Five star huevos rancheros

This was going to be normal huevos rancheros. But no tortillas in the freezer, no masa harina in the cupboard and no desire to go out just for some stinkin' tortillas led to this upscale version of the dish.

The cup is made from arepa flour - precooked corn meal - that's baked blind in the ramekin for about 20 minutes with a small pat of butter in the bottom. After that, simple. Just break an egg into the dish, add a dollop of ranchero sauce and some cream cheese (I was out of crema, too). Bake another 25 minutes or so, until the yolk just films over. Unmold (or not) and there it is. Fancy!

This could be made from masa harina, too. The flavor of the cup would be a bit stronger because there's lime left over from the nixtamalization of the corn. It would also be a bit more nutritious for the same reason - nixtamalization supposedly frees up more healthiness.

August, 2012. Zero reads. Looks like nobody gives a shit about transforming huevos rancheros into anything different. Until some asshole in a fancy restaurant comes up with something like this, and I'm sure it will be more popular than seamless underwear.

Apple-Lime soufflé

My sanitation and safety class tends to finish early. Most people leave, but they're missing out. The instructor brings DVDs featuring French chefs and has been playing them after class. For some reason, I'm the only one fanatic enough to watch, but why not? I'm still getting out earlier than the class' scheduled end time, and I'm getting lots of ideas. The whole idea of this program is to become an almost-chef, so why does it matter if I learn cooking techniques in a non-cooking class?

The last video featured Michel Guérard, whose recipes were then given to a housewife, a grandmother, a macho type and two children to replicate. Granted, this was a French housewife, grandmother, French macho type and two French children. So maybe their palates were a bit more educated than you'd find here. Or not. The housewife seemed like someone whose habitual cooking tool is a microwave. The grandmother, on the other hand, seemed like an excellent cook although she couldn't quite get a handle on what M. Guérard was doing with his foie gras recipe. The macho guy grilled some chicken - airline breasts, a strange choice for a macho guy, but as long as he's messing with fire and smoke not altogether inappropriate. The housewife did some kind of fish, if I remember right. It wasn't a raging success. The kids got something interesting: apple-lime soufflé.

The soufflé had an ingredient that I doubt I could find here: Lait Gloria. This is apparently evaporated milk that comes in cans in France. M. Guérard discovered that it can be whipped and added to soufflés, where it adds another level of flavor and richness. His process was to cook down some apples, pass them through a tamis (strainer), mix the result with some lime juice, lime zest, egg yolk and fold it into a mix of whipped Lait Gloria and the more standard egg whites beaten to stiff peaks. Then pour the result into some ramekins, bake it off and enjoy.

After making crepe batter, I had a lot of extra egg whites. There was a lime sitting on the table, and some apples. Voila! Everything I needed to try that soufflé less the Lait Gloria that I'd have to do without.

Apple-lime soufflé
Ingredients

• 4 egg whites
• 2 egg yolks (use the other yolks for Hollandaise, aioli, whatever)
• 2-3 apples, cut into cubes and cooked down
• 1 lime,  juice and zest
• sugar
• Calvados (apple brandy)

Process

1. Preheat oven to 425° F.
2. Grease four smallish ramekins, set aside.
3. Cook down the apples with some sugar and Calvados. I added the Calvados because something had to step in for the missing Lait Gloria.
4. When the apples have cooked down, uncover the pot and let them cool.
5. Squeeze the lime and plane its zest into a bowl with a bit of sugar.
6. When the apples have cooled, add them into the lime juice, then add the egg yolks and whisk all this stuff together vigorously.
7. Beat the egg whites and a bit of sugar to stiff peaks.
8. Fold the apple-yolk mixture into the egg whites, and immediately transfer the fluffy stuff into the ramekins, then zip everything into the oven. If you're smooth, you can put the ramekins on a cooking pan. If you're not, they'll slide off and break on the floor. The cooking pan makes it easier to zip everything in and out of the oven, but if it's just going to end as a heap on the floor, it's not a crime to quickly put the ramekins in the oven individually.
9. The soufflés should be done in 12-14 minutes. Check through the door - if you open it, they'll fall faster than the stock market after Bernanke's latest bad news. When done, they'll look dry, they'll hopefully have risen, and they'll be starting to brown on top. 

As soon as you remove them from the oven, soufflés fall. That's just the nature of the beasts. If you stop for photos, they'll pretty much have fallen all the way before you attack.

The result of mixing the lime and apple is that the soufflé has a crisp, green apple taste. The limes aren't even apparent - they just seem to intensify the apple flavor. I didn't add a lot of sugar, so without the richness of the Lait Gloria the soufflé felt a bit thin. Like a low calorie version. Still, it was a more refreshing version of the dish than usual. This is probably something that will need some more experimentation before it's ready for prime time, but with a bit of work could be made into a great light dessert for an autumn meal.

Farmer's market brunch

 

We finally got to our closest Certified Farmers' Market. The market just keeps getting better. There were cheeses, grass fed beef, pasture grown chickens, organic eggs, complex olive oils... and of course fruits and vegetables.

This coincides with one of us being on a low carb diet. Yes, she's the one who added the toast to the plate. Nice to know she's not restrictively serious about the whole diet thing.

