These days we eat eggs pretty much every day for breakfast. Back when I had a job, my breakfast usually consisted of some Kashi hot cereal eaten at my desk because I never had time to eat at home before heading to the office, late as usual. So now that I have unhurried mornings where I can sip my tea and read all the internet has to offer, I like to make myself special breakfasts.

These Sherried Mushrooms with Fried Eggs on Toast were definitely special and very delicious: thick crunchy bread topped with savory mushrooms and fried eggs. I know that hopefully sometime in the all not too far off future, I will return to the hot cereal at the desk and real breakfasts like this will be only weekend occasions, but for now, I’m enjoying my special breakfast treats. This breakfast recipe feeds 4 people at $1.17 a serving.

Sherried Mushrooms with Fried Eggs on Toast
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing
3/4 pound mixed mushrooms, such as button and cremini, sliced 1/4 inch thick
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1/2 small onion, thinly sliced
1/4 cup dry sherry, such as Oloroso, or you can use good Spanish sherry vinegar
Four 1/2-inch-thick slices of rustic white bread
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
8 large eggs
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped flat-leaf parsley

Heat up the oil in a frying pan, and add the mushrooms and season with salt and pepper. Cook them over a medium heat until they soften, around 4 minutes. Throw in the onion, and cover and cook the mixture until the onion has softened and the mushrooms are browned, around 3 minutes or so. Add the sherry or sherry vinegar and stir it in until it is almost evaporated. Season with salt and pepper, and remove the pan from the heat, and cover the mushrooms and onions to keep them warm.

Toast the bread slices. You can either do this in a 400 degree oven, or in a toaster oven. I rubbed some raw garlic on each toasted slice and then drizzled some olive oil over them. Delish!

Top the toast with the mushroom mixture and then fry up a couple of eggs per person. Place the eggs on top of the mushroom toast and sprinkle with some parsley.

In an attempt to try and eat better (aka lose weight), I have limited myself to baking only when we have someone coming over for dinner. Thankfully Carlo invited a friend to dinner last weekend, so I was able to take advantage of the fresh rhubarb that I had seen at the grocery store to bake a Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp. I love the combination of the sweet strawberries and the tart rhubarb, and how all the fruit gets stewed together so the flavours meld.

Even though the three of us each had a large serving after dinner and we gave our friend a to go container of crisp, we were still able to eke out 3 more nights of crisp enjoyment! So much for the diet, but it was thoroughly relished each time. This Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp can easily feed 8 people at $1.64 per serving.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp
Filling:
2 pounds rhubarb stalks, sliced 1/2 inch thick
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 pound strawberries, hulled and quartered
3 tablespoons cornstarch
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Crisp:
1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups quick-cooking rolled oats
3 tablespoons canola oil
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon salt

Start off by preheating the oven to 375¬? F. To make the filling, put the rhubarb in a bowl with 3/4 cup of sugar and let it sit for around 15 minutes. Stir it occasionally to make sure all of the pieces of fruit get covered by the sugar. You will notice that the sugar draws out some liquid from the rhubarb, which helps make the fruit less tart.

In another bowl, mix the strawberries with the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar and let it stand for around 10 minutes. Stir this mixture occasionally too. Use a slotted spoon and transfer the rhubarb pieces to the strawberries. Be sure to toss out any of the rhubarb liquid at the bottom of the bowl since it doesn’t taste very good.

Add the cornstarch, lemon juice, and vanilla extract to the rhubarb and strawberries. Mix it together well and then put the filling into a large baking dish.

The crisp topping is very easy: Just put all the ingredients in a bowl and use your fingers to mix them together until you make large crumbs. I was a little hesitant about using canola oil in the topping, but you couldn’t taste it in the end and it really helped to crisp up the topping.

Sprinkle the topping evenly over the fruit filling and bake it for 30 minutes. After the 30 minutes are up, reduce the oven temperature to 325¬? F and let the crisp bake for a further 30 minutes. Take out the crisp when the fruit filling is bubbling up through the nicely browned topping. Let the crisp cool off for around 10-20 minutes before tucking in and topping off each serving with a dollop of vanilla ice cream.

