Garlic, Parmesan, And Bacon Scramble

Breakfast is a meal of champions, and bacon is king.  Eating this bacon scramble ensures you to be KING OF THE CHAMPIONS.

The Meat

- 2 breakfast links

- 5 slices of bacon, divided

- 2 eggs, whipped with 1/4 cup milk

The Veggies

- 3-5 cloves of garlic, sliced

- 1/2 cup spinach, raw and chopped

- 1 green onion, diced
- 4 Padron peppers, diced

- parmesan cheese, dill, salt, pepper, marjoram to taste


Fry up the breakfast links on high heat, turning every 5 minutes.  Make sure they cook all the way through - I usually cut one open to make sure there isn't any pink left in the center.


When the links are halfway done, add the bacon.  The bacon will cook quicker than the links, and grease up your pan nicely to fry the garlic.  








Take the cooked, crispy bacon off the pan and toss on the sliced garlic.  While that is frying, crumble three slices of the bacon, and then whip your eggs, milk, raw spinach, peppers, green onion, and the crumbled bacon together in a bowl with a fork.  Get it nice and bubbly so your eggs are fluffy.  Pour the egg mixture over the fried garlic and season everything liberally.  After 3 minutes, flip your eggs and break it up into a scramble with your spatula.  Plate everything and cover the eggs with grated Parmesan cheese.  

Lemon Butter Salmon With Turnips and Zucchini

The combination of bacon grease and butter makes this meal so tasty.  Indulge in delicious fats!

The Meat

- 2 fillets of boneless, skinless salmon

- salt, pepper, dill to taste

- 1 teaspoon bacon grease for frying

- 1 teaspoon lemon juice

- green onion, diced for topping

The Sauce

- 4 tablespoons of butter

- 2 cloves garlic, diced

- 2 tablespoons lemon juice

- salt, dill to taste

The Veggies

- 2-3 turnips, thinly sliced and cut

- 1 large zucchini, thinly sliced

- 3 mushrooms, thinly sliced

- 6 Padron peppers, diced

- 1 tablespoon bacon grease

- salt, pepper, dill, basil to taste

- 1/2 heirloom tomato, sliced

- fresh mozzarella to taste

- 1 teaspoon olive oil

- salt, pepper, basil, oregano to taste

Begin by dicing the veggies and putting them in a large pan.  Add the bacon grease, season everything, and bring the heat up to medium.  Saute all the veggies for around 15 minutes, until the turnips and zucchini are soft.  

Melt the butter in a small saucepan on medium heat, and cook the chopped garlic until it is soft and has brown edges.  Add the salt, dill, and lemon juice, and bring it down to a low heat to let all the flavors meld together.

Cook the salmon on a griddle pan, using high heat.  Season the salmon while the bacon grease warms up in the pan.  Sear each side of the salmon, a minute per side, and sprinkle the seared sides with the lemon juice before letting them sit longer, around 4-5 minutes per side.  The salmon should be pinkish, opaque, and flake apart with a fork.  Watch it so it doesn't overcook and dry out.  

Toss the mozzarella and tomato in oil and the seasonings, then add them to the vegetables.

Put the cooked vegetables on the plates and place the salmon next to/somewhat on top of them.  Drizzle the salmon liberally with the lemon butter and garnish the dish with the diced green onion.  Enjoy!

Tomato Roasted Eggplant with Turkey Meatballs

Here is another fun meal to serve to friends!  The presentation is great and it tastes just as good as anything you can find over in North Beach.  The turkey meatballs taste so good, because they have bubbly hot Parmesan cheese rolled into their mixture.  Yummmm.

