I've been editing a cookbook for my family. Just the two of us - some of our favorite recipes, with tips and tricks noted. There were rules for getting in this cookbook. 1. The recipe has to feed at least 2 people. 2. The calorie, sodium and essential nutrient totals for the recipe have to be within healthful limits. 3. Ingredients must be as fresh as possible. This was a big one - I am not usually pleased with recipes that start out, "Well, I had this (produce item) sitting around for 4 days, so I suggest you let (produce item) age for 4 days, too." And yes, I've seen those kinds of notes on recipes. As I've been going through the list of recipes I want to include, I've noticed something:
Since I took the time to seriously evaluate the calories, ingredients and methods of the recipes I have, most of the ones I'd flagged on Pinterest are not in my cookbook. More from Tastespotting have made the cut. The majority of the recipes that meet the requirements I've set out have been taken from cookbooks written by chefs, family members, and research into the ingredients I want to use.
What does this mean?
For me, it means that the things that seem interesting on sharing pages aren't necessarily the wisest choices for every day meals. It isn't just about making your own good choices - it's about making good choices with where you start, as well.
As a kind of challenge, I asked a friend of mine to pick out 10 recipes on Pinterest that she wanted to try for her family. We compared the Pinterest versions with ones selected from appropriate cookbooks. Without exception, the dishes we put together with books were lower in sodium, higher in fiber and required less of the following ingredients: butter, salt, cream, sugar.
While I was pleased to see we could give my friend's choices a healthful make-over, I don't want to demonize Pinterest. Just like most of the other opportunities out there, it's about knowing how to look for the Right for My Health ones, not the Right for My Eyes and What My Tongue Says Will Be Perfect recipes.
You can satisfy desires for a beautiful meal as well as one that makes your tastebuds pass out in sheer delight, and you can do it without ruining the hard work you just put in at the gym/ taking that walk/ lifting that extra bag of potting soil while gardening. Get ideas wherever you can - inspiration is *always* a good thing. Take that idea you saw on Pinterest, TasteSpotting, or whichever place you prefer, and research it! Find a way to make it that fits your dietary needs, your budget and the plan you've made for yourself. There's more than one way to make that hunger-inducing pin you found, I promise!
Dessert Of The Day
Had this with my lunch yesterday - the sweet and cool was refreshing, and the high protein helped me stay full all afternoon! Love this little dish of wonderful!
1/2 cup Greek Yogurt (plain)
5 red raspberries (washed)
5 blackberries (washed)
2 tbsp slivered almonds
1 pkg Truvia sweetener
1. Mix.
2. Eat.
Showing posts with label recipe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recipe. Show all posts
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
An Easy Dish
I wanted to share something simple, delicious and good-keeping. This basic dish, which I had no idea what to call other than Peasant Stew, is extremely simple to make. The variety is limited strictly by the mind of the cook. Personal preference dictates notes of heat as well, but feel free to adjust any aspect of this dish to suit. My only suggestion on the meat is that I have personally tried many different proteins in this dish. Chicken, when boiled, does not appeal to me on a personal level. Ground beef becomes alarmingly tough for some reason, and the texture creates a beef vegetable soup situation for me when I use stew meat. I prefer a sausage that's been previously smoked. It keeps its texture and provides a contrast that I enjoy when juxtaposed against the softness of the potatoes. If you cook it low enough, the green beans keep their spring, and do not become mushy. I adore this dish, because the left-overs are often as/more delicious as the original, and it is truly a beginner's level dish.
Peasant Stew
4-5 red potatoes the size of a large lemon, rinsed
1 lbs smoked sausage (andouille is excellent as well, chorizo not so much)
1 lb fresh green beans (or 2 cans no salt added green beans)
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
1. Slice sausage into 3/4" rounds. Brown in bottom of stock pot. Preference of brownness, I leave to the cook. You may choose to remove fat if you choose a fresh sausage you had to cook through. Warming an already smoked sausage simply creates a delicious carmalization on the "face" of the rounds, and fat production is minimal within the 2-3 minutes needed to brown.
2. Add green beans. If using fresh green beans, add 1 1/2 cups water. If not, utilize water beans were packed in from the can.
