Such a Yummy Dinner

I love to cook.  BUT, I get real tired of every day cooking.  I have been making some of the same dishes for 45 years.  So every now and then I think, what’s new for supper. 

We love breakfast for supper.  Fried eggs or scrambled, with bacon or sausage, toast and jam, and potatoes fried in some unhealthy way. Usually with bacon grease, heaven on a fork.  All that with a big glass of milk is great.  But even that gets boring.  Still tastes good, but boring to cook.

I read recipes for entertainment.  Recently I have seen lots of foods cooked in muffin tins lined with bread, bacon, prosciutto, or ham.  Pig is always good.  What could I do?  I had prosciutto in the freezer and lots of eggs.  I told Marty what I was going to do.  He said if I wanted him to, he would make a Béarnaise sauce and fry up some potatoes.  Hell yes I wanted him to.  Fun in the kitchen, both of us creating.

I sprayed the muffin cups with Pam.  Next I lined the muffin tins with prosciutto up to the top of the cups.  Not as easy as that sounds.  It’s like working with cheap plastic wrap.  The prosciutto collapsed onto itself.  There was no getting it straightened out.  So I did what all cooks do with an error, I destroyed the evidence.  I ate it.

I got the hang of the prosciutto and lined the cups.  I then, one at a time, broke eggs into a little pitcher.  I carefully poured an egg into each cup.  I peppered them.  No salt because prosciutto is really salty. This was baked at 375 degrees for a little too long.  The whites looked runny and we left it in for 30 minutes.  I think 25 would have been better.  I like runny eggs and these were more of a firm yolk.

While I was doing that, Marty was working on potatoes and Béarnaise sauce.  (I did help stir the sauce) We toasted bread, cut it into circles.  That went on the plate first, the eggs were placed on the toast and the sauce was poured over them, and lastly the potatoes went on the side. 

                            

Building the meal.  Toast down, egg cups on top.

Béarnaise sauce pouring onto egg cup two.

 

Second plate of egg cups getting their Béarnaise sauce.

                                                

Ready for the taste test.

Smell wonderful, and yes, it was yummy.

When we do this again, I will cook the eggs a shorter time.  And I will make Marty pour more of the Béarnaise Sauce on the eggs.  I make a great Béarnaise Sauce, but I think his topped mine.  I just wanted to eat the sauce.

GREAT DINNER

Last night we cooked a great dinner. That was almost the royal WE. I did some prep work, but mainly wash up duty. I did create the menu and set the table. I had planned to cook it all myself. But luckily it interested Marty and he wanted to cook.

The Menu:

Sliced Tomatoes, shaved Parmesan cheese, torn basil leaves drizzled with a balsamic vinaigrette

Risotto with asparagus, porcini and lobster mushrooms, and shrimp

Bread sticks

If you have never made risotto you need to know it is labor intensive. You stir it for 25-30 minutes constantly. But we don't stir, we have a really cool gadget that works amazingly well. It is a Stirchef. A gadget that runs on batteries, sits on the pot, and stirs all sizes of pans tirelessly. I just did a search for the link and it looks like this gadget went the way of the Super Shooter and other Christmas specials. They are on Amazon and eBay, if you want to get one.

Back to the meal. The salad was scratched. Marty didn't want a salad. The shrimp were wrapped in prosciutto and cooked on the grill. The saltiness of the prosciutto against the risotto was fabulous.

We made too much risotto and that is one food you can't heat up the next day. So we picked out the wild mushrooms and asparagus and left part of the risotto.

Tonight pulled beef quesadillas. Unless Marty wants to cook again.