The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Savory Baked Eggs

Or solitary egg, in this case.

When I was a kid, my mother used to make this dish sometimes on Sunday mornings.  It’s a slow-morning kind of breakfast, and Dad’s photography business was closed on Sundays.

I haven’t had savory baked eggs since that time, and lately it’s been on my mind.  So I asked my Mom for details recently and here we are.  The ingredients are simple – onions, butter, salt and pepper, eggs, cheese.  The end result is so simple and incredibly yummy, I’m kind of annoyed with myself for not giving this a try years ago.

Crazy Eggs

Remember when I made these?  It was three years ago.  That post got picked up here and there on the internet and it’s probably my most visited post.  Go figure. 

Little Kale Quiche Bites

I served these bite-sized goodies at Thanksgiving, and I might just make them again at Christmas time.

They’re a variation on the Kale Pie I’ve made numerous times now, but I’m calling them Kale Quiche Bites because that seems to describe them better. 

But call them pie or call them quiche – they are scrumptious!

Trout Egg Pictures

A couple of weeks ago Bill and Alex went fishing and brought home a couple of trout.  One of them was female and full of eggs.

We saved them, and what I should have done was spend some quality time online looking up recipes for curing them, so I could make us some fresh caviar.

But I didn’t.  And I basically ruined them.

But before I did that, I took pictures….

All Four Food Groups! Including the All-Important Bacon Fat Group!

I almost feel like I should post this under an assumed name, what with all my perky, healthy, Look!  We Grow Vegetables!  posts lately. 

It’s…I don’t even know what to call it, other than one of the yummiest breakfasts I’ve ever had.

It’s a fried egg on top of warmed goat milk mozzarella on top of arugula on top of a piece of leftover pizza dough that was fried in bacon fat.

Yes.  Bacon fat. 

And yes.  It was that good.

Here’s how it happened…

Salmon Omelet with Homemade Feta and Chives

I’ve been on an omelet kick lately.  Or a scrambled-eggs-with-stuff-mixed-in kick.  This morning my eggs and additions took omelet form.

Here’s what I used:

From the top right – two eggs, some leftover grilled salmon (wild caught, Alaskan), chives from the garden, and homemade Feta from last week’s cheesemakingpalooza.  Okay, I guess I didn’t make enough cheeses for it to qualify as a “palooza,” but I made four kinds.  And one was Feta.  (The short-term version, fyi.)

Anyway, back to breakfast…

Thai-ish Scrambled Egg Breakfast Pizza

I’m not even finished eating this.  But it’s so yummy I had to share.

It’s basically a breakfast of leftovers, which is one of my favorite ways to do breakfast.

I don’t really have a recipe, per se.  Just what I did with what I had.

Interested?  Hungry?  Follow me….

Salad Omelet

I had a little bit of salad left from last night.  Some chopped asparagus, some greens, a couple of slices of radish.

I almost tossed them in the compost last night, but then I thought they’d make a nice omelet in the morning.

So here’s what I did.

Easter Eggs

I’m getting a lot of traffic for these eggs I made a couple of years ago, and for any of you new to this website, I figured I’d post the links to those original posts, just in case you’d like to give them a whirl…

Coloring Eggs

Wow!  And Welcome!  And More Egg Pictures!

The kids want to make these again this year, so we’ll probably be doing that next week, and I’ve got an idea for something new and different as well.  That’ll be a project for this weekend, maybe. 

I’ll keep you posted!

The Egg

My friend, Rosa’s Foster Mom, stopped by yesterday with some eggs for me, including a very special egg from Rosa.

It was a big egg.

No, make that a BIG EGG.

Here, let me demonstrate…

FFwD – Gerard’s Mustard Tart

My sister tasted a slice of the Gerard’s Mustard Tart the day after I’d made it, and she paused, mid-chew, and said it was the best thing she had ever eaten.

I’m inclined to agree.

Lobster and Goat Cheese Omelet

 

Ooo la la.

I know, it would be more ooo la la-ish if there was a garnish of some sort...perhaps a different plate...maybe a bud vase with a freshly plucked rose...a candle...something.

But there isn't.  This is just a straight-up picture of breakfast today.

To rewind a bit...