3. Slice potatoes and add immediately to pot. Add water to cover (approx 6 cups). Add seasoning.
4. Ideally, let simmer 2-4 hours on low heat. Can be cooked over medium heat, allowed a low boil, which results in a 30 minute or so cooking time. Potatoes should be fork-tender.
SERVING NOTE: I prefer this particular dish juiceless when served. However, my husband adores the broth that results, and insists on filling his bowl halfway with said liquid. There is no right/wrong, here. Be stronger than me - let whomever you feed decide their own level of juice/juicelessness.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go argue with my husband over the proper way to fill a glass with ice and water.
Peasant Stew
4-5 red potatoes the size of a large lemon, rinsed
1 lbs smoked sausage (andouille is excellent as well, chorizo not so much)
1 lb fresh green beans (or 2 cans no salt added green beans)
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
1. Slice sausage into 3/4" rounds. Brown in bottom of stock pot. Preference of brownness, I leave to the cook. You may choose to remove fat if you choose a fresh sausage you had to cook through. Warming an already smoked sausage simply creates a delicious carmalization on the "face" of the rounds, and fat production is minimal within the 2-3 minutes needed to brown.
2. Add green beans. If using fresh green beans, add 1 1/2 cups water. If not, utilize water beans were packed in from the can.
3. Slice potatoes and add immediately to pot. Add water to cover (approx 6 cups). Add seasoning.
4. Ideally, let simmer 2-4 hours on low heat. Can be cooked over medium heat, allowed a low boil, which results in a 30 minute or so cooking time. Potatoes should be fork-tender.
SERVING NOTE: I prefer this particular dish juiceless when served. However, my husband adores the broth that results, and insists on filling his bowl halfway with said liquid. There is no right/wrong, here. Be stronger than me - let whomever you feed decide their own level of juice/juicelessness.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go argue with my husband over the proper way to fill a glass with ice and water.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Pairing
It isn't about beer.
Really, it's not.
It isn't even about knowing why a thick red wine, slightly below room temp, enhances rather than detracts from that delicious medium-well steak lovingly prepared and sitting before you.
I don't even care what you drink, or even if you drink.
I want you to know, on some level, what you're doing to your tongue when you slam any-old-beverage up against correctly-seasoned-and-prepared food.
When was the last time you took a gargantuan swig of a sticky-sweet soda, then went to have a bite of dessert and thought, Really? This isn't nearly as sweet as I expected it to be. Perhaps, and I mean simply perhaps, the fact that you've overloaded the sweet-sensing aspect of your palette mere seconds before engulfing yet another sweet-tingling taste has rendered your ability to taste the balance of flavors.... oh, how does one say it.... a bit void?
Is that to say the bananas foster you ordered wasn't just a bit over-the-top? By all means, enjoy your petit fours and hazelnut-cherry fudge with delight. I am not telling you to stop. Nor am I suggesting that what you've chosen to wash down your meal with is in some way unsatisfactory.
What I'm trying to convey is that meals should have harmony. Your tongue is probably more analytical at any given moment than the rest of you. It is an entire system reset when you're told what you're about to eat will be salty, and when it gets into your mouth it's nothing but super-sweet. The soda you're chugging changes the way your dinner will taste. I promise you.
Don't believe me?
Experiment time!
Take a drink of whatever you usually have with dinner. Now eat a tiny bit of sugar. Got how that tasted? Good deal. Now, put a couple drops of lemon juice on your tongue. Did you make a face? It's okay, don't worry about it. Put the same amount of sugar on your tongue. I'll be impressed if you're brave enough to then follow that last sugar-taste with the same amount in salt.
Your body adjusts. You don't even realize that your palette normalizes itself. One of the silliest things I've ever heard in my life: "I had dinner at elBulli. Didn't make any sense at all. Just when I got into the groove, and was really understanding the flavors, out comes this bizarre thing that didn't taste right at all."
My instantaneous reaction? "Did the next course taste amazing?"
Response: "Well, yeah, but he seemed to be back on track."
Why is this? Why would a restaurant renowned for its culinary excellence (currently on a hiatus while its owners revamp/ retool/ reset the model from which their art descends) serve you something that, in the logic of a meal, seem absolutely out of sync?
