Monday, April 07, 2008

baked eggs & meatballs

I got the recipe for "Baked Eggs & Sausage" from a can of diced tomatoes recently... and tried it out today:

Ingredients:
1 lb Italian sausage *
4 cups frozen hash browns, thawed
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
1 cup frozen cut leaf spinach, thawed & drained **
1 can Red Gold diced tomatoes w/ roasted garlic & onion, drained
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
4 eggs ***
0.75 cup milk
Salt & pepper to taste
2 tablespoons shredded parmesan cheese ****

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 375F.
* Skipped the cooking sausage bit, seeing as I substituted it for some fancy already-cooked meatballs; I just cut the meatballs into smaller chunks.
Grease a 13x9 inch baking dish.
In a mixing bowl, combine the hash browns and cheddar cheese.
Use HALF of the potatoes & cheese to cover the bottom of the baking dish.
Layer in the following: diced tomatoes, meatballs, spinach, remaining potato mixture, and mozzarella cheese.
In a medium bowl, beat eggs, add milk, salt and pepper. Pour evenly over potatoes.
Cover with foil and bake for 1 hour.
Uncover, sprinkle with parmesan cheese and bake an additional 15 minutes or until knife insterted in center comes out clean.
Let stand for 5 minutes before serving.

Comments:
* as stated above, I substituted the sausage with a pack (12oz) of aidells chicken & turkey meatballs w/ sundried tomato with parmesan & romano cheese. They are pork free (unlike their sausages which come in pork casings, found out the hard way!) and fully-cooked; whoohooo! I think it came out good.

** this was really a "token" vegetable addition.. next time I'd probably try 1.5 or even 2 cups of spinach, or look to add in other types of veggies. 'shrooms would probably fit too.

*** considering the large surface area of a 13x9 in pan, the eggs seemed too little, especially compared to the potatoes! Maybe next time up the # eggs, reduce potatoes (get rid of the upper layer, perhaps?), or both.

**** yeah right. I just sprinkled liberally from a container of parmesan, that was probably a quarter cup, LoL!

Conclusion:
This dish was more cheesy potato-y than it was ever eggy. Repeatable, but with some amendments, definitely! And next time maybe I'll remember to snap some pix before I cut into it / pack it up, LoL! It certainly felt we were eating out, without the coffee, biscuits, pancakes, or waitress :-)

... and on a slightly related note: Last night we watched "The Family Stone" (ugh!), and coincidentally, the "strata" dish Sarah Jessica Parker's character prepares certainly seems similar to what Kosh and I had for breakfast today.

Yawwwn - happy Monday everyone!

3 comments:

  1. Hi, can I come over for some? Sounds delicious, ha ha.
    Happy cooking and have a nice day, UL.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mmmm....I can almost smell it. ;)

    Have a good week. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Uncle Lee> LoL, glad you can smell it from there :-)

    Kin> Thanx dearie, you too :-)

    ReplyDelete

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