Sausage, Spinach, and Quail Egg Breakfast Salad

I know this sounds really weird, and also involves frozen pre-cooked sausage patties, but it has been working for me recently.  This combination came to me in an extreme moment of hunger that suddenly attacked me.  I started scavenging the fridge and pantry trying to come up with something that felt substantial and that was super quick.  The results of my kitchen raid included spinach, turkey sausage patties, some leftover baguette, and two quail eggs.  So I thought about it a bit, realized I could throw some spinach in a bowl, dress it a bit, place the sausage on top, and then the fried eggs.  I mean, what isn’t better with a fried egg on top?  I was quite wary about the taste of all this together, but when hunger calls, usually anything will do.  I actually liked it!   Then I found myself making it again and again, morning after morning, and I realized I was actually eating a salad for breakfast – which is odd for me.  I’m not generally thrilled to eat them at dinner. But apparently if you give it to me in the morning I’m excited, feeling oh so rebellious, subverting some unspoken food norms about appropriate breakfast foods… 

Ingredients 
1 cup spinach
1 tablespoon chopped scallion
handful of sliced grape tomatoes
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon olive oil
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 patties (or links) cooked breakfast turkey sausage (so we get these frozen precooked ones that you just pop in the microwave for like a minute; they are so useful to us! But obviously you can use any form of breakfast sausage that you want)
2 fried quail eggs (or one regular egg)*
pinch sea salt
pinch red pepper flakes
2 toasted baguette slices for serving

Instructions
Place the spinach, scallions, and tomatoes in a bowl.  Drizzle the red wine vinegar and olive oil and toss a bit.  Sprinkle black pepper.  Place the cooked sausage links over that.  Place your fried egg over that, then sprinkle it with a pinch of salt and red pepper flakes. Slice and toast baguette, and spread a bit of butter on one side.  

*To fry the egg, melt butter in skillet on medium heat.  Crack egg into skillet and fry just until egg white is cooked, or sunny-side up, roughly 1 minute.

Favorite Bites from the Grand Tasting at Culinaria

One of the most elegant events at Culinaria, the wine and culinary arts festival in San Antonio, is the Grand Tasting at the Convention Center along the River Walk. Attending an event like this (or even just reading about it) allows you to pick up some great tips and ideas for future culinary explorations--both dishes to try on your own and a head's up about restaurants that are worth seeking out on future visits (find my tips in bold text).


At the Grand Tasting I had three favorite dishes. First was something very creative and tasty, compressed watermelon with pop rocks! Mainly it was just a lot of fun, juicy and crunchy and crackly. It's definitely a dish with a sense of humor, and while prepared by the chef at the hotel La Contessa restaurant Las Ramblas, it is available from their food truck, Tapa Tapa. I believe it also had a dab of black garlic. Pretty too. Compressing watermelon is a technique to try using a vacuum sealer, no sous vide necessary!


The next dish I really loved was a twist on Italian bread salad called panzanella. It was burrata, tomatoes (undoubtedly ripened in the hot Texas sun) with torn bread, micro greens, balsamic and roast chicken. I'm usually in the "please don't ruin Caesar salad by adding chicken to it!" camp, but in this case, it really worked. The dish was from Luke, a restaurant I got to visit last year.


The last dish was coconut ice cream with fresh red curry, pickled mango coulis and Thai basil micro greens. A sweet and spicy savory bite, I loved the cool sensation of the cold coconut ice cream with the hot curry swirled into it. A very innovative and unsual dish from James Beard nominated chef Jason Dady who runs several restaurants in San Antonio as well as a food truck.

I just noticed all these dishes had micro greens. Not sure why they are in vogue in San Antonio, but I guess you could call it a trend...

My thanks to the San Antonio Convention and Visitors Bureau for inviting me and hosting my trip.