Bobby Flay's Avocado Toast 3 Ways 🥑 | Brunch @ Bobby's | Food Network

So we're going to make three different versions of an avocado toast. I'm going to start by making the avocado base. Just a few ingredients, some avocados, some scallions, lime juice, cilantro. And then we can pump up the flavor and the creativity with lots of different combinations of ingredients. First of all, let's make the avocado base. A little squeeze of lime. So I'm going to add some green onions to this. I love the flavor of green onions. I love the pungency of it all. I want those bold flavors. Cilantro, salt and pepper. If you notice, I'm just going to kind of mix it once or crush it one time because we want that nice chunky texture. That's just my preference. I was the kid that when you were picking the peanut butter, I was always crunchy, always. So that's good. Let's make some toast. All right, we're going to start making our egg salad for our first avocado toast. I have some hard-boiled eggs here. I'm going to grate the eggs. You can actually chop them if you want. But if you just use the cheese grater, it goes really quickly. And I actually like the texture of it that way. I'm going to add some Dijon mustard and some creme fraiche and some shallots. So Dijon's a little spicy. The creme fraiche is nice and creamy, a little bit tart. And the shallot's going to give it a little bit of crunch. A little salt and pepper. A little bit of fresh dill. It's got such great flavor. It's one of the things I like about Eastern European food and Greek food. I'm just going to mix this up. I'm going to use the pumpernickel for this, which has a little molasses in there. Just lightly brush the olive oil on top. I'm going to broil our pumpernickel. Now, you can toast your bread in lots of different ways. I'm actually using my broiler. You can grill your bread outside on a grill or in a grill pan. Or you can actually just put it in a toaster. OK. I'm going to put the rest of the toast in the broiler as we make our first avocado toast. OK, we can start the avocado toast parade. And what I like to do is just put a very thin layer of avocado. Think of it almost like butter. Then I'm going to take a little bit of radicchio. You'll see it in lots of Italian and Mediterranean cuisine. This is going to give it a little bit of that peppery flavor. Then we take some of our egg salad. So pretty. And then I'm just going to put a little bit of dill right on top of the egg salad. And it really looks beautiful on that pumpernickel bread too. So this is going to be smoked salmon, a little bit of dill with the avocado. So again, very thin layer of the avocado. And then a little bit of smoked salmon. So you have like thin slices of smoked salmon. You just kind of let it drop into the avocado. Don't push it down. Paper thin slices. I'm going to add a little bit of creme fraiche right on top of this as well. Avocado, smoked salmon, and dill. And we have one more to do. Who knew avocado toast could be so much fun, right? We're just going to take some Fresno chili. Looks like a red jalapeno. Just drop some chilies right on top. A little bit of lime zest. And then a little bit of extra cilantro. That's what you want to hear. You want to hear that crunch. There it is, the parade of avocado toast. We had that baked ham last night. So why not utilize some of our beautiful ham here? Smells like the holidays. So I'm going to dice it up. Crisp it up a little bit with a little bit of butter. And render a little bit of that fat off. And then cook the eggs in the ham fat. Okay, now slice up some scallions. I'm going to save a little bit of these eggs for the egg wash later. Okay, so now I'm going to take my ham out. And I'm going to add the green onions right to this right before they're cooked. You don't want to overcook them. You want to undercook them a tiny bit because they're going to go in the oven also. They'll keep cooking. So we're going to take them out now. Beautiful. So we're going to add some ham. I'm going to add some goat cheese. Fresh goat cheese. Goat cheese is nice and creamy. It's a little bit tart. And you know what? I had some left over. Okay, so what I'm going to do here is just very gently fold the ham and the eggs together. With the goat cheese. And then I'm going to just put it on a sheet tray so it cools evenly. I actually have the empanada wrappers in my freezer all the time. So the dough's already made for me. You can use pre-made pie dough. I mean basically this is sort of like a pie dough. Just not as rich as say like puff pastry. Or even like a pie crust. Like a French pie crust. We're just going to make these a little bit bigger than they are. This gives you a little bit more room to work. I rolled out the empanada shells. I'm going to fill them with the egg, ham, and goat cheese mixture. But first I'm going to take a little bit of the egg wash. Whisk the eggs with a little bit of water. And I'm just going to go around the edges. You're going to use your egg wash for two reasons. You're going to use it as sort of like edible glue for your empanadas. And then we're also going to put it on the outside of the empanada. And it will make it nice and golden as it bakes. You want them to sort of be in the middle. Certainly don't want to overstuff them. But at the same time you want to make sure there's enough filling there. Okay. So now we're just going to close them up. All right. Then what I like to do is take a fork. And this helps to close them