Springtime Brunch
May 3rd, 2011 § 5 Comments
The beauty of recipes is that even though there’s a list of ingredients, there’s always room for tweaking it. Here are make takes on some great recipes I found.
Adventures in the Produce Section
I recently went shopping for the ingredients for the Blood Orange and Blackberry Sangria recipe that I saw on taylortakesataste.com. How hard could finding blood oranges be? Apparently, harder than I thought. I looked at a few grocery stores, but no luck. What I did find was a cara cara orange. According to Sunkist, the cara cara orange is similar to other navel oranges, but their interior is a distinctive pinkish red, has an exceptionally sweet flavor with a tangy cranberry-like zing and few to no seeds — thank goodness for having a cell phone with the capability to Google anything while in the go! This sounded like a good alternative since blood oranges were nowhere to be found, so I snatched them up for my sangria.
Orange and Blackberry Sangria
What you’ll need:
3 cara cara or blood oranges
1 cup blackberries
1.5 L of red table wine (anything will do; I used a cheap two buck chuck)
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup Triple Sec
Put one of the oranges aside. Squeeze the juices from the remaining oranges and combine with the wine, honey, Triple Sec and blackberries into a large pitcher or punch bowl. Stir the contents until everything is mixed together and chill the mixture over night. Right before serving, cut the orange you saved into slices and place in the pitcher or punch bowl. Add ice and serve!
Avoiding Pie Crust
In my recent post, I mentioned a delicious idea from bakedbree.com for mini quiche. I love that she uses bread instead of pie crust because pie crust intimidates me. (I swear I’ll conquer that fear one of these days!) Her recipe calls for white bread, but all I usually keep in the house is some type of whole wheat bread and I was sure my family would prefer to have something a little more savory than that, so I opted for a great onion and herb focaccia I picked up at the farmer’s market. It turned out to be a great choice and I learned that really any bread you like would work here. This recipe was quick and easy and everyone loved it. I packed it up to take to the park and served them at room temperature and they were still as tasty as they are straight out of the oven.
Mini Spinach and Jarlsberg Quiche
What you’ll need:
Focaccia or your choice of bread
Cooking spray
4 eggs
Half and half (enough to make 2 cups in the blender)
Salt and pepper
Grated nutmeg
3 cups fresh baby spinach
1 small red onion diced
4 ounces cremini mushrooms
4 slices pancetta cut into strips
1 cup shredded Jarlsberg
Heat a medium sized pan over medium heat and add pancetta. Cook until browned and slightly crispy. Remove from pan and set aside.
In the same pan, heat 1 TBSP olive oil over medium heat; add red onion and mushrooms and cook until soft, about 8 minutes. Add the spinach and cook until wilted. Set aside.
Using a biscuit cutter, cut the bread into 12 rounds.
Coat a muffin pan with cooking spray. It is important to coat the pan really well so the quiche doesn’t get stuck. (I took the tin outside and sprayed it thoroughly so I didn’t make a mess in the kitchen).
Press the bread rounds into the bottom of the pan. Divide the spinach mixture evenly over each piece of bread. Add the shredded cheese and pancetta.
Add 4 eggs to a blender. Pour enough half and half to reach 2 cups. Add some grated nutmeg (remember to go easy on the nutmeg – a little goes a long way) and salt and pepper. Blend well until the mixture is foamy and light.
Pour the egg mixture over the spinach. (Note: the egg mixture will settle slightly as it is absorbed into the bread, so pour a little in each and then go back through and add a little more.)
Bake in a preheated 400 degree oven for 20 minutes or until the eggs are puffy and golden brown.
Enjoy!
Great recipes and even better blog. Love the updates!
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