Bruschetta

Breakfast always promises me a chance to start the day anew, regardless of how horrible the night before may have ended. This morning I decided to make one of my favorite dishes for my family, Mushroom Bruschetta. It’s a dish we serve at our restaurant but I don’t have the exact recipe for it so I’ve always winged it on my own. I chose to emulate it pretty closely this time.
Things needed
Sliced Mushrooms
Sliced Onions
Sliced Shallots
Sliced Garlic
Sliced Ham
Red pepper flakes
Olive oil
Baquette bread/Crusty bread/Any old bread
Cheese [I like provolone but we use white american here]

I started picture taking a little later than I expected that’s why I suggest slicing everything up before hand. It’s all relative how small you would like your veggies. I like them pretty chunky. The mushrooms are awesome when they’re big and juicy but the garlic is nice when it’s not a hunk you bite into.


Heat the olive oil and toss in the mushrooms. Something I learned from Julie & Julia was not to crowd the mushrooms or they won’t brown properly. I also added a little bit of salt and red pepper flakes at this point.

The onions have been sliced and are waiting to dive into the olive oil. The bread is also sliced and ready to be topped with cheese. At this point you may brush the bread with olive oil, but the cheese being used today is quite enough to make up for the lack of moisture.

Tossed most else into the pan after the mushrooms browned some. The onions, shallots, and ham are all in there now. I didn’t salt it at this point because the ham has a good amount of that to release in the mix. I had to add a little more olive oil as well because the mushrooms do a luscious job of soaking it up like a sponge.

The bread is prepared with the sliced cheese. Don’t want to go overboard with the cheese especially with white american. It has such an overpowering effect that it could mask all other flavors of the dish.

Pop it in the broiler for a minute. Make sure the broiler is preheated and that you’re keeping an eye on it because it could turn out like this:

I burned the first batch of bread on the top but the insides were still nice and fluffy. the second batch I only left in for about 45 seconds before pulling it out and those browned very nicely.

Final product:
Array the cheesed bread on a plate and spread the veggies over the top. The juiciness of al the veggies helps the bread incredibly and overall it is just a wonderful dish. I’ll definitely be doing some variations in the future. I think my favorite is cooking this with sausage. As I was eating I thought to myself how delicious it would be to have a poached quail egg on the top of each bread slice. Sometime in the future…
Hope everyone is doing well and is nicely fed and fashionable.

Omelette

I haven’t been able to get some snaps of myself out and about. Drove to Richmond the other day with my Aunt and decided to wear my thrifted Christian Dior sweater, but never found the right opportunity to put that self-timer on and own the sidewalk. Work has been mentally bogging down on me. The holiday season means completely busy for us restaurant workers. Remember the accepted norm for tipping is 18% y’all! 20% is my standard. This is how some of us make our living so help a server out$
In the meantime, I snapped some photos of the omelette I made this morning. I figure a little cooking ain’t never hurt nobody =].

Starts with an egg, egg white, shredded cheese, shallots, sweet onion, garlic, and pagan ham.
I’ve taken up using egg whites to help fluff up my omelettes because it makes a carton of eggs last a lot longer. It also helps lower the cholesterol and fat content.


Look at that shallot..it looks like a butt. haha. anyway…shallots for me are like a softer flavored onion. They remind me of garlic (and butts) sometimes because they come clumped up like this.





Heat up some olive oil in your sautée pan and drop the sliced sweet onions in. I should’ve added the ham at this point to let it salt up the onion but I sprinkled some kosher salt over it.


After the onions cooked down for a bit I added the rest of the pre-egg ingredients. Garlic, shallots, and ham. No need for salt at this point with that salty ham in thurr.






I cooked it down until the purple was just about gone from the shallots. The food starts to break down and take in that oil making them veggies have a slight crunch. The oil is what keeps ‘em nice and juicy though. Added bonus about olive oil that not many people know, polyunsaturated fats and monounsaturated fats actually break down the saturated fats in your system clearing up them veins of cholesterol.

I then added the eggs and egg whites. let that cook over for a second then I sprinkled the cheese all over.






Cooked it until the cheese melted before I tried to flip it all over.





Flip!
Almost done. Now just some presentation.








Savory omelette with a nice fatty cup of coffee and some delicious Challah bread. Smattered with Sweet Baby Ray’s and Ketchup.





Hope y’all are nice and fashionable these chilly days. Scarf it up$