To reset your palette.
That thing you didn't like, that taste that made no sense whatsoever in the larger scale of the meal was meant to throw you off. You should be a bit off balance for the next course, because the over-arching reality of the meal is taking you to entirely new territory from the course before the offending taste to the course after.
How does a 32-34 course meal that will cost you approx. $400 compare to making dinner at home for your family? Why am I even bringing this up?
You should still realize what you're doing.
A meal that tends to the sweet, like teriyaki chicken, for example, will be overpowering if everything you serve with it is sweet. A cured meat may be overwhelmingly salty, when salt is the primary seasoning in everything on the plate.
*gripe from childhood warning* Mom, don't make pork chops breaded in Italian breadcrumbs, match it up with "chinese-flavored" rice out of the box and steamed broccoli and expect me to go, "Wow, this makes sense to my mouth." There's no crunch anywhere on that plate. Trust me. Theoretically, the broccoli would still have some bite to it, but not if you're my Mother. Rubber greenery, something in the rice that looks like slivered cardboard, and not necessarily greasy but definitely heavy-in-the-stomach pork chops? No thanks, I'll make myself a salad.
Well, Miss Smarty Pants, what would you do instead?
If I had "chinese-flavored" rice in a box, pork chops, a relatively normally stocked pantry and broccoli, what would I do?
1 TBS brown sugar
4 TBS soy sauce
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
Marinate room-temp pork chops (at *least* 20 minutes). Prepare boxed rice per instructions. Medium-high heat on oven-safe pan, little olive oil in the pan, get a nice brown on the outside of the meat. Add a couple more dashes of soy/balsamic vinegar, throw in the oven at 350 for 10 minutes to finish it off. Broccoli in a rack over boiling water for 3 minutes. Toss in ice bath. Remove, place on warm plate next to rice. Drizzle with balsamic, little fresh-cracked pepper. Pork chops out of oven, straight to plate. Wait 7-10 minutes for meat to rest. Serve.
Done and done.
By the way, when I was 14, this was pretty much the meal I served when my Mother (I would imagine she was tired of hearing "this meal doesn't make sense" and decided then let the little snot figure it out for herself, I've got a 10-hour workday ahead of me) left me pork chops, "chinese-flavored" rice in a box and broccoli with a note. "Make dinner tonight. Don't ask me how to fix pork chops. You're smart, you figure it out. Love you. Mom." I wasn't so fancy I figured out how to finish meat off in the oven, but the rest is pretty much the same.
For the record, I learned a lot from Julia Child. Thanks, PBS. Martha Stewart can kiss my ass.
Really, it's not.
It isn't even about knowing why a thick red wine, slightly below room temp, enhances rather than detracts from that delicious medium-well steak lovingly prepared and sitting before you.
I don't even care what you drink, or even if you drink.
I want you to know, on some level, what you're doing to your tongue when you slam any-old-beverage up against correctly-seasoned-and-prepared food.
When was the last time you took a gargantuan swig of a sticky-sweet soda, then went to have a bite of dessert and thought, Really? This isn't nearly as sweet as I expected it to be. Perhaps, and I mean simply perhaps, the fact that you've overloaded the sweet-sensing aspect of your palette mere seconds before engulfing yet another sweet-tingling taste has rendered your ability to taste the balance of flavors.... oh, how does one say it.... a bit void?
Is that to say the bananas foster you ordered wasn't just a bit over-the-top? By all means, enjoy your petit fours and hazelnut-cherry fudge with delight. I am not telling you to stop. Nor am I suggesting that what you've chosen to wash down your meal with is in some way unsatisfactory.
What I'm trying to convey is that meals should have harmony. Your tongue is probably more analytical at any given moment than the rest of you. It is an entire system reset when you're told what you're about to eat will be salty, and when it gets into your mouth it's nothing but super-sweet. The soda you're chugging changes the way your dinner will taste. I promise you.
Don't believe me?
Experiment time!
Take a drink of whatever you usually have with dinner. Now eat a tiny bit of sugar. Got how that tasted? Good deal. Now, put a couple drops of lemon juice on your tongue. Did you make a face? It's okay, don't worry about it. Put the same amount of sugar on your tongue. I'll be impressed if you're brave enough to then follow that last sugar-taste with the same amount in salt.