even more. And you know the pastry is just as important as the filling. So you want it to be nice and crusty. Golden brown. I'm going to take a little more egg wash. Just very lightly brush the egg wash on top of the empanada. This is going to make them nice and golden. So I'm just going to make a slit. A couple of slits in the top of the empanadas. Just to kind of let the steam out. Because otherwise you sort of steam the pastry. And we want the pastry to get crisp. All right. So we're going to bake these 425 degree oven. So pretty hot. And they should take about 10 minutes. I'm going to make a piquillo pepper sauce to go along with that. Don't stress out if you don't know what a piquillo pepper is. It's actually a red pepper that's been peeled and seeded. And packed in some olive oil from Spain. Now they're just like roasted red peppers. They have a little bit of a bite to them. So if you can't find piquillos. You can certainly use roasted red peppers for the sauce as well. So we're going to start with a little bit of onions and garlic. And I'm going to take my piquillos. And the great thing about piquillos. Now you can find these in lots of places. Is that they're roasted, they're peeled, they're seeded for you already. And you just take them out of the can and you can start to use them. They're fantastic. Add just a splash of olive oil in there. So we're going to saute our piquillos. We're going to put these in the blender with a little bit of red wine vinegar as well. Think about it. This is going to be the sauce for the empanadas. A little bit of red wine vinegar. I like to put just a splash of honey in here. Just to kind of chill out the vinegar and the pepper a little bit. This sauce is going to be beautiful. But it's also going to taste good. Slowly add the olive oil. And it emulsifies it. Which means it stays together. Just a splash of creme fraiche. Just gives it a little creaminess. And it's a beautiful sauce. And the great thing about this sauce is. You know it's not a hot sauce in terms of temperature. So you can make it ahead of time. A little bit of cilantro. Some garnish. And then there's only one thing left to do. It's brunch time. Look at that. You get the ham, the egg, the goat cheese kind of running through there. And you know the pastry is really light and flaky. It just adds one more sort of texture to your experience here. And the sauce just kind of wakes up the whole thing. A tortilla omelet burrito with pulled chicken and some salsa verde. Salsa verde. Translation. Green sauce. Tomatillos in the gooseberry family. They look like green tomatoes. In fact they're not. But you can utilize them that way. All right. Just quarter the tomatillos. And this is a sauce that you should just know how to make. You can make a fantastic green salsa that you can serve with like chips for instance. And I start by making this sauce just like this. So this is a good recipe for you to have. Period. If you want to get this recipe just go to foodnetwork.com slash brunch. And whatever we're cooking today it will be there. We have some jalapenos. And some red onion. We're just going to chop these up coarsely. And then a couple of cloves of garlic. We're going to put all this on a sheet pan with a little bit of canola oil. And we're just going to let them roast. And then when everything gets nice and soft we can actually blend it all together. Put some cilantro in there. We'll season it up. And we'll have a beautiful salsa verde. A little bit of canola oil. Season it up. Let's get in the oven. 375, 400 degrees. Probably will take about 20, 25 minutes maximum. All right. Tomatillos, onions, garlic, and jalapenos. And they're nice and soft and roasted. Didn't take very long at all. Maybe about 20 minutes, 25 minutes. We're going to put this right into a food processor. I'm going to put a little bit of honey in here. Why the honey? You have the spiciness from the chilies and you have the tartness from the tomatillos. So you want to balance that out. We're going to put a little bit of acidity with this fresh lime juice. Totally puree it. Okay. It's really pale. It's actually not a very pretty color. And we want to make this green. Now, the way to do that is obviously put something green into it to really kind of bring it out. And something fresh. So cilantro works really nicely. Now, the thing about it is that this is still warm. And we're going to actually heat this up with the chicken. This is chicken that it's like store-bought rotisserie chicken. And we're just going to cook the chicken in the sauce first. And at the very end, we'll add a bunch of fresh herbs. So it really kind of pumps with the green. If you put it in when it's warm, it's just going to turn gray anyway. So we're going to take a little canola oil. I want my chicken to be pulled, but I want it to be in big pieces. It kind of drives me crazy when it's so shredded that it has no texture. You find that with pork a lot. Texture is so important. A little salt and pepper. We can pour our sauce over this. Just slow down the heat. The chicken's already cooked, right? We don't want to overcook it, and we don't need to cook it for that long. But I just want the sauce and the chicken to really get to know each other for a minute. And we're going to make some chicken cracklings, or fried chicken skin. And this will give that sort of nice crunchiness to the burrito. And you already have the ingredient. It's like a free thing. Skin comes with the chicken. Put