Kind of a hot mess.

Let it be known! For any Tex-Mex dish in existence, there is an equally delicious breakfast version of that dish.

For evidence to back this idea, I offer exhibit A – The Breakfast Nachos.

The topping possibilities are pretty unlimited, but should probably include some sort of egg and cheese, plus some good veggies.

They are actually very easy to make and definitely fun to eat. Just be careful or you might find yourself in a very solid food coma for the day.

Breakfast Nachos

Yield: Serves 2.

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients:

8 ounces spicy pork sausage
4 large eggs, scrambled
1/4 red onion, diced
1 jalapeno, minced
2 cups pepper jack cheese, grated
Tortilla chips
Avocado
Cilantro
Salsa
Sour cream

Directions:

1) Lay out tortilla chips on a baking sheet in an even layer. Top with grated cheese.

2) In a medium pan, add sausage and begin to brown over medium-high heat. Crumble sausage as it cooks and cook until it's well-browned, about 10 minutes.

3) Scramble eggs and pour into pan with sausage. Cook until eggs are barely cooked, another few minutes.

4) Add eggs and sausage to tortilla chips on top of the cheese.

5) Top with diced veggies.

6) Bake at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes until cheese is melted.

7) Top with avocado and cilantro and serve with salsa and sour cream.

The Prep

There’s actually very little prep for these bad boys. Feel free to combine them with some of the more advanced nacho techniques I’ve used over the years like the individually topped chip or the cheese sauce method.

If you’re starving though, you can just throw some chips on a baking sheet!

The chips are down.

Obviously you could add a lot of veggie toppings to these. I kept it pretty simple though and just diced up a jalapeno and a chunk of red onion.

Just some basic chopping

Eggs and Sausage

When it comes to a good hardy breakfast, it’s pretty hard to beat eggs and sausage. So that’s what I used here! While you could definitely leave off the sausage for a veggie version, I’m not sure I’d leave off the eggs because then you’d just have nachos and not breakfast nachos.

If you are using the sausage though, just add it to a pan over medium-high heat and break it up as it cooks until it’s nice and browned.

Well-browned!

Then pour in your scrambled eggs! The grease from the sausage will be more than enough to help the eggs cook.

This will work. Trust me.

Stir the mixture vigorously as it cooks and it’ll just take another minute or so to cook the eggs.

Don’t worry if the eggs are slightly under-cooked. We are going to bake them also so it’s better to under-cook them a bit at this point.

A bit undercooked is fine.

Finishing the Nachos

Nothing rocket science about it. Add your cheese to the tortilla chips. I like a good pepper jack, but feel free to use almost any cheese.

Then add your egg/sausage combo followed by your veggies.

This guy is ready for the oven!

Cheesed and topped.

These will need to bake for about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile you can prep your toppings. I think Betsy would leave me if I served nachos without avocado, so I sliced up one.

It is the most marriage saving of all toppings.

Essential.

As soon as the nachos come out of the oven, top them with some avocado and cilantro (if that’s your thing).

I like to serve salsa and sour cream on the side so people can add their own.

Delicious breakfast.

This is obviously a pretty filling breakfast, but it really hits the spot on a cold winter morning. Especially if you maybe had a longer than expected night at the bar the previous night!

And yes. We did eat this entire tray of nachos. Do not judge!

Hard to get healthier than this!

After a weekend of over-indulgence, I’m always in the mood for something that’s really quick and healthy.

I definitely don’t want anything with meat or cheese in it. For once.

This recipe was inspired by a recipe that was in the most recent Bon Appetit. I say inspired because I changed almost every main ingredient except chickpeas. The original had chicken in it, but I felt like keeping it veggie packed so I nixed the chicken and added in a few potatoes and some kale.

The bonus piece of cutting out the chicken is that it also trims about 20 minutes off of your prep time.

Thirty Minute Chickpea Stew

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

2 15-ounce cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 1/2 pounds potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 small bunch kale leaves, chopped
1 quart vegetable stock
1/2 cup roasted red peppers, chopped
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
2 bay leaves
3 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Crusty bread
Salt and pepper

Directions:

1) Add olive oil to a large heavy pot over medium-low heat. Add minced garlic and red pepper flakes. Cook for a few minutes until fragrant.

2) Add in cubed potatoes, tomato paste, and cumin. Turn the heat up to medium and cook for 5 minutes, stirring regularly.

3) Add in vegetable stock, chickpeas, bay leaves, roasted red peppers, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer and simmer until potatoes are soft, another 10 minutes.

4) Stir in kale and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper.

5) Break up some crusty bread in the bottom of a bowl. Ladle stew over bread. Serve immediately.

A Basic Stew

I think one of the best things you can learn as an at-home cook is to master the simple veggie stew. Learn how to balance the spices and flavors in a stew and you can usually make a fantastic meal with a few fresh veggies, a few canned foods, and some simple stock and spices.

For this version (and for a lot of stews that I make), these are some of the basics.

Just some basics.

I was worried that by cutting out the chicken, my stew wouldn’t have enough body to be really filling. I’m not sure if that’s entirely true because there’s still bread in the soup also.

But, I decided to add in a few chopped potatoes at the last minute.

I liked the potato addition, but I also think it would’ve worked fine without them.

Gives the stew some body.

Canned chickpeas makes this stew super-quick. It would add on at least an hour to use dried chickpeas and I’m not sure you would get much for your extra work.

Just be sure to drain and rinse the chickpeas well.

I think I’m almost in the market for a new strainer…

Rinse these guys pretty well.

Making the Stew

To start the stew, we need to infuse some oil with two really flavorful things: garlic and red pepper flakes.

Two of my favorite things.

The key to doing this correctly is cooking the garlic and pepper flakes over fairly low heat for a few minutes. If you crank the heat to high, you’ll completely char the garlic.

Instead, just add them to the olive oil over medium-low heat for a few minutes. When it starts to get really fragrant, you know it’s ready to go. The garlic shouldn’t even be browned really.

Low heat is important..

Next, add in the potatoes, tomato paste, and cumin.

This will immediately start to smell amazing. Stir it all together and let it cook for a few minutes. You can turn your heat up a bit to medium at this point.

Already smellin' good.

After a few minutes of that, just pour in the vegetable stock, add the bay leaves and chickpeas, and bring the whole thing to a simmer.

At this point the stew is pretty much done when the potatoes are cooked through which will probably take another 10 minutes or so.

Love that color...