Your body adjusts. You don't even realize that your palette normalizes itself. One of the silliest things I've ever heard in my life: "I had dinner at elBulli. Didn't make any sense at all. Just when I got into the groove, and was really understanding the flavors, out comes this bizarre thing that didn't taste right at all."
My instantaneous reaction? "Did the next course taste amazing?"
Response: "Well, yeah, but he seemed to be back on track."
Why is this? Why would a restaurant renowned for its culinary excellence (currently on a hiatus while its owners revamp/ retool/ reset the model from which their art descends) serve you something that, in the logic of a meal, seem absolutely out of sync?
To reset your palette.
That thing you didn't like, that taste that made no sense whatsoever in the larger scale of the meal was meant to throw you off. You should be a bit off balance for the next course, because the over-arching reality of the meal is taking you to entirely new territory from the course before the offending taste to the course after.
How does a 32-34 course meal that will cost you approx. $400 compare to making dinner at home for your family? Why am I even bringing this up?
You should still realize what you're doing.
A meal that tends to the sweet, like teriyaki chicken, for example, will be overpowering if everything you serve with it is sweet. A cured meat may be overwhelmingly salty, when salt is the primary seasoning in everything on the plate.
*gripe from childhood warning* Mom, don't make pork chops breaded in Italian breadcrumbs, match it up with "chinese-flavored" rice out of the box and steamed broccoli and expect me to go, "Wow, this makes sense to my mouth." There's no crunch anywhere on that plate. Trust me. Theoretically, the broccoli would still have some bite to it, but not if you're my Mother. Rubber greenery, something in the rice that looks like slivered cardboard, and not necessarily greasy but definitely heavy-in-the-stomach pork chops? No thanks, I'll make myself a salad.
Well, Miss Smarty Pants, what would you do instead?
If I had "chinese-flavored" rice in a box, pork chops, a relatively normally stocked pantry and broccoli, what would I do?
1 TBS brown sugar
4 TBS soy sauce
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
Marinate room-temp pork chops (at *least* 20 minutes). Prepare boxed rice per instructions. Medium-high heat on oven-safe pan, little olive oil in the pan, get a nice brown on the outside of the meat. Add a couple more dashes of soy/balsamic vinegar, throw in the oven at 350 for 10 minutes to finish it off. Broccoli in a rack over boiling water for 3 minutes. Toss in ice bath. Remove, place on warm plate next to rice. Drizzle with balsamic, little fresh-cracked pepper. Pork chops out of oven, straight to plate. Wait 7-10 minutes for meat to rest. Serve.
Done and done.
By the way, when I was 14, this was pretty much the meal I served when my Mother (I would imagine she was tired of hearing "this meal doesn't make sense" and decided then let the little snot figure it out for herself, I've got a 10-hour workday ahead of me) left me pork chops, "chinese-flavored" rice in a box and broccoli with a note. "Make dinner tonight. Don't ask me how to fix pork chops. You're smart, you figure it out. Love you. Mom." I wasn't so fancy I figured out how to finish meat off in the oven, but the rest is pretty much the same.
For the record, I learned a lot from Julia Child. Thanks, PBS. Martha Stewart can kiss my ass.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Fish
I hate fish.
Nice confessional there, isn't it?
No, really. My body rejects the idea that the things with the fins are things I should digest. Whenever attempted, fish at its mildest leaves me with a metallic after-taste. At its worst, violent evacuation is all I'm going to say. I will say that I can enjoy (enjoy!) tuna salad. I'm picky about it, and specific about it, but my persnickity tuna salad is what works with my body.
So what could I possibly have to say about fish?
I married a man who adores finned protein. My husband loves fish. Passionately. So tonight for dinner, I made salmon and rice au gratin, with steamed snow peas on the side. I'm having macaroni and cheese. I could demand a pat on the back for preparing a meal I wanted to banish for all eternity, but I'd rather mention something important.
