Pocket Full of Gravy

On Sunday I made my famous (well at least in my head) Toast Baskets for dinner. Little bites of goodness that is white toast shaped into a cup and filled with alternating layers of whipped egg whites, bacon, a sofrito like mix of onions, fresh heirloom tomatoes, and garlic, more bacon, more egg white, and finally topped with the yolk.

The flavors are mostly there, but I'm still not happy with the toast baskets. I've tried to make them a number of ways.

First I just tried to make them by rolling out white bread with the crusts cut off into flat sheets and placing them in a greased Ramekin. Since it takes more than one piece of bread to fully line the ramekin, they tend to fall apart after baking. My second attemp which is the most succesful was to soak the bread in a little butter, roll them out, and mold them to the ramekin. These hold up fairly well in the baking process, and have the added benefit that they pop out of the ramekin easier and with less damage. For last nights attempt I tried more of french toast route and with with milk as the softening agent. Not bad but not as good as the butter. I didnt use enough butter so they fell apart a bit when i tried to pry them out of the ramekin as you can see in the picture.






With a little bit of further ado here is the recipe:

Ingredients: (Makes 2 Servings)

4 Slices good white bread with the crusts cut off (the larger sandwich size)
2 Eggs
6 Slices good applewood smoked bacon (I like Niman ranch from Trader Joes)
1/2 Medium sized yellow onion fine dice
1 Small heirloom tomato (about the size of a tennis ball) fine dice
2-3 Cloves garlic finely minced
Milk or Butter for basting the bread.
Juice from 1 lemon
A few generous pinch's of salt
A dash of peper
A dash of cayene powder
A dash of a good red wine vinegar (optional)









Since the bread baskets need to toast we'll start with them first. Unfortunately I did not take any pictures of this process mostly because I'm not happy with how they have turned out so far. I will make an addendum once i perfect it. If you have any ideas feel free to share them in the comments.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Generously spray the inside of your ramekins with non stick cooking spray. I like the pure canola oil spray you can get at Trader Joe's. I think Pam and such tastes like chemicals.

Cut the crust of your white bread. Using a rolling pin gently roll out the bread as thin as you can get it but are still able to pick it up in one piece, generally 3/16" or so. Brush the bread with either melted butter until damp but not soggy. Gently push your bread into your ramekin trying not to break it. Its ok if it rips a bit since we can patch it latter. Take a second piece and prepare it in the same way. Once rolled out and soaked cut it in half. Take one half and wrap it around the top inside of the ramekin to form the top portion of the toast basket use the second piece of your cut bread to line the other half. I'll also post a diagram of this later to help clear up any a confusion. Line the other ramekin in the same manner.

Place your ramekins in the over directly on the rack. Toast until golden brown. Around 10 minutes. Check on them once in a while as your cooking the other elements.

Preheat a medium to large skillet over medium heat.

While your toast is toasting, cut 2 strips of bacon into fine dice (1/8"). Cut the remaining strips in half. Fry up your finely diced bacon until crisp. When done remove with a slotted to spoon to a paper towel lined plate and reserve. Fry up the rest of your bacon strips to your liking. I like mine crispy so this takes a few minutes.

Dice your tomatoes, onion, and garlic while your bacon is crisping.

Once your bacon is done pour off all but 2 table spoons of the fat.

Throw your onions in the skillet and sweat for about 2 minutes. Then throw in your tomatoes and let the whole thing cook down for about 6 minutes. Your basically making an almost dry mixture like a sofrito used in paella. It really concnentrates the flavors when you do this.






Check on your bread baskets. There most likely done.






You need to carefully seperate them from the ramekins. Hopefully you used enough cooking spray that the pop out easily. If not use a small paring knife around the inside edge. You can see mine didnt come out all the great.






Put them back in the oven upside down on a cookie sheet to toast the bottoms a bit more if needed.

While the onions and tomatoes are cooking down separate your egg whites into a large bowl and reserve your yolks for later. Seperate the yolk so you have one each in a small cup,etc. Using a handheld mixer or your powerful forearms beat the egg whites until no longer shiny and fairly stiff. Set the egg whites aside.












Now add your garlic to the pan and finish cooking down. Taste and season to taste with salf pepper and cayene. It's probably on the sweet side from the sugars in the tomato. I like to squeeze half of a lemon in to cut the sweet flavors and a dash of good red wine vinegar if the lemon doesn't cut the sweetness enough.

It should look something like the following picture. You can see how much it reduced down. I like to add the garlic near the end of cooking in to preserve more of the bright flavors.






You can see its reduced down to about a quarter of what it was. It should be chockfull of tasty goodness.

Take the sofrito off of the heat and reserve.

Now its time to assemble this frankenstein creation and do the final bakeoff.

Sprinkle a little of the bacon bits into the bread baskets then top with a bit of the egg white.






Add more bacon and half of the sofrito to each basket (this picture doesnt have the sofrito in it).






Top with the remaining egg white sprinkle a bit more of the crumbled bacon leaving the center clear for the yolk and place in the oven. Place on cookie sheet and bake for about 8 minutes or until the egg whites just start to brown. Remove from the oven make a depression in the top center of the egg white big enough to hold the yolk. Gently slide the yolk into the depression. Place back into the over for a few minutes until the yolk is done to your liking. I put them in for maybe 2 minutes enough to cook the yolk but leave it runny.

Pull out of the oven, set on your plates. Decorate plates with remaining bacon crumbles and strips of bacon and serve. Eat them up yum.

Posted by charlie

at 10:45 AM

2 comments