quinn's place

a hearty & shareable breakfast / brunch with tons of zing zang flavor.

this one will “stick to your ribs”….. a phrase my mom used when i was growing up that always made me envision an xray skeleton with scrambled eggs sliding down the rib cage? i was like… “hmmm. interesting & kinda gross, mom. but ok.”

but really - this is as hearty as they come!

you could think of this a sort of “green shakshuka”, but it’s really not that, so i won’t bastardize the identity of shakshuka in this way lol. it may also be a “hash,” but i just don’t think so - so i’ve resorted to giving this recipe a very long descriptive title.

this is meat & taters with a deliciously bright green salsa and baked eggs, topped with a creamy avocado yogurt sauce.

the tomatillo salsa is based off of this avocado tomatillo salsa recipe but i skipped the tomatillo roasting step here - which makes this way easy. just throw all the salsa ingredients in the food processor, and it is done!

the color gets muted in the beef & potato mixture, but it sure is a gorgeous green. slather that avocado crema and cilantro on top and you’ve got a bright green visual dream.

this could be made without meat altogether - just simmering the cooked potatoes in the tomatillo salsa and following the remainder of the recipe would turn out scrumptious as well.

the brightness & acidity in the salsa and avocado crema really offset the heaviness of the meat, eggs & potatoes.

^after all the tie dye and bleach die we’ve gotten into over quarantine times in the last year, i regret not making soooo many more tie dyed linens and photo props before we recently ran out of all the dyes. i love how they look in photos (blue/grey linen napkin above)!

however, not a day goes by anymore where at least one, two, three or even four people that dwell within this household is not donning a piece of tie dye or bleach dyed clothing. we went pretty hard in the at-home arts & crafts department in the last year. 😂

and just look at that creamy dreamy avo crema. i used plain greek yogurt, but you could use sour cream or mexican crema as well. i added a touch of honey to it because it was tasting kind of bitter with the lime in there as well.

also - using the food processor or blender for this recipe is not daunting becauuuse you’re going to make 2 sauces separately and NOT have to clean the machine in between. if i saw that a recipe called for washing the food processor two times for the same meal, i’d throw my computer/phone/cookbook out the window.

also also - in the spirit of not hand washing too many dishes, you could cook the potatoes in the same skillet where you’ll cook the beef and set them aside until you need them again. in the interest of sAviNg TiMe, which seems more important to people, i cooked the taters & beef in 2 separate skillets simultaneously.

sidenote - we are getting a teeny tiny dishwasher installed in our teeny tiny kitchen soon, and i can hardly wait to see what i do with all my spare time NOT spent hand washing 6,000 dishes a day.

if you like flavor and cozy hearty breakfasts (or lunch or dinner, really), then you should please try this recipe and be satisfied for many hours!! good byeeeeeeeeeee!

Potato, Beef & Tomatillo Salsa Baked Eggs with Avocado Crema

Serves 2-3

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1 TB vegetable oil
1/2 lb. lean ground beef
2 cups small, quartered creamer potatoes (about 12 small potatoes)
3 eggs
rustic bread or sourdough toast, for serving
Tomatillo Salsa:
6 tomatillos, peeled, cored and quartered
2 garlic cloves
1 TB extra virgin olive oil
1/2 a jalapeño, seeded
1/4 cup cilantro, packed - with stems, plus extra for garnish
1/4 cup chopped white onion
3/4 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
juice of 1 small lime
splash of white vinegar, optional

Avocado Crema:

1 medium avocado
1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
1/4 tsp. kosher salt
juice of 1 small lime
1-2 tsp. honey, optional (if crema is too bitter)

Instructions-

In a large food processor or blender, combine all ingredients for the tomatillo salsa and pulse until very smooth. Taste and season with salt, pepper, and lime juice as necessary.

Heat 1 TB vegetable oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Quarter the potatoes and add to the hot oil with a big pinch of salt. Toss frequently and cook 5 minutes to tenderize. Add about 2 TB water, toss and cook 3 more minutes to steam through. Cook potatoes just until fork tender. Remove from heat and set aside.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. In an oven-safe skillet on the stovetop, break up and cook half a pound of ground beef until crumbled and browned, about 3-5 minutes on medium heat. If the beef is lean, add an additional drizzle of olive oil after browning, if desired.