Carlo and I both love to eat eggs, so it is no surprise that we enjoy a good egg salad every now and again. If you want to kick up your egg salad a notch, be sure to use homemade mayo which really showcases the taste and texture of the hardboiled eggs. This egg salad recipe tastes perfect on lightly toasted bread with some fresh tomatoes. Or you could one up that combo by adding a slice or two of crisp bacon. This egg salad recipe makes enough for 4 servings at 62 cents each.

Egg Salad, from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food
6 hardboiled eggs, peeled and diced
1/4 cup homemade mayo
1 tablespoon fresh squeezed lemon juice
3 tablespoons finely chopped pickles or cornichons
3 tablespoons fresh chopped dill
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Put all the ingredients in a big bowl and mix them together. Add more mayo as needed and season with salt and pepper to taste. This egg salad can be kept in the fridge for up to 2 days.

A delicious egg salad sandwich, but sadly lacking any bacon since we were out. We got the idea of bacon on egg salad sandwiches from Austin’s Thundercloud Subs, which serves the Office Favourite sub with egg salad, bacon and cheese–possibly the best sandwich ingredient trifecta!

I didn’t grow up eating mayo. Instead, I grew up eating salad cream, which is pretty much a tangier version of mayo and once upon a time used to be about the only salad dressing that you could get in the UK. While I still enjoy salad cream occasionally as a guilty pleasure, I think homemade mayo tops it any day. I don’t eat regular store bought mayo, but give me a fancy sandwich with some kind of fresh mayo on it, and I’ll go to town.

Mayo is incredibly easy to make and this basic recipe can be doctored with fresh herbs to make a nice herby mayo or you can add lots of garlic to make aioli. Or you can even use it as a base for other salads, like the egg salad recipe I’ll post later today.

Anyway you make it, this homemade mayo has the ability to turn a so-so sandwich into the sublime. This recipe makes about a cup of mayo with each tablespoon serving costing around 7 cents.

Homemade Mayo, from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food
1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
salt and freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 garlic clove

To create the base for the mayo, put the egg yolk and mustard into a medium bowl and whisk together.

Slowly, and I mean very slowly, add a little bit of oil to the mixture as you keep on whisking. Unless you are a pro, it is sometimes a bit hard to pour the oil while whisking, so I normally get Carlo to help out with the pouring, and then when my arm gets tired, we can trade off the whisking duties.

Add more olive oil once each bit is incorporated into the mayo. A thick emulsion will soon form and once this happens, you can begin pouring in the oil a little bit faster. Depending on how fast you whisk, this should take around 5 minutes.

Once the mayo is fully emulsified and all the oil added, season with salt and pepper to taste, and squeeze in a little fresh lemon juice for some zing. I also added a little microplaned garlic for an additional kick. You can keep the mayo in the fridge for up to a week in a sealed container.

We made the most awesome BLT sandwich with our mayo. The combination of farmers’ market tomatoes, salty bacon, crisp lettuce, and the mayo was divine!

It seems to me as though gazpacho is one of those love it or hate it kinds of food. Lots of people either don’t like the taste of raw tomatoes or aren’t into cold soups. I actually like gazpacho, but can sometimes get weirded out by the texture, especially if it is extra mealy.

That said this Jose Andres recipe is so incredibly good that it just might be able to turn gazpacho haters into lovers. With tomatoes at their juicy peak right now, this is the perfect time to enjoy some gazpacho. This recipe makes enough soup for 6 people at $1.20 per serving.