some canola oil in here. Let it heat up. While we're waiting for the oil to heat up, let's crack some eggs. So I said before we were making a tortilla omelet burrito. So basically, what we're going to do is crack some eggs. So I'm just going to whisk this up. A little bit of hot sauce. This, of course, is optional. I'm just going to pour this right into the... And this way, when we're ready to go, we'll just take one of our tortillas and dredge it into the egg on both sides and then cook it right in the pan. All right, I think our chicken skin is ready. There you go. And you just want to crisp up the skin. Chicken cracklings. Anything crispy and crackling is all good for me. All right, so they really take like 20 seconds. I'm going to let them drain on a paper towel. And we'll just keep cooking more of these. First thing I'm going to do is finish up our chicken by adding a bunch of fresh cilantro to it. And this is actually going to freshen up the color for sure, but also the flavor. Little squeeze of fresh lime. So now, let's make our tortillas. So we have our eggs with a little bit of hot sauce and some salt and pepper. Dip it into the egg. See what happens. Flip it over. A little crusty on the outside. Puffing up a little bit. Let's start by putting a little chicken in here. I love rotisserie chicken because you just take it home and then you can make a chicken dish, you know, in a split. Some of the cheese. We have some Monterey Jack and some white cheddar. They both melt very well. The cheddar is going to have a little bit more of a bite to it. Squeeze the lime. And don't forget our chicken cracklings. This is going to give the burrito a little bit of crunch on the inside. A little bit of crunch is always a good thing. Fold on both sides. Fold over the filling. It's pretty cool. Let's do one more. Fold it up. A couple of limes to go on the plate. A little fresh cilantro. Maybe a little creme fraiche on top. Let's give it a taste. The egg on the tortilla is a really cool idea. I love the flavor of eggs on basically anything, especially for brunch. The chicken with the salsa verde and those cracklings. That makes all the difference because otherwise it's all one texture. I'm going to make bourbon and honey glazed bacon to go along with our pancakes. I actually like to cook bacon in the oven as opposed to in a pan. It is much messier when you're cooking bacon on top of the stove because the fat, it splatters all over the place. That's number one. Number two, when you cook the bacon in the oven on a sheet pan, it cooks incredibly evenly. And also you can have your stove clear so you can do other things. That's basically the idea. And so we're going to just take some thick cut bacon and put it in the oven about 400 degrees. And also I like to put some parchment paper down on the sheet pan because it just makes it a lot easier to clean. We're going to let it cook about halfway. Let some of the fat render. And then we're going to start to glaze it with our bourbon and honey glaze. I'm a huge bourbon drinker. I love bourbon. I love the flavors of bourbon. I love what bourbon stands for. It's such a great American spirit. So a couple of ounces of bourbon and then some honey. And bourbon already has sort of a honey caramel-like flavor, you know, undertones to it, of course. A lot of times I put honey in dishes not so you actually taste the honey or make it sweet, but kind of counterbalance all the ingredients in there. Now, I spend a lot of time in Kentucky, so I go to a lot of bourbon distilleries. They have something called the Bourbon Trail near Lexington, Kentucky, near the horse country. You know, you can just kind of visit all kinds of different distilleries and taste lots of bourbon. I would say get a driver that day, for sure. We're going to let it reduce down. It's going to get a little bit thick. The alcohol from the bourbon will cook off, but you'll still have that wonderful flavor from the bourbon itself. My bourbon honey glaze looks great. And then I'm just going to take a brush and I just want some of the fat to render because sometimes I'm concerned if I put too much liquid on top of the bacon, it will never get crisp. But now that some of the fat has begun to render, I'm going to put this bourbon. Mm, smells so good. The bourbon and honey glaze is going to start to caramelize the bacon and give it a really beautiful glaze on the outside. Putting glazes on bacon has become very popular. Now, bacon has always been popular, but I feel like in the last 10 years, I mean, they're putting bacon on ice cream. You name it, bacon is paired with it. But I love the idea of making glazes for bacon. And you need some kind of sugar like a brown sugar glaze or honey or maple or molasses, something along those lines. But it's still bacon and that smokiness rings through. So the bacon is going to take 10 minutes or so. I actually do like a spicy mango glaze on bacon at Bar American and, you know, people can't get enough of it. So we're going to let the bacon cool because, you know, the honey is incredibly hot. And as it cools, we'll actually harden a little bit. We'll make the bacon crispier. Let's put some black pepper on there too. It's smoky. It's spicy. It's sweet. And there's bourbon. We're going to make French toast, but we're going to make a savory French toast with mustard greens and some bacon. Bacon is good for brunch. I know you already knew that, but I'm just going to let you know it again. Smells good