Since this was my first attempt at deviled eggs, I wanted to stick to fairly traditional flavors. I did a couple of things to take it up a notch — I used smoked paprika instead of regular paprika and then threw in bacon and green onion for good measure. I wanted them to look as amazing as they tasted, so I used an icing bag to fill the whites with the yolks. I was afraid that the bacon and onion would clog the pastry bag, so I sprinkled some of them under the yolks and some over the yolks.

Deviled Eggs can also be more casual if you are, say, going to a friend’s house to watch TV. For these eggs, I added cilantro and lime juice to the yolks. They were a little too creamy (I felt obligated to use the full two tablespoons of mayo I borrowed from a neighbor), but great for a weeknight indulgence. I just used a spoon to stuff the yolks into the whites.

I can’t tell you what measurements I used for either of these batches, but I’ll tell you what I’m going to do the next time I devil and egg.

Hard boil it. Put the eggs in a saucepan filled with water. Turn on the heat and bring the water (with eggs) to a boil. Once boiling, cover and remove from heat and let stand. Remove the eggs from the hot water after nine minutes and cool immediately in ice water.

Peel, halve, and remove the yolks from the eggs. Mash up the yolks with a fork. Add about half as much mayonnaise as you have yolks. Add about half as much mustard (or other sour liquid) as you have mayonnaise. Stir it up to see if you like the consistency. Add more mayo until it is your desired creaminess.

Add some flavor. Traditional deviled eggs are made with paprika and cayenne. I think it’s good to add fresh garlic, some kind of onion, a green leafy herb, and maybe some bacon.

Taste as you go. If you can’t stand licking the creamy yolks off of your finger, get a cracker to scoop them up. Once the mixture tastes good to you, plop it into the hollows of the white. It will always seem like you won’t have enough, but you’ll always have extra.

Sometimes I get a little carried away with themed dinners (remember the Indian Feast?) and Valentine’s Day seemed like the perfect excuse to go over the top with Chinese food. It started out simply — I saw an recipe for Orange Chicken that I just had to try. I thought I’d throw in some tried and true Pork Dumplings. Then I accidentally bought wonton wrappers instead of dumpling wrappers, so when I went back to the store I picked up some cream cheese to make Crab Rangoons. Next thing you know, we’re having a four-course meal. Since this was the first Valentine’s Day Glenn and I have ever spent together, I figured we’d make up for lost time.

The Orange Chicken was everything I hoped it would be. The sauce had strong citrus flavors, which made the entire dish tangy and bright. The recipe seemed a little light on the garlic and ginger, so Glenn doubled it. The great thing about making it yourself is that you can make it as spicy or sweet as you want.

The Pork Dumplings turned out perfectly. The water was barely simmering when I put them in — it was 212 degrees, but there were no bubbles — and I think that helped keep them in tact.

The Crab Rangoons didn’t exactly turn out. Several of them burst in the oil, others seemed understuffed, and the rest were nothing special. I didn’t notice any correlation between the wrapping techniques and the tendency to break (I tried folding them in half to form a triangle, folding the corners over the top to form a square, and bringing all the corners to the top). I wasn’t too disappointed since I never intended for these to be a part of the meal anyway.

It was a bit of an endeavor to have everything done at the same time, but we worked out a nice little schedule. First, we prepped each piece. Glenn cut the chicken into pieces and tossed it with egg and flour; he chopped and measured the ingredients for the sauce; he mixed the pork stuffing; I assembled the dumplings and rangoons. That took a little more than an hour with two people working the whole time. Then we took a break for an hour. Then we went back and put the rice on, fried the rangoons, and fried the chicken in batches. When I put the last batch of chicken in, Glenn added the corn starch to the sauce to finish it off and I put the dumplings in the (not really boiling) water. That took about half an hour.

We froze the leftover dumplings and rangoons (you can boil and fry them straight out of the freezer) and we stored the chicken and sauce separately so the breading wouldn’t get soggy. I’m off to reheat it all now.

I have never been asked to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner, but I am so certain the day will come that I’ve already started preparing for it. I am a firm traditionalist, so I can’t imagine a Thanksgiving dinner without green bean casserole. The only problem is that I don’t really like canned green beans swimming in cream of mushroom soup, so I was very excited to find this recipe for Real Green Bean Casserole.

Real should not be misconstrued as healthy. I am a firm believer that anything from scratch is better for you than something from a can, but I have a hard time making that argument in this case. Sure there are three pounds of fresh vegetables, but the butter, cream, and fried onion rings kind of cancel that out. It certainly doesn’t taste healthy.

