When you’ve got 20 people showing up at your house for breakfast the morning after hosting a 165-person party the night before, you want to make it all as easy as possible for yourself. Sheet pan eggs are the answer!
I pre-cook everything but the eggs the day before…I caramelized some onions, cooked sausage patties and cut them into small cubes, and wilted a couple of handfuls of spinach…then kept them in the fridge, ready to use. Grating or crumbling some cheese–cheddar or feta–is also a good idea.
2 dozen eggs, scrambled
12 sausage patties, pre-cooked
2 large handfuls of spinach, wilted in a pan with some olive oil
1 large onion, thinly sliced, and sautéed until caramelized in a little olive oil
cheddar cheese or feta, optional
milk or cream, optional
butter
olive oil
The next morning, I get a large bowl out and scramble 2 dozen eggs. A touch of milk or cream is optional. Then I add all the pre-cooked ingredients, stirring well.
The secret to successful sheet pan eggs is to make sure the pan is greased really well. Using a cube of butter, I cover every inch of the sheet pan thoroughly. Then, I pour a small amount of extra virgin olive oil in the pan, and spread that around with my fingers.
Once the pan is nicely greased, I carefully pour the contents of the bowl into the sheet pan and place in a pre-heated 300-degree oven.
Let the sheet pan eggs bake at this temperature, resisting to hurry the process by cranking the heat up. Higher temperatures will burn the bottom before the top is properly cooked. Eventually, you’ll see the bottom of the pan solidify while the top is still a bit runny. Be patient! When the top is cooked to your liking, remove it from the oven and let it cool for at least 5 minutes before slicing it into squares.
To serve, either go the sandwich route by toasting some fresh slider buns. Or simply serve a square on a plate, garnishing as you like, a little Tabasco on the side.
I drove over 1000 miles on my trip through Portugal, and one of my stops was the town of Aveiro, just south of Porto. The tourism marketers call Aveiro the “Venice of Portugal.” I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration. Sure, they’ve got a couple of canals, and some gondolas, but they’re surrounded by shopping malls and restaurants. A bit cheesy. But it was a fun town to visit, with a Michelin-listed restaurant called Salpoente, where I had a wonderful dining experience.
I stayed at the Turim Aveiro Palace Hotel, centrally located, with convenient parking right across the street at the underground lot of the shopping mall. (Parking is always a challenge in Portugal.)
I had a delicious salt cod lunch in Aveiro. Gotta have at least one salt cod meal while in Portugal, right? After all, that’s what they’re famous for.
Well, it would surprise most people to know that NONE of the cod served comes from waters around Portugal. The country imports ALL of its cod from Norway, Iceland and other cold water countries.
Salt cod with a corn meal and chourico crust
Dinner at Salpoente was wonderful…
Beef tartare tacoSmoked eel with a hazelnut sauceLambDessert
When my daughter hangs out with me, I always ask her what she wants me to cook for her, and there are a few “Dad” recipes that are her favorites. This is one of them, especially when fresh asparagus is available. And as any parent will tell you, if your kid is craving a dish that has vegetables in it, count yourself lucky–and make it!!
Prepping asparagus is easy, and you don’t need a knife to cut off the woody bottoms of the stalks. Simply bend the stalks at the bottom and they will naturally snap off at the right point.
4 mild Italian sausages, sliced into pieces 1/2″ thick 1 lb. penne pasta 1/2 onion, finely chopped 1 cup chopped fresh trumpet mushrooms (white button mushrooms work, too), optional 2 cups fresh asparagus, sliced into 1-inch pieces 1 clove garlic, passed through a garlic press 1 cup homemade chicken broth 6 fresh sage leaves, finely chopped 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese extra virgin olive oil salt and pepper
Have the pasta water salted and boiling, and add the pasta, cooking until just a bit more undercooked than al dente.
Heat a large pan, and drizzle in some olive oil. Sauté the sausage pieces until browned and cooked through, but not overcooked. Remove the sausages from the pan and place them in a separate bowl. Remove all but 2 tablespoons of the fat left behind in the pan.
Place the pan back on stove and sauté the onion until translucent. Add the garlic, and sauté for 10 seconds. Add the sage, and saute for 10 seconds, stirring. Add the chopped mushrooms and saute for a few minutes, then add the chicken broth, and simmer until almost all the liquid has evaporated. Pour the contents of the pan into the bowl with the sausages.
