Posts Tagged Bread
Ham, Spinach, and Gruyere Bread Pudding with Kale and Potato Hash
Posted by Eileen Devlin in Breakfast, Low Calorie, Main Course, Side Dishes, Vegetables, Vegetarian Entree on March 4th, 2010
It was time to do brunch again and I really wanted to do something different. ZenChef inspired me as he has used Gruyere in tarts before. If you like to branch out in your cheeses Gruyere is also wonderful as a dessert cheese and melts well for sauces and fondues (just a side note if you didn’t know this already!). So here you are. . .
For the Bread Pudding:
4 large egg whites
4 large eggs
1 c skim milk
2 tbsp dijon mustard
1/4 tsp ground pepper
1 tsp fresh minced rosemary
4 c whole grain bread (I left the crusts on) cut up in 1 in cubes
5 c chopped spinach wilted
1/2 c chopped jarred roasted red peppers
1 c diced ham steak (5 oz)
3/4 c shredded Gruyere
1. Preheat oven to 375 and prep your 2-2.5 qt baking dish. Whisk eggs, egg whites and milk and then add your seasonings; whisk.
2. Toss your bread, spinach, peppers, and ham in a large bowl. Add your egg mixture and toss well to coat. Transfer to baking dish and press down to compact. Cover with foil.
3. Bake for 40-45 mins; uncover and top with cheese. Bake for 20 minutes more. Cool on wire rack. Makes 8 servings.
For Kale and Potato Hash:
8 c torn kale
2 tbsp horseradish
1 med shallot, minced
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
1/4 tsp salt
2 c cooked shredded potato
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1. Place kale in large microwave safe bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Wilt – about 3 mins. Drain and finely chop.
2. Mix the rest of the seasoning ingredients and add potato and kale.
3. Heat oil in a pan over medium heat. Evenly layer your hash and cook until potato is crisp and golden brown, about 12-15 minutes. (The ingredients above yield 4 servings so I doubled the recipe.)
Sunday brunch!
To offset the two dishes we whipped up some buttery pancakes and made homemade whipped cream topped with strawberries (sigh). This was delicious!
Nutritional Information:
Bread Pudding:
Calories: 276
Carbohydrates: 25 g
Protein: 21 g
Fat: 10 g
Cholesterol: 169 mg
Fiber: 3 g
Sodium: 746 mg
For Kale and Potato Hash:
Calories: 240
Carbohydrates: 30 g
Protein: 6 g
Fat: 12 g
Cholesterol: 0
Fiber: 5 g
Sodium: 244 mg
Peanut Butter Chocolate Swirl Bread
Posted by Eileen Devlin in Baking, Desserts, Low Calorie, Snacks on January 26th, 2010
Seems like I can’t go one week without baking something for breakfast – but that’s a good thing, right? This bread sounds rich, but it’s not. It has just the right amount of peanut butter/chocolate flavor to leave you satisfied.
You’ll need:
3/4 c packed brown sugar
1/3 c creamy peanut butter
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 egg whites
2 tbsp canola oil
1 c all purpose flour
1/2 c whole wheat flour
1 c fat free milk
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tbsp fat free milk
1. Preheat oven to 350 and prep your loaf pan.
2. In large bowl, combine brown sugar, peanut butter, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Beat with electric mixer until combined. Beat in egg whites and oil until combined. In a small bowl, combine flours and alternately add this and 1 c milk to peanut butter mixture beating on low speed after each addition. Transfer 1/2 c of the batter to small bowl and stir in cocoa powder and 1 tbsp milk.
3. Spoon half the light-color batter evenly into prepped loaf pan. Then drop all the chocolate batter by small spoonfuls on top of batter in pan. Spoon remaining light-color batter over it. Using a narrow metal spatula, swirl batters to create a marbled effect.
4. Bake for 50-55 mins or until inserted toothpick in middle comes out clean. Cool in pan on wire rack for about 10 mins and remove from pan and continue to cool on wire rack. Makes approx. 12 servings.
I probably could've done better with the "marbling" effect but still tastes delish!
Nutritional Information:
Calories: 181
Total Fat: 6 g
Cholesterol: 0 mg
Protein: 5 g
Carbohydrate: 28 g
Fiber 1 g
Sodium: 177 mg
Parce que vous achetez les croutons
Posted by JT in Recipes, Side Dishes on April 9th, 2009
When asked why they hated Americans the French responded “parce que vous achetez les croutons.” (because you buy croutons)
I don’t know who to attribute that quote to, but I’ve always liked it as a statement on French vs American cooking. I usually make bread once a week, a boule or a loaf, but I don’t eat that much bread and it can go stale quickly. In trying to figure out what to do with a ½ a loaf of white bread I thought I would try to make some stuffing as a side dish with dinner. My wife loves stuffing and I have tried making stuffing (unsuccessfully) in the past. It always just tasted like wet bread. So to appease my wife I would buy and happily eat Stovetop stuffing from a box. Finally being ashamed enough that I couldn’t prepare what seemed to be a rather simple dish, and happening to have what I figured were the right ingredients on hand I tried again. This time successfully.