Last night Uncle Werner (he and his daughter, Beth, are staying with us this week) bought lobsters and littlenecks (Thank you!), which we had for dinner along with a giant (2 lb) pattypan squash that I cut open, baked, and then stuffed with a mixture of black rice, tomato, chives, some of the shredded squash, ummmmmmmm basil, tarragon and I don't remember what else.  It was kind of a warm rice salad, basically, sitting in a squashy yellow serving vessel.

It wasn't the star of the show, but people seemed to like it.

Back to the seafood.

While the water came to a boil in one of Bill's big brew pots outside...

Bill and Joe shucked the little necks out on the deck.

And Uncle Werner and Alex hung out to taste-test the clams as needed.

Alex was especially happy to help.

He likes hanging out with the bigger guys.

Bill looks a bit anxious...like he's worried Alex won't slurp properly.

Not to worry, though.  Alex is a pro.

As is Uncle Werner, though he wasn't caught mid-slurp here.  I only do that to my children.

Anyway, there were over 30 little necks shucked.  There aren't that many in the pan, of course.

If it came down to a competition between Werner and Alex over who could eat the most, I'm not sure who would win.  In my silly little mind I picture them in a darkened room, hunched over their plates, matching each other shell for shell and slamming the empties down on the table after each successful slurp.

Werner's got experience on his side, but Alex has enthusiasm.  They both have that all-important sense of competitiveness, too. 

I don't know. 

But we weren't about to stage something like that yesterday.  The rest of us (most of us) wanted to do some slurping of our own.  (I didn't get pictures of Emily or Beth - I got sidetracked by the eating part.)

Well, all except this guy.

"Hi, Neighbor!"

I didn't take pictures of us all devouring lobster, partly because no one (except my kids) would allow it and also because I needed both hands to crack the shells and pick out the meat.  You'll just have to imagine it.  Think of a school of pirhanas attacking...oh...a big meaty cow leg that's fallen into the water (not sure why it's in there, but just play along with me, okay?) and that's about how we all behaved.

At the end of the frenzy, there were two claws and two bodies left.  (Lobster bodies.)  I picked those clean last night and saved the meat for this morning.

Now, I probably make one, maybe two lobster omelets a year.  I started doing it (I wouldn't call it a tradition, because it doesn't fall on a particular date or anything...just a day after we've had lobster) many years ago (pre-kids) when we had the little boat and Bill had lobster pots.  I remember I made a lobster omelet the morning that we closed on this house.  So it's sort of a celebratory thing, I guess.  But then, it's lobster, so that in itself it something to celebrate.

So, back in the kitchen.

I cut the claw meat into little chunks, and the rest of the meat was already small enough for my purposes.

I picked a bit of tarragon from the garden and pulled up a scallion (it was big enough, and I had permission) and brought those inside, cleaned them off and chopped them up.  I also minced a small clove of garlic and about a tablespoon of onion.

In the past, I've made one or two smaller omelets in my little 8" pan, but this time I decided to make one great big omelet so we could all eat at the same time.

First I melted some butter in the pan (my 14" All-Clad treasure) and added the minced onion, the garlic, and a bit of the scallion.  I let everything soften and then I added a slug of white wine (it was a pino grigio, I think), a sprinkle of salt, and the tomalley (lobster liver) I'd set aside from the lobster bodies.  (Oh, you don't know the restraint I showed by not eating that myself when no one was around.  I love that stuff.)

I stirred the mixture around in the pan until the tomalley had pretty much melted and it smelled delicious.

That was to be the sauce for the omelet.  I poured that in a bowl and started with a fresh knob of butter.  While that melted, I set the oven at 375 and started cracking eggs - 8 of them - into a bowl.  A nice, wide, lightweight bowl, so I could whisk them vigorously and look all chef-like.

When the butter was hot and the eggs were frothy, I poured the eggs into the pan and let them just sit there, on the heat, for a few minutes.

When the eggs had started to set, I added the lobster meat, the rest of the scallions and the tarragon, and little bits of goat cheese. 

Every time I make a lobster omelet, I experiment with different herb combinations and different cheeses.  So I've never made any two the same.  And I think that's part of the fun of it. 

Anyway, I put the pan in the oven and made toast while the omelet continued to cook a bit, and then about five or six minutes later, the toast was buttered and stacked on a plate, the table was set (thanks, Bill!) and hungry people were banging utensils on the table and - okay, that part isn't true.  Besides, the kids had already eaten.