Finishing the Stew

There’s a few ingredients to add to the end of the stew that completely make it in my opinion. First, roasted red peppers. Honestly, I’m not sure that I’ve ever had roasted red peppers in a stew before but they worked great and paired really well with the chickpeas.

Next, I added some chopped kale. You could also use something like swiss chard if you wanted. A leafy, sturdy green really helps the stew out though.

One of the most important ingredients is lemon juice. The acid just makes all the flavors really pop. Don’t forget it!

Gotta toss in some greens.

Once all that stuff is stirred in, just season it with salt and pepper and you’re ready to go.

This stew took me about 30 minutes to make and I was taking photos and stuff. You could probably make it even faster!

Serving the Stew

The stew tastes good as-is, but to really turn it into a meal, just put about 1/2 cup of torn bread into the bottom of your bowl before you serve it. Any super-crusty and slightly stale bread will work great.

Hidden bread!

Then just ladle on the stew with some of the broth and you’re all set.

Hard to beat in my opinion.

Betsy and I devoured this and we had plenty for leftovers also.

Give this a shot this week if you are crunched for time and looking for something healthy and filling!

Better than it looks. Promise.

The first time I saw tempeh in the store I thought that whoever first made it must have been very hungry. It doesn’t look too appetizing.

The first time I ate tempeh I thought that whoever first made it was a freakin’ genius.

I think it’s one of the most under-rated foods around. Trust me. It’s not just for vegetarians and health nuts. It’s for anyone who likes really good food that easy to make.

Tempeh has more flavor and texture than tofu and is about ten times easier to make.

In fact, one of my favorite tacos to this day is my crispy tempeh tacos. This is actually kind of a riff on that dish made as a breakfast instead of a dinner. I ate this breakfast two days in a row which is pretty rare for me. It was just that good.

The Tempeh Scramble

Yield: Serves 2.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

4-6 ounces tempeh, crumbled
1/2 red or orange pepper, diced
1 jalapeno, seeded and minced
2 scallions, diced
2 tablespoons salsa
4 large eggs, scrambled
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
3 ounces pepper jack cheese, grated
1 avocado, sliced
Cilantro
Flour tortillas
Salt and pepper

Helpful Equipment:
Cast Iron Skillet

Directions:

1) Crumble tempeh and dice all your veggies. Mix the veggies in a bowl with salsa.

2) Add the small amount of vegetable oil to a cast iron skillet and get it hot over medium-high heat.

3) Add the tempeh and cook until it's well browned, about 5-6 minutes.

4) Stir in veggies and salsa and season with salt and pepper. Cook for a minute or two until veggies are soft.

5) Scramble eggs and add eggs to skillet. Stir vigorously so eggs mix with other ingredients. Cook until eggs are almost all cooked, probably just a minute or two.

6) Add on grated cheese and stick the pan in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for about a minute just to melt the cheese.

7) Serve scramble with warm tortillas, cilantro, and avocado!

Tempeh Tempeh

I’ve already raved in this post about my love for tempeh, but the reality is that it might be kind of hard for you to find. I only know of one health food store in my town that sells it.

Most grocery stores don’t carry it unfortunately. Maybe the demand isn’t quite there yet. But call around to a few places and you should be able to find it somewhere.

If you’re curious what tempeh is, it’s basically just fermented whole soy beans that have been mixed with other flavors like flax seeds or, in this case, random vegetables.

The nice thing about tempeh is that you can prepare it a million different ways. You can slice it thinly or just crumble it up. I thought for a scramble like this, it would be better to just crumble it.

Super easy to use.

The Veggies

While I listed specific vegetables in the recipe, I’d just encourage you to use what you have in your fridge. Some kind of pepper is good and something like an onion or scallion is a good idea.

It’s pretty flexible though… kind of like an omelet.

A few chopped veggies.

Whatever veggies you are using, dice them up and then stir them together with some salsa. This will give the dish a nice Tex-Mex feel.

Adding a tex-mex element.

Cooking the Scramble

I used my cast iron skillet for this dish, but you could use any large skillet really. I do recommend using one that is oven-safe so you can transfer the pan to the oven at the end and melt the cheese quickly.

The first step is to brown the tempeh. Add a small drizzle of oil to the pan and then add all the tempeh. Over medium-high heat, it’ll take 5-6 minutes to brown nicely. It’s pretty hard to burn this stuff. It’s very sturdy.

Way easier than tofu!

Once the tempeh is browned, add in the veggies and salsa and cook for another minute or two until the veggies are soft.

Then pour in your scrambled eggs!

Already smells good.

Everything will cook pretty fast at this point.

Just stir it all together and let it cook until the eggs are almost completely cooked.

This is about perfect. It looks like a hot mess, but it’ll smell great.

Not sure how many style points I get here...

Top the whole scramble with some cheese and stick it in a hot oven for a minute or two just to melt the cheese.

Can't forget the cheese.

You could just eat this as-is or serve it as a side. If you want to make a really good meal out of it though, serve it with some flour tortillas, avocado, and maybe some fresh cilantro.

Delicious breakfast.

There’s a lot of nice things about this meal. For one, I guarantee you that you won’t miss the meat. The tempeh is very flavorful, filling, and has a great texture.

The other nice thing is that this whole thing takes less than 30 minutes to make. You could also easily double or triple it and feed a crowd.

This is a great introduction to tempeh if you’ve never tried it before so hunt some down and give it a go!

When in doubt, serve it on arugula!

I love my kitchen as much as the next food blogger. I feel very comfortable there. It’s normally very relaxing for me to cook.

But sometimes I just want dinner to be made. I want a dish that’s quick, flavorful, and simple.

I want a dish that I can make within the time it takes me to listen to one podcast of Car Talk.

This dish is that dish.

It can look a bit intimidating, especially if you aren’t use to cooking with a lot of Asian flavors. But really it’s dumb simple to make and utilizes one of my favorite kitchen tips!

Sesame Chicken Noodle Salad

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 35 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound chicken breasts, seasoned with salt and pepper
1 red pepper, sliced
1 pound linguine
Vegetable oil
Arugula

Sesame Sauce:
2 inches fresh ginger, peeled and diced
1/3 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup oyster sauce
1 tablespoon chili-garlic sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1/2 cup pasta water (from linguine)

Directions:

1) Season chicken with salt and pepper. Add a drizzle of vegetable oil to a large skillet and heat over medium-high heat.

