Call them frittatas or oven omelets, baking eggs with a sauté or filling is much easier than fussing with a traditional omelet. Instead of the gymnastics involved in cooking and rolling a perfect folded omelet out of the pan, you put everything together, put it in the oven and set a timer.
I have rarely seen students so enthused and bursting with pride as when their airy brioche puffs to grandeur in the oven, arriving shiny and golden to the table just moments later. There is great triumph in baking perfection, and after a class, e-mails, photos, tweets, and Facebook notations attest to the students’ prowess in the kitchen. In my kitchens, I use honey rather than sugar as a sweetener. The reasons are simple: honey just makes food taste better, and for us it’s a homegrown product, produced from the bees that call Chanteduc and Provence home. When preparing this brioche, don’t omit the saffron; infusing it in the warm milk dramatizes the intensity of these golden threads and adds an exotic flavor and aroma to the final product, not to mention the touch of color.
This is the perfect everyday marmalade: coarsely cut grapefruit and thinly sliced lemon suspended in a sparkling citrus jelly. The grapefruit is blanched twice and the lemons once, rinsing out some of their bitterness and balancing their flavors. It is tart yet not astringent, delicate but full of fruit, flavorful yet not overpowering.
For a 4-to-6-cup soufflé mold or straight-sided baking dish 8 inches across, serving 4. You can bake this in a 4-cup mold with a paper collar, into which the soufflé will puff 2 to 3 inches over the rim and hold its puff when the collar is removed. Or bake it in a 6-cup mold, which will give you a more stable soufflé but less puff.
Ingredients
Nothing could be simpler than makin' bacon, the king of all fried meats. How many "vegetarians" have you known who just eat the periodic slab of crisp sautéed hog fat? I rest my case. Bacon is God. To cure your own bacon, plan and shop for ingredients well in advance. You might need to special-order the pork belly from your local butcher or grocery store. You can order curing salt from online retailers such as www.sausagemaker.com; I recommend Insta-Cure #1. In this recipe, I offer three ways to smoke the bacon. If you go the liquid smoke route, use only the real stuff: fake liquid smoke has an unappealing chemical taste. If you choose to smoke the meat on the grill, you'll need some hickory sawdust, which is available in smoking stores or through online retailers. Once the bacon is ready to eat, note that it will be easiest to slice thinly — a must if you like crispy bacon — when it is partially frozen and your knife is very sharp.
Croque Monsieur is essentially a toasted cheese and ham sandwich. Put a fried egg on top and you've got a Croque Madame (the egg is supposed to resemble a lady's hat). What makes the difference between a toasted cheese and ham sandwich and a Croque Monsieur is the cheese – in a Croque Monsieur it comes in the form of a creamy cheese sauce. And boy, does this make a difference!
Make this hash for a weekend brunch or as an easy weeknight supper. I like to serve it with a tossed green salad or a steamed vegetable and a crusty loaf of bread. Pass Tabasco or other hot sauce at the table; the vinegary, smoky flavor of hot sauce complements the rutabagas, bacon, and chiles. Poach eggs to place on top of this hearty hash. The runny soft-cooked eggs are a perfect accompaniment.
Lemon curd whizzed in a food processor for a minute or so becomes a lighter-than-air, creamy sauce for these sweet and tangy dessert crepes, which were created by pastry chef and cookbook author Kir Jensen of The Sugar Cube food cart in Portland, Oregon. If you're using fresh rhubarb, pick out the darkest red stalks you can find—they have the best flavor and color.