I took the omelet out (carefully!  The handle is hot now!) and ran a thin spatula under the edges to make sure it wasn't sticking anywhere.

And then, with a flick of the wrist, I flipped the omelet out onto a board.  Just like that!

 

Okay, not really.  I used the spatula to flip half the omelet over onto the other half, and then I held the handle and the little...other handle...on the pan and THEN I flipped it over so the omelet (prettier side up) landed on the wooden cutting board I was using to serve it.  (We didn't have anything else big enough that wouldn't break if I dropped the big pan on it.)

I cut the omelet into quarters and served it up to Beth and Uncle Werner and Bill and myself - and Julia, (who has a dog's sense of smell, I swear) who managed to show up just as I was slicing.  Bill gave her two bites of his omelet and I gave her two (small) bits of mine and then we told her to scram.  She begged one slice of toast and then scampered away.

I drizzled some of the tomalley sauce over the omelets (except Beth's - she's not nuts about liver) and we dug in.

Everyone enjoyed it.  Bill said every bite was different - sometimes you'd taste tarragon, other bites you'd get more lobster, others were more goat cheesey.  I spooned some of the leftover tomalley sauce on my toast - oh, I could eat that every day for a month and be quite content, folks. 

There were no leftovers.

Oh, I quite like lobster omelet mornings.

Coloring Eggs, One More Time

 

I didn't do a lot of them this time.  I have to confess - I'm getting a little egged out.

I wanted to try out all sorts of other egg-coloring methods...but I ended up just doing a few.  But they were cool and fun and I'll definitely try out more of these next year.  But not now. 

But enough of that - here's what I DID do.  It's kind of an amalgamation of various methods I've seen on the web lately.

I'd read somewhere that soaking the eggs in the same water as your simmering black beans would leave the eggs with a purplish color, so that was the first order of business - to get some beans a-soaking and to hard boil some eggs.

 

Then I went outside to gather some little leaves.  It's still fairly cold outside, especially at night, and there aren't a ton of cute little leaves to pick.  I plucked some sage and some strawberry leaves and decided that was enough.

 

And I also peeled some skins off some onions.

 

And then I put two of the hard boiled eggs in with the boiling beans...

 

Then I took some turmeric and saffron from the spice cabinet and put them in a little bowl.

 

I poured a bit of very hot water over the turmeric and saffron so the turmeric would dissolve and the saffron would release some color.

Next, I got a pair of stockings.  Black ones, to lend a bit of drama.  (Drama?  It's egg-coloring.)

 

And then I started setting up these final 3 eggs.

First, I pressed my little strawberry leaves on one of them...

 

The leaves were soaking in water, which helped them stick to the eggs. 

Next I pl aced that egg on a square of stocking...

 

And carefully wrapped the stocking around the egg and secured it with a rubber band.

 

That one went into a coffee mug along with the turmeric-saffron water.

Next up, some onion skin.

 

Onion skin is nice to work with because it's curved and wraps easily around the egg.

 

And I think onion skin is pretty.

Anyway, onion skin and stocking - check.

 

This one went into a mug with plain hot water.

And finally, sage leaves AND onion skin.  I know - WOAH, there, Jayne!  Get off that crazy train!

 

I wrapped the stocking around that one and put it in another mug with just hot water - oh, and the remaining sage leaves.

So here they are - three blue mugs with my little egg experiments.

 

Meanwhile, the two other eggs continued to cook with the beans.  When I finally removed the eggs, here's what they looked like.  They've still got black been gunk on them.

 

I think they're kind of...well...pretty damn ugly.  But they still need a rinse.

This morning I unwrapped the eggs in the mugs.  Here we go...

First up, plain onion skin.

 

 

 

And then the strawberry leaves in the turmeric/saffron blend...

 

 

 

Hm...well, it's incredibly subdued, I guess.

Last, the sage and onion skin.

 

 

Now that one's kind of cool.

Okay, so here we are, the final four (I tossed one of the black bean eggs - it had cracked, and you know what?  Over-cooked, hard-boiled, black-bean-water-soaked eggs smell kind of horrible.

 

As you can see, I rinsed off the black bean egg - it's a quiet, purpley-gray color.  I like them.  I wish the turmeric/saffron egg had more color, but maybe I needed more spice in the water, or maybe I needed to let it soak longer.  I'll give it another try next year - or maybe this summer, to use for deviled eggs.

