Cookbook: Egg Monster Adventure!

 Part of cleaning up my diet is severely limiting the amount of prepackaged foods I eat. This includes breakfast. I'm pretty slow to get going in the morning, so having something I can just reheat is awesome and required. Thus, courtesy of the awesome folks over at Nerdfitness, I have the thing known as Egg Monster. It's basically a frittata of sorts. But on to the recipe! And the Adventure!

Ingredients.
18 eggs
200g Pancetta
500g (lean) Beef Mince
170g carrots
140g portabello mushrooms
120g broccoli
200g flat beans
70g asparagus
A Leek.
130g mayonnaise
3g coconut oil
Herbs
Garlic
Pepper
Salt.

Makes 16 servings.
Rough nutritional info per serve: Energy 220kcal, Protein 18.3g, Carbohydrate 3.3g, Fat 19.5g.

Adventure! Recipe.
1. Turn the oven to 170C, and brown the mince in a frypan.
2. While the mince is doing its thing, chop the veges.
3. Set the mince aside, and sauté/steam/grill the veges and garlic, and cook the fat off the pancetta (separately). Drain the extra fat off, and put the pancetta on a couple layers of paper towelling to drain a bit more. When the veges are done, mix the meat and veges together.
4. Beat eggs, mayonnaise, salt, pepper, herbs together.
5. Grease a REALLY BIG pan with the coconut oil.
6. Put everything in the pan.
7. Put in oven for an hour.

The Adventure!
... That's not quite how it really happened. Here's the real (5 hour) story:

Arranged veges nicely, and took several photographs. Turned the oven on to 200C.



Tried to start chopping asparagus, found it was past a useful condition, and got the other bunch out of the fridge. Found flat beans in the process, and decided to add them too. Figured that since I now had different veg, I should take more pictures.


Took even more pictures.


Chopped carrots, leek and mushroom and ... took pictures.




Meanwhile, I cooked the pancetta. And took pictures.


Then I sautéed the carrot, leek and mushrooms and garlic and chopped the greens. And took pictures.


I steamed the greens in the microwave, and put the egg yolks and whites in separate bowls. And took pictures.






You may notice there are only 12 yolks. We'll get to that in a minute. I remembered that this thing was supposed to have mince in it, and put the mince on to brown. Well, actually I spent about half an hour breaking it up with a wooden spoon, then turned the heat on. And took pictures.




Beat the egg whites until slightly foofy, and beat the egg yolks with the mayonnaise, herbs, salt and pepper. Took more pictures.



I mixed my pancetta and mince together in the pan, then thought it would be a jolly good idea to actually have the veges and mince mixed all together. So I put them in a bowl and took pictures.





I greased up my glass roasting pan, and put the mince/vege mixture in. And took pictures.



And then remembered the greens. They went on top. Pretty, don't you think?




I remembered that this was going to rise. So I found my REALLY HUGE metal roasting pan, greased that up, and transferred the meat and veg to it. Oh well, so much for artistry.




I poured the egg mix over and ... oops. Not enough, eh?



So I quickly beat up another half dozen eggs, and added that. And took pictures.



Looks like enough, went to double-check the temperature the oven was supposed to be at ... oops. Mine's too high. Not to worry, I'll turn it down, open the door for a minute, and it'll be Just Fine(TM).Half an hour through cooking, turning the pan around, because my oven is like that.



Aaaaand ... RAWR! EGG MONSTER! Owait, not cooked all the way through yet, back into the oven with you.



During this adventure, I was also weighing everything and writing all the nutritional info down. A lot of maths, really. And then there were numbers. Actually, a whole spreadsheet. See? Numbers. Also, flowers.



Breakfast at 5pm, yay! Om nom nom.





Next time: Less mayo (so less fat), maybe more eggs. And different veges. Maybe less veges. Sooo many greens. And a capsicum. Okay, going now. The End.

Rediscovering the joy of cooking

It's no secret - anyone who knows me well enough knows that I love playing around in the kitchen. What many don't know is that I haven't had the energy or the will to cook for around two years now. For a hobby I loved to do daily, that's been pretty crushing.

