Jan 10 to Jan 13 - Breakfast For Dinner!

It was Monday morning and the start of a brand new week and I was only ten days into our new challenge and guess what? 

I HAD NO IDEA WHAT TO MAKE FOR DINNER!

I was up all night with insomnia, slept for two hours and then up for the day so I was tired, cranky and the last thing I wanted to think about was what new and exiting thing I was going to make for dinner?

At that point, I was either going to suck it up and do an asian flank steak with asian slaw that i found a recipe for OR we were going to just have poached eggs on some sort of toast with a nice salad.

Nobody said this was going to be an easy thing to do but I wasn't expecting to hit the wall on day ten!

In the end, I decided to do breakfast for dinner and make poached eggs with garlicky spinach and cheesy potato scones with proscuitto.

I had found this recipeat Sunita's World when I was poking around Food Buzz and really wanted to make it. I made a couple of changes like changing out the mustard for sun dried tomato pesto and using half potato and half sweet potato but other than that, I stuck to the recipe. I am NOT a baker so I tend to not mess around with baking recipes.

From Sunita's website:

What’s needed-

2 c of whole wheat flour (atta) + extra for dusting
1 and 1/2 C of mashed potato
2 T of finely chopped rosemary
1 tsp salt
1 tblsp English mustard (optional)
2 tblsp olive oil
6tblsp +5 tblsp of grated cheddar cheese ( I used Red Leicester cheese)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 c milk+ a little extra for brushing the tops
1 egg, lightly beaten

How to-

1. Pre heat the oven at 220 deg C and line a baking tray with non stick baking paper.
2. In a bowl, mix together everything, except the potatoes,egg, 5tblsp of cheese and milk. Rub the ingredients with the fingertips till it resembles fine crumbs.
3. Gently mix in the mashed potatoes.
4. Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture. Mix together the milk and egg and pour into the well. Lightly mix till everything is just moistened. It will be a sticky mess at this point, but there’s nothing to worry.
5. Transfer the mixture to a well floured board and with floured hands, knead very lightly to form a ball. It should still be slightly sticky. Do not over knead and do not add too mush flour. Pat into a circle of about 1 and a 1/2 cms in height. Cut into eight equal triangles.
6. Transfer the triangles to the prepared baking tray, slightly apart from each other. Brush the tops with a little milk and sprinkle the rest of the cheese on top.
7. Place the tray in the centre of the pre heated oven and bake for 12-15 minutes or till puffed and golden.
8. Transfer to a rack to cool. Serve warm, on it’s own or with a dip, as a snack or as an accompaniment with soup.
9. If you are storing for later, cool completely on the rack and store in the refrigerator. Warm in the microwave or wrap in foil and heated in a pre heated oven for few minutes..

I cut the scones in two halves to make it like a bun and threw the slices under the broiler while I poached the eggs and finished sautéing the spinach. Then i put a half a scone on the plate, piled on some spinach and topped that with a poached egg. The whole thing was finished off with a crispy slice of proscuitto.

Directions for making the finished dish:

scones, 1 per person. If you want them toasted you can half them and toast them under the broiler or even pop them in the toaster.

proscuitto: heat a grill pan or a non stick pan over med-high heat, brush lightly with a bit of olive oil and then cook the slices of proscuitto until they are cooked through and crispy. Remove them to a plate or a wire rack to cool and finish crisping up.

to poach eggs:

heat  at least 4" of water to a light simmer and add about a tsp of white vinegar to the water. Use a wooden spoon handle to create a cyclone inside the pot but stirring really fast in one direction. I like to crack the eggs, one at a time into a shallow bowl and slide them gently into the barely simmering water, right into the vortex of the swirl you created. Put up to four eggs in the pan and turn on your time for 3 minutes if they are straight from the fridge and 2 minutes if they are at room temperature. When the timer goes off, remove them gently with a slotted spoon and rest them on a plate lined with a piece of paper towel unless you really like wet eggs that make your bread all soggy. If you like wet, soggy bread, just plop them straight from the water onto your toast.

Here is a pretty good set of instructions to poach eggs if my instructions aren't making sense.

http://localfoods.about.com/od/preparationtips/ss/PoachEggs.htm

To prepare spinach or other green:

wash a large bunch of fresh spinach until the water runs clean and there are no more dodgy bits coming out of the rinsing water and set aside in a strainer while you heat about 1 tbls of olive oil in a pan over med heat. Add a finely chopped clove of garlic and sauté until it JUST starts to get a bit of colour. That is when you dump in the damp spinach and cook it down for a few minutes until it's completely wilted. Add a pinch of sea salt or kosher salt, stir it until the water is totally evaporated and remove it from heat. If you want to keep the fat down, you could also just steam the greens.

about 1 minute before your eggs are done, take the scones out from under the broiler and put half on each plate, pile the spinach on and then add a drained, poached egg on the very top (or two if you want two per person). You can either just snap the proscuitto slice in half length wise and artfully place them over the eggs OR crumble them up and sprinkle them over the top.

Final consensus was that neither guy loves the scones on their own. Shack said it was good under the egg but he didn't want to eat the other half that i had thought would be used to sop up any yolk (that is how I ate it but I really like scones)

They would love to eat it again but next time, less garlic ( I used two cloves and it was a bit too much), toast or english muffins or crumpets in place of the scones and it would be a perfect, light meal.

I made myself one the next day for lunch so I could get some photos with daylight. I had no more spinach so I used bok choy and had no more proscuitto but it was still really, really good and I look forward to variations on this idea!

The week looked like this:

Jan 10   Cheesey Potato Scones with Poached Eggs

Jan 11   Marilyn's Beef Stew (kindly donated by Marilyn) and fresh pumpernickle bread

Jan 12   Penne with Marinara Sauce A La Shack
Jan 13   Masala Basa with Basmati Rice 


Because life is what it is, tonight, Jan 12, was supposed to be the basa and tomorrow should be another dish entirely but Shack wanted pasta and the fish had not totally defrosted yet so pasta it is and this fish will be tomorrow's dinner. I have to tell you, this is probably going to harder than I would like to admit and my little pea brain keeps wanting to just fall back on the easy way out. I also find myself scouring books and the internet for recipes just to think "that looks good but they don't like olives" "that one would be good but they don't like couscous" when the whole point of this is to expand things, not put parameters on things. I am going to try to make one dish next week that I think they won't like and see what happens lol.