2) Sear chicken on both sides for about 4 minutes, then turn down heat and continue to cook chicken, flipping occasionally, until chicken is cooked through, about 12 minutes total cooking time.

3) Remove chicken from pan and slice into large chunks.

4) Start cooking pasta. When pasta is almost done, scoop out some pasta water.

5) Mix sauce ingredients in a bowl. Stir well. The sauce should be very smooth and silky. If it's very thick, add more pasta water.

6) Using same pan that you cooked the chicken in, add another drizzle of oil and add red peppers. Cook for just a few minutes over medium-high heat until veggies soften.

7) Add diced chicken back to skillet and stir in sesame sauce.

8) Drain pasta and add to skillet. Stir together to incorporate everything.

9) Serve sesame chicken salad on a bed of arugula.

Heavily adapted from a Cook's Country recipe.

The Sesame Sauce

When I say this meal can be intimidating, it’s mostly because I’m not sure a lot of people keep their pantries stocked with the stuff to make this sauce.

If you have to buy this stuff for the first time, it’ll involve lots of words you probably can’t pronounce and at least one panda bear.

Lots of jars...

Have no fear though. Once you hunt down all the jars that you need, the only actual work you need to do for the sauce besides measuring is peeling and dicing some ginger. Not rocket science!

There is one problem though. When you mix all these ingredients together, it will taste very good, but it’ll most likely be a bit on the lumpy side.

Don’t worry about this right now. We’ll fix it later!

A bit chunky...

The Chicken

The sauce is definitely the star of this show. You don’t have to use chicken for this dish if you wanted to make a vegetarian version. You could just toss the sauce with the noodles or use some seared tofu if you wanted.

I went the chicken route on this day though. Assuming you are using chicken, just season a few boneless skinless breasts with a good pinch of salt and pepper. I’m usually not a huge boneless skinless chicken fan, but it works well for this recipe.

Keep it simple.

In a large skillet, heat a drizzle of oil over medium high heat and once the pan is hot, add the chicken.

Sear the chicken for about 4 minutes per side. Then turn down the heat to medium and continue to cook until the chicken is cooked through, probably another 6 minutes or so. That of course will depend on how big your chicken breasts are.

Mine were on the smaller side.

Make sure it's cooked through...

Once the chicken is cooked through, scoop it out of the pan and slice it into big chunks.

You want the chicken to be visible in the final dish!

Big chunks work great.

Finishing the Dish

There’s just a few other things you’ll need to finish off this recipe. While it’s kind of optional, I recommend dicing up a red pepper and also getting some arugula ready.

Two quick veggies.

When it comes to the pasta for the dish, you can use almost any thin pasta. Spaghetti, linguine, angel hair… it would all work fine.

Fantastic Kitchen Tip Alert

Anytime you are making a sauce to go with pasta, one of the best sauce helpers you can have is the actual water that you cook the pasta in. Pasta water is starchy and salty and will help smooth out sauces and give them some body.

If you ever find yourself with a lumpy or lackluster sauce, try adding some pasta water to it.

In this case, we will add about 1/2 cup to that lumpy sauce that we mixed together earlier.

Wonderful water.

This will completely smooth out the sauce and make it perfect.

In the same skillet that you used to cook the chicken (no need to wash it even), add another drizzle of oil and then toss in your red peppers.

Cook them for a few minutes until they are soft and then add in your chicken. Pour your sauce over the whole thing!

Sauce is really smooth now.

Assuming you are decent at timing, hopefully your pasta is done as well right around this time.

Almost any pasta will work.

Then just stir your pasta in with the chicken and sauce.

It’ll look like a lot of sauce, but it’s just enough to coat all the stuff.

If at any point, the sauce gets too thick, just add a bit more pasta water to it and it’ll thin out.

This was my finished version!

All tossed together!

Now, you could just serve this in a big bowl, but I tried something a bit unconventional.

I served mine on arugula. This might sound strange to serve a pasta dish on greens, but it worked really well actually. The arugula is nice and peppery and holds up well to the strong sesame flavors.

And it makes for a pretty plate!

Pretty plate!

So there ya go!

If you can master the sauce, this dish is really simple to throw together, but really delivers in the flavor department.

Give it a shot if you’re in the market for a quick and easy dinner. And let’s be real… who isn’t in the market for a quick and easy dinner?

Well, this worked!

One of my favorite breakfasts or brunches to make on a lazy weekend day is crepes.

I like them because the batter is very easy to make and once you get the hang of them, I actually think they are easier to make than pancakes!

Plus you can fill them with all kinds of delicious stuff.

The problem I’ve encountered with crepes is that it’s hard to feed a crowd with them. You can only make one at a time and people usually want 2-3 for a meal so if you’re feeding four people, that’s 10-12 crepes!

Then one day the idea of a crepe pie smacked me over the head and I had to try it immediately.

It worked better than I ever thought it would.

Savory Crepe Pie

Yield: Serves 4-6.

Prep Time: 40 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

Basic Crepe Batter:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
2 large eggs
1.5 cups milk
2 tablespoons melted butter (plus some for the pan)

Filling:
8 ounces crimini mushrooms, sliced
1 yellow pepper, diced
1 poblano pepper, diced
1/2 onion, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
6-8 ounces cheddar cheese, grated
Salt and pepper
Butter, for the pie pan

Helpful Equipment:
Large nonstick skillet or crepe pan

Directions:

1) Make your crepe batter by mixing the dry ingredients together in a bowl and the wet ingredients (except butter) in a separate bowl. Stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Whisk in melted butter. Batter should be pretty runny. Let batter sit while you prep the filling.

2) Slice mushrooms, dice peppers, onions, and garlic. Add mushrooms to a large skillet with a drizzle of olive oil and saute over medium-high heat until the mushrooms release their liquid and soften, about 5-6 minutes.

3) Add other filling ingredients (except cheese) to the skillet and cook for another 4-5 minutes until peppers soften. Season filling with salt and pepper, red pepper flakes, and a pinch of dried thyme. Set filling aside.

4) Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

5) Using a large nonstick skillet, or crepe pan, add a small amount of butter over medium-high heat. Pour in about 1/2 cup of crepe batter and swirl it around the pan so it flattens out. Cook for 30-45 seconds on the first side until it firms up, then carefully flip the crepe and cook for another 15-20 seconds. Repeat until you have 4 large crepes. The batter will make 5-6 crepes so you can mess up one without worry.

