Last night, dead tired, I tumbled into bed somewhat early.  I picked up a book for a little bedtime reading.  It just happened to be this book:

Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill Cookbook: Explosive Flavors from the Southwestern Kitchen

Read more about this book here…

I wasn’t awake for long… just long enough to become obsessed with his recipe for breakfast quesadillas.  And the obsession was still there this morning.  I had little in the house to appease the obsession, so I made a quick trip to the grocery store. 

I suspect that I am not unique.  I believe that most people who cook often look to cookbooks for technique and inspiration, not for actual recipes.  And this recipe gave me lots of inspiration, though I didn’t follow it in practice.  Here’s what I did:

• store bought southwestern seasoned hash browns (can be found in the dairy case)
• two chorizo links, diced
• 4 flour tortillas
• shredded cheese
• 2 eggs, fried
• Salsa

Preheat oven to 425.   Brown hash browns in pan.  While hash brown are browning, dice and saute chorizo. 

Lay 2 tortillas out on a baking sheet.  Cover with shredded cheese.  Spread the hashbrowns and chorizo on tortillas.  Sprinkle shredded cheese over mixture.  Place tortillas on top.

Brush tortillas with olive oil, and place in 425 degree oven for approximately 10 minutes, until crisp.

Top tortillas with fried eggs, salsa and cheese, to taste.

Bobby uses bacon in his quesadilla.  I decided that if I was going to make a southwestern quesadilla, I was going to use chorizo.  I think it added a nice spice.

Additionally, I cheated.  I’m sure that homemade hash browns stuffed between the tortillas is the way to go, but I just couldn’t bring myself to go through that effort, so I made due with store bought hash browns.

And still, it turned out great, but incredibly filling. 

Bacon and Cheese Puff Muffins

This month’s Is My Blog Burning event was hosted by I Was Just Really Hungry. The theme: My Little Cupcake (Or Muffin).

Hmmmm. I like to eat cupcakes – who doesn’t? But I am not much of a baker. No offense to any of the bakers out there, but I have found that recipes and precise measurements are vital to the end result of a baking expedition, and I never cook with a recipe, or use measuring implements when I do cook.

When I bake, I feed so…. restricted.

I thought about it a bit. Easter was coming up, and I was hosting brunch for the family. Maybe I could experiment with a savory muffin sort of thing, and if it turned out edible, I’d make it on Easter as well.

And so I made Bacon and Cheese Puff Muffins. I guess you might call this cheating a bit for the theme, but, as Maki said in the write-up, “…I sort of regard a muffin (the American style muffin, not the English kind) as sort of a nude cupcake.”

I hadn’t thought if it like that before, but sure, I can see that. She also indicated that a cupcake or muffin-like silhouette went towards counting as well.

The Bacon and Cheese Puff Muffins I made did not rise as high as I thought they might, but they tried really, really hard to obtain that silhouette shape, so I think that this attempt qualifies.

They actually tasted great, and they will be perfect for my Easter Sunday brunch. Greg and I snarfed the batch down, and the pupster ate her fair share as well. In fact, she may have eaten more than her fair share, as afterwards she waddled into the library and fell asleep perched on top of the couch in the sun.

(Does she look a little queasy to you?)

Recipe below:

INGREDIENTS:
1/2 pound bacon
5 eggs, beaten
1 (8 ounce) container cottage cheese
1/2 pound cheddar cheese, shredded

1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Place bacon in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium high heat until evenly brown. Drain, crumble and set aside.

In a large bowl, combine eggs, cottage cheese, cheese, and bacon. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

The next morning, preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Remove egg mixture from refrigerator; stir in flour, butter, baking powder and salt. Spoon batter into 12 lightly greased muffin cups.

Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes, until puffs are slightly golden on top.

I seldom eat breakfast. I’m simply not a cereal person in the mornings. If I do eat breakfast, I want a real breakfast – eggs, bacon, potatoes… you know, something that sticks to your ribs, particularly when it’s five degrees below zero outside.

So why not combine it all into one easy and good dish?

We had gone out to dinner the night before and had brought home some left overs, including some baby white potatoes. Of course there had been some prime rib in the doggy bag as well, but when you’ve got a “doggy” that looks this deserving, what are you going to do but sacrifice the prime rib to her?

So with the leftover potatoes in hand, we made a bacon and potato frittata for our morning meal.

Ingredients:

• 4 slices of bacon, diced
• Left over cooked potatoes, sliced
• 4 eggs
• splash of water
• salt & pepper to taste
• 1/4 cup shredded cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Fry diced bacon in an oven-proof skillet. Once cooked, add sliced potatoes to skillet. Sautee til golden brown.

Beat eggs with a splash of water. Salt and pepper to taste. Pour over bacon and potatoes in skillet. Cook til eggs begin to set on the bottom. Sprinkle cheese on top.

Place in oven til cooked through, approximately 10 minutes.

In my much younger, and very much more foolish days, I would stay out all night accompanied by friends and beer, and then greet the dawning day with lots of coffee and a “Farmer’s Skillet” at the 24-hour diner.

The Farmer’s Skillet was just hashbrowns with onions, peppers, sausage, eggs and cheese sauce. The beauty of this meal was that if you ordered your eggs over easy, the yolks just oozed and combined with all of the other ingredients and created a dish that needed no skill or decision-making to eat. This was important given the hazy fog most of us were in. Then we’d all wander home, pull all the blinds, and sleep half the day away.

Every now and then I still get that craving, even without the inducement of the alcohol. And so this morning for breakfast I piled bacon and eggs on some hasbrowns and ate.

Note: The eggs in these pictures were done way too well to get the full effect of oozing yoke. Why, you might ask? Because people keep forgetting to tell me that my All-Clad stainless steel everyday pan is HOT when you pull it out from under the broiler, and you really should use hot pads.

The eggs cooked away while I ran my burning hands under the faucet!

Goat Cheese and Sausage Frittata

Mix eggs with seasonings. Cook on top of stove in oven proof skillet until starting to set. Add goat cheese, sausage, and parmesan cheese. Finish under broiler – approximately 5 minutes or until cooked through.