SALMON BONES: Salmon, especially when you purchase canned salmon as the recipe below suggests, occasionally is packaged with skin and bones intact. For those of us who are unfamiliar, bones and skin are edible on the salmon. Had I known this prior to deboning the monsterous little fillets I purchased, life would have been easier. Please, I beg you: learn from my mistakes. Also,
Salmon and Rice Au Gratin
1 lbs canned Salmon (usually more than 1 can)
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
2 cups cooked rice (leftover rice is fine, see step 2 note)
Topping
1 generous handful of oyster crackers
2 tablespoons butter
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Mix soup, milk, worcestershire sauce, liquid from 1 can of salmon and pepper together. Whisking works well to smooth out the sauce, though the same results are achievable with a spoon.
NOTE: If you find, as I did, that a pound of salmon is not an amount readily available in a can, there is a solution. Should you find yourself with extra salmon fluid from an unanticipated 2nd can of salmon, may I suggest using just a splash more liquid in the "sauce" mixture. It can sit while you make fresh rice for the dish. Use the remaining liquid from the can to boil the rice. You'll have to add water, but you should get at least half a cup of liquid out of your second can. This will infuse the rice with that salmon flavor, which adds depth to the final dish.
3. Flake salmon. To flake the fish, I used 2 forks and a paper plate. Put the forks back to backand draw away from each other. You'll see the salmon quickly break down into morsels, or flakes. The salmon will look a lot like tuna at this point.
4. Mix rice (it's okay if it's still warm, just make sure all the liquid has been absorbed) and salmon into saucy mixture.
5. Grease 2 quart casserole dish. Cooking sprays are okay, just be wary of using flavored ones likes garlic (bad bad bad things happen: trust the voice of experience). The "greasing" helps you clean up later: no residual salmon clinging to innocent cookware, making it murder to clean. Even the machine has issues when it comes to baked on salmon.
6. Pour mixture into casserole, topping with crushed oyster crackers and butter. I want to mention that I used oyster crackers because I wasn't satisfied with "unsalted crackers" here. The original recipe I saw called for 1 tblspn of butter.... wasn't enough. I ended up with an uneven butter/browning effect that was annoying. Take your 2 tablespoons of butter, chunk it up, drop the chunks evenly across your plain of crushed crackers.
7. Insert casserole into preheated oven for 20 minutes. Let cool 3-5 minutes before serving.
Nice confessional there, isn't it?
No, really. My body rejects the idea that the things with the fins are things I should digest. Whenever attempted, fish at its mildest leaves me with a metallic after-taste. At its worst, violent evacuation is all I'm going to say. I will say that I can enjoy (enjoy!) tuna salad. I'm picky about it, and specific about it, but my persnickity tuna salad is what works with my body.
So what could I possibly have to say about fish?
I married a man who adores finned protein. My husband loves fish. Passionately. So tonight for dinner, I made salmon and rice au gratin, with steamed snow peas on the side. I'm having macaroni and cheese. I could demand a pat on the back for preparing a meal I wanted to banish for all eternity, but I'd rather mention something important.
SALMON BONES: Salmon, especially when you purchase canned salmon as the recipe below suggests, occasionally is packaged with skin and bones intact. For those of us who are unfamiliar, bones and skin are edible on the salmon. Had I known this prior to deboning the monsterous little fillets I purchased, life would have been easier. Please, I beg you: learn from my mistakes. Also,
Salmon and Rice Au Gratin
1 lbs canned Salmon (usually more than 1 can)
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
2 cups cooked rice (leftover rice is fine, see step 2 note)
Topping
1 generous handful of oyster crackers
2 tablespoons butter
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Mix soup, milk, worcestershire sauce, liquid from 1 can of salmon and pepper together. Whisking works well to smooth out the sauce, though the same results are achievable with a spoon.
NOTE: If you find, as I did, that a pound of salmon is not an amount readily available in a can, there is a solution. Should you find yourself with extra salmon fluid from an unanticipated 2nd can of salmon, may I suggest using just a splash more liquid in the "sauce" mixture. It can sit while you make fresh rice for the dish. Use the remaining liquid from the can to boil the rice. You'll have to add water, but you should get at least half a cup of liquid out of your second can. This will infuse the rice with that salmon flavor, which adds depth to the final dish.
