February 10, 2010

Adventures in cooking

For my birthday I made myself a grasshopper pie. It was delicious. The recipe includes heavy whipping cream, marshmallow fluff, a little sugar, mint flavoring, and green food coloring. And some butter to hold the Oreo cookie crust together. Pretty simple, really. Also: not really a part of my diet, but I decided for my birthday I could eat whatever I wanted. And since this pie lasted for several days longer than my birthday, for those days too.




Back in December I went to Marche artisan foods in Nashville with my dad for brunch, if you live in Nashville (Tim and Carissa) and haven't been there, you definitely should. They have pretty moderately priced food, with great fresh ingredients, and the menu changes according to the season and what's seasonal. I've loved every meal I've had there. Anyway, that time I got toast with poached eggs in tomato sauce topped with flakes of parmesan. It was fabulous. Especially for this non-egg-loving girl. So I've been craving it ever since, so I decided to try it. It was my first attempt at poached eggs, and they turned out fairly well, I suppose. My version was pretty good, but definitely not as good as Marche's. Still, it was worth a try and it was a change from our regular menu.

4 comments:

Carissa said...

I'll have to check out Marche's! I hadn't heard of it. I like changes from our regular menu; it's pretty easy to get in a rut.

Anonymous said...

I can't believe you enjoyed an egg that much.

Anonymous said...

I poached eggs yesterday. They were okay I guess. What did you use for the tomato sauce in this recipe. Basically I want to know exactly what you did. Maybe you should call me.

Angela S said...

For the tomato sauce I did a couple of things. I used canned tomatoes, petite diced. Also, there's this Greek/Italian market here where I bought some frozen tomato sauce, which I added to my canned tomatoes to make the sauce a little thicker. It wasn't as good as Marche's tomato sauce, I don't know how they did theirs. If there were some more authentic brand of canned tomatoes, I would use that. Also, I used a nice loaf of Italian bread for the toast, and put that in the oven until it was browned and toasty on both sides, because you're putting all that juice on top and you don't want the bread to be soggy. Then I poached the eggs: half an inch of water nearly to boiling, I added a little vinegar because I heard that helps the egg stay together. Then break the egg into a mug, and pour the egg into the almost boiling water, turn the stove off, cover the pan and let it cook for about four minutes. Put the egg on the bread, put the tomatoes on top of the egg and bread. I bought a brick of parmesan and grated pieces of it off and put that on top. A much stronger flavor than pre-grated parmesan. I think this comment was longer than the post.