Italian Style Fry Jack Brunch.

Jumping.MunchkinIf you ever look through my Belize Wild Recipes section, you will know that I like “mixing it up” and revel in being non-traditional in my invention of meals.  I am indeed a Rebel Cook!! ;).  Anyway, I’ve cooked an Italian Style meal to eat with fry jacks.  Just in case you don’t know, fry jacks are puffed up dough traditionally eaten in Belize with refried beans or eggs for breakfast.  Well, I am being twice the rebel because I have modified it into Italian and Brunch!

This is really easy:

Take the following:

1 tbsp olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped finely

1 to 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

and saute until onions are nicely  browned.  Add:

5 peeled plum tomatoes (fresh/tinned), finely chopped

1/2 tsp of Italian Herbs (fresh/dried)

Salt to taste

Place a tight fitting lid and simmer for 10 minutes.

Next, take the lid off and crack eggs onto the simmering dish:

Fresh Eggs.
Fresh Eggs.

These are our lovely duck eggs; allow 1 to 2 eggs per person.  The timing for the eggs is crucial!  Put the lid back on; for soft cooked eggs, cook for 3 minutes 45 seconds; for hard boiled eggs, cook for 5 to 6 minutes.  I like them soft and gooey so I have to really quick about it!

Italian Brunch.
Italian Brunch.

Serve immediately.  Best with Fry Jacks but you can have it with crusty bread or toast.

Italian Fry Jack Brunch.
Italian Fry Jack Brunch.

A Few Useful Items…

Another.Munchkin.Ugly.MonsterA while back, we received a few interesting and useful gifts from a visiting friend.  Since a lot of these things can’t be found in Belize, I’d like to go through them (if you will allow me to indulge).  Good quality items are hard to come by in Belize so we were  really pleased to receive this stuff.

Good Gifts.
Good Gifts.

This is a “MicroPlane” zester.  If you make limoncello, you will understand why this one is a God-send.  Previously, we used a sharp pocket knife to pain-stakingly zest lemons and limes for our Elixirs.  I am not trying to be an advertisement for this little gadget but it I can now remove the zest from a lime (sans pith) in less than 60 seconds!

Superfine Zester.
Superfine Zester.

Great fun in the kitchen…

Gnome Zesting.
Gnome Zesting.

We have been looking for a cherry pitter for years.  I made the mistake of asking somebody from North Carolina to purchase one for me and he replied with:

“Down South, we don’t have no cherries to pit!”

At that point, I made the realisation that Northern America was a very big place and I had to look further north for a cherry pitter!  Anyway, this one is for pitting suriname cherry (a sweet red, ridged cherry with a distinct resinous taste) in Belize.

Yes, you can get vegetable peelers in Belize but they are your usual Made In China Piece of Crap (MCPC, for short!).  Yes, I am going to rave on about a potato peeler of all things because so far, after peeling about 22lbs (10kg) of Cassava it’s still intact!

Peeled Cassava.
Peeled Cassava.

The last item is a bottle of Absinthe which we had never tasted before.  It boasts a complexity of herbs which we thought would be interesting.  However, for our personal tastes, we would have liked it better if it was bitter because we like the taste of wormwood.  This particular brand has a very strong anise flavour ;)…Hic!!  Thanks For The Gifts!!

Water Update!

The Magic of Mayor Gnome.
The Magic of Gnome.

This is a Friday night so I don’t suppose I need to write anything of great consequence.  However, this is important to us since we have managed to solve our water issues on the farm.  Hooray!!  The smaller tubing worked for the compressed air and the air-lift pump works great.  Thanks to Gnome for Belize Rigging…it helps to have brains on a farm…it makes all the difference in finding elegant solutions.

We Have Water!
We Have Water!