Smoked Gouda Fried Egg Sandwich with Hot Pepper Jelly

I took a cooking class recently that introduced me to the world of Bobby Flay!  He uses lots of peppers which drew my attention because I adore spicy food.  Anyway, I made some of his hot pepper jelly and need to find more ways to use up this beautiful jar of sweet sticky yumminess.  On a side note, I exploded butter in that class and I will NEVER do that again!!!

Tonight I wanted to make a quick dinner that was easy to eat.  After all, it is poker night for the guys and my husband could use some healthy food before the feast of chips and Chinese food fills the house.  So I grabbed my pepper jelly and decided to make this sandwich to host the jelly.

Servings: 2

Ingredients
2 English muffins
2 organic eggs  (25% more omega-3's than regular eggs)
1/4 Avocado
4 thin slices Smoked Gouda
Handful fresh Spinach
4 Tbs. Hot Pepper Jelly

Preparation:
Heat a non-stick skillet with a touch of olive oil.  While it is heating up start toasting your English muffins.  Once the pan is hot crack each egg carefully into the pan and cook until the yolk is of desired consistency.

When you take the muffins out of the toaster place 2 slices of cheese on each and put them together.  The heat from the muffin will melt the cheese just enough.

When the eggs are done assemble the muffins with cheese, avocado slices, fried egg, spinach, and drizzle the hot pepper jelly on the muffin top and place it on top of your sandwich.

Each sandwich is about 370 calories...

Enjoy with smiles!

Shrimp and Grits

I started a "Meet the Masters" cooking class this week focusing on Bobby Flay and Patrick O'Connell.  We are cooking their recipes and learning techniques as we go along.

This week we made:
Amuse Buche Ham and Chive biscuits with Marscarpone Pepper Jelly
Cojito Crusted Quesadillas with Red Pepper Sauce    AND
Sauteed Shrimp with Sweet Potato and Smoked Chile Grits (Bobby Flay Mesa Grill Cookbook)

These might sound fancy but it didn't take more than 45 minutes to make any of them and all three were wonderful.  The one caveat is that the sweet potato was roasted before hand so we didn't have to do that in class.  I am looking forward to the next two classes and all the yummy food we get to try.

I made the shrimp and grits at home and they turned out equally as wonderful.

The sauces are a cilantro based vinaigrette and a pureed chipotle pepper with adobo sauce.

The pureed peppers add a smoky hot flavor that is reminiscent of a shrimp and chorizo dish I had once...

I followed the recipe pretty close and am not sure about typing out someone else's copyrighted material so if you'd like the recipe you could google the title, check out the book, or let me know and I'll share mine with you.  There are plenty of bloggers that have posted this to their sites but many of them have changed things that may or may not make this the best dish ever....

Is there a cooking technique you would like to know about?  I learned how to stir biscuit dough the other night, something I thought I already did correctly...but this other way was noticeably better, who knew?  So if you have something you've been wondering about I'd love to share my thoughts.

I wish you enough!