Breakfast Burrito

This is a quick breakfast, especially if you buy many of the ingredients pre-made (e.g., salsa, guacamole, canned olives, shredded cheese mix). You can make one or as many as required.

I’ve found that the egg and egg substitute combo makes for more a smoother and more evenly cooked scramble.

You can add or eliminate ingredients as you see fit. For the breakfast meat, I usually use leftover cooked Portuguese sausage, or pork sausage (link or patty), chicken sausage, bacon, or anything else that’s handy. I’ve even used Chinese char sui or lup cheong on occasion. 

It wouldn’t hurt to be inventive.

Ingredients

• FLOUR TORTILLAS, 12-inch, 1 per burrito
• EGGS, 1 per burrito
• EGG SUBSTITUTE, 1/4 cup per burrito
• BREAKFAST MEAT(S), your choice, chopped and heated
• SOUR CREAM
• AVOCADO, 1 sliced or chopped
• JALAPEÑO PEPPER, 1, deseeded, deveined, chopped
• OLIVES, sliced
• GREEN ONIONS, chopped
• SALSA (commercial) or SALSA FRESCA (homemade)
• CHEESE, Mexican mix, shredded

Directions

1. Scramble the eggs and egg substitute, and sauté them in a buttered non-stick pan over medium-low heat. Set aside.
2. Sauté the breakfast meat pieces over medium heat. Drain and set aside.
3. Lay a tortilla flat, spread on some sour cream, then spoon on some eggs and meat in a horizontal row.
4. Continue adding onto the row with avocado, jalapeño, olives and green onions.
5. Top with salsa and cheese.
6. Fold the sides in; then from the bottom, roll the tortilla, creating a delicious tube of tasty goodness.

Cheesy Sausage Biscuit Muffins

I got this simple recipe from Facebook.

It called for flaky layered biscuits, which I couldn’t find, so I substituted Pillsbury's jumbo biscuits, using half of each biscuit dough per muffin.

It also called for plain sausage, but I’d bought a huge amount of Italian sausage at Costco (you know how that goes), so that’s what I used.

Then, instead of just using cheddar cheese, I mixed in Mozzarella because after all, the muffins had morphed into Italian.

These are so easy to make, and so delicious.

Ingredients

• PILLSBURY BISCUITS, 1 ten-count can
• ITALIAN SAUSAGE , ½ pound in casings
• MOZZARELLA CHEESE, ½ cup shredded
• CHEDDAR CHEESE, ½ cup shredded

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400.
2. Mix uncooked sausage and cheese gently until well blended. Shape into 20 balls of equal size.
3. Remove biscuits from cans and separate each biscuit into two layers, making 20 total biscuit layers. Press one layer of biscuit into cup of lightly greased mini-cupcake pan. Repeat with remaining layers.
4. Place sausage-cheese ball in each biscuit cup. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until biscuits are browned and sausage balls are bubbly.

Sumthin’ ‘n’ Grits

Grits are great stuff, for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a snack.

The first time I had grits was in October, 1988, at Dallas’ Hilton Anatole Hotel buffet. "What’s that cream-of wheat-looking hot cereal stuff, anyway? Oh, it’s cheesy grits,” I muttered to myself. Well, why not? It was delish. Tres delish.

I tried to order it in restaurants after that, but the only time I found it offered was with breakfast, and when I had restaurant breakfasts in Hawaii, only Denny’s had it. And then, the Pearlridge Center Denny’s we frequented closed down, so that was that.

Just last year, I went to the House of Blues in the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay. Lo and behold, they had Shrimp and Grits on the dinner menu. Bingo! That’s what I ordered. When I got home, I sought out grits at the supermarket, but only two chains carried it in Hawaii – Safeway and Whole Foods. Not just any Safeway, one has to go to one of the bigger ones. And Whole Foods is an adventure as the wife and I end up buying too much good stuff, wiping out our budget.

I bought a box, made the grits regularly, until one day I couldn’t find my stock. They just disappeared. So I had to go on a safari again until I found some. Today, I have two big jarfuls of grits in my pantry.

Grits are good any way you make it. Here’s my Bacon and Maple-Cheesy Grits recipe; you can substitute any breakfast meat for the bacon if you want to (but why anyone want to is beyond me). If you have left-over shrimp scampi, that’s perfect on top of the grits.