The Meat

- 1 to 1 1/2 pounds of ground turkey meat

- Parmesan, salt, pepper, marjoram, basil, oregano, garlic powder, onion powder to taste

- 1 tablespoon olive oil

- 1/3 heirloom tomato, mostly crushed

The Veggies

- 1 large eggplant, sliced

- 1 summer squash, sliced

 - 6-10 Padron peppers, stems and seeds removed

- 1 heirloom tomato + the leftover tomato from the meat, mostly crushed

- 1 heirloom tomato, sliced

- salt, pepper, basil, oregano to taste

- 2 tablespoons of olive oil

- 2 cups spinach, wilted

- 1/2 cup water

- 1 tablespoon lemon juice

- salt to taste

Preheat your oven to 385 degrees. 

In a large baking dish, layer your eggplant, squash, and tomato, brushing each piece with the olive oil and then covering all of it evenly with the peppers, spices and crushed tomato.  Bake the veggies uncovered for 40 minutes.

In a mixing bowl, add the meat ingredients.  Take off your rings and get your hands in there.  Squish everything together until the spices and cheese look to be evenly mixed in with the ground meat.  Then go at it and roll some modest sized meatballs.  I ended up with around a dozen.  Bake them for 40 minutes on the rack above the eggplant and other veggies. They should be brown on the tops and the Parmesan should be hot and gooey when they are all done.

10 minutes before the baking dishes are set to finish, get a large saute pan and wilt the spinach over medium low heat.  Drain the spinach with a slotted spoon when moving it over to your serving dish.  When you pull the eggplant out of the oven, do the same, leaving the juices and crushed tomato mostly in the baking dish.

I served all of the food together on one huge serving platter. The baked eggplant and squash went on the bottom, then the spinach went on top of that, with extra Parmesan and some of the tomato sauce.  The meatballs were layered on the very top, with even more cheese and leftover tomato sauce.  Satisfying. 

Lomo De Cerdo Al Horno...with Roasted Salsa Sauce!

Our wonderful friend is in town and staying with us this week, so I made a few awesome meals to make her feel welcome and loved.  This meal is based off the Puerto Rican Pernil Al Horno, but I didn't have a bone-in pork shoulder to roast, nor did I have 6 hours plus a day in advance to prepare something that tasty.  I had a pork tenderloin and a whole lot of heirloom tomatoes, Padron peppers, and summer squashes from our weekend trip to the farm.  This worked out better than fine, the meal was fantastic and we all really enjoyed it.

The Meat

- 1 1/2 pound pork tenderloin

- salt, pepper to taste

- A few slices of Port Salut semi soft cheese

- 2 green onions, diced

The Veggies

- 2 summer squashes, cut into large chunks

- 1 large zucchini squash, cut into large chunks

- 1 large sweet potato, cubed

- dill, salt, pepper to taste

- 1 tablespoon of olive oil

- 1/2 cup water

The Sauce

- 3 large heirloom tomatoes, cut into really large chunks

- 1 slicing tomato, cut into really large chunks

- 1/2 red onion, cut into pieces

- 10-12 Padron peppers, stems and seeds removed

- 1 jalapeno pepper, stems and seeds removed

- 3-4 cloves garlic, peeled

- 1 tablespoon lemon juice

- 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

- chipotle habanero sauce to taste

- chili pepper flakes, chipotle pepper powder, black pepper, paprika, dill, cilantro, salt to taste

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Using a strong blender or food processor, blend together the sauce ingredients until everything is mostly smooth with a few chunks of tomato still intact.  Play with the taste of the sauce - if you like it spicier, add more spice, or keep the jalapeno seeds in your mix.  If you want it milder, omit the jalapeno pepper, chipotle powder, chili flakes and chipotle habanero sauce.  

Salt and pepper your meat, put it in a deep enough baking dish to contain both the meat and your sauce, and slowly pour the spicy tomato mixture over the whole tenderloin.  Stick it in the oven and cook it for an hour to one hour and fifteen minutes.  Make sure the internal temperature is at 145 degrees to ensure your food is properly cooked through.

Put the large chunks of squash and cubed sweet potatoes in a glass baking dish and sprinkle with dill, salt and pepper.  Brush the olive oil on and pour the water into the bottom of the dish.  Cook for 35-45 minutes on the same rack as the pork. 

