roasted vegetables with an egg on top

We were dying for vegetables after our odd weekend in the Tri-Cities, so we loaded up a shopping cart with mushrooms, onion, fennel, beets, carrot and a parsnip and took it all home to roast with olive oil and salt. I separated out the shrooms and fennel to roast together, parboiled the beets and put them in a pan with the carrot, and put the onion and parsnip in a third pan (J is not a big fan of the parsnip). When everything was caramelized and soft I tossed it all together on our plates, and topped the piles with a lovely halibut steak that I had roasted as well. It was all very fresh tasting and delicious, and made us feel that it was nice to be home (sleeping in our own bed helped, too).

So dinner was nice, but I felt the high point was lunch the next day. I was feeling inspired after seeing this post and video on poaching eggs, as well as months of reading the wonderful blog posts on Last Night’s Dinner featuring beautiful poached eggs on top of duck hash or other yummy things. I had been known to poach an egg occasionally, but usually wimped out and ended up frying them (I’m good at frying eggs, at least) and eating them for breakfast on top of leftover greens or couscous.

But I did it! It’s not as pretty as it could be, but it was perfectly done and it tasted wonderful with the roasted parsnip and beets and such, with the yolk dribbling down and mixing with the sweet vegetables juices. With a good sprinkle of fleur de sel, it was a cheery and restorative lunch.

Vegetable quiche

We’ve had a lot of soup recently for our late Monday night dinners, and I had some good gruyere on hand (left over from a wonderful cauliflower gratin I forgot to photograph), so this week I made quiche. Nothing special, just something to use up some leftover vegetables - we had mushrooms left from the risotto the night before, and a couple of red bell peppers withering away in the produce drawer. I followed my usual procedure, after sauteeing the mushrooms and peppers together and adding a handful of frozen chopped spinach. The only seasoning was a bit of salt, a grind of pepper and one pinch of oregano. Actually, I was practically making it in my sleep - I almost forgot to get it out of the oven!

An omelet and a glass of wine (and bread and salad)

I was on my own for dinner last night, a rather unusual event. I like cooking for myself, although I tend to gravitate towards things like noodles or sandwiches, or interestingly reconstituted leftovers. This time I decided to purposely keep things simple and cook myself an omelet for dinner, something I almost never do when we’re both home.

On the way home from work I talked myself into stopping at the co-op to get a small piece of cheese and a baguette to flesh things out, and when I got home I opened a bottle of white wine, a verdejo from the Spanish wine tasting last week. It was lovely with the faint sourdough taste of the bread.