Cornflake Crusted French Toast with Strawberries

Breakfast is important.  We all heard the studies about how eating breakfast is important to maintain your concentration, metabolism, yadda yadda yadda, but for me breakfast is important because it used to be the one meal I prepared for myself at home.  Most of my other meals were eaten at work, standing in the corner behind the oven or sitting on a dish machine rack by the mop sink.  Now that I am unemployed, I cook all my meals at home and eat them sitting down (usually in front of the TV) but breakfast still has a special place in my heart.

During the winter, I pretty-much ski everyday. I'll ski for about 3 hours (more if it is a powder day), go home, have a quick bite like a grilled cheese (if time permits) then make my way to work.  So breakfast basically became the only complete meal I could enjoy without having to wolf down my food. I like typical breakfast foods: bacon and eggs, pancakes, waffles, eggs in a basket, fritattas .......

For awhile now, I've had the craving for French Toast.  French Toast is not something I usually make because it is more labor intensive than I prefer. Soaking the bread and cooking it was usually one more step than I'd like to do.  But somewhere I saw this picture of cornflake crusted french toast and I just had to eat it.

Cornflake crusted french toast actually involves THREE steps! But I knew the extra labor of coating the french toast would yield a delicious crunch, so I fought back the laziness and coated my french toast!


Cornflake Crusted French Toast
makes 4

8 slices of thickly sliced bread
1/4 cup cream
2 TBSP. whole milk
1/4 tsp. salt
2 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
3 eggs, beaten
3 cups cornflakes, coarsely crushed
6 TBSP. butter
Maple Syrup, to serve
Fresh Berries, to serve

1. Preheat oven to 200˚F.
2. In a shallow dish, mix cream, milk, salt, sugar, cinnamon and eggs.  Put crushed cornflakes in another dish.  Working with one slice at a time, soak each slice for 10 seconds on each side, then place in dish with cornflakes, pressing cornflakes onto each side.  Transfer french toast to parchment lined baking sheet.
3. Heat a skillet over medium heat. Add 3 TBSP butter and heat until butter starts to foam.  Add four slices of the french toast and cook, turning once, until both sides are golden brown.  Transfer french toast to warm oven, wipe out the skillet, add remaining 3 TBSP of butter and cook the remaining four pieces.
4. Divide the french toast amongst 4 plates and serve with warm maple syrup and fresh berries

Cheers,
Burnt

Listening to Katy Perry- Last Friday Night

Welcome Back

It has been a long while since I have been here.  My last visit was almost a year ago.  I apologize for visiting so infrequently but my passion for cooking and baking waned last year as I struggled with my job. I was working the fry station and cooking (rather, frying) became the bane of my existence.  I stopped cooking at home and ate mostly a diet of Carl's Jr and frozen macaroni and cheese.  I would immediately come home from work, smoke until my lungs hurt, and watch reruns of the Gilmore Girls while eating terrible junk food. It was amazing to see how this one job completely ruined my passion for cooking and eating.  Eventually, I found another cooking job where I didn't want to slit my wrists everyday.  Slowly, my passion for eating was reignited.  Unfortunately I was laid off from that job so I am finding myself with lots of time to spare.  And since I have all this free time now, why not start blogging again.

Another reason why I stopped blogging was because I was intimidated by the other food bloggers who took great pictures of their food and made exotic dishes or technical dishes that I didn't have the time or patience to execute. I mean, hear I am, a professional chef, a graduate from culinary school, and these housewives and amateur cooks are schooling me at home cooking!  It made me feel stupid and inadequate as a professional chef. Not only, did I NOT have the time to make these dishes (I was working 8-10 hours a day plus I ski ALOT) but I didn't have the money to pay for the ingredients (a line cook make on average $10/hr).  Even if I did have the money to make these exotic dishes, I didn't want to spend hours in the kitchen to create one plated dinner.  For these housewives and amateur cooks, cooking was an escape from the pressures of the working world.  For me, cooking was my working world and the last thing I wanted to do was to spend more time in the kitchen.  As a result, when I did cook at home, my dishes were simple, required few ingredients and usually took less than 30 minutes to make.

So here is the deal: I'm not a millionaire rancher's wife,  I don't have a fancy kitchen or very much money to spend on ingredients but hopefully the recipes I post will be tasty and delicious.  This is how a professional (unemployed) line cook eats for herself.  I am also very interested in food policy so I will be posting articles about food policy along with posts about gardening, funny dog pictures and whatever I feel like.

Cheers,
Burnt

Listening to Adele -Rolling in the Deep