The flavor was surprisingly similar to traditional green bean casserole — salty and earthy. The biggest difference was in the texture — the green beans were firmer, the creamed mushrooms thicker, and the onions crispier. Instead of having a lumpy, soupy mess on my plate, I had a chunky, sludgy mess. As it turns out, I just don’t like green bean casserole, even if it is real.

For the record, I think this is a good recipe with good results. I highly recommend it for green bean casserole gurus.

Brunch is not complete without a few baked goods. That’s a particular challenge for me since I don’t care for danishes and their fruit fillings. When I saw that this recipe slapped pancetta on top of pastry dough filled with bechamel, I knew it was written with me in mind. Glenn made them for the first time for New Year’s Day 2009 and I specially requested them for my birthday brunch. They are hearty and rich and gorgeous to boot.

At first glance, the recipe for Bacon Pastry Slices may look excessively complicated. It is a multistep process, but the results are well worth the effort. The dough is very sticky, but this video has some great pointers on how to work with it. Both times that Glenn has made them, he has assembled them the day before, refrigerated them over night, and topped them with cheese before popping them in the oven in the morning. That system seems to work beautifully.

One of my friends graciously agreed to bring a birthday cake substitute, these streusel muffins. This picture really does not do them justice (I was so anxious to pop one in my mouth that I couldn’t be bothered to turn them all right side up). The muffins were airy and the streusel was crumbly. I had one every morning for breakfast the following week.

Another friend surprised me with chocolate chip and pumpkin ginger scones. These cakey biscuits studded with sweetness were absolutely delicious.

This Spinach and Cheese Strata was spongy and light, more like a bread pudding than an egg casserole. It required very little prep work, was easy to assemble, chilled overnight, and went straight into the oven in the morning. I probably baked it ten minutes longer than necessary, but it was very forgiving. I thought the browned edges were a nice contrast to the spongy center.

This was my first attempt at quiche, so I searched high and low for the perfect recipe. Every blogger I consulted told her own story of quiche disaster — broken shells and overflowing custards. I was a little put off, but still determined. I opened up the Joy of Cooking and, of course, that’s where I should have started. As usual, Joy gave it’s firm instructions on how to make the perfect quiche followed by several variations. The trick to making a quiche turn out is pre-baking the shell so that it stays brown and flaky even after you pour in the custard. After rolling the dough out and placing it in the pan, we covered the shell with aluminum foil and filled it with rice to weigh it down. After it baked for about fifteen minutes, we removed the rice and foil, brushed it with a beaten egg, and baked it for ten minutes more. Then the shell was ready to fill and bake. It was sort of an ordeal, but well worth it.

Quiche Lorraine

one 9 1/2″ pie crust
1 egg, beaten

4 slices of bacon, chopped into small pieces
1 thick slice of ham, cut into small cubes
1 cup of shredded Gruyere
1/2 cup of sliced red onion
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
1/4 tsp nutmeg
salt and freshly ground pepper

Roll out the pie crust and fit it into a 9 1/2″ pie pan. Weigh it down with pie weights or cover with aluminum foil and fill with rice . Bake at 375 for 15 minutes. Remove weights (or foil and rice – rice can be reserved for later use). Brush crust with beaten egg. Bake for 10 more minutes or until golden brown.

Fry bacon until cooked, but not crispy. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Add ham and onion to the bacon grease and fry until the ham is browned and onions are softened. Remove the ham and onions and drain.

Beat 3 eggs with the cream, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

Once the crust is baked, spread the bacon, ham, onions, and cheese in the bottom of the shell. Pour the beaten eggs over the top. Bake at 375 for about an hour.

I have failed at making biscuits and gravy many, many more times than I’ve succeeded. However, after making two good batches in a row (never mind that they were almost a year apart), I don’t believe I’ll ever fail again. You can see success number one over here and success number two above. I now know the secret to thickening gravy.

The secret to making thick and flavorful gravy is making a good roux. To make the roux, combine equal parts fat and flour in a large pan (preferably cast iron). One tablespoon each of fat and flour per person ought to do it. If you want stay-where-you-put-it gravy, you can add more flour a spoonful at a time until the grease won’t absorb it. Then cook the mixture until it is a deep brown color. Then add the liquid and stir slowly and constantly. If you’re a worry wart, you can spend the next twenty minutes agonizing over whether or not the gravy will turn out. But there’s really no need to worry — if you’ve done your work up front with the roux, the gravy will always turn out.

Breakfast Gravy:
1 lbs country sausage
2 Tb fat (from sausage or bacon)
2 Tb flour
2 cups milk

Brown the sausage in a large pan. Cook it slowly over a low heat to render the most fat.

After the sausage is cooked, remove it from the pan with a slotted spoon or spatula and save it for later.

