One of my favorite quick-and-easy egg dishes – and in fact one of the few I like – is a balsamic fried egg. Usually I make it with mushrooms because I often have them around, but sometimes I like to change it up a bit, such as this delicious incarnation of asparagus, garlic and cherry tomatoes.

The concept is the same: saute the vegetables, fry the egg, combine everything in the pan and add a dash of good quality aged balsamic vinegar. Two minutes later and a healthy dinner (or breakfast) is served!

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Savory French Toast Bites

For the Super Bowl this year I was charged with bringing a vegetarian appetizer to my friend Ariel’s party. Although I’m a proud meat-eater, I embraced her request and decided to have some fun with it, after all it is the biggest sport day of the year and not exactly a formal dinner.

The oh-so-fun-and-isn’t-it-cute appetizer I made was Savory French Toast Bites, adapted from Martha Stewart’s Hors d’Oeurves Handbook. The bites were perfect: a warm finger food that could also be enjoyed at room temperature and had a rich, savory flavor slightly reminiscent of pizza. Adding to my enjoyment was the other guests’ confusion when I told them it was French toast because these bites were nothing like the sweetened, dipped and fried bread enjoyed during brunch.

For starters, this version of French toast is baked and there is no sugar or sweetener involved. The savory ingredients consisted of roasted garlic, basil, tomato and Parmesan cheese – almost like a bread-pudding pizza. Finally, after baking I used a circle cutter to turn the French toast slices into bite-sized rounds, which made for a cute and appealing presentation that was just perfect for the Super Bowl.

And the best part was that there were plenty of yummy scraps leftover for the cook. Just sayin’.

Savory French Toast Bites

Here’s the recipe:

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Latkes (aka Potato Pancakes)

Wow, I just can’t believe how quickly these last few weeks have flown by. In fact, this whole year has been a bit of a blur. I hope it’s been a good year for you. As for me, let’s just say I’m ending the year in a better place than where I started it and am looking forward to seeing what 2010 will bring.

However, with all the recent activity I’ve sadly neglected my beloved blog. The sad truth remains that it’s been ten days since my last blog post, the longest I’ve ever gone between posts since launching this site more than a year and a half ago. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been cooking. I have, just not quite as much as usual.

English Toffee and Tornado Cookies

To recap some of my holiday cooking, let’s start with Hanukkah at my parent’s house. I brought the dessert: English toffee and tornado cookies, my family’s holiday favorite. At the house, I helped my mom make latkes from scratch. There’s no recipe here because we adjusted constantly as we went along, using up a small bag of russet potatoes, an onion, two eggs, a little matzo meal, and a large bottle of vegetable oil. Basically, grate the potatoes and onion (and then pulse a few times in a food processor), add the other ingredients, season with salt and pepper, and fry.

I have wonderful memories of my mom making latkes when I was younger. Back then we hosted the family Hanukkah party and she would make latkes from scratch and making enough for everyone was practically a day-long project (for those of you not familiar, latkes are fried potato pancakes that can be made from shredded potatoes or from a box mix). The problem was that my dad, sister and I would eat the latkes almost as fast as my mom could make them, sneaking latkes every time she turned away. Eventually, my mom would get fed up and send us to go see a movie so she could finish frying in peace.

It’s been a long time since we made latkes, and my mom had the “brilliant” idea of deep-frying them, a technique she saw on the Today Show. Despite her good intentions, it turned out not to be the best idea. For starters, she forgot to tell me advance so I could bring my candy thermometer and/or mini deep fryer, so we had a difficult time regulating the temperature of the oil. Secondly, the few latkes we made were too fluffy and lacked the coveted crispy edge. After a few not-so-good attempts, I finally convinced my mom to return to our traditional method of shallow frying the latkes in a skillet, a job my sister happily took over.

Another big event I cooked for was my sister’s annual holiday brunch where she gets together with her high school friends for their traditional Hanukkah gift exchange. I cooked for them last year and apparently the girls liked the food so much that my sister volunteered me to cook for them again. It’s fun for me, I’ve known these girls almost my entire life and I enjoy the opportunity to catch up with them.

While I was thrilled they enjoyed last year’s meal of baked challah French toast and savory frittata so much (a few of them even made the French toast on their own), I was worried I wouldn’t find a way top it. These girls love brunch food, which is a meal I don’t often cook, so I stuck with the general concept of an egg and vegetable dish, along with something starchy, and instructed my sister to provide fresh fruit.

Sticky Pecan Caramel Rolls

The starch was the easiest decision: Sticky Pecan Caramel Rolls from my new favorite cookbook, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (see Caramelized Onion and Herb Dinner Rolls). I’m not going to post another recipe from the book because I think everyone should buy it, but I will say that these rolls were amazing with just the right proportion of dough to the sugary sweet topping that seeped its way all around the rolls.

The egg dish was a bit more challenging. I wanted something that could be prepared in advance so I wasn’t cooking to order, and had a nice presentation. Somehow, while searching the Internet for ideas, I came across a number of blogs with posts about Gale Gand’s torta rustica (here’s the post at Pastry Heaven that I based my torta off of), essentially an egg and vegetable layered casserole baked inside puff pastry.

Torta Rustica

I didn’t follow the recipe precisely, but did use it as a guide. The most significant changes were adding a layer of halved cherry tomatoes, sauteing shallots with fresh spinach, omitting the ham, and using fontina cheese in place on mozzarella. Although it was a little fussy, the torta succeeded as a delicious showstopper, and you can see that I had some fun decorating the top with a star using pastry scraps (it was a Hanukkah party, after all) but you could easily add whatever decoration you liked.

Marci's Brunch: Sticky Pecan Caramel Rolls and Torta Rustica

Those are just a few of the things I’ve been busy cooking these past two weeks and I promise to bring you new recipes soon.

Also, in January I’ll be taking part in the Ten in ‘10 Challenge as a way to start eating and living a bit healthier. Not that I’ll be giving up sweets or obsessing about weight loss, but I do want to make more of an effort to eat better and get my butt moving, both challenges for me to do in the winter months. It’s not a New Years resolution (I don’t make those), but rather an idle thoughts whose time has come.

Quick Omelette with Shrimp & Peas

Welcome to the first official installment of By the Book on Foodie Reflections! This is where I will prepare a recipe from a cookbook and write about it. Pretty simple, eh? There’s no official schedule to these posts but at least it’s a step in the right direction as I slowly work my way through the ever-growing piles of cookbooks taking over my apartment.

A few things to note: 1) Some of the cookbooks were given to me, others I purchased because I was interested in them; and 2) I’m a little commitment phobic so there’s no schedule or day of the week for these posts — yet. The point is to have fun and celebrate the work that so many amazing cooks put years of blood, sweat and tears into.

First up is The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook by one of the most bubbly food bloggers I’ve come across: Jaden Hair of the blog Steamy Kitchen. I was fortunate to receive a certificate for a copy of her book a few months ago, and was thrilled when it arrived in the mail last week.

I tore apart the package and immediately dove into the book looking for a recipe to try. The only problem was that I needed to pick just one to start with and there were SO many that jumped out at me. In the end I went with the Quick Omelette with Shrimp and Peas for two reasons: 1) it was quick to make – I mean the word is even in the title; and 2) I was freaking hungry!

Oh, this omelette did not disappoint. It was filling and satisfying, not mention a little salty but in a good way, and a little sweet from the peas. Plus I felt energized from all the protein but not weighed down at all, a good thing as this was lunch afterall.

Now, I just have to choose what to make next.

Here’s the recipe:

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Mom's Kugel

One of my all-time favorite foods is kugel. A sweetened noodle casserole, kugel has been a staple at holiday meals throughout my life. There are so many different types of kugel, running the gamut from a little sweet to dessert sweet, but what makes it good really comes down to personal preference.

My favorite kugel will always be my mom’s, which was the runner-up in last year’s kugel-off. Much to her chagrin, I spiced it up a bit with 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon. She claims I destroyed the kugel but it got mad raves at Rosh Hashana dinner with people specifically commenting that they liked the (slight) cinnamonny flavor.

In our family kugel is always served as a side dish although I enjoy eating the leftovers cold, just as I used to in college when my mom would send me back to school with a fresh pan. However you choose to eat kugel, the key is to make it, and I do hope you’ll try this version.

Here’s the recipe:

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