in here already. That smokiness is incredible. Now what we're going to do is actually let the bacon cook and we'll keep the bacon fat and we'll cook some other things in the bacon fat. So we're going to let that go. While the bacon is cooking, we're going to put together sort of like our condiment. This is actually going to be creme fraiche, Dijon mustard and a little bit of hot sauce. Well, you get a little creaminess there, a little bit of spiciness, two kinds of spiciness from the mustard and from the hot sauce. And this is going to be our condiment for our French toast. All right. So now we're going to make the custard that we're going to actually soak the bread in. So it's going to be three eggs and an egg yolk. The extra yolk is for a little richness. Very rich custard for this French toast. Savory or not. And then some half and half. Some grated Parmesan Reggiano. Good quality cheese. And this is going to give a little saltiness to the French toast. But also it's going to actually help to make the bread golden brown when we're actually cooking it in the pan. Let's flip our bacon. Nice and crispy. I think bacon just always has to be crispy. All right. So we have our condiment, our creme fraiche, our Dijon mustard. This is our custard for our French toast. And we're going to get our bacon out of the pan. We're going to keep that beautiful bacon fat. Let's get a red onion going. And we're going to cook the red onions with some mustard greens. Mustard greens, that's what they taste like. They taste like mustard. They do have that sort of mustardy flavor. They're a little bit hearty. And, you know, I think of them as really good with things that are smoky, like bacon, for instance, and things that are rich, like some eggs. So I think the mustard greens are going to be a really nice foil for this savory dish, the savory French toast. Toss the red onions right into the bacon fat. Here are the mustard greens. And they're, you know, they're very leafy. So I'm just going to drop them in here. And they should just, they should really just kind of wilt. You can think about mustard greens as like kale with a mustard flavor. That's sort of the texture of what mustard greens are. Just a splash of cider vinegar. We want a little acidity in here to go with the mustard and the onions. Kind of wilt them down. A little splash of honey there. Where there's mustard, there must be honey. So we have our mustard greens and red onions cooked in our bacon fat with the cider vinegar. All right, so now we have all of our components ready to go. Except, of course, for our bread. So I have a pain de mie, which is basically a fancy French phrase for good quality white bread. We're going to start by smearing a little bit of Dijon mustard and creme fraiche and the hot sauce mixture to give the bread a little bit of moisture and also flavor, for sure. And then a couple of pieces of cheese, some gruyere cheese, just Swiss cheese. And I like putting it on both sides so that it melts on both sides. And then as it melts, it kind of holds all the other ingredients in the middle together. And then some crispy bacon. And you can let the bacon sort of fall out the end a little bit. Nobody will be complaining about that. Then we have our mustard greens with our red onions and a little bit of cider vinegar. And if you notice, I'm actually going all the way to the edges. So it's not just in the middle. I'm going to close this bad boy up. Let's press it down a little bit. And then we're going to soak it for about 30 seconds on each side so that the custard actually goes through the bread itself. All right, so we're going to turn this over and let the other side soak. And don't forget, we also have the Parmesan cheese running through the custard. So the cheese, while it cooks, will get a little bit gratin. It will brown a little bit on the outside. That's what we want. So we're going to take a little canola oil and just a little bit of butter. I'm going to put our sandwich, our French toast, right in there. So, you know, here's the key. You want the custard to cook inside the bread. And at the same time, you want all the other ingredients to kind of warm through. They're all cooked already, but we just need the cheese to melt a little bit. I can actually smell it. Can you smell the Parmesan cheese there? I know you can. You can smell the Parmesan cheese starting to get nice and crusty on the bottom side there. You're going to be very happy with this. Let's say we go out to brunch. There's four people at the table. You know, I like to order, usually, maybe like a savory egg dish for my main course. But I always want something sweet on the table. And I always say, like, the table's hungry, too. So let's feed the table. So I'll order some sort of waffle or pancake or French toast dish, usually. We just put it in the middle of the table. Everybody gets a fork and gets a little bit of that sweetness. I think that's a good way to go. I'm going to flip this over. Beautiful. Gorgeous. Making the savory French toast, you have to pay attention to every single component if you want to make it great. Amazing. Let's give it a taste. Really strong, robust flavors. Smoked bacon. That sort of spicy mustard green. And then the Gruyere cheese. Just a little sharp, but melts really, really nicely. Kind of brings it all together. I'm loving the Parmesan cheese in the custard because it just gave the bread a really amazing crust and a beautiful color. Just golden brown.