Gazpacho
For the soup:
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded and chopped
1 green bell pepper, seeded and diced
3 pounds ripe plum tomatoes, diced
2 garlic cloves, peeled
1/4 cup sherry vinegar
1/2 cup Oloroso sherry (use extra sherry vinegar if you don’t have any real sherry on hand)
3/4 cup Spanish extra-virgin olive oil

For the garnish:
2 1 inch-thick slices rustic bread
1/4 cup Spanish extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cucumber, diced
1/2 green bell pepper, seeded and diced
1/2 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
Sea salt to taste

The tomatoes that we have been buying from our farmers’ market have just been out of this world lately. Since the tomatoes are the key to a successful gazpacho, be sure to use the freshest and ripest tomatoes you can find. Often times the dreaded mealy texture, or even worse an insipid colour, are the result of using flavourless tomatoes.

To make the gazpacho, combine the cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, garlic, vinegar, sherry, olive oil, and 2 cups of water in a food processor or blender. Puree the ingredients until everything is well blended into a thick pink liquid.

You might have to do this in a few batches depending on the size of your blender. If you do have to do this, don’t worry too much about halving the batches exactly, especially with the liquid ingredients. Everything gets mixed together at the end and you can easily add more olive oil or vinegar to taste at this point. I definitely recommend tasting along the way and adding more oil or vinegar as needed. Making gazpacho is a pretty intuitive process so use your taste buds as your guide.

Pour the gazpacho through a medium-hole strainer into a container, and refrigerate for about 30 minutes.

The straining of the soup is a brilliant idea and one that you don’t often see in many gazpacho recipes. Straining the gazpacho gets rid of the possible dreaded texture issues and results in a silky and smooth soup.

To make the garnish, preheat the oven to 450 F. Cut the bread into 1-inch cubes and toss in a mixing bowl with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Spread the bread on a baking sheet and bake on the middle rack until golden brown, about 7 minutes. Set the croutons aside to cool. You can also make these croutons in a toaster oven too. Just keep an eye on them so they don’t burn.

To serve, pour the chilled gazpacho into bowls. Top with the croutons, cucumbers, and peppers. Sprinkle with salt and drizzle with a tiny bit of olive oil.

What makes this gazpacho so amazing is the combination of the silky soup and the crunchiness of the cut veggies and the crispy croutons. In fact, I think the croutons might be the most genius part of this recipe. Many gazpacho recipes call for the bread to be blended with all the vegetables, which only serves to thicken the soup and doesn’t really add much flavour. These croutons however are the tipping point in me probably never making another other gazpacho recipe again since this one is perfect in every way.

Often times when you order Carbonara at a restaurant, you get a stodgy white sauce that is as thick as it is unappetizing. Real Carbonara sauce is light and silky on your taste buds, and doesn’t leave a lead weight feeling in your stomach.

This Orrechiette Carbonara recipe fits the bill for a light pasta dinner, but one that is full of complex flavours. Carlo and I couldn’t get enough of it when I made it for dinner, and it even tasted wonderful as cold leftovers the next day. This pasta recipe feeds four people at $1.15 per serving.

Orrechiette Carbonara
4 applewood-smoked bacon slices, diced
2 medium leeks (white and pale green parts only), halved lengthwise, then cut crosswise into 1/3-inch pieces
3/4 cup frozen peas
10 ounces orecchiette (little ear-shaped pasta) or small shells
2 large eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese plus additional for serving
1 tablespoon chopped fresh Italian parsley

Cook the bacon in a large skillet over medium heat until it is crisp, about 8 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the bacon to a paper towel to drain. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of fat from the skillet if necessary. Add the leeks and slowly saut?© them over medium heat until they are tender, about 6 minutes. Set the leeks and bacon aside.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until just tender but still firm to bite, stirring occasionally. I threw in some frozen peas at the last minute to up the vegetable quotient in the dish. Drain the pasta and peas, while reserving 1/2 cup of pasta cooking liquid for the sauce.

Whisk the eggs and 1/2 cup of grated Parmesan in a medium bowl to blend; gradually whisk in 1/4 cup of pasta cooking liquid.

Add the pasta and peas to the leeks in the skillet, and stir the mixture to heat everything up. Remove the skillet from the heat. Pour the egg mixture over the pasta and stir until the sauce is just creamy and the eggs are no longer raw, about 2 minutes. (Return the skillet to a very low heat if the egg mixture is runny; do not overcook or the eggs will curdle.)

