Sunday, April 19th - Corn Muffins and Asparagus Omlette and Pizza

Breakfast, well rolled out of bed at around 10. I'm making corn muffins from a mix. I normally do make them scratch I promise. I had an odd obsession of collecting certain recipes when I was a teenager and they were Bread Pudding recipes and Corn Bread recipes. I don't know why. We rarely ate western food growing up and I guess I might have had a curiousity about hearty comfort food developed from necessity. I have a great corn bread recipe that uses canned corn for texture. So last fall visiting my sisters for Black Friday in the Bay Area, I bought an iconic corn bread mix called JIFF. Not Jiffy as in the peanut butter. (photo coming). The box contains enough mix to make 6-8 muffins and costs 99cents. Perfect! Well, it's sat in my pantry now for nearly a year. I'm making half.

JIFF CORN MUFFINS J's way

The box weights 240 g.
I measured out 120 g
add 1/8 t cayenne pepper
add 1/8 t of cumin (My sisters are rolling their eyes now because I alwasy do this. A pinch of this a pinch of that. What is really nice in cornbread is also sage or rosemary mmmmmm)
Beat 1 egg and pour in half the egg into the mix.
Add 3 T of milk (1/6 of a cup)
Butter six of the cups of a 'normal' muffin tin. I pulled out my pop over tin that D bought me and he laughed and said I'd maybe get two out of that if I made the whole box.
I like to butter symmetrically so that the muffins are evenly spaced out. I probably do this because I always had 'cheaper' muffin tins that warped from uneven baking. D has Analon so he didn't understand why I was doing this. I even go to the extent of pouring water into the empty cups. I still have tins that wobble on a counter top :-(.

Spoon out into the buttered cups. About 1.5 T per cup.

Bake at 405 F for 15-20 minutes until golden. I put it at 405 instead of 400 because I peak and like to keep the oven at 400.

D is using the half egg and 4 other eggs to make an

Asparagus Omlette with Cherry Tomato Balsamic Salad

4.5 organic eggs
half a bunch of baby asparagus spears, trimmed and chopped
1/4 c red onion sliced
1/2 c cherry tomatoes sliced in half
1/4 c fresh cheese (like farmer's ricotta or regular cheese, do not use cream cheese as a replacement.)
salt and pepper.

Sautee the Asparagus and the red onion until soft, set aside
Beat the eggs with 1-2 T of milk. Pour into medium heat pan with butter.
Push about with rubber spatula to run the uncooked bits touch the pan. Really, with a decent sized pan and this amount of eggs, it should be fine. Add the veg back, add the cheese and fold. Let it sit for a couple of minutes. Turn gently and serve. Clearly if you do one serving at a time, it'll be easier to turn and serve.

Serve with a few cherry tomatoes sliced and sprinkled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar with some course salt and pepper. Easy and tastes wonderful!


Enjoy!

Maguerita Pizza

see pizza dough recipe from April 13th
http://365vancouvereats.blogspot.com/2009/04/easter-monday-april-13th-homemade-pizza.html

Pre heat oven to 450.

Roll out dough as thin as you like. As you know, we go mazto thin, the size of a baking sheet.

Add red sauch, sliced rounds of fresh mozzarella, as much as you like. D uses one baseball sized ball. Add the basil after baking....20 minutes.

We had the most amazing Pinot Noir with the pizza. Delta Vineyard Pinot Noir from Malborough in NZ. ~30$ CAD in BC. Ymmmmm cheaper probably almost anywhere else. Recommend you try it!