This is pretty much like Eggs Diablo without the heat. This is one of the dishes I made to use up odds and ends in my refriegrator in preparation for the Big Move. It was actually pretty good and made a substantial breakfast for Spouse and myself.

To make this dish, I simply started a sofrito of garlic, chopped onions and chopped/deseeded tomatoes seasoned with just salt.  While it was simmering, I just dropped a few whole eggs and sprinkled some salt and pepper over it.  I then covered the pan and let it simmer till the eggs were done.

I’ve been meaning to do this omelette which I first tasted at the Village Smithy in Carbondale, Colorado last July when Spouse and I went to Redstone for our anniversary.   I thought it was a perfect recipe since I’ve always been gaga over smoked salmon (anything smoked for that matter) and cream cheese.  I didn’t have any bagels this morning but a couple slices of toasted French bread smeared with more cream cheese was fine.  Serving it with orange slices was a perfect way to cleanse the palate.

This omelette was simple enough that I could recreate it at home.  I’m sure it’s not exactly how they do it at the Village Smithy.  But with ingredients like cream cheese, smoked salmon, scallions and eggs – who can go wrong?

I highly recommend this.  It is not at all difficult to do and makes a satisfying and delicious brunch.

Smoked Salmon and Cream Cheese Omelette

5 eggs, scrambled with 1 tbsp. non-fat milk

1 tbsp. extra light olive oil

4 oz. shredded smoked salmon (big pieces)

3 scallions, finely sliced

4 oz. cream cheese, scooped in 1-in. pieces

salt and pepper to taste

Heat your skillet over medium heat.  Add oil then the salmon and scallions, just to heat it up.  This will only take a minute, no more.  Add the eggs and mix gently. 

As mixture starts to cook, gently lift edges of omelette, and tilt pan to allow the uncooked portion to flow underneath.  When you come to the point where your omelette is half-done (to your preference) distribute the cream cheese scoops on the top and cover the pan.

Turn off the heat but leave the covered pan to allow the residual heat to finish cooking the omelette.  I like doing this so my eggs don’t get burned but will cook thoroughly.  Spouse likes his eggs well-done and not runny at all so I’ve learned this trick to satisfy us both.

Serve on a plate with some bagels and cream cheese and a few slices of fruit.

Sunday Brunch is getting to be a nice habit for Spouse and I.  It’s just a nice way to start what will turn out to be the most leisurely day of the week.

This week, I tried a recipe I’d never tasted or cooked before:  Eggs Florentine.  Spouse has never had it himself so he was looking forward to trying it.  There are so many ways to do this dish, I was stumped for a minute deciding how I was going to make it.  I could’ve done the eggs poached but thought it was too early to successfully manage that.  So I decided on baking it in ramekins instead.

Here’s a photo of my Florentines when I was getting it ready for the oven.  You start with a buttered ramekin, put in the spinach and crack two eggs over that.  Then you pour over your favorite Mornay sauce to cover the eggs.  I didn’t really follow any recipe…just went with what I had and how I felt like doing things. 

But here’s an approximate recipe anyway, feel free to make any changes.

Eggs Florentine:

4 eggs

5-oz. frozen chopped spinach, thawed

1 tbsp. butter

salt and pepper to taste

Mornay Sauce:

1 tbsp. butter

2 tbsps. flour

1/2 to 3/4 c. low-fat milk (depending on your preferred sauce thickness)

1/3 to 1/2 c. shredded cheddar cheese

some gruyere cheese bits (I used leftovers)

salt and pepper to taste

pinch of nutmeg

When your spinach has thawed, cook it over medium-high heat in a hot saute pan with the butter. Cook it till the spinach juices are almost gone.  Season as you go along.  Remove from pan and set aside to cool.

Heat your oven to 325F.

In the same pan.  Add the butter and when it starts to bubble, add the flour. Use a wire whisk to stir and keep lumps from forming.  When this sizzles without turning brown, add the milk.  Stir vigorously to avoid lumps.  Add the cheese as it simmers away and season to taste.  If it gets too thick, add more milk.  Remove from heat and allow to cool a few minutes.