6) Butter a pie pan and lay a crepe in the bottom of the pan. Add half of the mushroom filling and 1/3 of the grated cheese.

7) Top with a second crepe and 1/3 of the cheese.

8) Top with a third crepe. So the middle layer is just cheese basically.

9) Add rest of filling and cheese to top of the pie and top with the fourth crepe. Kind of crimp the edges of the crepe around the edges of the pie so it is mostly sealed.

10) Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

11) Let cool briefly and then slice and serve!

The Filling

Over the years, I’ve put together dozens of different crepe fillings. Sweet, savory, fruity, cheesy… you name it, you can probably stuff it in a crepe.

So I don’t want you to get the impression that this filling is the only filling that you can use for this recipe. This is just the one I used and it worked really well.

Good winter veggies.

Rinse and slice up the mushrooms and dice up your veggies. It’s okay to keep them in pretty big chunks. You don’t want the veggies to disappear in the dish.

Great flavors.

Then just add a few tablespoons of olive oil to a large skillet and toss in the mushrooms. Cook them over medium high heat until they start to soften and release their water. Then you can add in all the other veggies and continue to cook until they are soft.

Total cooking time for this will probably be in the 10 minute range. There’s actually a lot of wiggle room in how much you cook the veggies. It is important to saute them though so you can cook off some of the water in the veggies. Otherwise the filling would be very watery in your final dish.

When the veggies are cooked, season the filling with salt and pepper, red pepper flakes, and dried thyme.

Very important.

The Crepes

This is my basic crepe batter recipe. It’s never failed me really. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broken right?

Whisk together the dry ingredients in a bowl and stir the wet ingredients together in a separate bowl (minus the melted butter). Then stir the wet into the dry and finally stir in the butter.

Ideally, let this batter sit for a few minutes before making the crepes.

I like to make the batter, then make the filling, and by the time the filling is done the batter is rested and ready to go.

Pretty easy batter.

Like I said, I find cooking crepes easier than pancakes honestly. That said, you might mess up one or two. Don’t worry about it if you do. Since these are going in a layered dish, they don’t have to be perfect.

When you’re ready to cook a crepe, just add a small amount of butter to a large nonstick pan or a crepe pan and then pour in about 1/3-1/2 cup of crepe batter. Swirl it around in the pan so it flows out and forms an even, very thin crepe.

Cook the crepe for about 45 seconds on the first side and then give it a flip. Flipping is always the part that people mess up but just do your best. Like I said, they don’t have to be perfect.

Takes maybe a minute!

You need four crepes to make this dish so just go ahead and make four and stack them up on a plate or something.

Making the Pie

You can use almost any kind of pie dish that you have. Is it important to have something round though so the crepes fit snuggly in there.

To make sure the crepes don’t stick to your pan, butter the thing really well.

Butter is important.

Then lay in one crepe and make sure to push it down so it’s snug against all the walls of the pie pan. Then add about 1/2 of your mushroom filling and 1/3 of your grated cheese.

Bottom layer.

Then toss on the second crepe. For the middle layer, I just did an all cheese layer. So add another 1/3 of the cheese to this layer.

Speaking of cheese, be sure to use a good flavorful cheese for this. You don’t want to use a lot of cheese, but make sure to use good stuff! I used a nice sharp white cheddar.

Just cheese on this layer!

Add on the third crepe and then the rest of your filling stuff.

It should all stack up very nicely.

More of the same.

Put the top crepe on and kind of press the edges down around the sides of the pie pan. Again, don’t freak out if it isn’t perfect.

Stick this whole thing in a 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes.

The great part about baking this is that the top and bottom crepes actually get a bit crispy which is nice and then the center is just this awesome savory party.

So good!

I was worried that this would just fall apart when I sliced it, but if you let it cool for just a minute or two when you pull it out of the oven, it actually slices really nicely.

You can even make out all the layers.

One of my favorite brunches.

If this is all your serving, assume about 1/4 of the pie per person. If you’re serving this with some other stuff then you could cut it into sixths and be fine.

The good news is that you can make these in advance and then just toss them in the oven if you’re having people over.

This is the right way to do crepes for a group!

Health in a bowl!

I’m a huge fan of instant Netflix. In fact, Betsy and I don’t even have cable anymore.

Currently my queue on instant Netflix breaks down into:

1) Dorky science shows like Mythbusters.
2) Awesome TV series like Breaking Bad and Law and Order: SVU
3) Documentaries or movies that people have recommended to me about food.

Last week, I finally watched a show that a friend recommended to me approximately 6 months ago called Forks Over Knives. I think the movie can be summarized in the title of it, which I didn’t fully understand until halfway through the thing. I thought the title was forks over knives because you use a knife to eat things like meat and forks to eat things like veggies.

The real meaning of it though is that if you wisely choose what you eat with your fork you can almost certainly avoid going under the knife. It argues that as a society, we have put the knife over the fork and now we think that it’s much easier and less drastic to have a few surgeries instead of changing eating habits.

So, as a shout out to what I thought was a really interesting and very well done movie, I decided to cook something that I think the Forks Over Knives crowd would approve of… mainly because it’s from their website!

Spicy Orange Greens

Yield: Serves 2.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1 bunch greens, like broccoli rabe, kale, or chard
1 red pepper, diced
1/3 cup water
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4-1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon orange marmalade
8 ounces soba noodles, cooked
1 tablespoon sesame oil
Chili garlic sauce (opt.)

Directions:

1) Wash and roughly chop greens and dice peppers and garlic clove. Cook soba noodles according to package. Drain soba and toss with sesame oil to make sure the noodles don't stick.

2) Add water, garlic, red pepper flakes, soy sauce to a large skillet or wok. Bring to a simmer over high heat and cook until garlic is fragrant, just a minute or two.

3) Stir in marmalade.

4) Add greens and red pepper to the pan and cover.

5) Cook for 2-3 minutes until veggies are soft. Stir everything together so the sauce evenly coats the veggies.

6) Serve greens with soba and top with chili garlic sauce.

Adapted from Forks Over Knives website.

Forks over Knives

Based on my post from the weekend, it’s pretty obvious that this movie didn’t turn me into a vegan. But it did reinforce a lot of what I already think. Namely, that through healthier eating, we would drastically reduce some of the health issues we face as a country.

This doesn’t just mean obesity, but even more radical diseases like heart disease and even some cancers. To make huge progress in this effort, the film argues that we have to basically completely eliminate from our diet three things: meat, dairy or other animal products, and processed foods and oils.

The problem that I have with the movie is that it makes the whole situation seem like a switch. It’s either on or off. You’re either eating healthily or you’re on a path to cancer.

I like to think of more as a sliding scale. Sure, if you eat nothing but deep-fried cheesesteak every day, you’re in for a rough haul, but having a slice or two of bacon on the weekends I don’t think is going to set my body into a tailspin.

Of course, Americans tend to have a problem with the word moderation so I can see how arguing for a cold turkey approach might be more effective.

Anyway, so I liked the movie. It has some fascinating statistics and compiles work from two very respected doctors who have been researching this stuff for over 40 years.

But enough about reviews… let’s eat!

Spicy Orange Greens

I wanted to cook something from the Forks Over Knives website after I watched the movie. One thing that I found ironic was that the recipe they posted probably leads to a lot of people breaking one of the main Forks over Knives rules!

The recipe calls for a tablespoon of orange marmalade and about 90% of marmalades in the store contain mostly high fructose corn syrup which the movie is very against. Oh well, nobody’s perfect. Of course, you can find marmalade without HFCS (I did), but I doubt most people would do this for the recipe. They would just grab a jar.

Anyway, this recipe was actually very delicious and takes less than 30 minutes to toss together which is cool.

You’ll need these things to make the sauce!

Good stuff.

One cool tactic that they mentioned in the movie, and that this recipe used, was that instead of stir-frying in oil, try to use water. So basically you make a very flavorful steaming liquid and cook your food in that.

I was skeptical that this would work but it turned out to be great and definitely healthier than cooking the greens in oil which is what I would’ve done if left to my own devices.

Speaking of greens… you can use almost anything for this recipe. You want something hardy like rabe, kale, or chard though. I went the rabe route.

Love the rabe.

To prep the veggies, just wash and roughly chop the ingredients. Pretty simple!

Just a rough dice is good.

Soba Noodles (I bend the rules)

You could serve the greens over rice or something, but the recipe also suggested noodles and that sounded better to me.

So I went with soba noodles which are some of the healthier noodles out there!

One of my favorite noodles.

I really love soba noodles because they are extremely flavorful. They have a really nutty flavor. I also like them because they are very good warm or cold so they make for quick leftovers.

There’s one problem with the noodles that led me to slightly bend the Forks Over Knives rules.

Soba noodles stick together like they are made of Elmers. After you boil them and drain them, if you walk away for a few minutes, they will congeal into one big mass of noodles: like a noodle cake.

These will stick like glue!

There’s one cure for this and it’s not approved by the Forks Over Knives doctors, but whatever.

The cure is oil… specifically sesame oil. For me, I’d rather use a tablespoon of this stuff and have really flavorful (and separated) noodles, but I do not think that the doctors in the movie would approve.

Necessary in my opinion.

Finishing the Dish

Once the noodles are cooked, this dish takes about five minutes to finish up. It’s really quick and easy.

Basically, just add the water, garlic, red pepper flakes, soy sauce, and marmalade to a large skillet or wok.

Water. Not oil.

Bring this to a simmer over high heat and then toss in your veggies.

A quick steam.

Cover this up and cook the veggies for just a few minutes. So basically you are steaming the veggies but with spices and some sweet orange flavors.

When the veggies are done, just toss them a bit so they all get evenly coated with the sauce.

Maybe two minutes later.

I wanted to kick up the heat a bit more on mine so I added some chili garlic sauce as well.

Simple and delicous!

It’s hard to deny that it would be good if more people ate meals like this pretty regularly.

I was also impressed by how actually delicious and creative this dish was. The oil-to-water change was a great one and probably one that I’ll use regularly.

So, check out the movie if you’re interested. But, more importantly, make this dish. Some might say that by eating it you’re warding off cancer, but I’ll just say that I’m recommending it because it’s really tasty!

The space in sweet bread is important.

A space has never been so important in a food name. Sweet bread is vastly different than sweetbread.

Sweetbread, of course, being the thymus gland of an animal (delicious in Po Boys) and sweet bread being an actual loaf of bread that happens to be sweet.

It can be confusing in writing, but it’s much more confusing in speech.

A recent conversation I had with Betsy:

Bets: What are you cooking today?

Nick: Sweet bread.

Bets: Awesome! My favorite. I can’t wait to try it!

Many hours later…

Bets: I thought you said you were make sweetbreads?!

Nick: Sorry. I should’ve been more specific. I was making sweet space bread.

It turns out though that sweet bread is also a wonderfully delicious thing and one that I’d never made before it won the poll last week. I was really happy with how it turned out!

Portuguese Sweet Bread

Yield: 2 loaves

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 6 hours

Ingredients:

Starter:
1/2 Cup bread flour
1 Tablespoon sugar
2.25 Teaspoons instant yeast
1/2 Cup water

Dough:
6 Tablespoons sugar
1 Teaspoon salt
1/4 Cup powdered milk
4 Tablespoons unsalted butter
2 Large eggs
1 Teaspoon lemon (or almond) extract
1 Teaspoon orange extract
1 Teaspoon vanilla extract
3 Cups bread flour
6 Tablespoons water, room temperature

Egg Wash:
1 Egg, whisked with 1 Teaspoon water

Helpful Equipment:
Stand Mixer

Directions:

1) Start sponge by mixing starter ingredients in a medium bowl. Stir until it makes a smooth batter. Cover and let sit at room temperature for 60-90 minutes, until the sponge is very foamy.

2) To make dough, combine sugar, salt, powdered milk, and butter in large bowl or with a paddle attachment in a stand mixer. Combine until smooth.

3) Mix in eggs, one at a time, and extracts.

4) Mix in the sponge and flour and switch to the dough hook. Mix on medium with the dough hook until the dough is very supple and soft. If it is at all wet or sticky add more flour by the spoonful. Alternatively, you can knead by hand on a floured surface until the desired consistency is reached. This will take 10-12 minutes with a mixer or 15-16 minutes by hand.

5) Add dough ball to a lightly greased bowl, cover and let ferment until it doubles in size, about 2 hours.

6) Remove dough from bowl and divide into two pieces. Form each piece into a tight round ball (a boule). Lightly oil two 9-inch pie pans and place one boule in each pan, seam side down. Cover loosely and let rise for another 2-3 hours, until the dough doubles in size.

7) Brush loaves with egg wash.

8) Bake loaves at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes until they are a deep brown and sound slightly hollow when thumped.

9) Remove from the oven and let cool on wire racks. Let cool for at least 45 minutes before slicing.

Adapted from The Bread Baker's Apprentice.

Making the Starter

Like a lot of real bread recipes, this loaf involves a starter. Don’t worry, this particular starter is really easy and doesn’t take days to make. You just need a few ingredients.

The basics.

Mix these all together with some water and let it ferment for 60-90 minutes until it gets nice and foamy. This also has the added benefit of making sure your yeast is nice and lively.

After the rise time, it should be really foamy and on the verge of collapse.

It's alive!

Making the Dough

If there is one book for which I’m very afraid to alter the recipes, it’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. The recipes are so specific that I just always feel like I’m committing some sort of cardinal sin if I change them.

So I feel obligated to disclose two changes that I made to this recipe. One I made on purpose and one I made on accident. Neither change made for a bad loaf.

First, I used 4 tablespoons of butter in my recipe while the original recipe called for 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of vegetable shortening. I made this change on purpose because I didn’t have any vegetable shortening!

Second, the original recipe called for lemon extract but I used almond extract in my version. The only reason I made this change is because I apparently cannot read.

Regardless, the one ingredient in this recipe that Mr. Reinhart says you 100% cannot substitute is powdered milk. I get that. It gives the final loaf a very specific flavor and texture. It’s not really negotiable.

Powdered milk is apparently important.

To start the dough, add the butter (or butter and shortening if you’re using both) to a bowl with the salt, sugar, and powdered milk and kind of work them together with a large spoon.

You could also add them to a stand mixer and beat them with a paddle attachment. You basically want to cream them together and I did kind of a piss poor job of it. Ideally, it would be one creamy texture.

Not my best job...

Anyway, then add your eggs one at a time, and the extracts and continue to mix.

Once all that is mixed together, add your starter that has been foaming away along with your bread flour and water.

That starter is cool stuff.

While you can definitely make this recipe with a stand mixer, I went ahead and made it by hand just to be different.

If you do use a mixer, switch to the dough hook after you get your ingredients together and stir it on medium for 10-12 minutes until the dough ball is a nice, soft texture.

If you’re doing it by hand, stir everything together until you get a rough ball. Something kind of like this…

Dough?

Scoop this out onto a lightly floured counter and start kneading! Here’s the bad news… this will take 15-16 minutes depending on your kneading skills. If the dough gets sticky at any point, knead in another spoonful of flour.

The resulting dough ball should be very smooth and soft and easy to work with.

Once you get it there, add it to a lightly oiled bowl so it can rise!

Dough!

The First Rising

Let the dough rise until it about doubles in size. This should take about two hours. This dough is incredibly soft and easy to work with. It actually reminded me of doughnut dough…

Doubling is about right.

A Strange Step

I was a bit confused about the next step. Actually, I’m still confused by it so I shoudln’t use past tense. The recipe calls to divide the dough into two even pieces and form loaves of dough. Makes sense, but then it says to add those boules to lightly greased pie pans.

I’m completely at a loss as to why you have to bake these in pie pans, but here it goes.

No idea why pie pans are needed.

The Second Rising

Once you’ve put your dough balls into the pie pans (seriously you can just use sheet pans as far as I can tell), cover them loosely and let them rise a second time.

Again, they should double in size which will take another 2 hours or so.

Then brush each loaf with a light coat of the egg wash.

For a nice brown crust...

Baking and Cooling

Bake these guys at 350 degrees for about 50-60 minutes.

After about 30 minutes they will start to get very browned. Have no fear. They won’t burn. Just let them keep cooking until the full 50-60 minutes is up. They should sound slightly hollow when thumped when they are done. If you’re in doubt, let them bake for another 5 minutes.

When you pull them out, let them cool on a wire rack. These are really pretty!

Pretty things!

I loved the crust on these loaves. After you let them cool for about 45 minutes, you can slice into them to reveal a nice crust and a very soft crumb which is awesome.

Makes great toast!

As you might guess, the dough is slightly sweet but also has great flavor from all the different extracts.

This bread is great on its own with some butter but is also good as toast with a dab of Nutella.

I hadn’t made a good loaf of bread in awhile so I was really happy with how these turned out!

There's gin in there...

It seemed like there was a phase in the cooking world, and maybe it’s still happening, when vodka pasta sauce was the freakin’ bee’s knees.

It was the sexiest thing you could do to pasta.

I’ve definitely made it and ate it and enjoyed it, although I’ve never posted on it.

Here’s my problem with vodka sauce: Good vodka is specifically engineered to be tasteless. That’s why it’s great for mixed drinks. It really has almost no taste.

So wouldn’t it make sense to make a sauce with booze that has some flavor? More importantly, maybe booze that has some herbal flavors that would go well with tomatoes and cheese?

Gin has these flavors and it will kick your pasta sauce up a notch.

Gin Penne Pasta

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound penne pasta, cooked al dente
1/2 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 28 ounce can diced tomatoes
1 cup gin
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup cream
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
1/4 cup fresh basil, minced
Salt and pepper

Helpful Equipment:
Stick blender or normal blender

Directions:

1) In a medium pot, add olive oil, onions, garlic, and red pepper flakes and begin cooking over medium heat. Cook for 5 minutes until onions are soft and fragrant. Be careful not to brown the onions and garlic. You just want them soft.

2) Add in tomatoes and cook for a few minutes.

3) Remove sauce from heat and blend with a stick blender, or normal blender until sauce is fairly smooth. It doesn't have to be perfect.

4) Add gin and sugar to sauce and bring to a simmer. Simmer for 20 minutes or so until alcohol cooks off from gin. You'll know when it's ready because it won't smell like strong alcohol.

5) Stir in cream, Parmesan cheese, and basil and season with salt and pepper. Keep warm.

6) Cook pasta according to package. Make sure to pull it when it is al dente or has a slight bite to it still.

7) Drain pasta well and add directly to sauce. Stir together.

8) Serve garnished with Parmesan cheese and fresh basil!

Gin Over Vodka

I was a bit worried when I had the idea for this sauce that I would go too far in the other direction. I was worried that gin would have too much flavor and completely overpower the sauce. I started slow and added a quarter of a cup to the sauce, let it simmer and tasted it.

At the end of it, I decided that about a cup of gin is the right amount. Even though gin has a pretty strong flavor on its own, when it cooks down and mixes with the other ingredients, it’s a subtle but nice flavor.

Basically, I think it gives the sauce some interesting complexity that definitely can’t be found with a vodka sauce. Gin after all is made with a fair amount of botanical herbs and spices while vodka is made mainly with… potatoes.

A few basics...

Starting the Sauce

While there is some simmering and stirring that goes on with this sauce, there’s really not much chopping. Just dice up some onion and garlic and you’re ready to start the sauce.

Just a few things to chop.

Add the olive oil to a medium pot with the onions, garlic, and red pepper flakes. Cook this over medium heat until the onions and garlic start to soften and it smells very fragrant.

You don’t want the onions to brown at all. They should just get soft over medium heat which will take around 5-6 minutes.

Try not to brown them.

Then add in your tomatoes and sugar. The small amount of sugar balances some of the acidity of the tomatoes.

Any diced tomatoes will do the trick for this recipe. I went with some fire-roasted Muir Glen tomatoes.

Any kind of stewed tomato will do the trick.

Continue to cook this for a few minutes.

I wanted my sauce to be pretty smooth so I decided to blend it up with my stick blender. You could also use a normal blender or just kind of mash the tomatoes as they cooked and go with a more rustic version of the sauce.

You definitely don’t need a blender to make this sauce, but if you can, I recommend taking it for a spin.

A quick spin.

Big Time Flavor

At this point our sauce is pretty standard, but it’s about to get a big bump in the flavor department.

Starting with the gin. A whole cup. It doesn’t really matter what brand of gin you use, but I wouldn’t use super-cheap stuff.

A whole cup!

Bring this sauce to a simmer and let it simmer for about 15-20 minutes, stirring regularly. Your goal here is to cook off most of the alcohol and reduce the gin flavors.

You’ll know when it’s done because the sauce won’t smell intensely like alcohol!

As a final step stir in some cream which will mellow out some of the flavors and give the sauce a nice, rich texture.

Mellows it a bit.

Any time I’m trying to make a really good tomato-based pasta sauce, there are two ingredients that I almost always include: Real Parmesan cheese, and fresh basil.

Must have flavors.

Add a good amount of these to the sauce and season the sauce with salt and pepper.

I recommend finishing the sauce and then just keeping it warm while you work on the pasta.

This was my finished sauce!

Done deal!

Finishing the Dish

For the pasta itself, just cook it according to the package. While I guess you could use any pasta, I think penne works perfectly for this dish.

Whatever you do, don’t overcook the pasta. Soggy pasta is pretty much the worst.

Steaming hot.

As soon as the pasta is drained, toss it into the sauce (or toss the sauce into your pasta depending on your pot size).

Stir it all together. Even though it will look like a lot of sauce, as you stir in the pasta, all that sauce will get trapped in the penne pasta and you’ll be all set.

These guys will soak up a lot of sauce.

I like to serve pasta dishes like this family style which basically means I just pile it in a huge bowl and add some basil and cheese to the top.

I like to serve it family style.

Surprisingly, even with a cup of gin in this sauce, the flavor is pretty subtle. All of those gin botanicals, most importantly juniper, give the sauce this really complex flavor and fragrance.

It’s one of those dishes that if you were to eat it without knowing what was in it, you wouldn’t be able to put your finger on it, but once you know it’s gin, then it makes sense.

Let it be known: When it comes to pasta sauces, gin is the new vodka.

My first shells!

Let’s talk about something quickly that has confused me over the years: the difference between yams and sweet potatoes.

Here’s the thing. It’s actually hard to find real yams in grocery stores. They aren’t popular in America. But, there are two kinds of sweet potatoes that are sold: ones with a lighter skin and light yellow flesh and ones with a more orange tint to it.

Unfortunately, a lot of grocery stores label the more orange sweet potatoes as yams even though they aren’t. They are still sweet potatoes but just a different variety.

My grocery store actually had these labeled as “Sweet Potatoes/Yams” as if they were the same thing!

Real yams have a dark skin and are even sweeter than sweet potatoes. They are popular in Caribbean cuisine, but are actually a bit hard to find in most grocery stores in the states.

So let the record show: These wonderfully delicious baked shells are stuffed with sweet potatoes and definitely not stuffed with yams.

Sweet Potato Stuffed Shells

Yield: Serves 5-6.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Ingredients:

2 large yams, boiled and mashed
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
6 fresh sage leaves, minced
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
1 28 ounce can tomato sauce
6 ounces mozzarella cheese, sliced
16 ounces pasta shells, cooked al dente
Salt and pepper
Fresh chives (garnish)

Directions:

1) Peel and cube yams and boil them in salted water until they are very tender, about 12-15 minutes. Drain yams and mash in a bowl.

2) You can cook shells in same water. Cook until al dente and then remove and drain shells.

3) Dice onions, sage, and garlic and saute in butter over medium heat until onions are soft, about 5-6 minutes. Don't brown the onions. Add red pepper flakes and a pinch of salt.

4) Add onion mixture to mashed yams with greek yogurt, cream, and walnuts. Stir together and season with salt and pepper.

5) Add half of the tomato sauce to the bottom of a 9x13 baking dish. Working with one shell at a time, fill shell with a few spoonfuls of filling. You can stuff them pretty full. It's also okay if they rip a bit.

6) Arrange stuffed shells in baking dish. Once the dish is full, top each shell with extra sauce and a slice of mozzarella.

7) Cover dish loosely with foil and bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Then uncover and bake dish for another 15 minutes at 400 degrees.

8) Serve shells garnished with fresh chopped chives.

Making the Filling

This is really a perfect winter filling. You could do a lot of things with it actually besides stuff it in shells. You could layer it in a lasagna or put it in manicotti. You could put it in ravioli or add some cheese and extra cream to it and make a kind of baked dip out of it.

It all starts with sweet potatoes though. Two large ones should do the trick. Just peel them and dice them into pretty large cubes.

Peeled and cubed

Boil these cubes in salted water until they are very tender (about 15 minutes) and then mash them up in a bowl. It’s okay if they aren’t completely smooth. Some lumps are just fine.

No need to be perfectly smooth.

Filling Flavors

Sweet potatoes are a good start but we want to add a lot more flavor to this filling. I really like the onion/sage flavor profile that the polenta I posted on Thursday had, so I decided to use similar stuff for this filling.

Good winter flavors.

Dice up the onion, mince the garlic and sage, and saute the veggies in butter over medium heat until the onions are soft. Be sure not to cook them on high heat or the veggies might brown which isn’t what you want.

You just want them to soften a bit so they turn slightly sweet. It should take about 5-6 minutes.

Then add in your red pepper flakes and add this mixture to the mashed sweet potatoes. You can add your yogurt and cream at the same time!

Yogurt... or sour cream.

I stirred this all together and tasted it.

Very Important: Any time you are coming up with a filling like this, it’s very important to taste it as you go.

When I tasted this, I liked the flavor, but I thought the texture was a bit mushy. So I went rummaging through my pantry and landed on some walnuts that I thought would give this filling some great texture.

Great add-in.

Just remember… if the filling tastes good on its own (which this did) then it’s going to be even better when it’s baked and covered with cheese.

The Pasta

Like I said, I wanted to use shells for this dish just because I don’t use them very often. You could use almost any baked pasta thing though for this filling, so go crazy!

Whatever pasta you choose, just make sure you don’t over cook the stuff. Pull it out while the pasta still has a very tiny bite to it. It will continue to cook in the oven later.

Be careful not to overcook these guys!

Prepping the Shells

These shells are actually really easy to stuff assuming that you don’t overcook them. Just add a few spoonfuls of filling to each shell! You can really stuff them pretty full.

Easy as that.

In a large baking dish, add about half of your tomato sauce to the bottom of the dish and then start stacking these shells in the dish.

You might have some leftover filling or shells depending on a few things, but it’s better to have leftover filling then not enough!

Might have some leftovers...

Add the rest of your tomato sauce to the top of the shells and top each shell with some mozzarella cheese.

I’m always inclined to add a large amount of cheese to dishes like this, but I would really recommend keeping the cheese light in this instance. The filling is really the star of the show and very delicious and rich on its own. So just a small amount of cheese should do the trick.

No need to go crazy with cheese.

Baking the Pasta

Cover this dish loosely with foil and bake it at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.

Then crank up the heat to 400 and remove the foil. Bake it for another 15 minutes just so the tops of the pasta gets slightly browned.

Baked!

Serve these suckers with some fresh chopped chives!

Really great meal!

These were a delicious winter dinner and the leftovers were perfect also. Betsy and I ate these shells for a few days and I never got sick of them.

So remember: These are sweet potatoes, not yams.

And also remember to try this as soon as possible!

Fun, quick, delicious. What more do you need?

For quite some time now the most popular post on Macheesmo was a recipe that I made kind of on a whim almost two years ago. It was just a simple breakfast sandwich with two twists:

1) You could freeze them.

2) They were made in a muffin tin so you could make a bunch of them at a time.

Based on the comments and emails I’ve received about the post, I think the muffin tin thing was what people really liked. It totally takes the guess work out of eggs and you can cook them in big batches.

I also do not think it’s coincidence that a muffin tin is the perfect size for an egg.

Something that great couldn’t be coincidence.

So I started brainstorming quick breakfasts that could use a muffin tin, but didn’t involve actual muffins.

These guys were the first dish that I tried and I loved them about ten times more than the breakfast sandwiches. We’ll see if they get ten times the traffic…

Tex-Mex Egg Cups

Yield: Makes 6 cups.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

6 corn tortillas
Butter or oil for muffin tins
6 tablespoons salsa
6 teaspoons Adobo sauce (from chipotle can - optional)
6 large eggs
3 ounces cheddar cheese, grated
1 avocado, cubed
Cilantro, garnish

Helpful Equipment:
Muffin tin

Directions:

1) Lightly butter or grease muffin tins and form corn tortillas into the tins. It's okay if they get folded a bit.

2) Add a spoonful of salsa and a tiny dab of Adobo sauce into each corn tortilla. You could also add in some black beans or something.

3) Crack an egg in each cup.

4) Bake eggs at 350 for 15 minutes.

5) Top with cheese and bake for another few minutes.

6) Top with cilantro and/or avocado and serve immediately!

Prepping the Cups

While eggs are a perfect fit in a muffin tin, corn tortillas are not. Luckily they are flexible so you can make them fit!

So corny.

There are two very important steps to make sure this goes down smoothly.

First, grease your muffin tin. You could use butter, vegetable oil, or even a nonstick spray. Doesn’t matter. If you don’t do this though, the corn tortillas are going to stick horribly to the pan.

Second, microwave the tortillas for about 10 seconds on high. That will loosen them up and make them easier to work with.

Then you just kind of shove them in there! There’s no science to it and they might fold and break a bit. Don’t worry about it.

Grease or butter those cups!

The Bottom Layer

I knew my middle layer in these cups was going to be an egg. I knew my top layer was going to be cheese.

I struggled with the bottom layer. At first I thought black beans would be a good thing, but then I worried that it wouldn’t have enough kick.

So I went with some salsa and this stuff!

Kick it up a notch.

I didn’t want the actual chipotle peppers, just the Adobo sauce! This stuff has fantastic flavor.

Now, you could use a whole bunch of different stuff in this layer, but just don’t add too much stuff. Remember that we have a lot of other stuff to fill!

This was my bottom layer of flavor.

This is a spicy cup.

The Egg Business

Next step is the eggs. Nothing rocket science about this… just crack them in!

If you’re worried about shells, you can crack them into a separate bowl and then pour them into the cups.

Perfect fit.

We are going to add some cheese to these later, but I like to bake them for a while first so they are almost done.

So throw your muffin tin in a 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile you can prep your toppings. I went with some grated cheddar, cilantro, and avocado.

Good flavor toppings

When your cups come out of the oven, most of the whites should be cooked, the tortillas should be starting to crisp up nicely, but the yolks should still be soft.

This is perfect.

Almost done...

Then sprinkle on some cheese for each cup. You don’t need a lot, just enough to give each cup a light layer of cheese.

Then back in the oven for another 4-5 minutes just until the cheese is melted.

Pull these guys out and carefully remove them from the muffin tin. They shouldn’t stick much, but you might still need to go around them with a knife to loosen them a bit.

Then just top them with some avocado and cilantro and serve them up!

Yolks should still be a bit soft.

I definitely recommend making these soft so that the egg yolks are still a bit on the runny side, but you could cook them hard also.

Just like the breakfast sandwiches, these guys are definitely freezable. After they are done cooking, let them cool and then pop them out of the muffin tin. Freeze them on a baking sheet and when they are frozen solid you can individually wrap them in foil and then store them in a freezer bag.

Good luck having leftovers to freeze though…