Asses how much grease you have. You can either eyeball it or pour it into a small liquid measure. If you don’t have enough grease, add some bacon grease (presumably you have a jar of it in your refrigerator).

Add the flour to the grease. Cook over low heat until the clumps are stirred out and the mixture is brown. If necessary, add more flour to achieve a more pasty consistency.

Stirring constantly, slowly pour in the milk. Bring the mixture to a very gentle simmer. In fact, it may not form bubbles because you’ll be stirring the entire time. Cook until the gravy thickens, stirring to prevent the bottom from burning or the top from scumming. It could take 30 minutes to thicken.

Salt and pepper the gravy generously, stir in the sausage, and serve over biscuits.

It’s fitting that the ketchup is the only thing in focus in this picture. That also seemed to be the focus of the conversation, Ketchup?! How Midwestern! and These latkes are great, but next time you should try them with sour cream and applesauce. I tried to avoid any great expectations by calling them Potato Pancakes, but maybe I should have introduced them as Hash Brown Bites. Oh well. At least everyone seemed to appreciate the potato part of the dish (they even received the Jewish seal of approval from one friend).

There were three key aspects to making the Potato Pancakes nice and crispy. First of all, as I learned from my brother, moisture is the enemy of crispiness, so you really have to drain the potatoes. After shredding the potatoes in the food processor, I used cheesecloth to squeeze out all the excess water (and there was a lot of it). Secondly, nothing works better for frying than cast iron. I used my new two-burner griddle, but a cast iron frying pan would work just as well (just not as fast). Finally, I reheated the potato pancakes in the oven before serving them, which added some additional firmness.

These were an easy to make and easy to eat — the perfect combination for any brunch buffet.

As special as extravaganzas are, I wanted to take it up a notch for my birthday. How can you do that? Have a brunch. What makes it a brunch? Salad. Who wants to eat salad when there’s quiche and potato pancakes and gravy? Lots of people. Trust me. These bowls were licked clean by the end of the morning.

The green salad was nothing special. I just threw together all my favorite ingredients: arugula, red onion, goat cheese, pecans, and dried cranberries. I tossed it with balsamic vinegar and olive oil (not even emulsified, just straight out of the bottle) and everyone loved it.

Hiding behind that green salad is a fruit salad like none other. I have been ogling this salad on Smitten Kitchen for more than a year and finally found the opportunity (and the ingredients) to make it. The fruit soaks overnight in a simple syrup spiced with a vanilla bean, star anise, and lemon zest. In the morning you drain it and toss the fruit with pomegranate seeds. I’m still looking for a use for the leftover simple syrup — a sweetener for tea, perhaps?

Stay tuned for the rest of the brunch recipes — I’ll be posting them throughout the week.

I’ve had some issues with fried rice in the past, so I was thrilled to see Mark Bittman write about it in his recent Minimalist column.  After watching the video, Glenn and I went straight to the store and fried up a batch as soon as we got home. The results were phenomenal. It was not the crunchy, smoky fried rice you get with takeout — it was something completely different.

These are all ingredients that I’ve used in fried rice before, but the difference is in the quantity and preparation. This method uses about four times as much garlic and ginger as I usually do and cooks it for much longer. The essence of those spices is captured in the oil and is eventually infused into the entire dish. The soy sauce and sesame oil offer a salty, earthy contrast to the ginger’s brightness.

The flavor in this dish is so complex and delicate that you’ll feel like you’re in a restaurant.

The Youngs claim to have preserved the Original Chex Party Mix recipe. I can’t say whether or not that’s true, but I can say that this stuff is darn good. However, I can only make that guarantee if you follow this recipe. Here are a few things I’ve learned about making Party Mix: measure the cereal because the ratios do matter; you can use butter or margarine, but butter is easier to burn; off-brand cereal is fine; one set of cereal boxes yields 3-4 gallon Ziploc bags of Party Mix; people who like pretzels prefer the knots or squares; let the Party Mix cool in paper grocery bags to prevent sogging in the Ziplocs; Party Mix never tastes right until it’s cool; and — this may be the most important part — store it in the largest containers possible (gallon Ziplocs or popcorn tins will make you feel like you have an endless supply).

Original Chex Party Mix
1 stick butter or margarine
4 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 tsp seasoned salt
2 cups Rice Chex
2 cups Corn Chex
2 cups Wheat Chex
2 cups Cheerios
1 cup pretzels

Mix the cereal and pretzels together in a large bowl.

Melt butter in a large pot or pan with high sides. Add the Worcestershire and seasoned salt to the butter. When the butter sizzles, pour in the cereal. Stirring constantly, fry the cereal for about five minutes or until the butter is well distributed over all the cereals.

Dump into a large paper bag and let cool 1-2 hours. Store in an airtight container.