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Another Valentine’s Day post because I happen to love Valentine’s Day AND because it provides a good excuse to drink Champagne, eat chocolate, and linger over indulgent meals.

With Valentine’s Day falling on a Monday, it is the perfect time to celebrate twice, once with a leisurely Sunday brunch for your Valentine and again on Monday.

smoked salmon omelet ingredients

You know a meal is good when you think about it for years. The day after I ran the Bermuda International Marathon in January 2004, I had one of the most memorable omelets that I have ever had at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess. I loved everything about the hotel, especially its beautiful waterfront location and the fact that it is PINK, but the post-marathon omelet sealed the deal.

This omelet had flecks of salty smoked salmon peeking out behind ribbons of melted brie all whipped into fluffy, airy eggs. It was the memory of this omelet that inspired my breakfast the other morning, and it is a recipe that could easily wow your beloved this Sunday morning for brunch.

I started with a few pieces of smoked salmon, chopping it into tiny bits. To the salmon I added some grated Kerrygold cheese left over from the bread I made the other day.

smoked salmon and cheddar

For my own omelet, I used only two eggs, but the recipe is easily doubled or quadrupled for brunch for several people. You can, of course also just use the whites for a lower fat omelet. I like the nutrition that comes from the yolks, so I left them in Smile

omelet ingredients

To the eggs, which I had whipped with a ball whisk, I added the salmon and cheese, about 1/8 up of skim milk, and a small pat of butter, chopped up into pieces. I heated up a tiny bit more butter in my smallest frying pan; I find it easiest to make a pretty-looking and fully cooked omelet in a smaller pan. When the butter was melted and the pan very hot, I poured the egg mixture in, cranked the heat up as high as it would go, and waited until the top of the omelet started bubbling, then solidified.

smoked salmon omelet

To get the omelet out of the pan, I placed a plate over the top of the pan, then held on to the plate and the handle of the pan while flipping the pan over. A piece of the omelet stuck in the pan, but otherwise, it came out without breaking! And I was able to fold it over to showcase the golden brown side. Fancy, isn’t it?! Smile I was kind of excited about how nice my meal was. I added a few scoops of homemade salsa which consisted of Muir Glen fire roasted tomatoes, a bit of red onion, two jalapenos, three cloves of garlic, and a little bit of olive oil.

omelet

The combination was excellent, filling, and healthy. Interested in making this for a special Sunday brunch? If I was making a Valentine’s brunch for my husband (which I won’t be doing because I am going away and he is working alllllll weekend), I would pair this with some oven roasted potatoes, maybe something sweet like mini cinnamon rolls, and of course a glass of bubbly, maybe a Billecart Salmon Brut Rose? Then, I would take my time eating, drinking, and relaxing for the rest of the day!

Do you have a really memorable meal that has been on your mind for years like the omelet I had in Bermuda?

Tags: breakfast, brunch, brunch at home, cheddar, eggs, healthy, omelet, omelets, protein, recipe, recipes, salsa, smoked salmon

Heart healthy and nutrient rich yes, a favorite of meat and potatoes eating men? Not always. Broccoli is one of those vegetables that people love or hate. Just like other greens and Brussels sprouts (which you know I love love love!), broccoli can, I firmly believe, be dressed up to make people like it. The broccoli dish I made a few nights ago is so delicious I would dare to say it is even fancy and fun enough for a special Valentine’s Day meal at home.

broccoli

I started with a whole bag of broccoli florets, cutting the larger ones so that the florets were all uniform in size. I also roughly chopped a bit of red onion, about 1/2 cup. The onions went straight into a sizzling frying pan, coated well with olive oil, and they cooked until softened, just a couple of minutes. I then added in the broccoli, gave it a stir, and let it go.

red onions and broccoli

While the onions and broccoli were cooking, I chopped three slices of prosciutto that were left over from the chicken saltimbocca I made on Sunday.

prosciutto

To cook the prosciutto, I pushed the broccoli and onions to one side of the pan and put the prosciutto into a little bit of oil. After another couple of minutes, I mixed the prosciutto in with the broccoli, cooked the whole mixture for a few more minutes, and served.

broccoli and onions

Excuse the appearance of this dinner. It was a late night for the hubby, and this was all I could muster feeling sore and tired from my long run. He loved it though!

broccoli and chicken

The prosciutto provides some really nice salty flavors, and broccoli, when cooked just long enough, actually can have a little bit of a melt-in-your-mouth quality to it. This is probably not THE healthiest way to eat your veggies, but it is a great way to sneak something green into a menu without sacrificing flavor.

I still have not come up with a Valentine’s Day menu, but I am beyond excited about Valentine’s Day. I’ll definitely be spending some time this weekend looking through blogs and magazines for ideas for a special menu!

Do you have any hints for getting veggie haters to eat their vegetables?

Tags: broccoli, Food, prosciutto, recipe, recipes, side dish, vegetables

As I mentioned earlier in the week, one of the things I love about visiting Ireland is the discovery of new shows. Between Ireland and the UK, they have some pretty good and some delightfully bad shows. One quality discovery I made while visiting was Catherine’s Italian Kitchen

Catherine’s Italian Kitchen features Catherine Fulvio, an Irish native with a Sicilian husband, and the show is filmed between Ireland and Sicily making for some gorgeous scenery as well as some great recipes. Catherine is a graduate of Darina Allen’s Ballymaloe Cookery School, a place I will take cooking classes at some point in my life.

After seeing the show on television while in Ireland, I was delighted to find an episode being shown on the entertainment system on our Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Boston.

In the episode I saw, Catherine made a pork saltimbocca, wrapping pork fillets with prosciutto and quickly pan frying them for a flavorful main course. 

prosciutto

Saltimbocca literally means “jumps in the mouth”, and the simple flavors in this dish definitely do excite the palate. I decided this weekend that I would make a quick variation on Catherine’s saltimbocca using chicken instead of pork. I started by dividing two chicken breasts in half and cleaning off the icky parts.

chicken breast

Then I placed the chicken between two cutting boards (only used for chicken, then rinsed and put in the dishwasher!) and pounded them down with my fists until they were very thin.

chicken breast

The thin fillets mean that the cooking time is minimal. Once the chicken was thin enough, I wrapped each piece with a layer of prosciutto so that the entire half of a chicken breast was in contact with it.

chicken saltimbocca

I heated a mix of butter and olive oil in a skillet then gently placed the chicken pieces in.

chicken saltimbocca

For most of the chicken pieces, a few minutes on either side was just enough to make sure they were done. This guy up front was a little thicker, so I ended up placing the pan into the oven for a few minutes to cook through, and we ate the done chicken first.

chicken saltimbocca

I served the chicken with a top secret recipe that I tested for a cookbook that is not yet released. A post on recipe testing will be up later today!

My chicken did not turn out as pretty as Catherine’s pork saltimbocca did, but it was certainly an enjoyable dinner and something I would make again in a heartbeat. Chicken can get kind of dull, and the prosciutto was just the thing to jazz it up!

What was the last cooking show inspired meal you made? Do you have any fun ways of making chicken to make this common protein a little more exciting?

Tags: chicken, chicken saltimbocca, cooking show, dinner, Food, green beans, recipe, vegetables

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