 

Anyway, that's it for the eggs for me this year. It's been fun! 

Cha Yip Dahn (Tea Eggs or Marbled Eggs) with Goo Yuet Fun Yim (Roasted Pepper and Salt Mix)

 

This particular recipe is from Charmaine Solomon's The Complete Asian Cookbook.  I think I've referenced this book before.  It's HUGE and covers the cuisines of Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Pakistan, The Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.   The Tea Eggs, of course, are from China.

Wow! And Welcome! And More Egg Pictures!

I took a look at my stats this morning, as I do every now and then, and OH MY!

I thought I needed more coffee or new glasses - where'd that really big number come from????? 

It was the eggs. 

Eggs like these.

 

And these.

   

And also these.

   

So I just wanted to give a HUGE welcome to all the new visitors to my site who have arrived from places like Ohdeedoh and Lifehacker and The Presurfer and anywhere else that featured or linked to my post about coloring Easter Eggs. 

WELCOME! 

I'm delighted to see that - for the most part - people have gotten just as much of a kick out of these eggs as my kids and I and the rest of my family have!

And since I can't, at the moment, get enough of them, I'll spend the rest of this post subjecting you (if you stick around) to more pictures.

I made a batch with my kids (as you probably figured out from the small hand in the picture above), and they had a great time cracking all the eggs and later peeling them to reveal the crackley colors.

 

One of the fun things is that the color on the outside of the egg isn't always the color you're going to see under the shell.

    

Surprise! 

I admit I've become a bit obsessed.

 

I spent a good chunk of Friday just taking pictures of eggs.

   

 

They just lend themselves to all sorts of fun picture ideas...

  

     

 

   

 

   

 

   

After all that (and of course, there were a lot more pictures that didn't make the cut), the eggs were rather the worse for wear.  I tossed them the next morning. 

And made a newer, smaller batch so I could test another way of coloring them.

This time around I hard boiled them as usual, cracked the shells as usual, BUT instead of putting the cracked eggs in mugs or bowls of hot colored water, I just dissolved the gel colors in cold water, put the eggs in the mugs of colored water, and put everything in the fridge. 

They stayed there overnight,

and the next morning,

when I peeled them,

they were just as nice as the other batches I'd made. 

  

And even better, they were totally safe to eat. 

I sliced each egg in half and popped the yolks into a bowl.  I placed the whites (or reds or greens, etc) cut side down on a piece of paper towel to dry off a bit while I mixed mayo, mustard, salt, and pepper with the yolks.  Then I filled a piping bag with the yolk mixture and piped it back into the whites. 

 

 

Ta-da!  Totally wild deviled eggs!  Next time around I'll cook a few extra eggs or use a couple less whites so there's a greater proportion of yolk mixture to white, and the filling will mound up more and look more inviting.  To me, anyway.  And maybe top them with some chopped chives for a bit more color and texture.  Or not.  There seems to be plenty of color!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coloring Eggs

 

I wouldn't go hiding these around the house for your kids to find on Easter morning. 

They're probably better suited to just eating, or perhaps making a batch of really wild deviled eggs - something I'm thinking of doing with the next batch. 

I've been thinking about making these for a while.

I'd seen recipes in a couple of my Asian cookbooks for Chinese Tea Eggs, a typical street snack found in parts of China.  Basically what you do is hardboil your eggs normally, and then, when they've cooled enough to handle, roll the eggs around on a hard surface to crack them.  You don't want to crack them too hard - you still want the shell to stay on the egg.  But you want to develop a nice overall cracked look.

 

Then, for the tea eggs, you'd make a pot of good, strong, dark tea and either simmer (recipes vary) the eggs for a while in the tea or just plunge them into the hot tea and leave them there for several hours.

To make mine, I hardboiled them, cooled them a bit, and rolled them around on a paper towel to crack them.  Some came out better than others.

Then I brought some more water to a boil and salted it (to flavor the eggs a bit, just in case we eat them).  While the water was heating up I set out several bowls for the various colors.  I picked out seven colors (no particular reason for that number - I'll probably make more when it's closer to Easter) and parcelled out some gel food coloring into each bowl.

 

 

 

I used pink, yellow, copper, green, blue, teal, and purple. 