Add the tomatillo salsa to cooked beef in the oven-safe skillet. No need to wash the food processor or blender - make the avocado crema in the same machine by pulsing ingredients for avocado crema together until very smooth. Add honey to the mixture if the taste is too bitter.

Simmer tomatillo salsa and beef on medium-high to thicken, 5-8 minutes, until just a bit of liquid remains but you can form wells for the eggs in the bottom of the pan. Add the cooked potatoes to the tomatillo beef mixture and toss to incorporate.

Create 3 small wells with a spatula and crack an egg into each well. Transfer skillet to preheated oven and cook the eggs about 7-8 minutes, until egg whites appear set.

Remove from oven and top with avocado crema and torn cilantro. Serve immediately with rustic bread or toast.

file this one under: first-timer food projects!

i had never made handmade pasta before this (i took these photos on my phone in september 2020). it was fun, easy and delicious.

i hauled the pasta to my bestie’s house where we also made handmade gluten-free pasta to conduct a side by side pasta taste test with the best bolognese recipe in the land.

this may be a very unhelpful blog post because i don’t even remember which pasta recipe i used to make this, but that’s not the point. making your own pasta by hand is a little bit of a process, but it is simple and worth it.

flour, eggs, olive oil and salt - that’s the gist of it. i may have used this gal’s recipe for the regular all-purpose flour pasta and her helpful methods.

another thing i learned after this process was about timing and freshness. if you’re going to make handmade pasta (and not freeze it), consume it within 24 hours. i think i had made mine and refrigerated the noodle nests for a couple of days before taking it to my friend’s house, so the noodles oxidized a bit and turned slightly green.

i learned a lot about fresh pasta and pasta storage from reading this article from the pasta evangelists.

i’m a big fan of big fat chewy noodles, so this process was very worth it to me. fresh pasta is one of life’s greatest pleasures, i say.

i discovered this cute shoppe in seattle that makes delicious fresh pasta - la pasta! there is a location in wedgwood, and i just noticed one on queen anne! i once tried their pappardelle noodles, and they were fantastic. i love that option for when you want to make a special pasta meal but don’t necessarily want to make the actual noodles by hand.

pete got me a few kitchenaid pasta rolling attachments for christmas that i’d been yapping about wanting for a while. after our current bathroom/kitchen remodel mayhem is through, believe you me that i am going to make all the pasta messes with those kitchenaid babies.

for the gluten-free pasta, we used the bob’s red mill 1-to-1 gluten-free flour and i believe we added 1 extra egg yolk to the same recipe i’d used to make the regular noodles.

we were super stoked with the final results of the gluten-free noodles! they were definitely more fragíle to handle, but after gently moving them to boiling water for a few minutes and adding the bolognese sauce, they were super scrumptious. we cut them to a pappardelle-like width and they had a nice texture!

you can see how my pasta nests did oxidize and change color over the couple days spent in the fridge - doesn’t mean they were bad, they were just not as “fresh” as they could possibly be. lesson learned.

i could have boiled the regular noodles a couple mintues longer, i think. they turned out a bit too chewy, but i was too nervous about overcooking them to mush (the worst!!).

^ above you can see the regular all-purpose flour noodle nests on the left, and the flat gluten-free noodles on the right.

i think next time i would keep the regular pasta drying flat or hanging straight; twisting them into nests and not flouring them before storage made them clump together unnecessarily, i think.

below are 2 very unattractive photos of each pasta 😂 taken by candlelight with the only parmesan cheese we had on hand, lolz. i would regularly use finely grated or parmesan shards.

this was actually the week of those awful awful wildfires happening on the west coast - we had all planned for this great camping trip, but we were totally smoked in for several days where all there was to do was cook & eat. 😈

^ left: regular/all-purpose (undercooked here, but oh well). ^ right: gluten-free (cooked properly, about 3 minutes in lightly salted high-simmering water).

both were great and andy baraghani’s bolognese is the star player, as usual. my personal takeaway after our taste test was that if you’re having a gluten-free eater over for homemade pasta night, the gluten will really not be missed! i enjoyed the texture and taste of the gluten-free noodles for sure.