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Not that I would turn my nose up to this meal at any time of day, here's a fairly breakfast-y breakfast: an omelet with some fruit on the side. Specifically, Madeline's Omelette with Mustard Croûtons & Beaufort Cheese from The Zuni Café Cookbook The salad is also adapted from the same cookbook - arugula, fennel, toasted almonds and Cara Cara oranges in a sherry vinaigrette.

This is a 2-egg version of the 12-egg 😮 Madeline's Omelette with Mustard Croûtons & Beaufort Cheese from The Zuni Café Cookbook p 174. It's kinda like having your toast INSIDE the omelette instead of on the side! I read all the instructions and they're a bit much with only 2 eggs in a little pan, but it still turned out fine. The recipe doesn't use a lot of cheese - only 1/3 oz for 2 eggs so I chose a tasty one - Trader Joe's Unexpected Cheddar - since a white Cheddar was one of the options. That amount was just perfect. I love cheese but omelettes that are full of heavy, molten cheese can be awfully stodgy. This made for a nice light meal. I had some dressing left over from the salad that I made the other day so I repeated it here with Cara Caras instead of blood oranges.

I hope you have a great experience there and let us know how it is! Here's another 40th anniversary article on Zuni Café, this one from the New York Times: Zuni Café at 40: Still a Home for the Eclectic

As promised, I made Shrimp Cooked in Romesco from The Zuni Café Cookbook p 334. This is a delicious, company-worthy dish. The Romesco sauce is rather time and kitchenware consuming but can, and should, be done ahead. Once that's done, the actual meal prep is very easy. There's a 30 min wait to allow the sauce to meld with the stock and wine. Just enough time to chop and cook the onions, set the table, warm the plates and relax with a glass of the wine you've chosen. The shrimp and spinach then cook in just a minute or two. A modification of this recipe is available online here. I wondered if this should be served with something like rice or orzo. With the bread in the Romesco, I didn't miss a separate starch but after polishing off the shrimp, I did reach for some crusty bread to wipe up all the sauce!

More of that Boiled Kale from yesterday, this time topped with a fried egg - the lovely Fried Egg in Breadcrumbs, also from The Zuni Café Cookbook.

That Chimichurri is on my list! The Romesco that @Anna N recommended is up first!

Today's Zuni Café Cookbook lunch was a salad described in the header notes of the Mixed Lettuces with Mandarins, Hazelnuts and Hazelnut Vinaigrette p 140. Per Judy, "this salad consists of arugula, blood oranges, slivered fennel and toasted almonds, tossed with sherry vinaigrette perfumed with Cointreau." It's simple, delicious and perfect for citrus season. And these cute little Sage Grilled Cheese p 115. I wanted to make little 2-bite sized grilled cheese but when I pulled out the baguette I had in mind, the crumb was full of huge holes that would never have contained the cheese. I had already prepped the sage and black pepper-infused olive oil that's brushed on instead of butter or mayo so I turned to a seeded loaf that was a bit bigger than I had in mind but still worked. I really liked the crunchy-peppery-herby crust on these.

I don't have the Breville but on my oven, I apply a paste of baking soda & water, let it sit overnight, wipe most of it off and finish up with the razor blade scraper if needed.

I'm sure you'll have a wonderful trip! In 2005, I was lucky enough to spend Christmas Day at Martin's Bay Lodge (as part of the Hollyford Track guided walk) and New Year's Eve on the beach at Punakaiki. Such a beautiful place - I'd love to go back. I do think Queenstown is a good base as there are good hikes you can do right from town, lots of restaurants and if you decide on any guided activities, they all pick up in Queenstown. Since my trip was quite a while ago, I don't have any specific recommendations but I'll be following along!

Good grief, I'm following that gorgeous, crusty bread and glistening, succulent beef with Boiled Kale on Toast! From the Zuni Café Cookbook, this is one of the 4 ways this boiled kale is used. The thick slices of bread (I used the Pan de Pueblo from a local bakery that uses some of their own milled corn), rubbed with garlic, float on the boiled kale long enough to soak up some of the pot liquor and are topped with the kale, ribbons of prosciutto, shaved pecorino Romano, black pepper and a drizzle of olive oil.

