FNCCC 9 – Mexican Street Corn & Eggs in Baskets

GUEST POST

At the time Xeo had posted the chef for the week, I was trying to figure out what to make for dinner. Fortunately, one of the recipes on the list worked perfectly, and I even had all the ingredients. My mother has a large garden and she’s always pushing veggies my way in the summertime. The corn from her garden became my first recipe Mexican Street Corn.

My son helped me by mixing up the seasoned mayonnaise while I was grilling the corn. I got a grill basket early this spring (Pampered Chef!) and I’m always happy when I can find a recipe that requires it. I will say that I had the grill turned on high heat and the corn took longer than the twelve minutes that the recipe stated. The recipe says “easy” and it really was!

After removing it from the grill, I used a pastry brush to put on the seasoned mayo. Once it was on the corn, it didn’t taste like mayo at all…it tasted more like butter. I ate two, Jordan ate one, and Cady declared that it was “a little too spicy” and she ate one plain without the mayo. A very easy recipe. I didn’t have corn oil, so I used canola. I also substituted a lemon for the lime, since I didn’t have any limes on hand. The lemon juice helped take some of the spiciness away.

When I first saw the list for this chef, I started looking for recipes that have prosciutto…I still had some left over from last week’s chef and I wanted to use it. Sure enough, Eggs in Baskets have prosciutto on top…and that recipe called for exactly the amount I had left.

This recipe is also rated as “easy” but it’s not easy like the corn recipe. When I think of an “easy” recipe, it takes only a little time to prepare, short cooking time, and doesn’t require stirring or watching. I used my food processor to grate the potatoes. I didn’t have “extra large muffin tins” that the recipe called for, so I used regular cupcake pans. The eggs in baskets were probably about half the size they were supposed to be, and the recipe made 12 cupcake-sized ones. I did spray the tins, but as I was pressing the potatoes into them, I was fairly certain that I’d be cleaning a stuck pan later.

I baked the smaller sized potato “baskets” for about 33 minutes. While they were baking, I started cracking eggs for the baskets. The recipe tells you to crack one egg in each basket and bake it again until the yolk is still runny. Eggs with runny yolks gross me out, so I decided I’d crack out 6 eggs, scramble them in a bowl, and pour them into the “baskets,” baking them until they were fully cooked. You can’t crack an egg in this house without having “help.” To crack SIX eggs is pure glee to a 10 year old, so he cracked most of them and didn’t even get shell in the bowl. Glad Cady wasn’t around or there may have been bloodshed over who got to crack the most.

I poured the scrambled eggs into the baskets, filling them almost level full. They did take a little longer to bake (about 11 minutes) but I was pleased that my eggs were well done. Then I topped them with the cheese and put them in to broil.

The prosciutto/maple syrup mix was a bit of a mystery to me. Why bother with the maple syrup? Personally I think bacon would have been just as good, and no maple syrup. The prosciutto took MUCH longer than one minute to get crispy in the broiler. It was more like 3 or 4. I dumped them on top of the egg/cheese/baskets and we had them for breakfast this morning.

Addy ate his right out of the muffin tin. The potato bits stuck in the bottom of the tin, just as I figured they would. After eating one, he moved on to other breakfast foods. I didn’t take this as a good sign. Jordan and Cady both tried one. Jordan liked his but said that it would taste better if the maple syrup wasn’t on there. Cady ate part of one and picked off all the prosciutto. She then asked if she could have what daddy was having. I ate two. They were pretty good, but I agree with the family…the maple syrup added a weird taste to it that I could do without. I asked Addy what he thought, and he said that he thought they were a little too sweet (yet he drinks Dr. Pepper for breakfast). So the verdict is, if you make these, skip the fancy prosciutto, use bacon and leave out the maple syrup. 🙂

I’ve run out of witty things to say about people so I’m just using their avatar picture and putting guest post under it.  Is that enough to signify it as a guest post for everyone?  I don’t want to put it in the title because then the titles get outrageously big.  If you have any other ideas about how I could do it drop me a comment.  Thanks! ❤ Xeo / Wil