Two-egg Omlette

Crazy! Everyone knows an omlette is made with three eggs. Especially the Egg Board. They think a four egg omlette is the future. Between the eggs, butter and cheese there is no shortage of calories in this meal. I'm a fan of the fluffy omlette with little browning of the eggs. Let's press on and see what happened in the Aga Kitchen.

Note to self: Very first thing, get your pan in the Warming Oven

  Before beating, barely 4 ounces                       After a good beating, almost 7 ounces 

Let's gather up what we need. This takes about 5 minutes once the cooking starts.

• A steel bowl, good whisk. heat proof rubber spatula and your favorite egg pan. I use a cast iron non stick Aga pan in Racing Green. 
• Two eggs
• Clarified butter, you can just use regular butter but it will brown a little and give you a nutty flavor. Not really a bad thing
• Pan spray
• Cheese and other fillings, your choice. I went with shallots, cheddar and Pico de Gallo

Whisk the eggs for two minutes or so until almost doubled in volume

Put the egg pan on the Simmer Plate and spray with non stick veg coating then add the butter

Swirl it all around so it's coating the pan evenly

Add eggs slow and steady into the center of the pan

As the eggs set (approx 20 seconds) run your spatula around the edges to loosen

Add your fillings

Into the Roasting Oven for two minutes or until it's firm to the touch

Remove pan from oven and loosen omlette with rubber spatula

Pick up the pan from underneath the handle and slide omlette onto a warm plate. Roll it or fold it, your choice.

Top with addtional cheese or garnish and into the Simmer or Warming Oven while you prepare your next one.

Trust me, no one will know you only used two eggs except the president of the Egg Council

 

Easy, breezy and one less broken egg to be worried about.

Next time we cook coffee beans!

Spinach, a lot of spinach

I am an advocate of 100/0 Aga cooking. Must be the overachiever in me. The 80/20 rule is so 1960's, when petro was cheap and wasting natural resources was in vogue. Let me back up a little for those not up on our hip Aga jargon. The 80/20 rule is something old school Agaheads came up with. The rule is pretty simple. Cook 80 percent of your food in the oven and 20 percent on the Boil or Simmer Plate. Limit the heat loss as much as reasonably possible. I am not reasonable.  My rule, more of a goal really, is to cook everything in the oven. Goal accomplished for this dish.

Large amounts of fresh leafy greens are difficult to deal with no matter what kind of cooking appliance you have. Big pots of boiling water,stuffing in all the greens and attempting to stir the product without making a mess is not easy. No wonder most spinach recipes start by telling you to defrost the frozen cooked spinach.  This technique takes advantage of the way your Aga Roasting Pan and Aga Sheet Pan fit together.

 

Let's see how this went down in the Aga Kitchen. Should take less than hour from fridge to table and about 10 minutes actual working time. It  reheats beautifully so make it a day ahead if needed and it's real good tossed with gnocchi.

Creamed Spinach Aga Style

Gather up these ingredients.....

• 2 nice bags of fresh spinach, about a pound
• 1/2 of a medium sized onion
• 1/4 cup of olive oil or butter
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 2 nice cloves of garlic, smashed
• 1 teaspoon mustard
• grated nutmeg to taste, if possible try to find whole nutmeg and grate it using your microplaner
• good pinch of salt, kosher or sea please

Follow along with me.....

Put your Aga Roasting Pan in the Baking Oven with 1/2 cup water and the butter or olive oil

Slice your onion into thin strips. Slice along the lines on the onion, going with the grain

Toss your onion in the pan with the butter/oil and water, sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Back in the Baking Oven and set the timer for 15 minutes.

Beep beep goes the timer, add garlic and swirl around so it's evenly dispersed and fragrant. Add the spinach, cover with bak-o-glide and Aga Sheet Pan (check out picture above)

Back into the Baking Oven for 10 minutes, use your timer

Remove the cover and add the cream, mustard, pinch of salt and nutmeg. Back into the Baking Oven for uncovered for 5 minutes.

Not so photogenic when it comes out of oven but once you stir in the seasonings it cleans up nice.

I hope you give this a try. Being in the 100/0 club is pretty cool. It takes a bit longer and requires using a timer or having a strong memory and excellent sense of time. The beginning of this recipe, sweating the onion with fat and water is being done in fine dining restaurants around the world. It adapts beautifully to the gentle heat of the Aga.

Thanks for reading to the bottom , cook like you mean it, G

 Look what I found on my terrace, I have no idea what it is but it seemed harmless

Maine Shrimp Salad for Valentine's Day

There are not really too many finites in cooking. I think that's one of the things that keeps me interested. Hard to believe, but I like being wrong. It means I learned something. I think a therapist would call it "growth". Here is a finite I can sink my teeth into. Write it down and commit to memory. Never cook a special meal that is so laden with fat and calories that you and your mate are too stuffed to "get busy". Makes the dinner date not so special anymore. "We ate and drank so much the only reason we unbuttoned our pants was to keep them from splitting apart" sounds more like something to forget.

Back to the shrimp. Love it when the fresh Maine shrimp come into season. I picked up some at my not so local (50 minutes away) fancy food store. Cucumbers and shellfish always taste good together. The textures play well off each other and respond similarly to seasoning. Both ingredients are delicate and can be overpowered by assertive type of seasonings like raw onion or garlic.

Let's see how this went down in the Agakitchen.

Cook the shrimp

• 3/4 lb of fresh Maine shrimp. Drop into simmering salted water for 90 seconds. Overcooking makes the shrimp mushy. No wine or lemon, the acid has a tendency to denature these small crustaceans. Drain and layout on a flat plate to cool. No need to rinse them under cold water. On a plate and in the fridge. Takes about 30 minutes to cool.

Make the dressing   mix everything together in bowl big enough to add the shrimp and a cucumber

• 3 Tablespoons of mayo. Homemade is really much better and crazy easy. I'll give you a recipe at the end of the post.
• 3 teaspoons of Heinz Chili Sauce. This not some Asian offshoot of Americas best loved condiment. It's ketchup for big boys, a little less sweet with a little more kick. Beats ketchup anyday.
• 1 teaspoon dry sherry
• 1 teaspoon of prepared horseradish. Be sure to squeeze the liquid out of it first.
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika, picks up the smoky notes in the sherry

Put it all together

• peel and quarter your cucumber, remove seeds with your knife tip, dice into medium size uniform pieces. About the same size as the shrimp. Salt the cukes
• toss cukes and shrimp in bowl with dressing, add a little chopped dill or parsley if you have some
• place some fancy greens (I use the herb blend in the winter) tossed with a little oil and vinegar on the plate
• mound the shrimp salad in the center
• D-U-N spells done, rhymes with fun!

As promised, mayonnaise

• 1 egg and 1 egg yolk
• 1T mustard
• 1T cider vinegar
• squeeze from 1/4 of a lemon
• 1 cup olive oil, not EVOO
• salt to taste
• pepper, white if you have it, again to taste
• 1 Tablespoon of hot hot water

Mix everything but the oil and water in a food processor. With the motor running slowly add the oil. After the oil add the hot water. Taste, season and taste again.