Throw in going dairy free, and more recently gluten free, and I've been even less able to do this one of my favourite things.

When I have made food it's generally been as an obligation, or in one of the very, very rare flashes of feeling not-tired. It hasn't been a part of my daily life, and I have missed it horribly.

That's changed in the last two weeks. I have been able to think about cooking, and experiments, and carry them through. To theorise and test my theories. What can I say? I'm a geek in the kitchen, as much as I am anywhere else in life. I stand there and I think about the chemical processes going on, and how it would change if I did something else, or used a different ingredient, or a different process, or whatever.

Occasionally I get a surprise, as I did on Sunday when I made my breakfast quiches. Well, they were supposed to be quiches. They ended up being souffles instead. Apparently, mayonnaise is a very effective raising agent. I'm not quite sure why that is, but it certainly seems to be the case. Originally, it was supposed to be substituting for cream, to give them a better texture. It changed the texture, all right. Just in a bit of a different direction to what I was expecting. I've tacked the recipe on to the end of this post, suggestions for flavour combinations and tweaks would be great.

I want to start making my own mayonnaise for use in my quiches too. Anyone got a good recipe?

I still haven't debugged my mini meatloaf, which are my lunches during the week. Being dairy and gluten free, and also doing a lot of physical exercise, relying on cafes and food courts for lunch is expensive and risky. So, I DIY. I like a hot lunch, too. Thus: mini meatloaf. Anyway. They're lovely and moist and ... fall apart. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong there, really. Maybe less egg? More breadcrumbs? Oh well, I'll give it a try next time I make a batch.

Quite apart from the meds (which have had a vastly positive impact on my outlook and mood), I think that making more of my own food is making me feel healthier. I get bugger all preservatives in my diet now. Lots of fresh veg and good quality protein. Very little starts off looking like something not recognisably of plant or animal origin. On top of that, it's fun. And delicious! I say without shame that I am a very good cook. I can count the number of fail meals I've made in the last decade on one hand (I'm up to 4). I make food that is far, far better than what I can buy in a packet and is usually better than what I can buy in a cafe or restaurant. Part of that is, I think, that I have been doing it long enough - about 20 years - so that I have a good 'feel' for it. Part of it is the way my brain is twisted towards curiosity and experimentation, followed by analysis, theories, and theory testing. This is helped along by a very active sense of taste - I love food, food tastes awesome, and there is no faster way to give me an endorphin high than to feed me a wonderful meal.

In a slight change of subject, I'm considering adding to my list of hobbies doing formal reviews of gluten and dairy free products. Especially for baking, flour in particular, it is a right royal pain in the posterior to get together, mix, and keep on hand all the little bits and pieces needed. Also, packet products are a good place to start a new set of experiments - it tastes good, what's in it, can I make it better? Or simply have around as convenience foods. I guess I'd have to contact various companies to find distributors in my area, although I suspect I already know where most of them are within a 10km radius. It will improve my writing and food photography skills, as well as providing at the very least a self-reference for various products, and potentially a resource for others.

This post is probably long enough, so I'll leave it there. Please comment on anything that interests you, and let me know if there's anything I can improve in my writing or anything else.

As promised, the recipe:

Crustless Individual Quiches or Souffles.

Ingredients.
8 eggs
2-3 cups finely chopped veges (shallots, fresh asparagus, capsicum,
tomatoes, green beans, zucchini, mushrooms, caramelised onion, etc).
Saute hard veges first.
200g meat filling (bacon, salmon, chorizo, etc)
spices to taste (pepper, garlic, chilli)
herbs (basil, thyme, dill, rosemary, mixed herbs, etc)
2-3 tbspn whole egg mayonnaise (4-5 tbspn for souffle)

Method.
1. Preheat oven to ~180C.
2. Grease six-cup texas muffin tray.
3. Whisk together herbs, spices, eggs and mayonnaise in a 2L jug,
until smooth. ~30secs.
4. Mix together meat filling and veges.
5. Divide meat/vege mix into muffin tins.
6. Pour egg mix over meat/veges. Fill cups to nearly full.
7. Bake for around 30min, until golden brown on top.

Makes six texas muffin sized quiches or souffles.