Sweet Corn & Bacon Frittata

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Sweet Corn & Bacon Frittata

Serves: 4-6

Difficulty: easy

Sweet Corn & Bacon Frittata

You can throw anything into a frittata and call it breakfast, lunch or dinner. A well-made frittata is one of the world’s most perfect foods. It’s cheap, quick cooking, and an efficient vehicle for leftovers. But sub-par frittata is not so lovely.  They can be spongy rather than custardy, dry and flavorless. To avoid this horrifying fate, we use a bit of dairy. Any dairy will do but be aware that anything less than a full-fat product will produce a sub-optimal frittata. This recipe is filled with the finest sweet summer corn and smoky bacon with some heat provided by Serrano and jalapeno peppers. 

Sweet summer corn

The bacon, cooked just to the point of crispness, gives the frittata its smoky, salty flavor. It also uses gruyere, which is a type of Swiss cheese named for the town of Gruyeres, Switzerland where it was originally made.  It a firm cheese with a pale yellow color and a rich, creamy, slightly nutty taste. It is a great table cheese and also an excellent melting cheese. You could substitute with other melting cheeses such as fontina or even cheddar.  A soft cheese, like ricotta, does not melt well so I would not recommend this one.  Harder, aged cheeses, like Parmesan or Pecorino Romano, adds a sharp hit of salty, nutty flavor, but they are not prime melters. You can use them as a sharp wallop of flavor on top if you wish. I cubed Gruyere in this recipe instead of grated so that some bites will result in an explosion of cheese gooeyness. Try it….you’ll like it!

For another frittata, try Mushroom, Leek & Fontina Frittata posted earlier: http://cookingwithlarue.blogspot.com/2013/06/mushroom-leek-fontina-frittata.html.

Crème fraiche was used as the dairy with eggs.

We're baaaack!! Return of Larue with Grilled Yogurt-marinated Chicken Shawarma

Grilled Yogurt-marinated Chicken Shawarma

Serves: 4

Difficulty: Moderate

 

After returning from a spectacular trip to Israel, I was craving shawarma. It was shortly after that I found this recipe from Oleana, a Mediterranean restaurant, in Cambridge. With a few modifications, this has become a wonderful addition to our weekday meals.  Shawarma is a Levantine Arab meat preparation, where lamb, chicken, turkey, beef or mixed meats are typically placed on a vertical spit in restaurants. The home modification requires threading the chicken on skewers and cooking on a grill or a cast-iron grill pan over medium high heat. Typically shawarma is eaten with tabbouleh, fattoush (future date, I will share my favorite recipe), couscous, tahini or hummus.

Old Bay Shrimp Cakes--PRE-HOLIDAY HIATUS RECIPE

Old Bay Shrimp Cakes

Serves: 4

Difficulty: Easy

Old Bay Shrimp Cakes

Simple, simple, simple. We love Old Bay seasoning.  It adds a bit of zip as well as a orangey hue to seafood evoking memories of steamed crabs strewn over newspapers in Baltimore…founding city to the Old Bay Company in 1939 (and where my husband grew to love this amazing spice). How can you avoid a seasoning that has been around that long? Give it a taste. Lick a pinch on your hand, close your eyes and you will find yourself seaside. Add it to your next Bloody Mary, boil frankfurters in an Old Bay-infused bath, sprinkle on potato salads, and popcorn! Sprinkle it everywhere. In this recipe, I use it to form shrimp cakes.  Again – simple, simple, simple.

Heading into the holidays, I would like to wish all of you a healthy happy New Year, chock full of great food, of course!

 

Old Bay....one of the world's great spices!

Lamb Loin Chops with Pan-roasted Grapes & Zinfandel

Lamb Loin Chops with Pan-roasted Grapes & Zinfandel

Sous Vide and Grill Methods

Serves: 4

Difficulty: Easy

Sous Vide Temp: 131- 134 degree F; Time: 2-4 hours

 

Lamb Loin Chops with Pan-roasted Grapes & Zinfandel

This is a simple recipe and a spectacular one. In the heart of the Paso Robles wine district, you will find wine and food paired in cooking as well as serving. This recipe includes actual grapes into the sauce adding an additional sweet note. One thing we know about California’s zinfandel: it is a far, far more food versatile wine than usually assumed.

But it wasn’t always like that. A couple of decades ago the country was still awash with pink colored “white zinfandel”; and focusing on the other two “fighting varietals,” chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon, many of the mainstream California wineries went so far as to drop red zinfandel from their lineups. This may have been good thing, because all it did was dramatize the inevitable resurgence all the more; towards the end of the nineties, when artisanal producers began pushing their big red Zins, recalling some of mammoth Zins that came and went with the seventies. Like micro-minis, fondue, VW bugs and martinis, there are many things never really go away – they just come back with a vengeance.

Amazing braised Indian-spiced Chicken with Peas, Tomatoes & Potatoes

Amazing Braised Indian-spiced Chicken with Peas, Tomatoes & Potatoes 

Serves: 6

Difficulty: Moderate

Amazing braised Indian-spiced Chicken with Peas, Tomatoes & Potatoes 

This is a surprising (shocking actually) great tasting entrée….and so easy too! The fragrant sauce includes a mix of dried spices – all are important to create the perfect storm of flavor! If you are a fan of Tikka Masala or Butter chicken, you will love this one. It is flavorful, hearty, spicy and a great “throw everything in a pot and let it cook all afternoon” kind of dish. The resulting sauce is delicious and plentiful, great for sopping up with the naan bread.