kitchen firsts: poached egg sandwiches with spinach, tomato and cheese

The kitchen first this time is not a new ingredient, but instead the conquering of a kitchen technique: the poached egg, no cheatsies! Up until now, whenever I was called on to create a poached egg I would simply reach for my handy dandy egg-poaching device, let the eggs cook in their little metal cups, and then slide them out, looking all freakishly disc-shaped. I am not a fan of runny yolks, so poached eggs are not a huge deal for me and I was happy enough with this arrangement as it allowed me to quickly and easily make poached eggs for Stephen. But, the more I cook and blog, the more I realize how obsessed food people are with poached eggs, so it kind of bothered me that I wasn’t able to create a normal-looking, old fashioned poached egg in a water bath. Enter my new favorite cookbook, America’s Test Kitchen’s Cooking For Two: 2010, and I finally found a poached egg sandwich recipe that I could master, and even enjoy.

new takes on toast

I’ve been sitting on these two recipes for weeks now and I almost feel guilty about it, they are so good. We are big fans of breakfast for dinner (b4d!) and weekend brunches around here, but I have to admit that as tasty as they are, things like scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes, breakfast sandwiches, and even breakfast burritos get a bit tired after awhile. These two breakfasts, tartiflette toast and french toast with oats and almonds were a complete breath of fresh air.

oatmeal french breakfast muffins

Two things occurred to me recently:

1) My mornings would be a whole lot easier if I had some kind of grab and go breakfast to take with me as I scurry out the door five minutes late each day, and since buying a weekly supply of such things is expensive and not always very tasty, there is no reason why I shouldn’t make something myself on Sundays.

2) French breakfast muffins are delicious!! Have you had one before? I have only had them from one local bakery, and while they are really tasty there, they are also ginormous and probably filled with lots of bad stuff (not to mention the thick coating of butter and cinnamon on the top of each boat/muffin), and I realized I could easily recreate the same tastiness in my own (cheaper and less guilt-inducing) way.

a new year’s resolution, and breakfast for two

Well folks, the time has come yet again to consider resolutions! I typically tend to be of the “make ’em and break ’em” persuasion, generally within the first two weeks, but this year I am hoping to manage to follow through with at least one. And by follow through, I do indeed mean follow through: all year, no cheatsies.

Although I am considering the staying-power of a few personal resolutions as well, the one I am concerned with here is a cooking related one that I’ve been thinking over during the last month, and I hope it will be one I can stick with– I take it as a good omen that I have actually been looking forward to starting!  My goal, in 2010, is to begin a “kitchen firsts” series on this blog, for which I will attempt to do one new thing in the kitchen every week.  Especially at first, this will most often take the shape of  new ingredient to my kitchen– it could be something that I have never tasted or cooked before (sunchokes and rutabagas are on my list), or it could be something I’ve eaten many a time but never bought and prepared myself (fennel, parsnips, etc).  Kitchen firsts may also appear as a new kind of recipe (i.e., I’ve never made a souffle before), or a cooking technique that I’ve never tried before (braising, butterflying). My hope is that with these restrictions, I should be able to fill a whole year with weekly Kitchen Firsts (whenever I doubt that I’ll be able to come up with enough new items, I just take a stroll through the produce and bulk sections, or better yet, head to a specialty market like an asian grocery store!). I encourage anyone who is interested in embarking on a bit of a culinary adventure to follow along with these kitchen firsts, and please feel free to make suggestions if you can think of any interesting ingredients or recipes using them that you think we should try!

(read on for a New Years Breakfast Recipe)