When the water reached a boil and I'd added in some salt, I ladled water into each bowl and stirred the food coloring to dissolve it.  Then I placed one or two cracked eggs in each bowl, making sure they were covered completely with the colored water.

** And here's where I give you a word or two of advice.  First of all, have a towel under your bowls - if the egg displaces too much water, you'll have a mess, and food coloring CAN STAIN.  Second, use bowls or other containers that are more vertical then horizontal in dimension.  Actually coffee mugs worked really well for me - I ended up pouring colored water from my bowls into mugs - oh, the colorful mess I had!  But the mugs worked great.  I made sure to pick dark mugs so that if there was any staining catastrophe, no one but me would know.

I didn't take pictures of the eggs in their color baths - most were too dark. 

I left them in there for...(had to do some thinking just then) about 7 hours.  Yes.  I typed it correctly and you read it correctly.  7 hours. 

* Update *  I was thinking that it wasn't a very food-safe thing to do - leaving the eggs out to soak in hot/warm water for 7 hours.  In fact, it's not safe at all - it's a perfect environment for all sorts of bad little bugs to grow and thrive and contaminate everything.  We didn't eat those left out eggs anyway - I just took pictures and eventually tossed them.  Wasteful, right?  So I made a batch and instead of soaking them in hot colored water, I used cold colored water and soaked the eggs in the fridge overnight.  I'm happy to say it worked just as well AND you can eat the eggs!

Now, I don't know if it was necessary to leave them that long, but that's just the way it worked out, what with shuttling kids around and bringing Julia to gymnastics and making dinner and everything, it was nearly 7 pm when I finally got a chance to unveil my masterpieces. 

I was kind of excited, to tell you the truth.  And I was so excited that I didn't think to take a picture of the eggs BEFORE I peeled them, but ah well, that's why I don't write for Bon Appetit.

Here, however, is a lovely photo of the peeled shells:

 

Pretty darn festive themselves, aren't they? 

And here are my eggy jewels:

 

Aren't they cool?????  Well, some of them didn't come out so good, but the ones that did - I'm pretty happy with them.

As you can tell, it's hard to really see the detail on the yellow one.  I might not do yellow again, although it's so bright and pretty that maybe I will.  You just never know what I might do!

Anyway, the interesting thing (to me) is that some of them don't look like the colors I'd expected.  The two green ones are fine.  And that single teal egg is fine.  The orangy one is copper, but oddly enough, when I look at it today, it's more pink.  Or peach.  And those two purple ones?  Those were in the pink food coloring.  They looked purple yesterday (in the above photo) and today they've calmed down a bit to a fuschia.  The blue ones...they're fine.  And that darker blue, right in front?  That was supposed to be purple.

So either you can do a lot of scientific experimentation with amounts of food coloring and length of time spent soaking...or you can just wing it and let the eggs be like little colorful gifts as you peel them.

Both of my kids are dying to color eggs, especially Julia.  She saw all the mugs and bowls of eggs in food coloring on the counter yesterday, and unfortunatly she was sent to bed early (long story) and didn't get to see the final products.  I didn't show her this morning.  I was a bit concerned that she'd cry or get upset about missing the fun of peeling.

So I think I will make more of these and let the kids pick the colors and roll the eggs around to crack them. 

Alex WILL NOT eat eggs, but even he was impressed last night with how they looked.

And then perhaps I will make deviled eggs...or a really colorful egg salad...with the finished products.

OH!  Almost forgot - yet another bit of advice - when you're cracking the shells, be gentle with them.  If you whack them too hard on the counter or on your sibling's head (just preparing for everything here), you could also cause the white to split all the way to the yolk.  Just like this blue one on the end here (left front):

 

It's not the most horrible thing in the world, but it does kind of ruin the aesthetic.  And we don't want that, do we?  At least not for the pictures.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to for fun.  Hope you've been entertained!

(Oh, and if you haven't had enough of these eggs, go here.)

 

Zucchini Prosciutto Quiche

I had zucchini...tomatoes...a little prosciutto...cheeses...and plenty of eggs.  Hey!  I could make a quiche! 

And so I began.

A Closer Look at Meringue

Just because.

Creme Brulee

(originally from my old blog...)

2008 note - if you want to see pictures of the process, go here.

Tuesday night when everyone was over I made Creme Brulee,