Portabella Egg Caps

Large Portabella caps
eggs
pre-cooked bacon
cheese

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  In a baking dish sprayed with non-stick spray place your Portabella caps, stems removed, top side down.  Crack 1 egg into each cap.  Bake 25 minutes or until Portabella and eggs are done.  Remove from oven and fill cap with cheese and top with pre-cooked bacon.  Bake another 5 minutes.

Comments:  A friend brought over 2 large portabella mushroom caps for me to 'play' with.  The first thing that hit me was stuffed and I decided to go with a breakfast/brunch idea.  I put the caps, top side down, in a baking dish and broke off their caps.  One cap was larger than the other so in the small one I added 1 egg.  In the larger I added 2 eggs.  I baked them at 375 degrees for 10 minutes, checked to see how they were doing and went another 10 minutes.  The smaller one with just one egg was done after about 25 minutes.  It also drained it's liquids into the pan.  The larger one with two eggs took about 35 minutes.  I also had to poke it with a knife to allow its liquids to drain out.  Now for taste.  If you like portabella mushrooms, like I do, you'll love this and the possibilities of changing the taste are endless.  You could use sausage, ham or even pour a little hollandaise sauce over it.  Your baking times may vary depending on the size of the portabella.  This is a dish I'll be playing with for a long time.

Comments from Carol:  The bacon and cheddar give a lot of flavor to this egg bake in the portobella mushroom top.  Their flavors are sufficiently pleasing to the palate and dense to bring out the earthy, yet light, flavor of the mushroom.  The egg is a long time friend of all three ingredients and together they are a treat.  And I mean a TREAT!  This recipe is perfect for breakfast, or brunch...or any time of day.  And easy too.

Breakfast Spaghetti

1 lb. lean sausage
½ cup chopped onions
½ cup chopped bell peppers, red and/or green
1 cup shredded cheese
6 eggs
½ cup sour cream
½ lb. uncooked spaghetti

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Cook spaghetti according to package directions, drain.  While spaghetti is cooking brown sausage in a large frying pan.  When done, drain and transfer from the pan into a large bowl.  Add onions and bell peppers to pan and sauté for about 5 minutes over medium high heat.   Add onions, peppers and cheese to sausage.  Toss to blend.  In a second bowl beat eggs and sour cream until smooth.    Spray an 8 x 8 x 2 baking dish with non-stick spray.  Cover bottom with spaghetti.  Spread sausage mix over spaghetti.  Pour egg mixture over sausage.  Bake 20-25 minutes or until firm in the center.

Comments:  I've made other dishes using spaghetti as the 'crust' so decided to see what I could do with sausage.  This came out a lot like a quiche with the spaghetti giving it a bit of a twist being used as the crust.  This can be done with bacon, cooked and crumbled, or ground beef.  If you used ground beef you might want to top it with sour cream and salsa.  This is a fun recipe to play with as you Think With Your Taste Buds.

Breakfast Pizza

1 lb. sausage
1 med. potato, cut into small cubes
1 T finely chopped onion
1 T finely chopped bell peppers
1 (8 oz.) pkg crescent roll (the kind that isn't separated)
4 eggs
1/2 cup shredded cheese
salt & pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Crumble and brown the sausage. Remove from the pan. Add the potatoes, onions and peppers to the same pan and saute until the potatoes are almost done. You want a little firmness because they will continue cooking while baking. Unroll the crescent and press into a 9 x 13 baking dish sprayed with non-stick spray ,bringing the edges of the crescent up about 1/2" around the sides of the dish. Lightly beat the eggs and pour over the crescent. Add salt pepper. Evenly top with the sausage, potatoes, onions and peppers. Cover with cheese. Bake 20 minutes or until the eggs are set. Serves 6.

When selecting the sausage, I like to get a good brand that is lean and cooks up with very little grease. I also use the hot flavor. The hot flavor tones down when the other ingredients are added. For changes - lean bacon, fried and crumbled. I you use bacon or even sausage that has a lot of grease, pour it out of the pan before you saute the onions and peppers. You don't want them greasy. You could add mushrooms or use ham as your meat. When I served this to my Food Testers I served it with sour cream on the side. Everyone liked the added flavor.

Breakfast Quiche Paprika

1 cup grated cheese
4 strips bacon, cooked and crumbled
3 eggs
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. nutmeg, optional
1 1/4 cups milk
1 tsp. dried minced onions
1/3 cup biscuit mix

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Spray a 9" pie plate with non-stick spray. Sprinkle bottom and sides of pie plate lightly with paprika. Sprinkle cheese on bottom of pie plate. Sprinkle cheese with bacon. In a large bowl combine eggs, salt, nutmeg, milk, onion and biscuit mix. Beat with a mixer on med. speed about 1 minute thoroughly mixing. Pour over cheese and bacon in pie plate. Bake 30-45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Serve hot. Makes 6 servings.

I have a Sunday morning coffee for some of my food testers. I always make a new dish to serve them. Sometimes it's a breakfast dish, sometimes it's some type of bread or cake. I never tell them what they are going to be eating and if I add a secret ingredient such as the nutmeg in this dish I don't tell them but wait on their response. When making this dish I doubled the recipe so there would be enough to go around. The nutmeg couldn't be detected so you may want to increase it to a little over 1/4 tsp. But I must say that this dish was a big hit. The biscuit mix I used was an inexpensive pouch but if you keep the box variety on hand that will work too. Now for changes. Use sausage or ham instead of bacon. As for cheese, change the flavor by using different blends and flavors of cheese such as pepper jack for spice and heat. This would also be good served topped with sour cream and a little salsa.