Bacon and Maple-Cheesy Grits

Ingredients

• GRITS, ½ cup
• WATER, 1 cup
• MILK, 1 cup
• MAPLE SYRUP, ½ cup
• BUTTER, 2 tablespoons
• SHARP CHEDDAR CHEESE, ½ cup, shredded
• BACON, 4 slices, cooked and crumbled
• GARLIC SALT, a shake

Directions

1. Bring the water+milk+salt to a boil in a pot, then pour in the grits.
2. Lower the heat to low, and when most of the liquid has been absorbed, stir in the maple syrup, butter and cheese.
3. Remove the pot from the heat and cover, letting the grits thicken at least 5 minutes.
4. Serve in bowls (makes 2 servings), sprinkle with crumbled bacon.

Frittata

A frittata is one of the easiest breakfast dishes to make.

Basically, it’s a scrambled egg "pancake" mixed up with whatever leftovers you can find in the refrigerator. Of course, you can plan it and get your ingredients beforehand, but it’s fun to be creative and see what you can make with what’s on hand.

I usually use at least four eggs in my frittatas, so the wife can have some too.

In a non-stick pan with some olive oil, I begin a sauté of some chopped onions and bacon lardons , adding in a little left-over chopped meat (whatever I can find – hot dogs, char siu,  spam, lup cheong, Vienna sausages, steak, spare ribs, you name it), throw in some left-over veggies, some left-over potatoes if I have them,and  some shredded cheese (sharp cheddar is perfect, but any kind will do).

Then, I lower the heat to medium, add in the eggs, mixing it in well, slowly letting it set on the sides and bottom, lifting it with my silicone spatula so the runny part can slide under.

When the eggs are pretty much set but slightly runny in the center, I sprinkle more cheese on top and put it under the broiler to finish. Watch it and remove when the cheese topping starts to bubble and turn a golden brown.

Remove the frittata from the oven, let it set a few minutes, then slice it up like a pie and chow down.

Fried Bread and Eggs

It’s one of the simplest breakfasts I know. All you have to do is fry a big ol’ thick slice of nutty bread in lots of butter, throw a couple of over-easy eggs on top, and serve with some breakfast sausage.

The good thing about it is that you can do almost infinite variations on this, depending on what kind of bread you can find at the bakery, and what kind of butter and/or jam/jelly you have in your pantry.

The last time I made this, I used a little jar of mango-flavored butter I picked up in a specialty food store, and some cranberry-walnut bread that I got at Whole Foods Market.

Ingredients

·         NUT BREAD, 1 slice, at least one-inch thick

·         BUTTER, unsalted, 2 tablespoons

·         FLAVORED BUTTER, as much as you want

·         EGGS, 2, over-easy, sunny side up, or scrambled

Directions

1.       Melt the butter in a non-stick sauté pan.

2.       Fry one side of the bread slice until it’s toasty.

3.       Turn over and fry the other side.

4.       Transfer the toasted nut bread to a plate and spread flavored butter on top.

5.       Top with the eggs and serve with breakfast sausage.

Breakfast Dog

I often have this when I’m feeling lazy.

Just boil a hot dog and put it in a hot dog bun. Scramble some eggs and pile it on top. Then dress with salsa, or as pictured, with some creamy salsa verde dip (my recipe elsewhere in this blog).

Or, top it with anything else you want. Just make sure you get nice, plump hotdogs for this one.

Okay now. If you mess this one up, you’re beyond saving.

Fiesta Breakfast

Here we go again, another breakfast created from the previous night’s leftovers. In this case, we had homemade tacos for dinner, thusly permitting a special breakfast the next morning.

I first had a “Mexican-style” breakfast in San Diego, at the hotel where I was staying for a few nights. Their version was a little different, but it included such things as tortillas, black beans, chorizo, eggs, guacamole, sour cream and salsa.

Feel free to substitute whatever taco fixing leftovers you have. Chopped green onions make a terrific and tasty garnish, and guacamole would be a nice addition as well.

Here’s the way I make it:

Ingredients

• TORTILLA, 1, 8-inch, flour or corn, your choice
• TOMATO, 1, skinned, seeded, and chopped
• ONION, 1 small, chopped
• REFRIED BEANS, canned
• GROUND BEEF, prepared with taco mix, leftover
• SHREDDED CHEESE, prepackages Mexican mix
• SOUR CREAM, 1 to 2 tablespoons, as desired
• EGGS, 2 or 3, over easy
• PICO DI GALLO or SALSA, as much as you want
• BUTTER for frying

Directions

1. Warm the tortilla in lightly buttered non-stick pan. Put on plate.
2. Warm the refried beans in the microwave.
3. Warm the leftover flavored ground beef in the microwave.
4. Spread the refried beans, then the ground beef, on the tortilla.
5. Sprinkle shredded cheese on the ground beef.
6. Top with chopped tomatoes and dot with sour cream.
7. Fry your eggs in a non-stick pan, using plenty of butter.
8. Slide the eggs over the open-face taco.
9. Spoon on pico di gallo or salsa.
10. You might want to warm up more tortillas on the side.

