Those of you who know me might be surprised that I was watching the Food Network- I'm not into their "brand" and question some of the "celebrity chefs" they have brought into our midst. I am also unlikely to go to "Hungry Girl," or a show specifically for low-cal cooking, as an authority. I certainly like healthy eating, but when it comes to watching food shows or finding inspiration I like to see a regular recipe and then figure out how to tailor it to meet my particular food sensitivites and health goals. I do use Cookinglight.com to find recipes sometimes, but I mainly rely on it because of it has thousands of recipes that are carefully tested, indexed, and easy to search. With all that said: how did I happen upon this episode? The honest answer is that the elliptical's TV was stuck on the Food Network and it was on. But the waffle taco concept quickly engaged me.
The basic premise is that you take a frozen waffle and roll it out so that it's a bit thinner. Then you drape it on itself in the oven and bake it so that it crisps up into a taco shape. Then Hungry Girl suggests that you stuff it with healthy breakfast fixins like egg whites to make a nutritious breakfast. I thought to myself, "Forget those egg whites... let's make this interesting!"
A few words about the recipe as its given:
1. I suggest that you thaw the waffles for a few minutes so that they're easier to roll out.
2. The recipe calls for you to use an "oven rack" to drape the waffles. I wasn't entirely sure what they meant, but I used cooling racks- like for cookies. I put one on top of a deep roasting pan so that the waffles had room to hang. I draped the waffles upside down between the slots.
3. The waffles may start to rip on the fold where they drape over the cooling rack. Just be aware and don't push them down to tightly.
4. The recipe calls for 5 minutes at 350. I found that was not enough time. For my oven at least, 7-10 minutes was the time required for a perfectly crispy shell.
But ultimately the waffle-as-taco thing worked!!
I wanted to have a lot of stuffing options. I prepared the following items and put them out so that we could create our own tacos with them as we ate: scrambled eggs, crumbled bacon, salsa, cilantro, maple syrup, blackberry syrup, and chipotle ketchup (my special recipe.) My first taco was a "savory" one. I used eggs, crumbled bacon, some cilantro, and maple syrup. It was delicious and my favorite of the morning. The next one was a "garden" taco: eggs, salsa, cilantro. Also yummy, but not as good as the first.
I made hash browns in the oven to go with the meal. That concept is pretty simple: dice a few baking potatoes, throw them on a jelly roll pan with some PAM, sprinkle them with garlic, salt (I use hickory-smoked), pepper, and cook them for about a half hour at 350 or until crispy on top. I serve them with my homemade chipotle ketchup. They're bangin!!! If I hadn't had served them with a spicy sauce, I would have sprinkled them with a little paprika too before they hit the oven.
Also on the table: grapes, strawberries, blackberries, biscotti cookies, and a really crisp light Pinot Blanc from Alsace.
Cooking these days is a slow process that involves me balancing and sitting on a large stool in my kitchen. Sometimes I can bribe someone to help me create a mise en place before they leave me to my own devices, but usually I have to bend and twist to get things out of the frig too. A condiminium kitchen is surprisingly conducive to my situation though; the stove and frig practically touch and the counter is just next to the stove. Here's a picture of me cooking (on a different night) to better illustrate what I mean:
And yes, that's my Top Chef jacket that I've had signed by Tom Colicchio, Marcus Samuelsson, and Angelo Sosa. With Emmalicious embroidered on it. Yes, I'm a dork. And proud of it!
Back to cooking: The biggest obstacle right now is that I can't multitask. I realized a bit late, for example, that I could not prepare the eggs and bacon at the same time. Usually I could have done them each in one skillet on the stovetop simultaneously, but now I always need one hand to balance. Stephanie arrived to pandemonium and chaos as I was realizing scrambled eggs is insanely difficult; whisking and balancing are mortal enemies. But we got everything on the table eventually and with a few microwave zaps everything was at a nice warm temperature for eating.
What would you stuff your breakfast tacos with? Let me know!
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