Meantime, prepare your 2 ramekins by rubbing all sides with butter.  Place spinach at the bottom.  Crack 2 room temperature eggs into each bowl.  Season if you want to.  Now pour the cheese sauce over the eggs, making sure to leave room for the sauce to bubble.

Place  thebowls on a cookie sheet and pop in the oven.  Allow to cook for 20 minutes for medium done eggs.  I cooked this  a bit longer because Spouse likes his eggs well-done.  Between 15-20 minutes should be a long enough window to check how your eggs are doing.  A good indicator of how cooked your eggs will be is shaking the cookie sheet just a bit and testing how done the eggs are by how it jiggles.

Plating:  Toast some bread or English muffins and set on a plate.  Spoon out the Florentines over the bread, allocating 1 egg per slice. 

A summer squash is something I only got to try when I moved to the US.  It’s always found next to the zucchini at supermarkets.  These two vegetables actually go very well together.  But I like the summer squash more, mainly for its sweetness.  I just found out that this vegetable is also very beneficial for your health.  Fantastic, another vegetable I actually like and is healthy too.

I made my last purchase of summer squash into a quiche last week.  The  sweetness would go well with the eggs and cheese I thought…which it did.  And if you can make a quiche with the watery spinach, you can probably use any vegetable in your quiche. 

Here it is, straight from the oven, all puffy and browned. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to take a photo of a slice because we ate all of it too soon…this was a small quiche.  Maybe next time….

This ground pork omelette was a regular packed lunch item when my siblings and I were in elementary school. I can still remember that scent when you first opened your plastic lunch box at the school canteen.  It was a mixture of the pork, the bell peppers and the plastic. This always came with steamed rice and a good serving of catsup.  I still cook this today and Spouse usually takes it with salsa and steamed rice or as a sandwich.

My mother always had a large container of the pre-cooked ground pork filling in our refrigerator for a quick lunch or dinner.  She was big on convenience because she had seven kids to raise, a household to run, her garden to tend….and at one point, even a regular office job.

On school days, my mother had to see us off to three different schools so it was always chaos in the mornings.  The older sisters were perpetually on a diet, so they preferred to have light sandwiches instead of the usual rice lunches.  The younger ones required sandwiches for their morning snack aside from the rice lunches.  My mother would start her day with a strong cup of coffee and start on those sandwiches.  It took a whole loaf of bread to satisfy all the requirements of the day.

Meantime, whoever was the maid* assigned to do the cooking was preparing the packed lunches.  I remember there was even a time when my dad insisted on having his rice wrapped in banana leaves!  Apparently, someone would go out to the backyard and cut off a banana leaf, clean and prep it for that purpose alone.  This all got done somehow and we left at the same time each morning for school and in my dad’s case, the office. Don’t ask me how we did it….I was always half alive in the mornings even then.

Back to this omelette, it’s a common Filipino dish that’s commonly called Torta.  We just called it Omelette.  You can use this for stuffing your Tortang Talong (eggplant) and other roasted vegetables. My dad once stuffed pandesal halves with this and dipped it in egg before frying the whole mess in just a bit of oil.  That was good.

Here’s the recipe:

Ground Pork Omelette

1 tbsp. cooking oil

1 large clove garlic, peeled and mashed

1 small onion, chopped

1 lb. ground pork

2?tbsps. fish sauce

1 tomato, chopped

1 (or more depending on the number of kids you have) potato, peeled and diced

1/4 c. water

1 small carrot, diced

1 small bell pepper, seeded and diced

salt and ground black pepper to taste

Heat oil in a wok over medium-high heat.  Add garlic and cook till almost brown.  Add the onions and cook till tender.  Add pork and cook till all the pink from the meat is gone.  Add fish sauce and cook a minute or two longer or until brown bits start to form.  Add the tomatoes and cook until it’s incorporated into the mix.  Add the potato and water.  Cover and cook for about 3 minutes.  Add carrots, cover and cook a minute or two.  Add the rest of the ingredients and cook another minute longer.

Set aside to cool.