Add some of the remaining 1/4 cup of pasta cooking liquid to the pasta if it is too dry. Stir in the bacon and parsley. Serve the pasta, topped with some freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

There is nothing better than waking up on the weekend and making yourself a delicious breakfast to start the day. We used to go out all the time for breakfast, but to cut back, we have been cooking our own breakfasts at home more often.

I’ve been surprised to find that I like breakfast at home perhaps better than going out. I don’t have to get showered or changed, and you never have to wait for a table. This recipe for Huevos Divorciados, or Fried Eggs on Corn Tortillas with Two Salsas, is great, and if you are only cooking for two, you can make the full recipe and even have leftovers for Sunday. These eggs feed 4 people at $1.48 per serving.

Huevos Divorciados
1/2 lb plum tomatoes
1/2 lb fresh tomatillos, husks discarded and tomatillos rinsed
2 fresh jalape?±o chiles
1-inch wedge of large white onion
2 garlic cloves
2 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 to 1/2 cup water
8 large eggs
8 (6- to 7-inch) corn tortillas

Heat a frying pan over moderate heat until a bead of water evaporates quickly on it, then roast the tomatoes, tomatillos, jalape?±os, and onion, turning each with tongs, until they are charred on all sides, 10 to 15 minutes. Core the roasted tomatoes, discard the stems from the jalape?±os, and discard half of the seeds from each chile.

For the red salsa: Coarsely pur?©e the tomatoes, 1 jalape?±o, 1 garlic clove, and 1 teaspoon salt in a food processor, and then transfer the mixture to a bowl.

For the green salsa: Coarsely pur?©e the tomatillos, remaining jalape?±o, remaining garlic clove, remaining teaspoon salt, cilantro, and 1/4 cup water (add more if needed for desired consistency), and then transfer the salsa to a bowl.

Fry two eggs per person to your liking, and heat up the corn tortillas. You can fry them in a little bit of vegetable oil in a frying pan, or you can do what I normally do, and stick them in the toaster oven for a couple of minutes until they crisp up.

Place two tortillas on each place and top each of them with one fried egg. Spoon the green salsa over one tortilla and egg, and then spoon the red salsa over the other side.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Last week, my dad and I took my niece Isla to Gnismer Farms by my parents’ house so she could pick some of her favourite food, sweet corn, for a bbq. Unfortunately when we got to the farm, they were all sold out of corn, so we decided to pick some blackberries instead. It was a lot of fun and we managed to find quite a few blackberries that were ready to be picked even if many of them had yet to ripen. I’m not sure what Isla thought of the blackberry picking experience, but she sure did look pretty cute carrying the basket and helping us pick the fruit.

Since we had the blackberries, I decided that I needed to bake a berry pie to celebrate our fun day and share our goods with the rest of the family. I decided on a Mixed Berry Pie with Ginger, Orange, and Almond Streusel. We had to use some store bought raspberries and blueberries to round out the filling, but I like to think that the pie tasted extra good because of our freshly picked blackberries.

In fact, my family enjoyed the pie so much that my mum suggested we make it again when we had some friends over for dinner a few days later. The combination of the fresh berries with the spicy granulated ginger streusel topping were to die for! I encourage everyone to make this pie for their loved ones this summer while all of the berries are still in season.

Crust:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch cubes
2 tablespoons (or more) ice water

Whisk the flour, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl to blend. Add the butter and rub it in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add 2 tablespoons ice water and stir with a fork until the mixture is evenly moistened, adding more ice water by teaspoonfuls if mixture is dry. Gather the dough into ball; flatten into a disk. Wrap the dough in plastic and chill at least 1 hour.

Position a rack in the center of oven and preheat to 400¬?F. Place a rimmed baking sheet in the bottom of the oven to catch any possible spills from the pie. Roll out the dough on lightly floured surface to a 12-inch round. Transfer to a 9-inch-diameter glass pie dish. Turn the pie crust edge under, forming a high-standing rim extending 1/4 inch above sides of pie dish; crimp edge decoratively. Freeze the crust while making the berry filling.

