A Relaxed After-Christmas or After-New Year’s Breakfast Brunch Egg Cake with Bacon Yorkshire Pudding
For a relaxed late breakfast or brunch in the days after Christmas, you can whip up a wonderful egg cake (not a frittata) that makes great use of your holiday leftovers. I like to sauté lots of onion and garlic with bacon lardons, which are little slivers of bacon. First, you want to render the bacon, heating it in a pan; when the fat is melted, remove the bacon. Then add your sliced onions and garlic to the pan and really get those caramelized. Add the bacon back and then take all your Christmas leftovers--bits of turkey, ham, or roast, and potatoes--and mix them together with your bacon, onion, and garlic base in a large pan. (A 5-quart sauté pan, about 12 inches in diameter, will work well.) Fill the pot up with your mixture and then crack 12 eggs on top of it. Season it with salt and pepper, and bake it in the oven until the eggs are the consistency you prefer. I bake it until the eggs are just opaque on top, and still runny on the inside, like a sunny-side-up egg. Serve it with bread. I’ve made this often, and guests love it.
This cake works well for any holiday; it’s basically bacon and eggs with the flavor of the holiday. So if it’s after Christmas Eve, for me that means a lot of Christmas Eve fish, lobster, and shrimp leftovers. There’s crab, too, that is terrific in this mixture. If it’s New Year’s Eve, maybe it’s scraps of roast beef or Yorkshire pudding. It’s a great day-after-any-holiday meal.
Rocco’s Yorkshire Pudding
From Rocco Gets Real
Traditional Yorkshire pudding is cooked in the beef fat that drips off a roast. These are cooked, popover style, in a popover or muffin pan.
Ingredients:
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons salt
4 cups milk
8 large eggs
Nonstick cooking spray
2-1/3 cups shredded cheddar cheese, about 10 ounces
Directions:
1. Place a 1/2-cup popover pan or standard-size muffin tin in the oven. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Place the flour and salt in a fine-mesh sieve and sift it onto a piece of wax paper.
3. In a small saucepan, heat the milk over medium heat until small bubbles appear around the edges.
4. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs until frothy. Slowly whisk hot milk into the eggs, being careful not to cook the eggs; set aside.
5. Gradually whisk the dry ingredients into the egg mixture, stirring until almost smooth (a few lumps are fine).
6. Remove the hot popover pan from the oven; spray the cups with nonstick cooking spray. While the pan is still slightly warm or at room temperature, fill each cup at least 3/4 full.* Top each pudding with some of the grated cheese. Place pan on a baking sheet to catch any drips.
7. Bake puddings for 15 minutes. Rotate the pan 180 degrees so that the puddings will rise evenly. Bake until puddings are golden brown, about another 35 minutes.
8. Invert the pan to remove the puddings and serve immediately. (Puddings can also be made up to 2 hours in advance. Prick them a few times with a fork to keep them from deflating, and then cool on a wire rack. Reheat in a 250 degrees F oven for 5 to 6 minutes just before serving.)
*Note: Depending on how many pans you have, you’ll have to repeat the filling/baking process the number of times it takes to use all the batter.
Makes 24 servings
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