Breakfast for Dinner

Nov 30, 2011 by Colleen

In October, the weekend after the Halloween party at Lyndi’s, I hosted a “Breakfast for Dinner” themed dinner at my place. Who does”t love breakfast for dinner!!??

The appetizers I had in mind were lox and cream cheese crustinis and french toast sticks with homemade maple syrup. The lox and cream cheese crustinis were simple, little bites with onion and capers on french bread slivers:

I didn’t get a starting picture of the french bread dipping sticks, but you can see how popular they were. I ended up having to use garlic butter Texas toast as the bread because I couldn’t find any regular Texas toast. I wiped off some of the excess butter and garlic, but they were still very present in the flavor. Surprisingly, everyone drooled at how yummy they were and had no idea it was due to garlic and butter! Well, they could”ve maybe guessed the butter part.

I served them along with some homemade maple syrup (the simple, maple flavoring type). The bottle with the XXX on it contains a little brandy. Apparently, if you put three x”s on a bottle and put it in front of adults, it is the first choice every time.

For the mystery ingredients, we luckily had bacon as a random selection. Boy, was I pleased to see bacon for our Breakfast dinner! Here”s what everyone brought, and then some pictures:

Kristin D & Tom – Flounder
Josh – Soba Noodles
Courtney & Brandon – Brown Rice and Bread
Shelby – Bacon
Grant & Mary Jo – Bell Peppers
Kerry & Erik – Artichokes & Bean Sprouts
Jes – Heirloom Tomatoes, Basil, Carrots
Vicky – Sartori Balsamic BellaVitano Cheese

The Sartori cheese is a hard cheese, similar to parmesan, with a slight hint of balsamic. It was delicious! I also had some fun with my Picnik editing tool.

I have to say, I was a bit freaked out by the instant brown rice. To me, very few things are harder to flavor than brown rice, especially INSTANT brown rice. But, that”s what this is all about! A little challenge.

There were also some beautiful tri-color carrots that I botched up the picture of…so I”m just going to show you the shredded slaw I made out of them. I tossed them with some olive oil, salt, and pepper and they were delightfully crisp and fresh.

There were also a few more items not pictured, like bean sprouts, cheeses, and enough Flounder filets to feed everyone.

We started with the bacon to get it nice and crispy and ended up doing a BLT using the bread loaf, some left over cream cheese, bacon, the beautiful heirloom tomatoes, and the bean sprouts (in place of lettuce). Pictured here before the tomatoes made it on top!

Did you catch where I mentioned someone brought Flounder?  Yep, Flounder for breakfast! I decided to take the two most non-breakfast foods (Flounder and brown rice, IMO!) and put them together, so I thought, “What fish and grain would you ever eat for breakfast?” Then, an idea came to me: Shrimp & Grits. Grits are breakfast food-y and they go with shrimp when it’s a dinner, so why not Flounder and Rice, but Shrimp & Grit style. It was a stretch, but I added some Cajun spices to the Flounder, some cream and artichoke to the rice and called it the Kamikaze version of Shrimp and Grits.

I had planned ahead and made sure I had enough eggs to do a large quiche or omelets, and was thrilled to try out my first ever frittata with the balsamic cheese, peppers, mushrooms, and basil. It was easy and very tasty.

For the Soba noodles (which are traditionally served cold with a soy, sugar, and mirin dipping sauce), my first thought was to do some sort of latke, or potato pancake, but then it made more sense to do something more in the style of hash browns to feed a large crowd. So I cooked and drained the noodles, tossed them with the batter I’d used on the french toast, and cooked them in a skillet until they were browned and crispy.

Here’s me explaining everything on the menu:

And here’s everyone applauding my amazing achievement (haha!):

Some Holiday parties are in the works and I”ll be posting my recipes for my MasterChef practice dishes. Even though I may not have made it on TV, I did pass the food judge, so you can at least try out the winning dish and it”s contenders.

Till next time!

~The Kamikaze Chef’