3. Flake salmon. To flake the fish, I used 2 forks and a paper plate. Put the forks back to backand draw away from each other. You'll see the salmon quickly break down into morsels, or flakes. The salmon will look a lot like tuna at this point.
4. Mix rice (it's okay if it's still warm, just make sure all the liquid has been absorbed) and salmon into saucy mixture.
5. Grease 2 quart casserole dish. Cooking sprays are okay, just be wary of using flavored ones likes garlic (bad bad bad things happen: trust the voice of experience). The "greasing" helps you clean up later: no residual salmon clinging to innocent cookware, making it murder to clean. Even the machine has issues when it comes to baked on salmon.
6. Pour mixture into casserole, topping with crushed oyster crackers and butter. I want to mention that I used oyster crackers because I wasn't satisfied with "unsalted crackers" here. The original recipe I saw called for 1 tblspn of butter.... wasn't enough. I ended up with an uneven butter/browning effect that was annoying. Take your 2 tablespoons of butter, chunk it up, drop the chunks evenly across your plain of crushed crackers.
7. Insert casserole into preheated oven for 20 minutes. Let cool 3-5 minutes before serving.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Breakfast Anytime - And Beer Matches
Tonight, I'm thinking Breakfast Burrito (recipe to follow) paired with a Kriek (Cherry) Lambic Beer.
Why on Earth would I suggest a beer to go with this dinner? Beer, like wine, whiskey, scotch and all the other liquers out there, have history that spans whole regions of the world. Finding one you like is a matter of trial and error. Maybe lambic is more your thing than Budweiser. I assure you, Lambic is no ordinary beer.
Lambic, for you purists, is a sour spontaneous-fermenting beer that in its unblended state is cloudy and uncarbonated. If you buy Belgium Lambic (the only place the 'real' stuff comes from), you'll be drinking beer aged 3 years that is characteristically dry and has a bit of sour to the finish.
Subgenres of lambic include
Gueuze - blend of 1 yr and 3 yr old beer, traditionally dry and sour
Faro - blend of lambic and freshly brewed beer, often with the addition of brown sugar or syrups
Kriek - lambic made with sour cherries which create initial and secondary fermentation, traditionally dry and sour
Fruit - Using names such as kriek, framboise or frambozen, cassis, etc. doesn't mean what you have is made from lambic. Syrup is the key here: adding syrup to a subpar beer creates an entirely different experience for your taste buds, and has been practiced widely in several Lambic products put out in recent years.
Having said that, it's up to your palate. I enjoy the syrupy lambics, unwholesome though that may be. I really like the sweet-sour notes of the Kriek lambic (which is tart but refreshing), it helps brighten the meal in my opinion. The reason I suggest the lambic with this meal is taste as well as lifestyle. Sometimes you have to let yourself relax. There is an amazing feeling about pairing the food you made with your own hands, with a complex and challenging beverage someone else worked to create. Be adventurous.
Breakfast Burrito
6 large eggs
1/4 cup milk
8 oz breakfast sausage, uncooked
8 oz salsa, prepared
8 oz lettuce
6 oz Monterrey jack cheese
1 pkg burrito shells
Suggestions: Using 1 pan is possible with this dish, but it should be a non-stick pan. Life is just easier with non-stick when it comes to eggs. The type of sausage you get is part of your over-all flavor. If you like spicier dishes, you can use hot sausage and use mild salsa to refresh the flavor in your burritos.
1.) Brown sausage over medium low heat.
HINTS: If you're using pork sausage, it's important to remember that pork smokes at a lower temperature than other meats. Don't panic! It's okay, you're not burning your sausage. Low and slow, steady as you go: that's you're rule when it comes to pork. Don't turn it too much; less is more when it comes to meat.
2.) While the sausage is cooking, whisk eggs with milk. Make sure the yolks break, encorporating all of the egg into the light mixture.
3.) Remove sausage from pan. Using the drippings from the sausage ensures a tasty meld of flavor in the eggs. Not required, especially if you're concerned about fat or salt content.
4.) Begin pouring the egg mixture into a warm pan over medium-low heat.
HINTS: Leave the eggs alone! The longer you can wait to flip and stir, the fluffier the eggs will be. Just like meat, the less you mess with it, the better the final product.
