Breakfast Bread Bowls

I'm not sure what you, my audience, does with my blog. I'm sure there are plenty of you who pop on to grab recipes and actually make them. Some of you are just here for the food porn. And some of you are just my friends and family who are here to help me out (thanks, guys).

No matter the reason, you're likely here because you enjoy food. However, if you're not that passionate about cooking, I think maybe you need to revisit that thought. I think learning to cook is a worthwhile way to spend your time, even if all you do is learn the basics (and I don't mean knowing how to cook ramen noodles). It's also important for every budding chef to take a step away from reading recipes and just experiment in the kitchen. Trust your instincts, rely on a little trial and error, and do your best and you might end up with something fabulous. The point is that you try.

I bring this up because 98% of the time, the recipes I share here have been slapped together and developed after a little bit of experimenting and they turn out to be delicious. Mind you, some are not so successful, but the good ones are so good. And, as you may have seen, I try lots of delicious dishes at restaurants and the first thing I do when I get home is try to recreate it. I just trust my taste buds to help me figure out what flavor components are required to make the dish perfect.

If you haven't really experimented much, then today's dish might be a great place to start. It's just an easy breakfast bread bowl and I've given you suggestions for what to fill it with, but you can totally make this your own. You don't have to follow my recipe exactly. Just throw in what you like and just roll with it. Maybe by this time next year, you'll be whipping up Thanksgiving dinner on your own, without being being a slave to a cookbook.

Ingredients [for 2]:
2 bread bowl rolls
2 eggs
2 oz. salt pork or 2 slices bacon, chopped
¼ onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 to 5 mushrooms, sliced
¼ bell pepper, sliced
jalapeno slices (add as little or as much as you like, depending on your spice level preference)
¼ cup grated cheese (I used gruyere)
2 tablespoons heavy cream
salt & pepper to taste

Grate up some cheese and chop up the vegetables and the salt pork.

Add the salt pork (or bacon) to a cold skillet. Turn the heat up to medium and render out the fat and allow the pork to crisp up.

To the pan of crisped up pork, add in the onions, garlic, peppers, and mushrooms. Cook until everything is lovely and browned and cooked down to almost half of what started in the pan.

Grab your rolls and slice off the tops. Scoop out the innards (and snack on them or save them for breadcrumbs). Save the tops!

Pop the rolls onto a sheet pan and sprinkle a little cheese in the bottom.

Add a few slices of raw jalapeno.

Grab a bunch of the cooked vegetables and pork and add them to the bread bowls.

Make a little dip in the vegetables and crack in an egg.

Drizzle about 1 tablespoon of cream onto each bread bowl and then season with salt and pepper. Go easy on the salt, since the cheese is pretty salty.

Top with a little more cheese, pop the lids back onto the bowls, and back in a 375F oven for 20 to 25 minutes and then pop in a low broiler, with the lids off, for 2 minutes (just to set the egg) and then serve.

I think serving the bread bowls with the lids on makes for the cutest presentation. It's like a little surprise. Your guest(s) will think, "Hm, I wonder what's inside!"

Ah! The big reveal. It's so eggs-citing, right? Tuck in! Tuck right on in to that deliciously runny yolk, the beefy mushrooms, the sweet caramelized onions, the sweet peppers, the spicy jalapeno, the salty, gooey cheese, and don't forget, you can eat that bowl. It's made of bread.

Go for it. Go on.

Here's the recipe page: