We are always on the look out for great breakfast recipes that we can make on the weekends because both of us could perhaps eat breakfast food for every meal. A couple of months ago, Esquire Magazine came out with an article on the best breakfast joints in America. In addition to the great breakfast recs around the country, they also featured some delicious recipes, including this Pulled Baby-Back Ribs Egg Benedict. Pork ribs are already awesome on their own, but combine that with a poached egg and some cornbread, and you just might be in brunch heaven.

This Pulled Baby-Back Ribs Eggs Benedict recipe serves two for breakfast and costs 59 cents per serving plus the cost of your pork rib leftovers.

Take a half a rack of pork rib leftovers and shred the meat off the bone. Make a bbq-hoisin sauce for the meat by mixing 2 parts bbq sauce with 1 part hoisin sauce, and add the rib meat. You want enough sauce for the meat to be nice and juicy, and then heat up the mixture in the microwave until it is warm.

I had never made cornbread until I made this recipe and I was shocked at how easy it was to make using the package of Jiffy mix from the grocery store. I normally make the corn bread the night before so we can eat breakfast sooner in the morning. You can cut the corn bread however you like to top with the pork ribs and egg, but I like using a cookie cutter to make it look like I’m eating in a fancy restaurant.

Poach two eggs by cracking them into a pot of simmering water with a couple of teaspoons of white vinegar. After about two minutes, take the eggs of the water and place an egg on top of the rib meat and corn bread. Top with some chopped green onions to finish off the dish.

This recipe is fanastic and tastes as good as it looks. If you have guests over to brunch, they will never know that you are using leftover ribs from a bbq take out or what you had made the night before. I think this recipe will also work great with left over pulled pork or even chopped up brisket–whatever is your favourite bbqed meat.

This Tomato, Fennel and Feta Pasta Salad, adapted from the Independent newspaper, feeds 4 people at $2.25 per serving. It made a nice pasta salad that took a little time, because of the roasting of the fennel and onions, but wasn’t too taxing. I didn’t bother peeling the tomatoes because I’m not certain it’s worth the time and trouble, but do whatever you like. I think you could even use cherry tomatoes and it might be even better (obviously don’t try to peel those!).

2 fennel bulbs
2 red onions, peeled
extra virgin olive oil (for frying)
sea salt, black pepper
2lb plum or beefsteak tomatoes
3 garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced
1 teaspoon thinly sliced red chilli
1 small handful basil leaves
8 oz pasta shells
6 tablespoon very best extra virgin olive oil (for the dressing)
2 teaspoon aged red wine vinegar
5 oz feta, cubed
3oz black olives, pitted

Preheat the oven to 375F. Trim the fennel bulbs of their shoots, remove tough outer sheaves and tidy the base. Halve vertically and slice thinly into segments. Halve the onions vertically and cut these, too, into fine segments. Place in a bowl and toss gently with olive oil and seasoning, then lay out on a baking tray and cook for 30 minutes until coloured at the edges.

Stir halfway through cooking.

To peel the tomatoes, bring a pan of water to the boil. Cut a cone from the top of each tomato to remove the core and plunge them into the boiling water for 20-30 seconds, then into cold water. Slip off the skins, quarter and de-seed them.

Heat 2 tbsp of olive oil in a medium-size saucepan and sweat the garlic and chilli for a moment, then add the tomatoes and seasoning and cook for 10-20 minutes, stirring regularly and pressing down to mush them up. Heat the pastis in a long-handled spoon, ignite and pour it over the tomatoes. Remove from the heat, tear up the basil and add, leave to cool.

Just before serving, bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and cook the pasta, leaving it firm to the bite. Drain and run cold water through it. Add the best olive oil and vinegar to the tomato sauce, then gently fold in the roasted fennel and onion and the pasta. Next, mix in the feta and black olives. Serve straightaway.

Carlo and I just got back from a three-day camping trip in Zion National Park. We had an incredible time, and it just might be my new favourite place in the world. When we go camping, we like to make up some hearty salad-type recipes that we can eat for lunch, so you don’t get stuck eating sandwiches on stale bread with dodgy lunch meat every day.

When we went camping in Death Valley last month, we made the Marinated Chickpeas and Pasta with Roasted Tomatoes and Black Olives. We make these dishes before we leave and stick them in plastic containers in the cooler, so we can take them out for a quick lunch or picnic. This tactic works really well and you always have something filling and tasty on hand, so you can spend more time having fun on your trip instead of slaving over the camp stove or grill.

One of my old friends Britney had forwarded me this Quinoa Salad recipe from the incredible blog 101 Cookbooks after reading about the Quinoa Sopa Seco. I’ve had this recipe on my list of things to cook for a while, and thought our trip to Zion would be the perfect place to test it out.

This Quinoa Salad recipe made 5 very large lunch-sized servings at $1.21 per serving.

I put just a tiny bit of olive oil in a hot pan to brown the tofu. Even though the recipe already calls for extra firm tofu, the browning helps make it even firmer and you can also season the tofu at this point to make it a bit tastier too.

Since I’m a fairly recent convert to quinoa and others may be too, here is an up close photo of what cooked quinoa looks like. Be sure to keep on cooking it so you can see all of the grains’ curliques. I like cooking my quinoa in some vegetable or chicken broth for some added flavour.

I didn’t really follow a recipe for pesto, but just chucked in some fresh picked basil from my potted garden, some toasted pine nuts, grated Parmesan cheese, and salt and pepper in the mini food processor. I whizzed all of that up and then added enough olive oil to make the mixture into a paste–so much better than the jarred stuff you can get at the grocery store.

The finished result tasted delicious and was my first “full” recipe made from my new garden. In case you are a bit nervous about making pesto, here is a classic pesto recipe to follow.

This Quinoa Salad was pretty easy to make and like Carlo’s Fritatta, this recipe has endless possibilities about what kind of veggies or protein you can use. It would be a great thing to make on a Sunday afternoon so you can use up whatever leftover vegetables are still in the fridge and get a head start on the week by having a few days’ worth of lunches prepared. I didn’t have any cherry tomatoes in the house, so I used some of this awesome roasted tomato paste that we bought in Argentina, which was a nice salty touch.

This recipe turned out to be the perfect camping trip lunch. It tasted great and really filled us up so we could hike to our hearts’ content. Even though Carlo did make a quip that he felt like a total hippie eating quinoa and tofu while camping

The incredible view from our campsite.

This recipe for Korean Grilled Mushroom and Scallion Kebabs feeds six hungry people at 99 cents per serving. It’s from Steven Raichlen’s Barbecue Bible, a great book for anybody with a grill. It couldn’t be easier: mushrooms are great for grilling because of their high water content, which keeps ‘em moist, plus they take on a nice crunchy texture. This is a good side dish for any sort of grilled meat, or could be a good vegetarian main course, perhaps if you used sliced portobello mushrooms.

Take about 12-16 ounces of mushrooms (I used a pack of whole white mushrooms), and a couple bunches of green onions, and a bell pepper (preferably red or yellow). Finely chop the green part of the onions, and cut the white parts into about 1 1/2-inch pieces, and cut the pepper into about 1 1/2 x 1-inch pieces. Then put them onto skewers (if you’ve got them), mushrooms, onion, pepper, and so on.

After you’ve got everything skewered up, grab a bowl and put in 1/4 cup soy sauce, 3 tablespoons of sugar, 1 tablespoon sesame oil, 4 cloves of minced garlic, a tablespoon of sesame seeds, and a decent bit of ground black pepper, and mix it up. Dump that over the skewers and leave it for an hour or two. It’s best if you can do this in a baking dish or something similar, since you want to brush the remaining marinade over the skewers as you grill them.

Get your grill going at medium-high to high, and put the skewers on, brushing the remaining marinade over as it cooks. It won’t take too long, and when it’s done, sprinkle over the chopped green part of the onions, and another tablespoon of sesame seeds. It’s great with any sort of grilled meat, especially anything with a soy-based sauce or marinade.

I never used to eat breakfast much, but I’ve been on roughly a four-year fascination kick with eggs. Over the past several months, I’ve made several frittatas on Sunday nights so I’ve got breakfast made for a few days during the week. There’s not a lot of rhyme or reason to the recipes, I tend to use whatever’s hanging around the kitchen — leftovers of vegetables we’ve cooked earlier in the week, or whatever hasn’t gotten cooked. Just about anything works, and usually I try to get a few different colors and some protein. Generally speaking, my frittatas make 4 servings at around $1.50 per serving or less depending on what you put in them.

This time, I had some cherry tomatoes, asparagus, some bulb onions, and some awesome breakfast sausage from Zingerman’s. I tossed it in a skillet and cooked it up until the sausage was cooked through and the veggies mostly done.

Then toss in two beaten eggs per serving and mix it around. At this point, I also put in some kale. Greens like this make a nice addition, but don’t cook them too much, or they’ll turn to mush. Don’t mix the eggs around with the veggies too much, just let things cook until the eggs just start to set on top. Then put them in your preheated oven at about 350 or so.

It’s done when the eggs are totally set on top and cooked through. After that, flip the frittata out onto a plate and let it cool.

Then, if you have some of the Lemon-Raspberry Cupcakes…

Cut a slice out and play Pac-Man.

I have been craving potatoes ever since I made those awesome Crispy New Potatoes when I was in Austin last week. Instead of making them again for Carlo to try, I decided to make some Spring Shepherd’s Pie and get my mashed potato fix instead. Shepherd’s Pie is normally associated with stodgy cold weather food, but the tomatoes in the meat sauce helped lighten this recipe up, as well as the crunchy rosemary in the mashed potatoes.

The Spring Shepherd’s Pie feeds 6 people at $2.35 per serving.

I like Jamie Oliver and I think he makes good food that focuses on fresh and seasonal ingredients, but I really don’t get why he insists on putting bacon or pancetta in pretty much every recipe! Half the time it isn’t entirely necessarily and only serves to add some extra fat to the recipe. Since I’m trying to eat healthier, I chose not to add the pancetta that the recipe calls for and add some extra veggies and an extra can of chopped tomatoes to the meat sauce insead. Lamb was also quite expensive at the store, so I decided to use some lean minced beef instead.

I love mashed potatoes and these were no exception. I mainly followed the recipe instructions, but added a little less butter. Basically I just eyeballed the potatoes and mashed and mixed until they were light and fluffy. The lighter the potatoes, the less heavy the Shepherd’s Pie, which is a good thing at this time of the year.

Frying the rosemary reminded me of frying the sage for the Fried Egg with Sage, Chilli and Garlicky Yogurt. The rosemary fried up quite crisp, and more importantly, the fragrance of the rosemary made the kitchen smell divine. After mixing the fried rosemary into the potatoes, I decided at the last minute to add the remaining butter in the pan to further infuse the rosemary flavour into the mashed potatoes (so much for trying to use less butter in the potatoes!).

My mum would always score the top of her Shepherd’s Pie with the back of a fork when I was a kid, and I love to do the same with mine because it helps the mashed potatoes brown better and it makes the pie look fancier as well.

The Spring Shepherd’s Pie is an easy dinner that can be prepared in advance and then put in the oven to cook right before serving, and more importantly, it makes for great leftovers.

Mother’s Day is just around the corner (this Sunday in case you didn’t know), and what could be more thoughtful than baking a cake for the special mother in your life. Today’s Lemon Meringue Cake not only looks spectacular, but tastes delicious as well.

Lemon meringues pies remind me of my mum because she always used to make them for me when I was growing up because both her and I love any kind of dessert that is lemon-based. This Lemon Meringue Cake is a nice update on the pie classic, and serves 12 people at 49 cents per serving.

I found this cake recipe in the May 2009 issue of Sunset Magazine, and knew that I immediately had to make it. I even showed the photo to Carlo and he agreed, even though he is not a big dessert fan. The Lemon Meringue Cake was featured in a gorgeous article about cakes that use this Best Butter Cake recipe as a starting point. The other cakes all looked delicious and are ones that I want to try at some point, including the Fudge Butter Cake, Strawberry Tallcake, and Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake.

Anyway, the batter of the cake was really easy to make and tasted delicious being licked out of the bowl. Sometimes I think the best part of baking is licking the bowl and spatula clean.

The cake took quite a bit longer than the recipe indicated because the middle of the cake was still gooey and the toothpick would just not come out clean. I’m not sure if this is because I made my own cake flour by adding 1/4 cup of cornstarch to 1 3/4 cups baking flour or not, but don’t worry if your cake takes a bit longer to cook. Keep on checking every 5 minutes or so until the toothpick comes out clean. The cake’s outside got a little bit crispy, but all of that ultimately gets cut off and the inside was still really fluffy and light.

I do have to say that I felt quite accomplished making my own lemon curd. It was easier than I imagined since you basically mixed together egg yolks, sugar, butter, and lemon juice, and then put it in a saucepan and then just whisk until the mixure turns really thick. The whisking required some elbow grease for sure, but the results were definitely worth it. The lemon curd was excellent, and would taste good on some scones with cream.

I was most worried about cutting the cake into thirds because I don’t have the most steady knife skills and didn’t want to butcher the cake. So I made Carlo cut the cake and he did a pretty good job. Even though my fears were totally unwarranted because it doesn’t really matter if your cuts are off because once you put the meringue coating over the cake, you can’t tell at all.

I was expecting a harder meringue coating on the cake, but by putting the egg whites and sugar over heat before whipping them, the meringue ended up being very silky and soft instead. I actually prefer harder meringues, so next time that I make this cake, I would be tempted to skip the heating step and just whisk the egg whites and sugar together to make a more airy meringue. I’m not sure if this would mess up the cooking instructions or not but I think it should still work per the recipe’s directions.

Speaking of cooking instructions, the recipe calls for the cake to be placed 7 inches below the broiler. I did this and only the top of the meringue was getting browned, not the sides. I ended up taking the cake out of the oven so the top wouldn’t get burnt, and I finished the sides of the meringue with the awesome flame torch that is our creme brulee torch.

If you don’t have a flame torch to finish off the cake, I would put the cake on the lowest rack of your oven so the meringue can broil for a bit longer and hopefully brown on all sides. Or you could just get a creme brulee torch which is perhaps one of most fun kitchen tools.

The final Lemon Meringue Cake was well worth all the effort and my sore arm from doing all of the whisking by hand. It seriously did taste just like a lemon meringue pie with the tartness of the curd and the lightness of the meringue. Even Carlo really enjoyed the cake!

I definitely recommend making this cake when you have lots of people to share it with because it does have a lot of sugar in it, and too many slices to yourself can give you the sugar jitters (or at least I got those from eating too many slices!).

Saturday evening was spent sitting outside with Carlo on our patio  pouring over all the new food magazines that had arrived in the mail that day while drinking Bulleit Lemonades and smelling these Beef Skewers Marinated in Harissa and Yogurt on the grill. It was perhaps the perfect way to spend a lazy Saturday evening together.

These Beef Skewers Marinated in Harisa and Yogurt feed 4 people at $1.96 per serving, and the Cucumber Salad featured in the recipe costs an additional 60 cents per serving for a full meal at $2.56.

The recipe calls for you to marinate the beef for at least half an hour, but I recommend that you try to get the meat into the harissa and yogurt goodness as early as you can so the flavours can really soak into the beef. If you don’t have any harissa in the fridge, you could also use some Thai red curry paste instead. If you make this switch, you may want to decrease the amount of curry paste used in case your marinade gets a bit too spicy.

The tri tip at the store was super fatty, so I ended up buying some sirloin for the skewers. Carlo had to cook the beef a bit more on the grill than the recipe called for to make sure that they were cooked all the way through, especially since he had threaded the beef strips onto the skewers and they were quite thick. Next time I make this, I would just cube the beef so it is easier to skewer and then a bit easier to eat in the pita.

This Cucumber Salad was a great addition to the skewers, especially when stuffed inside the pita with the beef and hummus. It was really easy to make: just cut up a cucumber, and throw in some olives, red onion, and mint. The recipe doesn’t call for any kind of acid in the salad, but I ended up squeezing in some lemon in there for extra zing.

The whole meal was great and all of the flavours worked really well together. Next time I make these skewers, I think I will make some of Minty Yogurt Sauce that goes with the Red Curry Chicken Kebabs so it can provide a nice coolness to the heat of harissa and play off nicely with mint in the Cucumber Salad.

Last Monday was my last night in Austin, and I decided to celebrate an incredible trip catching up with friends with a Recession Recipes Dinner Party for some of my favourite girls: Ashley G, Ashley M, Becca, Emily, and a new friend Meera. The challenge was to throw a killer dinner party at Ashley G’s house, without breaking the bank, but still sharing delicious and fresh food with my friends while Ashley took beautiful photos of the evening for the blog.

I had no idea what to make for the dinner party, especially since I had wheat, dairy, and red meat dietary restrictions to take into account. I decided that I would go to the Austin Farmers’ Market on Saturday morning and check out what was in season and let the produce shape my menu. Wow, after attending the Las Vegas Farmers’ Market, the Austin Farmers’ Market looked like produce heaven. There were tons of stands filled with incredible looking produce, cheese, meat, and eggs, so I was totally spoiled for choices.

I decided to head to our old favourite stand of Tecolote Farm because not only did they grow beautiful produce, but it was always sold with a smile and friendly recipe suggestion. After reading last year that they were perhaps going to close down due to their well drying up, I was very relieved to see that the farm was still in business, and still growing their wonderful produce.

They had some really nice looking beets and baby carrots, which I bought even though at that point, my mind was still racing as to what exactly I should do with them all. Thankfully the previous night I had eaten a great dinner at Texas French Bread, partly cooked by my grad school friend Stephanie, of a roasted beet salad with goat cheese and chicken chasseur with polenta. I had really enjoyed this dinner, so I decided that this was the perfect meal to recreate for my friends.

The Recession Recipe Dinner Party’s official menu would start with Roasted Beet Salad with Goat Cheese with a main course of Chicken Chasseur with Crunchy New Potatoes and Roasted Carrots.

The Beet Salad cost $1.50 per serving, and the Chicken Chasseur cost $2.85 per serving. The Crunchy New Potatoes cost 99 cents per serving, and the Roasted Carrots cost only 33 cents per serving. The total cost per guest for the dinner party was $5.67, which clearly shows that you don’t need lots of money to entertain well.

Usually when we roast beets, we just cut them up and put them in a roasting pan and throw some olive oil over them. While this gets the job done, the beets always end up looking a little bit dessicated after the roasting process. To prevent this, I found this recipe on how to roast beets by wrapping up each individual beet in tin foil and roasting them in a 375 degree oven for an hour or so. Not only was this method incredibly easy, it used no olive oil, and the beets were perfectly roasted and sweet while still looking beautiful. After discovering this method, I don’t think I will go back to pan roasted beets unless it is for a recipe that includes multiple roasted veggies.

I bought two kinds of beets from the Farmers’ Market, your regular red beet and the fancy Chioggia beet. The Chioggia beet not only looked fantastic with its alternating pink and red rings, but it was slightly sweeter and more delicate in flavor than the regular red beet to provide a nice complexity to the salad.

To assemble the Roasted Beet Salad with Goat Cheese, I let the beets cool and then sliced them up. I put down a bed of local arugula also grown by Tecolote Farm and placed the beets on top. I then drizzled some olive oil and white wine vinegar over the beets and arugula plus added salt and pepper. In retrospect, I should have tossed the salad with the olive oil and vinegar first and then placed the beets on top with just a dash of oil to top off the dish, but such is life.

Last but not least, I sprinkled some of the most delicious and fluffiest goat cheese that I’ve tasted over the beets. I bought this plain goat cheese from the Maid in the Sky farm stand, which basically consisted of an old guy in a cowboy hat with a small cooler, but damn, that old guy can make some goat cheese!

Anyway, this Beet Salad was a huge hit and devoured by everyone, especially Ashley M who had somehow never eaten a beet before but quickly became a convert. And all for $1.50 a serving!

One of the best things about this Chicken Chasseur recipe is that you could split up the cooking process and make the sauce before your guests arrive. Then all you need to do is warm it up and place the chicken breasts in to simmer right before you are ready to eat. This is a huge help for when you are throwing a dinner party because there is nothing worse than stressing out in the kitchen instead of hanging out with your guests.

I ended up buying chicken breasts with the skin on, but without the bones because the bone-in chicken breasts included the rib bones which looked a little scary. I think you could easily use chicken legs, thighs, or even a whole chicken cut up to save on the cost of the chicken and it would hold up well in this recipe.

The end result was delicious, and all of the tomato and mushroom sauce proved to be even tastier when eaten with hands down the BEST roasted potato recipe I’ve tried.

I ended up buying some small Dutch Cream potatoes for this easy recipe. Basically, you boil the potatoes for 10 minutes, drain, put them on a baking tray, and then lightly smash them with a potato masher. Yes, I know it sounds bizarre, but the smashing will help produce the crispiest potatoes you have seen. Drizzle them with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, and then stick them in the oven at 400 degrees.

The recipe says to roast the potatoes for 20 minutes, but I just kept them in the oven pretty much the whole time that I was cooking the Chicken Chasseur. I didn’t have to worry about them over cooking because they just became even more crispier and awesome. Seriously, if you love potatoes, please be sure to make these Crispy New Potatoes this week. You won’t be disappointed.

Another super easy side dish were these Roasted Baby Carrots. Chop the tops off of the carrots and trim the roots. Put them on some tinfoil and drizzle a bit of olive oil over them with some salt and pepper. Wrap up the carrots in the tinfoil like a present, and pop them in the oven. I just stuck them in with the potatoes at 400 degrees, but you can cook them at pretty much any temperature and just adjust the cooking time accordingly. I left these in for around 35 minutes or so until they were tender.

The dinner party was a huge success with the food pairing brilliantly with passionate conversations over wine. Thanks to everyone for making my last night in Austin so special, and thanks to Ashley G for letting me take over her kitchen, and more importantly being the photographer for the night.

Here are some more photos of the beautiful decor she created for dinner party.

Ashley G loves everything vintage and has been assembling an eclectic collection of antique plates that served as a pretty focal point for the dinner table.

For a sweet but cheap floral arrangement, buy a big bunch of baby’s breath and place them by themselves in a vase.

Ash made these favors for each of the guests to take home by placing a flower in a vase made from reused bottles of Mexican fizzy water.