Homemade Stovetop Stuffing
2 cups of croutons
¾ cup chicken stock
Salt if your stock does not already contain it
Pat of butter
1 stalk celery diced
1 leek cut into rounds and separated
1 tablespoon garlic (or to taste)
1 tablespoon of sage
1. Make your croutons. For me all I had to do was cut ½ a loaf of white bread into the right shape and leave it out overnight, you may need to place yours in a low oven tossing regularly depending on how wet your bread it or how quickly you need your croutons.
2. In a sauce pot combine butter, leeks, garlic, celery and ½ the sage. Sautee until the celery and leeks get soft and aromatic.
3. Add your chicken stock and bring to a boil.
4. Add in your croutons
5. Add in the rest of the sage
6. Stir, mixing thoroughly, cover and let sit for a few minutes
7. Serve along side roasted anything
Sage is the secret that I had been missing and caused my previous incarnations to taste like wet bread (no matter how flavorful the stock.) I am now convinced I could add croutons, salt, water and sage to a pot and come out with acceptable stuffing.
Roast Chicken and Potatoes
Posted by JT in Main Course, Recipes on March 29th, 2009
Roasting a chicken is one of those quintessential things you are supposed to be able to do if you consider yourself a cook. I have a confession to make. I have been cooking for around 8 years now and I have never made a good roast chicken. That is until now.
One of my problems is that I refuse to use recipes. It feels like cheating to me. It doesn’t feel like you have learned anything, just memorized something. Because of that, the first few chickens I roasted came out sad and flabby and I stopped roasting chickens. Since then I have read a lot more about roasting chicken, and while this attempt still wasn’t perfect, it was a vast improvement and created the best potatoes I have ever had in my life.
Roast Chicken and Potatoes
1 chicken -unsure of weight
Potatoes -enough to create a bed for the chicken
Salt – 1 cup + 2 tablespoons
Baking Soda – 1 Tablespoon
Water – Enough to cover chicken
Pepper, Parsley, Lemon and Garlic – For stuffing the cavity and seasoning
1. Starting with the chicken, I buy my free range, organic chicken from a farmer. While the chicken does taste more “chicken-y” than the grocery store variety, the main difference I have found is the amount of fat. Farmer chicken has much more.
2. 48 hrs in advance, brine the chicken. I place the chicken in a pot, add water until chicken is covered, remove the chicken and mix in a cup (give or take) of salt, and then stir. No need to heat it, the salt dissolved just fine, and I don’t add any other flavors because I’m not really using this as a flavoring as much as to trap moisture in the cells and give me less of a chance of over cooking.
3. 24 hours in advance, remove chicken from brine and dry thoroughly. Once chicken is very dry create a rub of 2 Tblspns salt and 1 Tblspn baking soda. This is to desiccate the chicken skin and really give you thin, crispy skin. Rub this all over the chicken skin. Return to the fridge uncovered.
4. Preheat the oven to 375, remove the chicken from the fridge. Using a knife cut a bunch of slits in the chickens back to allow the fat to escape as the chicken cooks. Stuff the chicken cavity with a halved lemon, a few cloves of crushed garlic and a bunch of parsley.
5. Cut up your potatoes (I used fingerling because it is what I had) and create a bed for the chicken in your roasting pan. Place the chicken on its back on top of the potatoes
6. Roast chicken for 25 minutes at 375, turn up heat to 475 and roast for another 25 minutes, turn off heat and let cook for 10 more minutes or until the thigh registers 180.
7. Move the chicken to a carving board and let rest, move the potatoes (golden and crisp on the pan side) to a serving bowl add salt if desired, pepper and chopped parsley.
The brining plus salt rub results in a pretty salty chicken. That’s how I like my chicken, if you don’t I would reduce or eliminate the salt rub. Yes, this recipe involves a lot of advance prep, and not all of it is worth it. Going forward I will remove the baking soda, it left a little bit of a baking soda flavor, the skin on the back turns out soft from sitting on the potatoes, and I think that the salt plus 24 hours in the fridge uncovered will do enough to dry the skin. Finally, I’m not sure what I added by putting lemon, garlic and parsley inside, next time I’ll leave it out and see what type of difference it makes.
Here is a close up of the chicken skin where the thigh meets the body that shows the tissue paper like consistency the skin had.