Since I’m still a little afraid of rolling out dough, I had my brother Andrew roll out the dough since he has turned into a budding pastry chef from making chicken pot pie a few times. Check out his killer pie crust:

Berry Filling:
3 cups fresh blueberries (17 ounces)
2 cups fresh raspberries (9 to 10 ounces)
1 cup fresh blackberries (5 to 6 ounces)
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
3 tablespoons cornstarch

Gently toss the blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, 1/2 cup sugar, and lemon juice in a large bowl. Let it stand for 10 minutes. Mix the cornstarch and remaining 2 tablespoons sugar in small bowl. Add to berry mixture and toss gently to coat. Transfer the berry mixture to the pie crust, mounding slightly in center. Bake the crust and filling for 30 minutes.

Streusel Topping:
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons finely chopped crystallized ginger
1 teaspoon finely grated orange peel
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch cubes
1 tablespoon whole milk
1 cup sliced almonds

Blend the flour, sugar, crystallized ginger, orange peel, and salt in a processor, or with your hands. Add the butter; using on/off turns, blend the mixture until coarse crumbs form. Blend in the milk, so the mixture resembles moist coarse crumbs. Transfer the streusel to a medium bowl, and stir in the almonds.

Remove the pie and filling from the oven after it has cooked for 30 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 375¬?F. Sprinkle the streusel topping evenly over the berry pie filling. Return the pie to the oven and bake until the crust is golden brown and the berry juices are bubbling thickly, about 40 minutes. Transfer the pie to a rack and let it cool completely.

Enjoy your slice of pie with some vanilla ice cream.

I’m finally back from a 2.5 week vacation to Texas where I got to spend lots of quality time with my family, including my sister and two little nieces who are visiting from Scotland. I had a great time with everyone, and also got to eat lots of food that you just don’t get in Vegas like great BBQ and Tex-Mex.

I went down to Austin with my sister, nieces, and brother and basically got to sample pretty much every chicken finger in and around the city since chicken fingers seem to be THE number one food of choice for all the 1-4 year olds that we know.

So it is only fitting that we start reblogging today with a tasty Crispy Chicken Fingers with Sweet Potato Fries recipe that both little and big kids can enjoy. I found this recipe for chicken fingers in one of my Fitness magazines, and while I’m normally very hesitant of whether light versions of fatty foods can taste good, these chicken fingers tasted just as close to the real thing as you can get while still maintaining a healthy moral superiority. The chicken fingers recipe makes enough for 4 big kids at $1.37 per serving, and the sweet potato fries cost 72 cents per serving.

Crispy Chicken Fingers, from Fitness Magazine
12 ounces skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 cups cornflakes, finely crushed
dash of black pepper

Preheat the oven to 450 F. Cut the chicken into strips. In a shallow dish, combine the egg, honey, and mustard, and in another dish, stir together the cornflake crumbs and black pepper.

Dip the chicken strips into the egg mixture, and roll in the crumb mixture to coat. Arrange the chicken strips on an ungreased baking sheet. Be sure to use an ungreased baking sheet or else the bottoms of the chicken fingers become soggy when you cook them.

Bake the chicken for about 12 minutes, or until the outsides are golden and chicken is no longer pink on the inside.

To make the sweet potato fries, cut up a whole sweet potato in strips (or cheat like me and buy the pre-sliced fries from Trader Joe’s). Spray some olive oil on a baking sheet and then place the fries on top and spray the tops of them with more olive oil. Season with lots of salt and pepper and cook in a 450 F oven for around 15 minutes, or until they are crunchy.

I put my fries in just a few minutes before the chicken fingers and they both came out of the oven at the same time perfectly cooked.

Since this dinner was for big kids, we made some spicy ketchup by mixing together chili-garlic sauce with ketchup to taste because even big kids love tons of ketchup with their food.