Easy Eggs Benedict

Homemade Eggs Benedict

Once in a while, I like making eggs Benedict for breakfast. There’s very little in the world that can beat poached eggs on tender Canadian bacon and crispy English muffins, peeking out from a beautiful golden blanket of hollandaise sauce.

The two snags that probably keep more people from making this delicious dish are the poached eggs and the hollandaise.

I’ve solved the poached eggs dilemma. It’s not easy to make nice poached eggs. It takes practice and more often than not you end up with a spider-web of egg whites spreading out in a pot of boiling water. Plus, it takes too long when you’re hungry.

What I’ve done is purchase an egg-poaching pan. It makes four poached eggs at a time. Granted, the eggs turn out a little triangular, but that’s a minor point.

As for the hollandaise, I use a packaged mix – Knorr. It’s good, it’s fast, and it’s easy.

So there!

Beans on a Biscuit

Here’s another easy breakfast … the principal ingredients are store-bought.

Whenever I bake Pillsbury “Grands” Biscuits, I make sure I have one or two left-over, so I can make “Beans on a Biscuit” for breakfast the next day.

What I do is open a can of Bush’s Grilling Beans (any flavor), and jack it up with some additional stuff (e.g., bacon, onions, mushrooms, green peppers, whatever you have lying around).

Then, I ladle some over a biscuit that I’ve cut in half and “crunchy-fied” in the toaster oven and slathered with some melted butter. On top of this, I slide on a couple of over-easy fried eggs.

Those are orange wedges left over from when I squeezed orange juice.

Hey! That’s what leftovers are for, isn’t it?

Ma-Too Eggs

This is not a dish for everybody. In fact, some of you might be absolutely appalled and disgusted at what I’m about to tell you.

Ma-too eggs have been around in my family for a long time, ever since our first son decided when he was little that he liked eggs over easy but didn’t know how to describe them.

So he made up his own word – “ma-too.” Ever since then, we’ve called eggs with runny yolks “ma-too.”

Ma-too eggs look pretty horrible when they’re ready to be eaten. In the picture above, I’m showing you what it looks like before everything is mashed together, in order to prevent your disgust from trying it out.

Ingredients

• EGGS, two
• BUTTER, a dab in the pan
• KETCHUP, 3 tablespoons
• SOY SAUCE, 2 tablespoons
• HOT SAUCE, to taste
• RICE, 1-2 cups, cooked

Directions

1. Combine the ketchup and soy sauce in a small bowl, along with as much hot sauce as you want.
2. Cook the eggs in a non-stick pan with butter, over-easy.
3. Slide the eggs onto a bed of steamed rice (sticky rice is best).
4. Spoon the sauce over the eggs.
5. Mash it all together – rice, eggs and sauce.

Chili Willi

This is a variety breakfast that I have occasionally, whenever there’s leftover chili from the night before.

I heat up the chili, fry up a couple of over-easy eggs and lay them on top of hot steamed rice, and pour the chili on top. You can do it in a soup bowl and have your breakfast with a big spoon. Hearty man-sized meal, it is.

As for the name, “Chili Willi,” it’s just something silly I made up one day because it’s a good hot breakfast for a cold winter morning.

If we have a lot of leftover chili, I divide it into individual-sized servings and freeze it for another time when I have a hankering for Chili Willi upon waking up in the morning.

Salmon Omelet

This is so easy, no recipe is required.

If you have left-over salmon – baked, fried, smoked, miso-marinated, you name it – you can enjoy a salmon omelet in the morning, or maybe even for dinner.

All you need in addition to the salmon is butter or margarine (I use Benecol), sliced mushrooms if you have any lying around, chopped onions (sweet round or green) if you’ve got some, and a couple of eggs (I usually use one egg and egg substitute).

Sauté the mushrooms in a small nonstick pan in lots of butter, then add the salmon and onions. Start your omelet in a larger nonstick omelet pan flavored with more butter. Add in the heated salmon-mushroom-onion mix.

Slide the omelet off onto a plate, folding it over on itself.

