One of my favorite breakfasts... An open-faced, over easy egg & cheese sandwich with onions on rosemary toast. So good you should probably have wine with it but a good orange juice matches nicely too.
If it's a nice morning and you have a comfortable setting, eat it outside and eat it slowly (because you're not animal and you savor your food).
Once you've made it a couple times, this is a breeze (10 minutes tops). Learn how...
update: this is an award winner on chow.com (for food freaks)... I was ridiculously happy when I found out... like 10-year-old
Ingredients (for one)...
Mis en place (pronounced: meez on plas - put in place... it's french) will help you nail this dish and eat it hot.
1. Get all your ingredients out.
2. Ready a few slices of onion.
3. Ready several slices of cheese.
4. Ready a large slice of bread (about a half inch think). Cut it in half now or after toasting.
5. Ready a nonstick pan or other cooking surface with butter over medium heat. Not too hot here is key for making the dish look a little nicer (eggs that aren't browned with burned butter). If you miss it for the looks, don't worry about it. It'll still be good unless you really go insane on the heat.
6. Throw on the onions and sautee a couple minutes. We're going for a softening not a full carmelizing here. Add a pinch of kosher salt (you don't use table salt any more because it's trash and now you're aware... and with awareness comes responsibility... sorry... a little carried away).
7. Put the bread in the toaster so it's ready for the egg when the time comes (this is an important step for melting the cheese nicely in the end).
8. Move the onions to the side of the pan. With the bread toasting, crack the eggs onto the cooking surface. A little salt and ground pepper (that's what you use now because you're a 212er and you care about the details).
9. Get your plate ready next to the pan (meez, remember?).
10. Once the egg whites have firmed up, flip the eggs (splitting them with your spatula if they've joined together in the pan), and salt and pepper them a little. If you break a yoke in the flip, I'd keep going as too not waste the egg but it won't be as good without the runny over easy texture dripping out and soaking into the bread after you cut it. If you break both yokes, I might still eat it but I'd be very frustrated and it would probably ruin my entire day (maybe even the week).
11. The toast should pop by now. Cut it in half if you didn't do it before toasting it. Put it on the plate and place the thin cheese slices (good cheese, remember... not too sharp though) on the toast. Top it with the onions from the pan.
12. Place the (hopefully) over easy eggs on the pieces of toast and let it sit a minute or so so the hot eggs start melting the cheese.
Sorry. It's really wonderful despite my final food shot here.
Serve with wine juice.
Unfortunately, I've found it's a little challenging making this dish so a crowd can eat it at the same time. A little planning and you might be able to make it for 2 or 3 at the same time (an extra pan... some nice meez).
Also... remember to clean as you go so you have less to do after you eat. It's also the mark of the killer cook (and that you are).
Saturday breakfast is my favorite meal of the week. Every once in a while my oldest son, now 22, will ask me if I'll make breakfast.
I start by cooking potatoes, peeled or not, and some onion in a little olive oil until the potatoes are soft. I'll also add ham, regular or thin sliced sandwich meat, and later, some shredded cheese. After warming the meat and melting the cheese a little, I add scrambled eggs, with a little milk added. I add salt, fresh ground pepper and some cayenne pepper along the way.
I jokingly asked my son if he liked the way I fixed it, or the way my wife fixed it: I got the vote!
Posted by: Bruce | September 02, 2008 at 09:33 PM