For the omelette, beat one egg for about 2/3 cup of the ground pork mixture and mix. Heat up a tablespoon of oil in a wok over medium-high heat.  Pour in the egg and meat mixture into the pan.  Cover and lower heat to medium.  Cook for about 3 minutes or until bottom turns brown. Flip and cook uncovered until the bottom is brown. Repeat for the remaining meat mixture.

*NOTE:  This was way back in the early days when maids in the Philippines were begging to be taken from the provinces just for a chance to live in the city.

I first tried this dish at a small Chinese restaurant somewhere around the Timog/Circle area of Quezon City. For some strange reason…like a failing memory…I cannot recall the name of the place!  It was a favorite lunch choice of my officemates and I, quite affordable and consistently serving good, simple Chinese cuisine.  I heard they closed some years ago, quite a surprise since they were always full.

Some 4 years ago, Spouse and I went to visit my sister in New England and had a chance to visit New York and New Jersey.  I made it a point to go to NYC’s Chinatown and specifically requested this dish at a non-descript Chinese eatery.  They didn’t have it on their menu.  But with a little explanation from this non-Chinese speaking Asian, they came up with exactly the same thing I had in Quezon City.  I was so excited to have it again!

I’m guessing this is another alternative to the poular Egg Foo Yung which you can have with chicken, beef, pork or shrimp at most Chinese restaurants in the US.  It’s not exactly an omelette or a frittata…but it’s wonderful and I hope you’ll try this dish.  Unfortunately, I had no other choice but to use canned oysters.  If you can get fresh oysters where you are, I urge you to go with the fresh ones, even if you have to do the shucking yourself. It’s just so much better with fresh oysters.

Oyster Cake

1 tablespoon each corn starch and rice flour

2 ounces chicken stock

1 tablespoon fish sauce

1 teaspoon hoisin sauce

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 garlic clove, sliced thin

1 small onion, sliced thin

1/2 cup mung bean sprouts

3 eggs, beaten

8-10 small or extra-small shucked oysters, or large oysters cut into 8 pieces

1/4 c. thinly slivered green onions

1/4 c. thinly slivered chives

Whisk together the starch, flour and chicken stock. Combine the fish sauce and hoisin sauce and set aside.

Heat a 12-inch fry pan or pancake griddle. Add the vegetable oil. When it is hot, add the garlic, onion?and bean sprouts. Stir-fry until the bean sprouts are heated through and wilted. Whisk the starch mixture again and pour over the vegetables. Let set. Lift and peek under the crepe often to make sure the crepe is crusty brown all over. Drizzle with half of the sauce mixture.

Pour in the beaten egg over the crisped crepe and immediately drop the oysters, green onions and chives into the egg mixture. Let the egg partially set and allow oysters to firm up. Flip the omelet over or put in a hot oven set on grill to brown the top.

Slide onto serving plate, drizzle with remaining sauce and garnish with cilantro and more green onion.

Each time Spouse and I stop at a Chinese restaurant, there’s an 80% chance I’ll be ordering this dish called Mapo Tofu.  I never bothered to cook it before since it’s so convenient to pick up the phone and order it for delivery. When I scouted for a recipe online, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was.

As the Kitchen God would have it, today I had all the ingredients in my pantry and decided to give it a shot.  And the taste was not bad at all I must say…even Spouse. who is NOT tofu-friendly, enjoyed it.  The Kitchen God’s Wife must have been watching over me too…

Mapo Tofu

.5 lbs. ground pork

2 tbsps. chili garlic sauce

3 tbsps. black bean  and garlic sauce

1/2 c. chicken broth/water

sugar to taste

salt to taste

1 tbsp.  oyster sauce

1 block medium tofu, cut in cubes

2 tbsps. cornstarch dissolved in 2 tbsps. water

chopped green onions

1 teaspoon sesame oil.

Stir fry pork in a hot wok for 3 minutes.  Add chili-garlic and bean sauces.  Stir-fry a couple of minutes. Add broth, sugar and salt and bring to a boil.

Add oyster sauce and tofu.  Return to a boil.  Fold in cornstarch mixture to thicken.  Turn off heat.  Top with green onions and sesame oil.