Weeknight Cooking: The New Egg Bake

The fine art of the artless egg bake is fast becoming an easy way to cook not only a breakfast or brunch but for any weeknight cooking.  Having the new so called list of super foods in the pantry or refrigerator is a great help and best start.  Simple, high protein, low gluten foods, such as quinoa or bean based foods, nuts and berries, or even unprocessed meats, especially fish are all the raw materials you need.  We had a pre-made container of quinoa and cranberry nut mixture, some lunch meat turkey,

cheese and plenty of eggs on hand.  How to turn these ingredients into an easy and simplified meal that looks good but is quite filling and good for you?  Whip up ten eggs with milk, fold in chopped turkey so that it free floats in the mixture, then, as that settles gently drop by hand the moist and sweet quinoa mixture over the top; some will settle down to the bottom and some will stay over the surface, giving the bake a nice look from the outside.  I used a relatively small and deep baking dish which presented a few problems of its own in the beginning, but was solvable.  At 350, the eggs begin to quickly cook

around the edges of the baking dish, but the middle stayed almost entirely uncooked.  At this point I turned the oven down to 325 for a slower bake, but the middle still stayed liquid.  Luckily, I had sprayed the sides of the baking dis with oil, so that when I pulled the dish out I was able to totally re-fold and mix the ingredients, scraping down the cooked sides and pulling the middle back out to the sides – the look of the egg bake become rougher and less smooth but within nothing more than another five minutes or so, with the hot and the cool quickly mixing together, the entire egg bake firmed and formed a perfect texture.  What was best about this simple throw together was that the ingredients – not following any pre-set recipe – ended up working very well together.  The light and frothy eggs matched the almost brittle quinoa and the cranberries added sweetness to an obvious otherwise not sweet egg mix.  Touches of turkey added a meat protein and cheese, if desired, would add another layer of flavor and texture.  When all else fails, as long as there are eggs there is a meal.  It's challenging to think of any main food type that wouldn't just toss into dish of eggs.  All veggies; grains; cheeses; virtually all meats; potatoes; rices; pasta?; sauces over the top…the list is endless.