Return the pan to the stove, add a little more olive oil, and on medium heat, sauté the asparagus pieces. Cook them until they are al dente, not too soft. Once the asparagus has reached this stage, return all the contents of the sausage/mushroom bowl to the pan to heat through. Drain the pasta, and add it to the pan as well, combining all the ingredients. If it looks too dry, add a little pasta water to the pan. Season with salt and pepper.
Make sure you serve this hot, with grated Parmigiano Reggiano on top, and drizzle lightly over the top with extra virgin olive oil.
I spent my first two nights of my vacation in Porto, Portugal, driving up from the airport in Lisbon along the West Coast, fortifying myself with double espressos, as I had been on the overnight flight from Boston just a few hours earlier.
The streets of Porto were extremely busy, partly due to the regular traffic there, and partly due to the fact that there’s an awful lot of construction going on in that city. I was told that they were putting in new subway lines, and the construction had been going on since Covid. It made getting to my hotel a bit difficult, but once I was there and the valet took my car away, it was nothing but comfort.
Nice to not only have a beautiful room to crash in at the end of the day, but a great bar for that last drink of the night. Breakfast the next day was at the hotel and in typical European style, it was an excellent buffet with many choices.
I was surprised to find that Portugal has a wonderful selection of gins. I tried several of them on my trip.Breakfast
When I travel, I do like to go off the beaten path and eat like a local. But I’ve also got a nerdy American tourist side to me, and I try to go to every Hard Rock Cafe I can find on my journeys. Portugal has two of them: one in Porto, and one in Lisbon.
My rule for visiting Hard Rock Cafes is simple: have a drink at the bar, then get the shot glass. My trip to Portugal brought my total up to 24!
Hard Rock Cafe in PortoThat’s an actual car hanging from the ceiling at the Hard Rock Cafe in Lisbon.
The Hard Rock Cafes I’ve been to, as far as I can remember: New York (the original on W 57th St. and the current in Times Square), Boston (now closed), Philadelphia, Washington DC, Chicago, Phoenix (now closed), Orlando, Miami, Maui, New Orleans, Cabo San Lucas, Cancun, Cayman Islands, St. Thomas (now closed), Bangkok, Paris (now closed), Rome, London (the original), Warsaw, Athens, Porto, and Lisbon.
My second night’s dinner, after my day-long tour of the Douro Valley, did not disappoint!
Elemento is a live-fire restaurant, just a stone’s throw from the Hard Rock Cafe in Porto, and it was fun to sit at the bar where you could watch all the chefs work to create some very unique dishes.
A series of starters for the tasting menu. They bring you a wooden box with all the utensils you’ll need throughout your meal.A beautiful piece of beef after a couple of seafood dishes. And it was hiding an ingredient I haven’t seen in a long time…Crosnes! (Also known as Chinese artichokes.) Found mostly in Asian and French cooking, my first taste of them was at a high-end French restaurant in Quebec City many years ago. They look like little caterpillars, but it’s a root veg that is really tasty and crunchy. (A relative of mint.) I grew some in my garden for several years. You don’t see them in the US very often. Two desserts, because one’s never enough!
No matter where you drive in Portugal, you’ll see grapevines and olive trees. But the Douro Valley is special, and I wanted to really enjoy it all: the food, the wine, the scenery—without any hassles. So I signed up for an all-day tour. Our guide knew all the back roads, had tons of great information, and took our small group around in a comfortable van, allowing us not only to enjoy the incredible UNESCO heritage site scenery, but also drink some great wine from small family vineyards without worrying about driving. And I made a few new friends along the way.
Our first sip of Vinho Verde was at this wonderful tavern in Amarante.A boat trip on the Douro River made this scenery look even more spectacular.
It was great to experience the roads of the Douro Valley without having to drive! I highly recommend signing up with one of the many tours, but pay a little extra and go with the small vans that hold a maximum of eight or 10 people. It’s a much better experience, and you just might make a few friends along the way.
I moved to my current home in the fall of last year. One of the toughest things to say goodbye to in my previous garden was my asparagus patch. Over the years, I had grown loads and loads of delicious asparagus, but sadly, there was no good way to transport that patch to my new place.
I’ve got a much smaller garden space at my current home, a small space that gets full sun, and despite its limited size, asparagus is too important of a crop to leave out. So I bought a bunch of plants this spring, and planted them. And now I have to wait. They say you’re not supposed to harvest asparagus for at least a couple of years to let the new bed establish, but I found that pretty much impossible to do…I have to have at least a bit of a taste.
