WineLovers Discussion Group

My wife and I are starting to think about our menu for Easter but are tired with the same old brunch dishes. We've done the eggs benedict, the leg of lamb, cornish hens, the ham ... anybody have any crowd pleasers?

I am so not a breakfast person, Joe, that I have very few tricks up my sleeve for a brunch meal. I only serve festive meals like that early in the day when I have overnight company and basically HAVE to. That said! Corned beef hash topped with poached eggs never fails to please. And neither does a sausage and sourdough bread pudding, or little cups of thinly sliced ham pushed down into a muffin tin and filled with sauteed mushrooms and scrambled (raw) eggs with a little cream or whole eggs for the sunny side up type of presentation with a little grated parm on top. Those little guys bake in about 15-18 minutes and become little everything-servings that are quite attractive and self-dosing at service: little eaters take one, bigger eaters take more. Mexican food is also quite adaptive to late breakfasts, like steak and egg tacos, but they're not very eastery.

Monte Cristo sandwiches. It's breakfasty because it's French Toast and it's lunchy because it's a meat sandwich. But you can fill it, plate it any way you like. (For Easter one might stuff it with rabbit meat and plate it with a fried egg on top. And a Peep.)

Jeff Grossman/NYC wrote:Monte Cristo sandwiches. It's breakfasty because it's French Toast and it's lunchy because it's a meat sandwich. But you can fill it, plate it any way you like. (For Easter one might stuff it with rabbit meat and plate it with a fried egg on top. And a Peep.)

VERY clever!

If you Google "fried eggs cooked in a bell pepper ring" you will find beautiful photos for inspiration, and recipes using different things like tomatoes for the bottom of the ring. I made these a few weeks ago with green, red, and orange bells, I kept the top part of the pepper plus the stem, cooked it a bit in the pan to soften it and then plopped it onto the egg dishes that went to guests of my choice. They are beautiful and you can make a bunch of them in two large sauté pans. I brought the hot pans to the table and put them in the middle on tile. The color is spectacular and everyone loved them. I had home made pico, jarred chunky salsa, and home made cilantro pesto, with lemon and chili peppers. I served the guests, but let them get their own garnishes. Very fun.
Oh, and you could also do scrambled eggs, if you wanted. Still pretty.

Karen/NoCA wrote:If you Google "fried eggs cooked in a bell pepper ring" you will find beautiful photos for inspiration, and recipes using different things like tomatoes for the bottom of the ring.

Ooh, outstanding. Those are very pretty!

Reminds me of the egg version of Toad in the Hole.