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Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

Buttermilk Challah French Toast

March 30, 2017 by Mary 7 Comments

Buttermilk Challah French Toast on an antique white platter with powdered sugar and 3 cups of coffee.I love French toast! It’s even better than pancakes for me. Did you know that this past Saturday was National Waffle Day? Me neither, until our totally on-the-ball, wonderful marketing associate, Abby, at MARY’s secret ingredients pointed it out, and that made me think of making French Toast too. But then I thought, how could I make French Toast even better? And I came up with this Buttermilk Challah French Toast recipe – and it was totally yummy!!

It’s less sweet. It sort of tastes like French Toast coated with crème fraiche. It’s a subtle sophisticated difference, but I really liked it. And it’s a whole lot better for you too as buttermilk is considerably lower in calories and fat content but high in calcium, Vitamin B12 and potassium as compared to regular milk. One cup of buttermilk may contain up to 99 calories while milk may contain up to 157 calories. Also, one cup of buttermilk typically has 2.2 grams of fat while the same amount of milk gives you 9 grams of fat. So there!

What makes your French Toast work?

I remember once being on location for a catalog and advertising photo shoot for several days and our crew of five folks spent three days together shooting slippers. Yes, slippers, for Dearfoams, and at one breakfast at the local diner, they had French Toast, but no powdered sugar in the kitchen. Bradley, the photographer looked at me and said, “So you need that to make it work for you?”

I thought that was such a funny yet very true way to put it.

And yes, I do need confectioner’s sugar with a tiny bit a melted butter, to make my French Toast work for me. Ever since I started eating leftover dinners, sliced turkey or only eggs for breakfast, as I need a lot of protein, I rarely make these sweet things. So it’s a good thing we had the sugar on hand, while my husband prefers maple syrup.

Here you go with this super simple recipe. Since there were only two of us, after I made it on Saturday and used just half of the batter, I covered the pie plate with Saran wrap and refrigerated it. The next morning on Sunday, I took the batter out and let it warm up at room temperature for about 20 minutes and then started soaking bread slices again to make a fresh batch of Buttermilk Challah French Toast. This was a way cool, super fast breakfast the second time around. And, it was just as good!!

Make with LOVE.

BUTTERMILK CHALLAH FRENCH TOAST – serves 4

1 loaf of challah bread
4 eggs, beaten
1 cup of real buttermilk (I use Kate’s)
Pinch of French grey or Kosher salt
1 Tbs. vanilla extract
¾ tsp. ground cinnamon
1 Tbs. unsalted butter

Slice the challah into generous ½” slices. Lightly beat eggs in a Pyrex pie plate. Add buttermilk, salt, vanilla and cinnamon and whisk to combine thoroughly. 

Soak the bread slices in the egg buttermilk mixture, turning over several times to coat thoroughly.

Heat the butter in a large skillet until sizzling. Add dipped bread slices. Brown on each side for 2 – 3 minutes on medium-high heat. Watch it so it doesn’t brown too quickly because the inside needs to cook as well. You may need to add more butter to the skillet.

Serve with pure warmed maple syrup or a tiny swish of butter and powdered sugar.

Filed Under: Breakfast, Brunch, Food Responsibility Tagged With: buttermilk, buttermilk challah French toast, challah bread, challah French toast, French toast

End of season tomatoes

September 30, 2012 by Mary Frances Leave a Comment

Fresh green tomatoes on a white plate.

This is a big travel time for us – Vermont this past weekend, Vancouver for the next two weekends on business, and then a huge wedding at the Mandarin Oriental in Manhattan after that. We won’t be back at our country house for a month so I had to pick all the remaining tomatoes last weekend.

But, the good news is, we love Fried Green Tomatoes!! (great movie too – Kathy Bates and Jessica Tandy are stellar!) I like to slice them about 1/4” thick, soak them in buttermilk for at least 20 minutes and then coat in very fine cornmeal (I use Goya) seasoned with salt and pepper, sauté in very hot olive oil and you are in for a very fine treat!! Since I rarely fry breaded things, it is a real treat for us!

I just read an article in the dining section of The New York Times about buttermilk and apparently Kate’s Real Buttermilk is the real deal, so try to find that or some other organic whole buttermilk instead of skim.

Filed Under: Sides, Vegetables Tagged With: buttermilk, dining section, end of season tomatoes, fine cornmeal, fried green tomatoes, Goya cornmeal, green tomatoes, Kate's Real Buttermilk, The New York Times

An early summer delight!

