along with 1/2 cup water, reduce heat to medium, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until thickened slightly, about 20 minutes. Season sauce with salt.

3. Crack eggs over sauce so that eggs are evenly distributed across sauce's surface. Cover skillet and cook until yolks are just set, about 5 minutes. Using a spoon, baste the whites of the eggs with tomato mixture, being careful not to disturb the yolk. Sprinkle Shakshuka with feta and parsley and serve with pita, for dipping.

SERVES 4 – 6

Note:

I didn’t use Jalapeno or hot peppers because my wife, as most other people, doesn’t tolerate the same heat level as I do. I used sweet banana red/green peppers instead and used hot Hungarian paprika to spice it up to acceptable level.

Main ingredients.

Seasoning.

Saute onions and peppers.

Add cumin, paprika and garlic, cook till fragrant.

Add tomatoes and simmer (I transferred sauce to earthenware pot).

Add eggs and feta and poach till whites are set.

Ready to be served.

It is so, so good. I can't wait to prepare it again.