Showing posts with label breakfast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label breakfast. Show all posts

Monday, January 16, 2012

Popovers!

The HSHW household recently bought a KitchenAid stand mixer. You know, the classic ones that every good homemaker should own. And now we do! Shoutout to Target for having it on sale for only $199.99.

I hadn't actually used it yet -- Mr. Homewrecker has been using it to make his from-scratch chipotle mayo -- so I browsed the little cookbook that comes with the mixer and came across a recipe for popovers. For those unfamiliar, popovers are similar to Yorkshire Pudding, which like many English "pudding" dishes isn't anything like the Jell-o we're familiar with. It's bread. And it's eggy and delicious.

I love when the food actually looks like the picture in the recipe

And, as it turns out, they're a total breeze to make, especially with the stand mixer. I'll share the recipe with you all since it's a cinch. The hardest part was greasing and flouring the ramekins. A large muffin tin would work as well.

POPOVER RECIPE from KitchenAid recipe book

  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 tbs butter or margarine, melted
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 tsp salt
Place eggs, milk, butter, flour and salt in a mixer bowl. Attach bowl and wire whip to mixer. Turn to Speed 4 and beat 15 seconds. Stop and scrape bowl. Turn to Speed 4 and beat 15 seconds more. [Now, if you don't have a KitchenAid mixer, I'm fairly confident this entire step could be done with a hand mixer or a wire whisk and a little elbow grease]

Fill 8 heavily greased and floured custard cups half full with batter. Place cups on cookie sheet. Place cookie sheet in cold oven and set heat at 450 degrees F. Bake for 15 minutes; reduce heat to 350 degrees F and bake 20 to 25 minutes longer. Remove from oven and cut slit into side of each popover. [I guess that's to deflate them? I skipped this step since mine de-poofed on their own after only a moment out of the oven] Serve immediately. Yield: 8 popovers.


Serving suggestion: I think these would go great with apricot jam. Today I had them with Anarchy in a Jar's Hot Fireman's Pear Jam with Chipotle and Cinnamon -- also a great pairing (pear-ing?)

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Cocktail Party Turned Animal House and a Breakfast Miracle

I tried to have a classy holiday cocktail party -- cranberry-pear bellinis, artichoke dip, crudites, bourbon-pecan truffles, the works! And what happens?


Untitled from KneeniG on Vimeo.

My guy friends end up shotgunning tall boys in my kitchen, and the cops show up on a noise complaint. Hey-o!

After all this mayhem, I woke up Sunday "morning" sometime around 1pm having just dreamed a wonderful dream about the most delicious breakfast. I imagined a poached egg sitting atop a bed of creamy grits, smothered in hollandaise sauce and served to me in a stemmed dessert dish. "Wow," I thought, "that would be delicious. I will have to try making that when I'm not so hungover." I started to imagine it as the signature item in the cookbook I will publish some day.

I met a friend in Fort Greene for brunch around 2pm at this fantastic French place iCi. The restaurant specializes in local ingredients and incidentally is owned by former reality TV guy Laurent Saillard, from Bravo's The Restaurant. Well, what to my wondering eyes did appear on the menu? Poached Eggs with Grits and Truffle Sauce. When it arrived, the truffle sauce turned out to a more elegant sort of hollandaise sauce -- it was the breakfast from my dream (minus the dessert dish)!! Friends, it was a breakfast miracle.