French Toast Recipie

Napoleonic Dreams

Finding a title for today’s blog was more difficult than usual. That stems mostly from my choice of recipe of the week. I hope you don’t think it unbecoming of a foodie due to its simplicity. Naturally, the weekend was full of great food, French toast with strawberries, deep fried soft-shelled crab, trout stuffed with salmon mousse and hollandaise sauce and a breakfast Napoleon. All of these were very good. My personal favorite was the trout. I thought I had boneless trout but discovered a whole trout instead. Steeling myself, I deboned my first trout and did a pretty good job. The salmon mousse was a puree of salmon, dill, seasonings, cream and two egg whites. Given I have two yolks left over, I figured a hollandaise sauce would be the perfect accompaniment. It was. Yet, as a recipe, the trout dish is fairly complicated requiring too many ingredients and steps. The choice for recipe of the week came from my wife, Gay. She chose the breakfast Napoleon as the best new meal of the week. Also, it is a really simple recipe. It is a sandwich with two thin layers each of tomato, ham and egg topped with cheese. It sounds pedestrian but it was really good. So, try the Breakfast Napoleon , it is simple and delicious. Enjoy!

OK, so that title is way off base. Avaya didn’t release the Flare with the intent of dethroning the iPad. It is not being introduced with that Napoleonic dream in mind. However, it is a really cool device. The Flare begins to include the kinds of features that would finally get me to buy a tablet. With a slim profile, it is a phone, video conferencing center, contact management system, presence manager and it can email and provide Web access. The user interface is a very contemporary touch screen with sharp colors and images tablet users expect. But the Flare is not a tablet. It is the next generation in how the desktop phone, video and collaboration tools should be integrated. The only downside for the device is the price. I found a list price of $2,208 on the Web. That is a lot!

So, how will the Flare fare? A lot depends on the interest of C-level executives in having this really cool device on their desks or on boardroom conference tables, which is too bad, because a device like this is made to be portable. The size is not an issue for me, as it has a Bluetooth interface and can incorporate a headset to place and receive calls. (Wi-Fi would need to be supplemented with 3G/4G to replace my cell phone though.

The Breakfast Menu: Recipie: Baked French Toast Casserole

Challah bread is a special braided bread eaten by people of Jewish faith on holidays. My local bigs in Hyde Park sells it and I saw a guy use it to make french toast on Food Network once. I myself used it when I attempted to make a version of Vitor's unforgettable French Toast to great success so I swore I would always go with Challah when making French Toast. I started the recipe the night before the brunch by mixing the ingredients in a bowl and pouring it over thick slices of the Challah bread. I let the bread sit out for several hours to give it a firmness. one recipe I read called for day old bread but I forgot to buy the bread a day early and worked with what I had. I wasn't sure how to fit all the slices of bread into the pan they specified so I had two layers of bread and whatever I had left I cut into chunks and wedged it into any open spaces. I also added a bit of orange zest to the custard because it is something I started adding to my French Toast batter as well. I followed my grandmother's method of mixing portions, and I by that I mean I didn't measure any of the spices and dropped them in based on my visual assessment. I was a little heavy on the Vanilla because I am a fan of that flavor. I also added a dash of warm honey to the custard because I saw that in a cookbook somewhere and thought it was a good idea. I am not a very precise cook, which means often have difficulty replicating my magic, but part of the allure for me is the experimentation. I also used 2% milk, as that is what I usually buy, but in my regular French Toast I often use heavy cream.  For the Praline topping I made the most changes. My wife can't eat Pecans so I had to substitute. At firsat I tried a mix of frosted flakes and cinamon toast crunch because I had that on hand and I have used that as a fench toast topping before. Unfortunately those ingredients turned to powder in mixing bowl. I added crunch up graham cracker to the mix to give it a texture, but it wasnt my first choice. It occured to me later that I could have used oats, which is a topping my mother puts on sweet potatoe casserole now that my wife eats with us, but at the time I was making the dish we did not have any on hand. The dish was good, but the recipe called for nuts and that would most certainly kill my wife so I had to substitute, which I should have been more prepared for. Other than that it was delicious and I am definitely making it again.

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