Creamy Cheesy Grits

Faigy and I just got back from our two week trip to Southeast Asia. And in honor of that we've decided to bring you...the furthest thing from Asian cuisine we could think of! Well, not really. But I did make this for breakfast to give us a taste of being back home.

Because of the 12-hour time difference, we are extremely jetlagged, to the point that we were up and about at 4am. Faigy managed to get back to sleep but I was up for quite a while more, so I decided I would surprise her with breakfast in bed. The problem with that, I realized, is that before leaving we had completely emptied our fridge. This left us with no eggs, which are quite a staple of breakfast foods. I was originally thinking of making an omelette or pancakes but that obviously wasn't possible. So I did a quick search to get some ideas for egg-less breakfast ideas.

The first thing that I saw was oatmeal, which we had. I went to grab it from above our fridge and saw behind it that we also had a container of quick-cooking grits, which also doesn't require eggs. My first inclination was to make a sweet version with some jams we had in the fridge, but a recipe on the side of the box gave me the idea to do a more savory version.

I applied a few technique tricks to amp up the flavor of the grits (since they can tend to be bland) including browning the butter and toasting the grits; these steps can be skipped if you're in a hurry though. The box calls for water for cooking the grits but I used milk (yes, it was still good after 3 weeks! Ah, the joys of ultra-pasteurization) for added creaminess, and some garlic and paprika for enhanced flavor and color. I topped the cooked grits with additional cheese and wheat germ (we had some in the fridge; if you don't, it's not a big deal) and broiled it.

Since I took the savory route, I complemented it with some jam on toast to fill in the sweetness. Here's what it looked like (on our new serving tray from Vietnam).

Breakfast in bed

Balsamic Avocado Brunch Toast

This year for Chanukah, Faigy got me a book I've been eyeing for a while: The Flavor Bible. It's great because it's not a cookbook, but rather a guide to creating dishes by pairing flavors that have affinities for each other. Most of the book is just long lists of every single kind of ingredient and a bit about its character and what it goes well with.

So of course I began leafing through the "A" section and hit one of the best parts of it: Avocado. Avocado to me is a little bit of a magical superfruit (as indicated in Faigy's Spaghetti Squash with Avocado Garlic Sauce recipe) because it just makes whatever it's in instantly more appealing (aside from its many health benefits). It's got a creaminess and fruitiness which, when complemented with a bit of salt, is heavenly all on its own.

There was one particular pairing that caught my attention: avocado + basil + tomato + red onion + balsamic vinegar. I've known about the first four for a long time (in panini or guacamole for example) but the last bit, the balsamic vinegar, intrigued me. Normally I am not a huge fan of balsamic vinegar raw, because it's a little too pungent for my tastes. But I wondered if I could take inspiration from this and make a delicious and quick brunch the next morning.

As it turned out, we had left over challah from Shabbat. No fresh tomatoes, red onion or basil though; we did have sun-dried tomatoes and dried basil however, which would suffice. I also thought I would use sea salt rather than my standard of kosher salt to get a little more flavor contrast with the avocado. Taking a little bit of inspiration from a co-worker who prepared an avocado open-faced sandwich for breakfast once for me, I decided to top some toast with eggs. It turned out to be incredibly filling and was less than 15 minutes from start to finish (I'll note the order of preparation in the recipe that I found to be fastest).

Faigy likes eggs-over-easy; I prefer scrambled - you can prepare them any way you like!

Chewy Fruity Breakfast Bars

Some days I have classes really early, so I was looking for the perfect breakfast bar recipe that would be filling and last for a long time in the fridge (so I don't have to start baking weekly before class!). Of course, I also wanted to look forward to eating this thing early in the morning. After some searching around the internet, I didn't find any recipe that seemed just right, so of course I just mashed together a couple of recipes and then took it from there to make up my own. 

I took inspiration from recipes by Alton Brown and another blog I found called One Hundred Eggs. Actually, the baking instructions are almost entirely from the latter, as the method of cooking these bars generally stays the same. It's a pretty flexible recipe in general, so you should feel free to swap some of the dried fruit for other dried fruit you like, or some of the nuts for other kinds of nuts. Just make sure the moisture to dry content ratio stays about the same to get the chewy bar texture we're seeking here.

A single portion of the finished product

Apple Blueberry Muffins

Ari has been encouraging me to add some of my own recipes to this blog, and I've finally gotten around to it now that I'm home-bound due to Hurricane Sandy!

These delicious muffins are healthy and dairy-free. I based this recipe on a another health-conscious mini muffin recipe I found. While it looked great, I didn't want my muffins to have dairy or to be small, and I had no bananas on hand. What resulted was an entirely new recipe that are great to have around the house for breakfast or snack.

I specifically used pastry flour to get an airy texture, and I picked dry over fresh blueberries so as not to over-saturate the muffins with moisture (and a pervasive blue dye!). The original recipe calls for a cup of vanilla yogurt and half a cup of milk. As I was seeking something dairy-free, I thought that the vanilla pudding mix would add the flavor and some of the moisture the yogurt adds, while also adding to the amount of milk to ensure enough liquid in the mixture.

This recipe can be adapted in many ways, especially by swapping out the apples and blueberries for other add-ins, like chocolate chips, nuts, or other fruit.

Enjoy! What are your favorite ways to modify dairy recipes?