June 29, 2012 by Mary Frances 1 Comment

Soft shell crabs on a white plate.
It’s the season for soft shell crabs, a personal favorite of mine. After a true Seinfeld episode with Felix from the fish store calling numerous times and yelling at me, I finally got my order delivered. I have to say, it was worth the abuse.

What I did was so stupid simple and so very good, my husband is still talking about them today. That’s the sign of a really good meal – the memorable factor!

Here’s what I did.

SOFT SHELL CRABS
– serves 2

4 cleaned, washed and dried soft shell crabs
Organic buttermilk to cover the crabs
2 tbs. canola oil
1.5 tbs. unsalted butter
Flour to lightly dredge in on a flat plate
Fresh snipped chives to garnish
Lemon wedges

Have your fishmonger clean your crabs before you bring them home. (Put up with the abuse.) Place crabs in a narrow deep bowl to stack them and cover with buttermilk and let them sit for 15-25minutes, turning them once in the middle of the time. Heat the oil until very hot and add the butter. When the butter foam subsides, lift a crab out to drain the buttermilk and dredge lightly in the flour to cover and place in the hot pan. Once all the crabs are in, place a heavier, preferable cast iron skillet, on top of them to weight them down and cook for 3 minutes. Remove the top skillet and turn the crabs over and cook for another 3 minutes, no weight on top this time.

Lift them from the pan, sprinkle chopped chives on top and serve with fresh lemon wedges.

Delish!!! (Notice they didn’t even need any salt or pepper – I think the organic buttermilk was important and of course the quality of the crabs.)

Filed Under: Dinner, Fish Tagged With: butter, buttermilk, chives, Felix, fish monger, Jerry Seinfeld, sauteed soft shell crabs, Seinfeld, Soft shell crabs

Happy Sunday!

January 29, 2012 by Mary Frances 2 Comments

Waffles and blueberries on a white plate.

Okay, so I made these waffles this morning (my husband was pining for them) and they look pretty good – but didn’t taste great. So I won’t share the recipe with you. I don’t know what was wrong but let me work on this recipe before I give it to you. One thing they suggested was to do this sweetened sour cream – with brown sugar and ginger with sweetened strawberries AND the maple syrup. Well I think that would have put me in a sugar coma …. and I didn’t have strawberries. But I did have blueberries and I did have the buttermilk for the batter and I did have the sour cream. I always feel so cool when I find a new recipe I want to make and I actually have most of the ingredients!

Back to the sugar – so for this, I just put a dollop of plain sour cream with some slightly sweetened blueberries and it was really really good as a topping. Now I just need to work on that base waffle!

Filed Under: Breakfast Tagged With: blueberries, buttermilk, maple syrup, sour cream, Sunday morning, waffles

Weeknight entertaining chicken

September 21, 2011 by Mary Frances Leave a Comment

Buttermilk roasted chicken on a white platter.This is my son Zach’s favorite chicken. We make this over and over as you can get two recipes out of a quart of buttermilk and what else are you going to use that for? And buttermilk lasts a long time so you can do it 3 weeks apart. It is a take on a Nigella Lawson recipe as I have fiddled and changed it. Great for weeknight entertaining as you do the most work two days ahead of time. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do – and it’s super easy – with an easy clean-up to boot!

BUTTERMILK ROAST CHICKEN – serves 4
1 3.5-pound chicken
2 cups buttermilk
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
6 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon crushed black peppercorns, or 1 1/2 tsp. coarse ground pepper
1 tablespoon coarse sea salt
2 heaping tablespoons fresh rosemary leaves, roughly chopped
10 juniper berries, smashed
1 tablespoons honey

Butterfly chicken by placing breast side down and using heavy-duty kitchen or poultry shears to cut along both sides of backbone. Discard backbone, turn chicken over and press gently on the breastbone to flatten.

Place chicken in a large freezer bag. Add buttermilk, 1/4 cup oil, garlic, peppercorns, salt, rosemary, juniper berries and honey. Seal bag securely, massage all ingredients together and refrigerate for two days. Turn over and massage more during the two days, when you think about it.

Take chicken out of the refrigerator 30 – 45 minutes before roasting. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Line a roasting pan with foil and use a rack. Remove chicken from marinade and place on a rack in the roasting pan. Drizzle with remaining 2 tablespoons oil. Roast for 40 minutes, then reduce heat to 325 degrees. Continue roasting until well browned and your meat thermometer measures 155 – 160 degrees in thigh meat, about another 10 -15 minutes.

Remove chicken to a platter or carving board and allow to rest for at least 10 minutes before cutting into serving pieces.

Filed Under: Dinner, Poultry Tagged With: buttermilk, chicken, entertaining, marinade, roast, rosemary

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