 After the presents, and before making the feast, you have to make Breakfast for a crowd: Cooking breakfast on Christmas morning is always a challenge. Not everyone likes those breakfast casseroles, and the last things I want to do it to make anything complicated when I am going to be cooking all day. My friend Shane recently taught me a great breakfast hack: to cook soft boiled eggs in a muffin pan. To augment the eggs, I added Sourdough English Muffins (which I made the evening before), bacon and sausage (both easily cooked while the eggs were cooking), skillet hashbrowns, and melons and berries on the side. Soft Boiled Eggs for a Crowd: 1. Preheat oven to 350F 2. Butter each cup of a 12-cup muffin pan. 3. Crack an egg into each cup. 4. Add a tablespoon of water to each cup, and then sprinkle the top of each egg with a pinch of salt and pepper, and a sprinkle of Italian seasoning. 5. Cook for 10-15 minutes (the longer they cook, the more hard-boiled they become). 6. Use a teaspoon or offset spatula to gently pry each egg from the pan, and serve. In the afternoon, everyone is arriving and you are getting the kitchen going and staged for the dinner. To keep everyone happy, I try to keep the Afternoon Snacks and Appetizers super simple with a Charcuterie Plate, some Cheese Stuffed Dates, and a old family recipe from Sweden for potato dumplings with bacon and onions called KruppKakker (Kruppkakker is a traditional Swedish dish, that in my family we save special for Christmas because a) it’s a lot of work and b) it’s not the healthiest. It's peasant food, and it's delicious. So it gets its own separate post later.) Charcuterie Plate – This is always a crowd pleaser, and I will select the cheeses based on the what I know my guests like, along with some nice deli meats, local honey and some seasonal fruit like figs. And definitely some olives – my favorite.   Cheese Stuffed Dates (so simple, and so yummy!) This recipe is an amalgamation of a few different recipes over the years. I get the medjool dates, with seeds, and then two different soft cheeses like a goat cheese, a mascarpone, or a bleu. And when I am done, I like to sprinkle them with olive oil and some sea salt or Himalayan pink salt. PREPARATION: 1. Preheat the oven to 375F 2. Slice the dates lengthwise and remove the seed. 3. Spoon a bit of the cheese into the date. 4. Place the dates on a baking sheet, lined with parchment, with the cut side up. Warm in the oven for 8-10 minutes. 5. Place on a serving plate and drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. And of course while everyone is noshing, you are cooking. In order to make a dinner that is not just Thanksgiving 2.0, I always try hard to really mix up the sides from a traditional Holiday This year, the Dinner Menu was: Main course: Turkey roasted on the Big Green Egg Sides: Asparagus with Bacon, Slow Cooker Mac ‘n Cheese, Beet Salad with Feta and Walnuts, Ratatouille, Mashed Potatoes, Stuffing Cooking the turkey on the Big Green Egg not only creates a perfectly cooked turkey, but it frees up the ovens for all of the side dishes. We brined it overnight, and then injected it with Applewood flavor , and put a basic rub on the outside, and when we put it on the Egg, we placed an aluminum tray underneath it with sliced apples, onions and chicken broth.    This is my recipe for my signature spice rub. \It makes about a cup at a time, and is great on chicken or pork. It can also be made in bulk and shared with dear friends at the holidays. As long as it is in an airtight container, it could last forever - but it won't! Enjoy! Signature Spice Rub: ½ cup packed brown sugar 1T kosher salt 1T chili powder 1T sweet paprika 1 T onion powder 1T garlic powder ½ T smoked paprika 2 tsp ground black pepper 2 tsp dry mustard 1 ½ tsp ground cumin 1 tsp ground oregano Combine all of the ingredients in a small mixing bowl. Great for pork or poultry. Any extra can be stored in an airtight container to keep it dry.   I always have a lot of avocados in the house because I love avocado toast. But sometimes they get a little mushy and I need to find something else to do with them. Now I have a solution. Another recipe making the rounds on TikTok is Avocado Chips. So I gave it a turn in the Delaney Test Kitchen for you. Plus, my Google Analytics tell me that the TikTok recipes are the most viewed pages of my site, so I thought I'd try another one for you. The recipe for this is super easy: Ingredients: 1. One over ripe avocado 2. One egg 3. One cup of grated parmesan 4. Everything but the Bagel topping, or jut Salt & Pepper Instructions: 1. Mash the avocado in a bowl, add a beaten egg and the cheese. Mix well. 2. Drop in circles on a parchment lined cookie sheet, mash them flat and top with Everything but the Bagel. Should make 11-12 rounds. 3. Bake for 30 minutes at 350 F. Voila! These were, not surprisingly, very yummy. The next time I make them I may add a pinch of salt to the mash before baking – I think it needs a little something. Maybe it needs a bit of lemon juice, not unlike guacamole. I might also try it with mixing in a little shredded mozzarella cheese. One Tik Tok suggestion is to double or triple the recipe, and to make larger chips as a substitute for bread. I may try that next time but that sounds like a lot of food. But if you're doing a Keto diet, that might be awesome. If you try this one, let me know how it goes!  Avocado toast has become my new favorite breakfast. Or lunch. It’s healthy, delicious, simple to make, and simple to dress up. This is a nutritious meal in under 5 minutes. There is basic avocado toast. And then there all the ways you can personalize it. Much like tacos, the options are endless. I like to use various ingredients like microgreens, cherry tomatoes, bacon, jalapenos, chives, radishes, spinach, arugula, red pepper flakes, onions, salmon, goat cheese and dill in a variety of combinations. But you can really just use anything you have on hand. Step 1: Toast your bread. You can use any type of bread, and I prefer thick cut white bread. But crusty bread or whole grain can make it even healthier. Step 2: Cut, scoop and mash the avocado in a small bowl. A fork works great for this. Step 3: Add to the mash. For this, the basic mash, I suggest using a squirt of lime, salt and pepper, and maybe some cilantro. Mix it up well. Step 4: Spread the mash on the toast. Give it another pinch of sea salt and Voila! Step 5 is Optional: some people like to add egg to the top of the toast – sunny-side up, poached, or even hard boiled. This definitely helps to give you a bigger dose of protein to get through the morning. Additional Flavor Option Ideas: cheese and chives, salmon and dill, salmon and dill and goat cheese, pico de gallo, bacon and tomato, or bacon and tomato and lettuce.  Selecting your Avocados: The key to great avocado toast is bring able to pick a great avocado. It is hard to find them already ripe in the store, anyway. So I get them on the harder side and place them in a bowl on the countertop to ripen. You can tell when they are ready when they are slightly soft to the touch, and the nub where the stem was attached easily flips off with a fingertip.  |
AuthorKris Delaney is a marketing executive, foodie, travel enthusiast, and book nerd based in Atlanta, GA. Archives
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