Hoping to get some spears next season!
In the meantime, I can only look back at my previous success with asparagus…
The home garden is already showing signs of activity. Overwintered dill and arugula seeds are sprouting. And cool weather seeds that I’ve sown early: peas, turnips, radishes, and others are doing the same.
Asparagus is really easy to grow. You just need the space, and the plants practically do the rest.
Space them about a foot apart, and before you know it, you will have a vast network of tasty stalks sprouting through the soil every spring. They are so much better than anything you can buy in a supermarket.
In the start of the growing season, the stalks don’t even make it into the house. I cut them and just eat them straight out of the garden. Eventually, they make the move to the kitchen, where I love to simply place them on a baking sheet and drizzle a little olive oil over them. Salt and pepper…and then in a 400-degree oven until they’ve caramelized.
Sometimes I toss some tasty chives with blossom buds on top of the asparagus and roast.
In the past, I’ve had I so much asparagus that I just didn’t know what to do with them all. So I started pickling them…a really easy process that ensured I had delicious asparagus well into the summer.
Several bunches of asparagus spears
2 cups white vinegar
1 cup cider vinegar
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 cups water
20 peppercorns
Garlic cloves, peeled
Kosher salt (1 teaspoon per quart-sized Mason jar. Use less for smaller jars.)
Bring the vinegar, water, sugar and peppercorns to a boil. Set the pan aside.
Trim the bottom of the asparagus spears so that the spears are just slightly shorter than the height of the quart-sized Mason jar you will use. Or cut them into pieces that will fit smaller jars.
Pack the jars as tightly as you can with the asparagus spears. (They will shrink when processed.) Add the garlic clove and 1 teaspoon of salt to every quart-sized Mason jar…less for smaller jars.
Fill the jars with the vinegar mixture and seal them tightly.
Process the jars for 10 minutes. Let them cool before placing them in the refrigerator. If you know you’re going to eat all the asparagus in the next week, processing isn’t really necessary.
DOES YOUR PEE SMELL FUNNY WHEN YOU EAT ASPARAGUS?
Asparagus has a sulfur-containing compound identified by scientists as methyl mercaptan. A colorless gas, this compound is also found in blood, feces, garlic, eggs, cheese and even skunk secretions. Another ingredient found in asparagus is asparagine. Present in foods like dairy products, seafood, poultry, fish and nuts, this amino acid is known to have a distinctive smell when heated. To metabolize both methyl mercaptan and asparagine, your body needs to break these compounds down and it’s this breakdown that’s responsible for your urine’s strange smell.
Since both methyl mercaptan and asparagine are associated with the sense of smell, there is debate over which ingredient is actually responsible for the asparagus-urine phenomenon. It could be one, or both.
Many people claim that, regardless of asparagus consumption, their urine does not smell. There are multiple theories about that as well. The first claims that everyone’s urine is in fact affected by asparagus, but only about half of the population have the specific gene that is required to smell the change. On the other hand, the second theory states that only half of the world’s population has the gene that’s required to break down the compounds found in asparagus and, if the body doesn’t break them down, no smell is emitted. In fact, one study published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology found that only 46 percent of British people tested produced the odor while 100 percent of French people tested did. So whatever the reason, asparagus will forever be known as the vegetable that makes your urine smell strange.
I’m back from my trip already! I guess I had such a great time, that I didn’t get a chance to post more photos! My first night in Porto, I had dinner at a wonderful steak restaurant called Cumplice Steakhouse and Bar, just a short walk from my Intercontinental hotel, and just a few blocks away from the Mercado do Bolhão.
What I was about to realize was that the food and the people everywhere in Portugal, are wonderful. Although I spent almost a year on Duolingo, trying to learn some basic Portuguese, they easily spot an American tourist from a mile away and most know the English language. So I never felt completely lost.
NegroniBeef tartareA perfect steakSide roasted vegDessert with port wineAnd a little more port wine!A bit jetlagged, but happy.
Porto is the first stop on my trip, and I always try to visit the old market in town. Mercado do Bolhão did not disappoint!
Yep, these are what they look like. Traditional to inspire fertility. Or so I am told. You can find them in many places in Portugal. They come as a pastry or more like a cookie.
Live the Live ™ 