If you are so inclined, you can add anything else to the innards that you can think of. Crispy bacon would be nice. So would bean sprouts. Heck, I’ve even added in chopped leftover Brussels sprouts.

Yum!

Simple Dutch Baby Pancake

Also known in some circles as a German pancake, a Dutch baby is a very large, sweet pancake that’s made in a large skillet. It’s started on the stove, then finished off in the oven; the ones that I’ve had elsewhere are served with fruit toppings.

I make a much easier version. Instead of mixing my own pancake batter with eggs, flour and milk, I use packaged pancake mix … most often Bisquick. Why? Because it’s quick and I like the flavor of their pancakes.

The time-consuming part is the peeling, coring and wedging of apples, but what the heck, you can do that while watching the morning show on TV.

Ingredients

• PANCAKE MIX, 2 cups
• EGGS, 2 slightly beaten
• MILK, 1 cup
• APPLES, 2 (I use Gala or Fuji), peeled, cored and sliced into ½-inch-thick wedges
• BUTTER, 4 tablespoons
• BROWN SUGAR, 3 tablespoons

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 475°F.
2. In a large pan (mine is 13 inches), melt the butter and add the brown sugar.
3. Add the apple slices and toss in the pan until all are coated.
4. Prepare the batter as instructed on the box (Bisquick calls 2 cups of mix, plus the eggs and milk).
5. Pour the batter over the apples.
6. Bake for 12 minutes, or until the pancake is golden brown on top.
7. Remove and let sit for about 5 minutes.
8. Cut out wedges and invert before eating, with apples on top.

Hamburger Scramble

Here’s another quick and easy (and tasty too, of course) breakfast that you can rustle up with leftovers.

If you’ve made hamburger patties for dinner the night before (or perhaps even the night before the night before), use the leftovers to make an egg scramble in the morning.

If you have a tomato and a sweet onion, it’s even better!

Ingredients

• HAMBURGER PATTY, 2, leftovers
• TOMATO, 1, chopped into large chunks (seeded and/or skinned if you are so inclined)
• SWEET ONION, 1 small, chopped into large pieces
• EGGS, 3, scrambled
• BUTTER, 2 pats
• HOT SAUCE, to taste

Directions

1. Break up the leftover pre-cooked patties and microwave for a minute or so until hot. Set aside.
2. Sauté the onions until only slightly crunchy, then set aside.
3. Butter your non-stick sauté pan and scramble your eggs.
4. When the eggs are half-way set in the pan, toss in the chunks of filling – hamburger, tomatoes and onions.
5. Continue scrambling until almost set, and then remove from heat.
6. Serve and eat immediately, squirting on as much hot sauce (I use Tabasco) on the dish as you like.

Uova alla Marinara

Inspired by Eggs Benedict, every now and then I make an Italian version. I call it Uova alla Marinara, which is Italian for “Eggs Marinara.”

Traditional benedicts consist of an English muffin split in half then lightly toasted, Canadian bacon, poached eggs, and hollandaise sauce. Maybe topped with a half-olive or a little leaf of parsley.

The Uova alla Marinara that I make replaces the English muffin with Ciabatta bread. In place of Canadian bacon, I use Italian sausage.

Instead of hollandaise, I use marinara, any left-over spaghetti sauce will do – even jarred sauce does fine. I always make more spaghetti sauce that I need and keep it in the freezer.

If I’m in the mood to make poached eggs, then fine, that’s what I’ll use. More often than not, however, I make over-easy eggs, cooked over medium-low heat in a buttered non-stick pan until the whites are just set.

Finally, I grate parmesan cheese on top of it all, and maybe plop a little piece of kalamata olive on top.

Ingredients

• CIABATTA BREAD, two flat slices about 3 inches square
• ITALIAN SAUSAGE, 2, removed from casing and flattened
• EGGS, 2
• MARINARA SAUCE, half a cup
• BUTTER or MARGARINE
• PARMIGIANO REGGIANO CHEESE
• KALAMATA OLIVE, 1

Directions

1. Lightly toast the Ciabatta until slightly crunchy, then butter liberally.
2. Make two thin patties with the sausage filling and sauté until cooked but still moist.
3. Poach the eggs, or cook them over-easy until the whites are just set.
4. Heat the marinara.
5. Lay the Ciabatta on the dining plate and place the sausage patties on top. Place the eggs on top of the sausage, then ladle the marinara sauce over the eggs.
6. Grate the cheese over the marinara sauce.
7. Seed the olive and cut in half, placing the halves on top of each serving.

Makes one full serving.

Buono Appetito!