5.) While eggs cook, wash lettuce leaves lightly and slice or tear into strips. The added crisp, light flavor will keep the meal from feeling greasy. The crunch is also a nice change from the other textures in the burrito, which keeps your mouth interested.
6.) When the eggs reach a done-ness you prefer, remove them from heat. Build your own burrito.
HINTS: Some people prefer runnier eggs. I'm a "make sure it's done" kind of lady when it comes to eggs. I wait until the texture looks light, but nothing looks wet. Also, when building your burrito, remember that cheese and salsa should enhance the eggs you worked so hard on, not hide them. Show off what you achieved!
Why on Earth would I suggest a beer to go with this dinner? Beer, like wine, whiskey, scotch and all the other liquers out there, have history that spans whole regions of the world. Finding one you like is a matter of trial and error. Maybe lambic is more your thing than Budweiser. I assure you, Lambic is no ordinary beer.
Lambic, for you purists, is a sour spontaneous-fermenting beer that in its unblended state is cloudy and uncarbonated. If you buy Belgium Lambic (the only place the 'real' stuff comes from), you'll be drinking beer aged 3 years that is characteristically dry and has a bit of sour to the finish.
Subgenres of lambic include
Gueuze - blend of 1 yr and 3 yr old beer, traditionally dry and sour
Faro - blend of lambic and freshly brewed beer, often with the addition of brown sugar or syrups
Kriek - lambic made with sour cherries which create initial and secondary fermentation, traditionally dry and sour
Fruit - Using names such as kriek, framboise or frambozen, cassis, etc. doesn't mean what you have is made from lambic. Syrup is the key here: adding syrup to a subpar beer creates an entirely different experience for your taste buds, and has been practiced widely in several Lambic products put out in recent years.
Having said that, it's up to your palate. I enjoy the syrupy lambics, unwholesome though that may be. I really like the sweet-sour notes of the Kriek lambic (which is tart but refreshing), it helps brighten the meal in my opinion. The reason I suggest the lambic with this meal is taste as well as lifestyle. Sometimes you have to let yourself relax. There is an amazing feeling about pairing the food you made with your own hands, with a complex and challenging beverage someone else worked to create. Be adventurous.
Breakfast Burrito
6 large eggs
1/4 cup milk
8 oz breakfast sausage, uncooked
8 oz salsa, prepared
8 oz lettuce
6 oz Monterrey jack cheese
1 pkg burrito shells
Suggestions: Using 1 pan is possible with this dish, but it should be a non-stick pan. Life is just easier with non-stick when it comes to eggs. The type of sausage you get is part of your over-all flavor. If you like spicier dishes, you can use hot sausage and use mild salsa to refresh the flavor in your burritos.
1.) Brown sausage over medium low heat.
HINTS: If you're using pork sausage, it's important to remember that pork smokes at a lower temperature than other meats. Don't panic! It's okay, you're not burning your sausage. Low and slow, steady as you go: that's you're rule when it comes to pork. Don't turn it too much; less is more when it comes to meat.
2.) While the sausage is cooking, whisk eggs with milk. Make sure the yolks break, encorporating all of the egg into the light mixture.
3.) Remove sausage from pan. Using the drippings from the sausage ensures a tasty meld of flavor in the eggs. Not required, especially if you're concerned about fat or salt content.
4.) Begin pouring the egg mixture into a warm pan over medium-low heat.
HINTS: Leave the eggs alone! The longer you can wait to flip and stir, the fluffier the eggs will be. Just like meat, the less you mess with it, the better the final product.
5.) While eggs cook, wash lettuce leaves lightly and slice or tear into strips. The added crisp, light flavor will keep the meal from feeling greasy. The crunch is also a nice change from the other textures in the burrito, which keeps your mouth interested.
6.) When the eggs reach a done-ness you prefer, remove them from heat. Build your own burrito.
HINTS: Some people prefer runnier eggs. I'm a "make sure it's done" kind of lady when it comes to eggs. I wait until the texture looks light, but nothing looks wet. Also, when building your burrito, remember that cheese and salsa should enhance the eggs you worked so hard on, not hide them. Show off what you achieved!
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