Finger Food for Grown-ups

Posted: February 4, 2010 | Author: Alyssa | Filed under: Alyssa | Tags: brunch, Eggs, Quiche | 3 Comments »

Do you ever miss being able to eat with your hands with out people looking at you like you’re an animal?  I do.  Of course there are always things like quesadillas and chicken wings that are standard ‘finger food’ but there aren’t many finger foods to fit a more refined palette (not my palette, but someone else’s who is more refined.  I still love PB, banana and honey for gods sake).  So in my many internet wanderings, I stumbled across a new mini quiche recipe that both  intrigued me and made me squeal like an excited little girl at the same time (yeah, I said it).  I guess I shouldn’t say the whole recipe excited me, rather the idea that the recipe gave me.  Rather than using a standard crust for the quiche, they used prisciutto.  Thats right my friends, I give you quiche wrapped in bacon!! Its super easy too.  You can use whatever quiche recipe you prefer, but here is the one that I used:

1 egg, 2 egg whites, 3Tbsp sour cream, diced black olives, diced mushrooms (left over from my kickin pasta from earlier this week), pepper, and garlic to taste.  Whisk the eggs and sour cream together until they are smooth,  then add the rest of the ingredients.  Take four slices of prosciutto and cut them in half width-wise.  Grease 8 cups of a mini-muffin pan (I know the prosciutto has fat, but trust me its going to make your life a lot easier if you add a little extra grease.  Line the greased cups with the half slice of prosciutto by squishing it up against the sides until it fits the cup shape pretty well, then spoon the quiche mixture in dividing it evenly between all the cups.

**Keep in mind that its going to puff up a little.  I got a little over zealous loading these bad boys up and  had some overflow during the cooking process.  Bake in a 400 degree oven for about 12 minutes until the quiche is set.  Let them cool until you can handle the pan, then run a knife around the edges and the quiche should pop right out of the pan.

One word of advice though: I usually get my prosciutto sliced pretty thin, but for this recipe I would definitely recommend using a thicker cut because the thin has a tendency to pull apart more easily so there are holes in your ‘crust’.  A thicker cut would solve that problem pretty easily.

Once they are out of the pan, devour them.  These would be really good for any party from a brunch to the superbowl depending on what you put in them, and they are fantastically easy to make.  If you can poke, stir, and pour then you are good to go.   Hope you enjoy!

Sunday Brunch, Anyday

Posted: November 14, 2009 | Author: Johanna | Filed under: Johanna, Make-Ahead, Monthly Mingle, brunch, vegetarian | Tags: brunch, Cheese, Eggs, Monthly Mingle, Mushrooms, Pan Paesano, vegetarian | 3 Comments »

One of my favorite bloggers recently posted a recipe for Saffron shortbread cookies. And she posted it as a participant in something called the Monthly Mingle. The internet is full of blog events, from Novel Food to Daring Bakers to the BBA Challenge.

This month’s Mingle theme is brunch recipes. Now, I love me some brunch, so I decided that a heck of a time to start participating would be with brunch. So….. away we go!
While I love french toast or a good stack of pancakes as much as anybody, I’m much happier to put my energies into a savory brunch, and similarly much happier to eat it. Plus, it’s difficult for me to make a brunch decision out at a restaurant that doesn’t involve cheese or eggs in some way. Unless it’s corned beef hash. And honestly, cheese on corned beef hash would be delicious, but overly decadent.
And yet I digress.
We were out at a party the night before our at-home brunch, and I knew that I would be up early the following morning to go for a run (4.5 miles. ughhh). So, when we got home from the party, I threw together a Breakfast Bread Pudding, which much like a strata, can be left in the fridge overnight, fully assembled, and baked the next morning.
Breakfast Bread Pudding
1. Butter a baking dish. It can be round or oval or rectangular, 9×13 or smaller, or possibly bigger if you scale up. I used a smaller one than I planned, but any baking dish will do, as long as it has 2-inch or higher sides.
2. Tear up half a loaf of crusty bread. We used Pan Paesano from Whole Foods, which has a delicious cornmeal crust, but please feel free to leave whatever loaf of bread you want out on the counter all day, so you can tear it up at night. Rip it into bite-sized pieces, and scatter them evenly over the bottom of the dish.
3. Dice 1 small onion and 1 clove of garlic, and saute in 1 tablespoon of butter until soft. Add roughly 8 ounces of chopped crimini mushrooms, and cook until softened and starting to color. Add a pinch of salt, and season with pepper. While the mushrooms and onions cook, halve 3/4 of a pint of grape tomatoes and reserve.
4. Whisk together 6 eggs and 1 cup of milk, and season with salt and pepper. Raid your cheese selection to see what you have left in the fridge. Grate whatever looks good — in our case some leftover Madrigal baby swiss that was used in several recipes, most notably the Most Amazing Mushroom Risotto EVER.  Grate 2/3 of a cup of cheese.
5. When the mushrooms are cooked, sprinkle the mushroom-onion mixture, as well as the tomatoes, over the bread chunks. Sprinkle with half the cheese. Pour in the egg mixture, and press everything down into the bottom of the baking dish. This is literally the most disgusting combination of sound and feeling ever, but persevere. Top with the rest of the cheese.
6. At this point, you could cover the bread pudding, and stick it in the fridge overnight. Otherwise, you could put it directly into a 350-degree oven for 1 hour.

Call your friends up, and tell them to bring the mimosas.

Or, y’know, change out of your sweaty running clothes, thank the heavens for boyfriends who remember to put the food in the oven, and settle down on the couch with a plate of this and a cup of coffee. Your house will smell gorgeous and you will be eating a delicious meal. I suppose there might be more to life, but around 11am, I couldn’t think of a darn thing.