Just about everything in this recipe came from the Farmers' Market. I wish the prosciutto had come from there, but so far nobody is making charcuterie for the market...

Farmers' Market Eggs

Ingredients (per person)

• 1 Orange cherry tomato (other tomatoes still not ready), chopped
• about 2 Green onions (scallions). Chives would work, too. Finely chopped. You'll use the green tips as a garnish, the bases for the Hollandaise and the frittata.
• 2 Organic cage free happy chicken eggs, whole for poaching and separated for sauce and frittata.
• Salt to taste
• Foggy Morning cheese from the Nicasio Valley Cheese, sliced into 1/4" thick rounds
• Chicken stock - about 1/2 cup or so
• White wine vinegar - for the Hollandaise and the water for the poached eggs
• Prosciutto, cut into narrow strips, about one piece (slice)

Process

Overall
The goal is to time all this so that everything goes together hot and is whisked out for everyone to enjoy. You either have to prepare some things in advance or juggle several processes at once. I tend to make the Hollandaise a bit in advance since a quick whisking will restore it to its former glory, within reason.

• Chop all ingredients that need chopping.
• Slice the cheese so it's ready
• Boil some water for the poached eggs.
• Fry the scallions for the sauce and some more with tomatoes for the frittata
• Let the pan for the Hollandaise cool down
• Do the frittata and poached eggs
• Finish the Hollandaise
• Assemble the thing

Hollandaise

1. Fry some of the scallions in some butter, when they're translucent add chicken stock and white wine vinegar (just a dash of the vinegar)
2. Add chicken stock and a bit of white wine vinegar (or white wine) and reduce to almost dry
3. Let the pan cool.
4. Whip in egg yolks over low heat or bain marie. Careful! If you don't use a bain marie, lift the pan off the heat... better read about this technique before you try it. I don't use a bain marie because it's a pain, but too much heat will break your sauce and you'll have to start over.
5. Add small cubes of room temperature butter, whisking constantly
6. Add lemon juice when sauce thickens, whisk in. 
7. Reserve sauce.

Frittata

1. Put some oil in a pan, slowly fry some more scallions and the tomatoes.
2. When they're a bit translucent, add the egg whites left over from the Hollandaise.
3. Put on very low heat and let set up while you're doing other things. 
4. When almost done, but still a bit liquid, turn off the heat and reserve. The eggs will cook on residual heat.

Poached eggs

1. Add some salt and white vinegar to the boiling water.
2. Stir the water, and add the eggs to the middle of the swirling water, one at a time. Drop them from just over the surface of the water so the yolks don't break.
3. Turn off the heat once the eggs are in, give them about three minutes. You want fully cooked whites with runny yolks (unless you have a different preference).

Assembly

1. Get your plates ready.
2. Make sure everyone is ready to eat and at the table, not walking around the garden gawking at flowers.
3. Place the cheese rounds on the plates
4. Place the hot frittata on the cheese
5. Carefully lean the two poached eggs on the frittata.
6. Pour the Hollandaise over the frittata, between the poached eggs
7. Add the prosciutto over the top
8. Add the green onion garnish (or chives).

Serve right away, preferably without taking lots of photos, so it will be warm. The frittata should melt the cheese a bit, and the Hollandaise will flow like lava, mixing with the cheese, the egg yolks, the frittata, the prosciutto... If you're the photographer, it's even good lukewarm. 

This was originally designed to be a low carb plate. If you want it that way, don't serve with toast. You really don't need the toast except to chase down that remaining cheese/frittata/sauce on the plate.

Cheap yet extravagant

On the way back from a meeting, we headed for our favorite hole in the wall Mexican joint for a burrito, but ended up passing Whole Paycheck just to see if they had anything irresistible. Result: we spent a bit too much on cheeses. Along with some other things. Only one solution: stretch out our purchases so we can get back to the cheap burrito index. That will mean a minimum of four meals.

Only one thing to do: compensate. Compensating with inexpensive ingredients does not mean choking down something in atonement for our fromage extravagance. Old bread (home made), eggs and butter are all cheap. Prosciutto isn't, but then this doesn't use much of it.

This uses a Hollandaise sauce made of shallots, white wine vinegar (also homemade) and limes to keep things moist and interesting. The bread is cut out into a round and gently simmered in butter after being lightly splashed with chicken stock. The bread scraps become croutons, same process (they'll crisp up again in the butter). Only two free-range brown organic eggs per person. One poached, the other in the Hollandaise. Eight eggs left in the under four dollar package. Damn cheap!

The prosciutto also gets cut into a circle, and the scraps get trimmed kind of like a chiffonade and used as a garnish.

Here's how it stacks up, from the top down:

• Prosciutto "chiffonade" garnish
• Crisped round bread
• Hollandaise
• Poached egg
• Prosciutto round (two thin slices deep)
• Hollandaise

Garnish all around with croutons and parsley or basil.

There might be a way of making this with fewer pans, but I doubt it. One for poaching, one for croutons, one for Hollandaise, container to separate the egg yolks. A lot of washing, but cheap + good often equals extra labor.