I've been wanting a tuna sandwich since I saw @Ann_T's post above - it will happen one of these days, even though I can only aspire to bread like that! Today's breakfast was Crostini with Asparagus-Egg Salad & Smoked Trout from Zuni Café Cookbook (which I also posted over in the thread on that cookbook)

With asparagus on hand from the soup I posted about yesterday, I took Judy's suggestion to substitute slivered raw asparagus for fava beans in the Crostini with Fava-Egg Salad & Smoked Trout from Zuni Café Cookbook p 125. This is in the section on crostini ideas and I like the way it's written in a short paragraph, telling you to boil one egg for every three crostini. After that, you mash the warm egg with lemon zest-infused olive oil (p 285 in the book) and thinly sliced asparagus and spread it on crostini (here, made from a whole grain rosemary baguette) and top simply with smoked trout and black pepper. I liked this best with a drop or two of lemon juice squeezed on to the trout, although a couple of capers in the mix would do the same thing. I had this for breakfast but it would have been a perfect accompaniment to turn yesterday's asparagus soup into a meal.

I love Judy's little menu notes in that article!

Inspired by @snowangel's earlier post, I made the Asparagus & Rice Soup with Pancetta & Black Pepper from Zuni Café Cookbook p 166 Quick and easy, the flavors are both rich and fresh. I'd prefer less pancetta - the recipe calls for 3-4 oz for ~ 4 cups of soup. I went with the lower amount but though it was still a bit much. I'll cut back further next time.

My standard 6.5 min egg. Large eggs, direct from the fridge into boiling water for 6.5 min, then ice water til cool enough to peel. The nice orange yolks are courtesy of my farmers market egg peeps who pasture the chickens in an organic orange grove so they get to run around and eat grubs & bugs and other tasty stuff.

Boiled egg with sugar snap peas cooked with Chinese dried sausage and ginger over rice

As mentioned yesterday, Xie Laoban’s Dan Dan Noodles, also from Every Grain of Rice (and available here online) with broccolini Totally different from the "classic" Dan Dan noodles that I made yesterday from the same book. These have sesame paste and and Sichuan pepper. This recipe calls for beef, but I used pork. As usual, I reduced the amount of soy sauce significantly to control the salt

And it won!

Thanks, @liuzhou! My planned breakfast for tomorrow is her recipe for Xie Laoban’s Dan Dan Noodles, also from Every Grain of Rice (and available here online) and it doesn't call for those ingredients either.

That would be great! Do both your sauces have the same characters on the labels? If so, perhaps the difference is just due to the brand? My hoisin sauce has different characters for the first 2 and only the last one matches so I know it's not what she's calling for here.

I am not expert in these matters so hopefully someone else can give you a more authoritative answer but in the meantime, based on what she says in the book, that appears to be the stuff she's using in her recipe as the characters on your label match with this description from the book: She illustrates that description with this photo:

That flavor combination of sweet caramel and sour pickles sounds odd but it also reminds me of the classic maple sugaring season treat of Sugar on Snow - maple syrup, boiled to a soft ball stage, drizzled on to clean snow, twirled up on to a fork and eaten with dill pickles and fresh, warm doughnuts. I must say that warm noodles sound much better for a chilly morning than my snow comparison 🙃

It was indeed a tasty bowl of noodles and the sweet, spicy pork almost reminded me of a breakfast sausage! This recipe is the same as the one in the book, so there was nothing for me to prep in advance, except the chilli oil and I made up a batch of that last week. Everything else was from the pantry. On her website, Fuchsia recommends a purchased ya cai so that's what I used for the preserved veg: My only modifications were to reduce the amount of oil for browning the pork, eliminating the salt and reducing the amounts of soy sauce and Sichuanese ya cai to adjust the salt for my taste.

Yes. Quicker than pancakes, that's for sure!

Classic Dan Dan noodles from Fuchsia Dunlop's Every Grain of Rice