Rainy, Lazy Sunday: Breakfast in Bed

Winter is rainy season here in San Francisco, and while we’ve been blessed with many absolutely gorgeous days, it has also POURED quite often.  On Sunday I woke up to rainy gloom, and decided it was the perfect kind of day to surprise Earl by treating him to breakfast in bed.

view of the rain from our apartment window

At 7:30 I strapped on the shoes and went for a quick 4-mile recovery jog in Golden Gate Park.  Then when I got back I showered up and got to work.

The Menu

• Baked Eggs served in Herloom Tomatos with Prosciutto and Basil Puree
• Strawberry-Watermelon Smoothies with Ginger Infusion
• Cinnamon-Sugar Toast
• Coffee

Final Product

I found the recipe for the eggs here, and it was fantastic.  Not that hard, either.  I would absolutely recommend it- the tomatos came out sooo juicy and just bursting in flavor- perfectly complimented the eggs.  The entire meal came out stupendously.

Here’s how I made it:

Step 1: dig out the insides of 4 tomatoes, save the “shells,” theses are what you are going to use to house your eggs.  I chopped up the insides and saved them for pasta sauce, which I made for dinner later that night.  Homemade sauce would be the perfect dinner to go with this because you end up with some left over basil puree as well.

scoop out the insides of 4 tomatoes

One thing the recipe for the eggs kept mentioning is that it was important to get all of the “juices” out of the tomatoes. I think that’s because they would mess up the eggs when they were baking. So it has you blot them with paper towels and also drain them upside down while preparing the basil rub.

drying out the tomato shells

Step 2: make the basil puree. add fresh basil, olive oil, salt and pepper. The recipe called for it to be smashed in a mortar and pestle, although I don’t have one so I just used my trusty magic bullet blender, in “chop” mode

basil puree- fresh basil, olive oil, salt and pepper

basil puree- this smelled soooo good

Starting the smoothies: I used half a watermellon in each and then about four strawberries. I also threw in an infusion of fresh chopped ginger and a pinch of sugar which I made in the blender.

smoothie ingredients

step 3: wrap the tomato shells in prosciutto. secure with toothpicks, smear inside with basil puree

tomato wrapped in prosciutto, inside rubbed with basil smash

Good thing I have my trusty prosciutto-taster on hand

what ho? why, prosciutto? but of course, it would be my pleasure to taste it for you!

I find this proscuitto playful. I adore the way the sublime meaty flavors balance the simplicity of the remarkable handling of salt.

It should be added that the tonal suggestions of the proscuitto relationship with the salt bring within the realm of discourse the eloquence of these pieces!

Step 4: pop the tomatoes in the oven for 10 minutes to start them to roast. @350 degrees

bake @350 for 10 minutes to roast tomatoes

While the tomatoes are baking, prepare cinnamon toast. I used a whole-wheat baguette

whole wheat baguette for cinnamon toast

Prosciutto taster also handily doubles as vacuum; a little more lowbrow than snooty prosciutto taster!

Vrroom, vrroom! bring on the four-legged, automatic vacuum

Step 5: After tomatoes have roasted for 10 minutes, break an egg inside each one, return to oven to bake for 8 minutes

break egg inside each tomato, return to oven to bake for 8 minutes

While the eggs were baking, I finished off the toast with cinnamon-sugar mix and butter, and made some coffee.

Since this was breakfast for Earl, I made sure to use his special MATH mug*! (*this mug was the source of a major “fight” between the two of us once- I made the mistake of using it to store pens and pencils in on his desk… the horror! special math mug must be used for serving beverages, ONLY!! Got that, Greene?) A few of the equations on the math mug are: Newton’s acceleration, Fourier Transform (Earl’s favorite equation), laplace, Euler’s Identity, and the harmonic.

special math mug

Close up of the final result of the egg

egg in herloom tomato wrapped in proscuitto

sleepy mathematician gets woken up with kisses in time for breakfast!

Earl gets served breakfast in bed

Here’s mine when I cut into the egg. Notice that I didn’t have a fancy tray and just ate right on the bed (we only have 1 tray!).

dig in!

1 down, 1 to go… Mmm, mmm. Best breakfast I’ve ever made. The smoothies were awesome, too.

filling and scrumptious

Post-breakfast, we had two four legged friends who joined us to snuggle the day away in bed

these two joined us post-breakfast to laze in bed

After breakfast Earl worked on this

Earl searches for the definition of e

and I worked on this. yes, I still try to get the sunday times even though we’re in SF. It’s a habit I just don’t want to give up. Although the CA version of the Sunday Times is NOT as good as the NYC version of the Sunday times. I miss the freaking Real estate section and the City section. Just because I am all the way out here in CA doesn’t mean I don’t want to read those sections, too!

wouldn't be a proper sunday in bed without the NYT!

*sigh*
Best Sunday Ever.