Tuesday is my “chill out and sleep in until 8:30” morning, and I decided to extend the luxury of the morning into a gourmet breakfast.
I’m not one to normally make big breakfasts, so this was a treat for me.
As fancy as this might look, it was really quite a practical meal. Leftover in my fridge I had ricotta cheese, lemons, strawberries and blueberries. The typical university student fare, right? Perhaps not… Anyways, you can imagine my excitement when I found a recipe on Canadian Living that used all four of these ingredients.
Now, since I had no desire to be eating these pancakes for the remainder of the week, I cut the recipe in half and tweaked a few things to make up for my lack of raspberries, etc. I also added twice the amount of lemon rind, mostly because I got overly enthusiastic while zesting. That’s my bad, but I will stick by my guns when I say you can never have too much lemon rind. Also, I didn’t put blueberries in my pancakes as the original recipe requested. I’m not a huge blueberry person. If you are, however, a lover of these petite berries, throw them in. They’ll go nicely with the lemon. (PS: you can find my recipe under the pictures)
The pancakes turned out great. I drizzled them with some real maple syrup and piled my fork high with pancake and berries. I am not even ashamed to admit that I ate five (GLUTTONY). There was actually just the right amount of lemon, and the flavours made me feel like I was sinfully indulging in dessert for breakfast. Morning calorie splurges are well deserved.
Woah, eggs benedict. Where have you been all my life?
Since today is Family Day in Ontario, I decided to spoil my family and attempt once more to show off my new found cooking abilities (ones that still shock the socks off of them at times). When my mom suggested I make breakfast today, I spent endless hours browsing the Internet (the modern day cookbook, as my dad calls it), in search of the perfect recipe.
And then I found eggs benedict.
My egg, pre-hollandaise hat.
My decision to make these rich towers of deliciousness wasn’t as impulsive as you may think. You see, my desire to make these eggs began this past Thursday when I was frantically studying for my art history exam, which was to take place the very next morning. My roommate Ariel and I were desperately trying to think of weird word associations to help me remember the dates, artist’s name and photo name for 30 assigned key works. One of these photos was taken by this dude named F. Holland Day. He created this Sacred Art Series, where he starved himself and paraded around in pictures pretending to be Jesus. As you can probably imagine, the mind trick we created for Mr. Day was something clever to do with hollandaise and Jesus liking eggs (kind of lame, but it worked!). As a side note, I also remembered the year of the photo (1896) due to this suggestion from Ariel: “Boy needs to eat and sandwich. He’s so emaciated. Kate Moss was super skinny and popular in the 90s, just remember that.” Aced it.
BUT ANYWAYS, I found this dreamy eggs benedict recipe from Pioneer Woman Cooks. Her step-by-step picture guide worked wonders, and I frequently found myself scrolling like a crazy woman through her images, trying to find out what the hell I was doing. Poached eggs have held some sort of strange allure to me ever since I watched this scene from my favourite movie, Julie & Julia. Luckily, unlike Julie Powell, my mom had these little silicon pod things that I could poach the eggs in. This, in and of itself, was not done without challenge. I initially filled up my pot with too much liquid, and boiling water slopped over the side of the pods, sinking the poor little guys to the bottom. Although my motto is normally “leave no egg behind,” I regretfully inform you that we lost a brave comrade to the compost.
Now before I shut up, I must comment on the hollandaise sauce. I LOVE IT. I just want to pour it into a pool and drown in it, that’s how good it was. All that’s in the sauce is a cup of melted butter blended up with egg yolk, lemon juice and cayenne pepper. Goooooosh, butter. So wonderful. My 17-year-old brother was so critical of its smooth, velvet-like consistency, and refused to have the it drizzled on top of his egg. What a grave mistake, young one. After my eggs benedict were done, I ate half an english muffin just with hollandaise sauce. No shame, gluttony reigns supreme.
A poor illustration of how creamy, heart attack-inducingly delicious this hollandaise sauce was.
Alright, but I feel like I’m rambling a little here because of all the adventures associated with this morning’s breakfast. Basically, all you need to know is that this was delicious and rich, albeit a tad bit time consuming. I went through a few little panicked moments trying to co-ordinate the cooking, blending, and poaching of everything, but in the end it turned out alright (thanks for a helping hand from my mom)! Kudos again to the Pioneer Woman for another stellar success.
PS: Okay, I’ll admit it. I overcooked the egg yolks a wee bit which is why they don’t look as runny as they should, but I’m still a newbie with this whole poached egg thing.
PPS: If you’re wondering what this “Canadian bacon” thing is mentioned in PWC’s recipe, it is back bacon. Yum!
Before I start, let me say HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone! May your 2011 be filled with delicious recipe discoveries and good health!
Now that I’m back in Ottawa for the winter term, I figured it was time to resume blogging. For my last days at home I was almost never on my computer, since my parents were worried that I was over-doing my computer usage by watching endless amounts of How I Met Your Mother on my brightly lit macbook (I’ve almost finished four seasons in two weeks, a tv addiction like this hasn’t happened since I fell in love with LOST…).
But back to the food… These are the breakfast strudels that my family and I have every Christmas morning. They’re rich, tasty and the perfect start to a special day. My mom has always made these in the past but, just like with my dad’s fruitcake, I decided it was time for me to take up the reins on making this second Duff family tradition. The recipe for these strudels was from an old edition of Canadian Living and has been adapted by my mom to become the recipe that I love today.
The one challenging thing about these strudels is the phyllo pastry. Phyllo is probably the most delicate item you will ever have to cook or bake with and it becomes a bit of a hassle when you’re a tad impatient like me. In the process of making my strudels, I wrecked one or two sheets of phyllo simply because I wasn’t careful enough when handling it. Luckily for me I enjoy eating raw pastry dough (one of those weird Hilary things), and ate the destroyed sheet despite the disapproving look I got from my mom. Regardless of the initial challenges, these strudels are a foolproof way to make an awesome breakfast!
End note: you know you’re back in a student kitchen when you keep watching the stove while boiling water, waiting for a fire to begin.
End note 2.0: YES, my suitcase just got delivered after it was lost in transit yesterday. Going to unpack this instant!
See recipe after pictures. ALSO: Since the directions may be a little confusing, I’ve included a very poorly-photographed/focused (my kitchen is dark, okay?) step-by-step visual guide on how to arrange the phyllo pastry for these. Hope it helps!
Since my friend Alan is here from Montreal, I have been eating rather decadently (since he is a self-proclaimed food snob). Last night for dinner we had onion and mushroom crêpes with melted brie. THAT was only the appetizer – we then cooked up some delicious trout and had that with baguette…wonderful, right? Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures, since by the time we finished cooking everything, it was dark outside, and the dining room light just wasn’t cutting it…
Anyways, this morning I knew we were going to have to make something just as gourmet as last night’s dinner – for some reason I just knew Alan wasn’t a “Cheerios and milk” sort of guy. Here is a picture of the delicious waffles we made, using my fairly new yard sale purchase: a $10 never-used belgian waffle maker!
Hilary Makes 