When the tenderloin is all done, the sauce should have thickened and darkened a bit.  Slice up the tenderloin and spoon the sauce back over the top of the meat.  Layer some of the delicious semi-soft cheese on top and let it melt for a few minutes before you serve it.  Sprinkle on the green onions and present your food!  I put some fresh green grapes and some full fat Greek yogurt on the table as garnish - the sweet grapes paired great with the smoky, spicy flavors, and the Greek yogurt soothed our slightly burning tongues from all the delicious spiciness.  You could also use sour cream if you wanted, it's all about your preferences and palates.  

A Trip To The Farm Means Twice Baked Zucchini

Our friend has a small plot of farmland up in Petaluma, and he brought us up there yesterday to weed, seed, and harvest some amazing heirloom vegetables.  We were so impressed with his bountiful crops and we truly enjoyed spending the entire day weeding, learning, and picking some fantastic vegetables.  We were lucky enough to get to bring some of the veggies home to make, including THE BIGGEST ZUCCHINI SQUASH I HAVE EVER SEEN.  It was two feet long (!!), and I had to get creative to cook it.  Much like you can make twice baked potatoes, I made a twice baked zucchini, and it was superb!  

We have a dinner party with some family every Sunday night, and we love to go to The Fatted Calf and get some of their special made crepinettes.  This week we had lamb patties wrapped in their signature fatty netting, with pine nuts and figs.    

The Meat

- 7 lamb crepinettes from The Fatted Calf

The Veggies

- 2 large turnips, cubed

- 8-10 cloves garlic, peeled

- 1 gigantic zucchini

- butter, salt, marjoram, pepper, garlic powder to taste

- 3-4 figs, chopped 

- Parmesan cheese, to taste

- 6-10 Padron peppers, diced

- 1/2 red onion, sliced

- 4 tablespoons of olive oil, divided

- 2-3 medium sized sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed

Preheat your oven to 380 degrees.

This meal took around an hour and a half of prep, so try to time out your cooking times so you don't have food sitting and getting cold waiting for the other parts of the meal to come together.

I cubed and roasted the sweet potatoes with a tablespoon of olive oil, half a cup of water, and salt and pepper in my glass baking pan for around 45 minutes.  I had the pan ready to go and just popped them in when it was around 50 minutes before serving time.  

Cube and boil the turnips with the garlic until they are tender, around 20 minutes on medium high heat.  Drain them and then mash the turnips and garlic together and set them aside to add to the zucchini later.

Look at the size of this zucchini next to my bread knife.  When I cut it open, the seeds were big enough to be mistaken for pumpkin seeds!  I scooped out the raw innards and kept the skins to become my "bowls".  The skins got dolloped with butter and brushed with olive oil, and then I liberally salted and peppered them.  Then they got popped into the oven to roast for 30 minutes.  

I took the "meat" of the zucchini that I had scooped out and put in a saute pan with the cooked turnips and garlic.  I added butter and olive oil, plus some garlic powder, salt, pepper, and marjoram.  I sauteed the mixture until the zucchini was soft, around 15 minutes on medium low heat, then used my masher to really blend everything together.  I added a few teaspoons of tapioca starch to the mash to thicken it a bit.  

While the zucchini was sauteing, I also softened some red onion and the Padron peppers we had picked in a small pan with a little olive oil on medium heat.  I moved everything around in the pan pretty often, and after around 10 minutes they were ready for the next step.

Next it was time to remove the roasted zucchini skins and spoon the mash into them.  I sprinkled chopped figs, parmesan cheese, and the sauteed Padron peppers and red onion on top of the mash and then put the whole shebang back into the oven for 15 more minutes.   

I grilled the lamb patties on my Griddler and then put everything on platters to serve.  This dinner party menu went over really well, everyone loved the way I presented the giant zucchini! :)