An experiment in the kitchen

I'm doing a low carb bootcamp for a week or so. I've been circling around the 50 lb. mark since the middle of December and I'm determined to break through. When I jump into Atkins, I like to great a bit creative so I'm not just eating grilled or sauteed meat all the time.

Things I like to have at the ready are prosciutto, mozzarella cheese sticks, "hot shot" sausages from the local meat market, and boiled eggs. They're all at the ready when I get hungry, and they're all pretty low carb and fairly low calorie. A great snack is a cheese stick wrapped with prosciutto. Tasty!

While I was working out today at the Y, I started thinking about what I should make for lunch. I knew I had the prosciutto and the boiled eggs at home, and so I began thinking about what I could do with them, sort of in a tapas style. I decided I'd make some cheesy egg and prosciutto sandwiches.

I stopped at the Mexican market on the way home and picked up some queso fresco cheese. Have you ever heard of this amazing stuff? It doesn't really melt, so you can season a piece and throw it directly on a hot skillet and it will brown quite nicely without oozing all over the place. I cut out some two inch rounds, seasoned them and set them aside.

I then pulled out the prosciutto and an egg. I cut up the egg, then put a tiny dollop of mayo in the prosciutto, then a little bit of egg. I wrapped it up into a little ball, then wrapped that again with another slice of the prosciutto and skewered it with a toothpick.

I then turned on the heat, put some oil in the frying pan and went to town. First in went the two discs of cheese, seasoned side down. When I flipped them over, I put the prosciutto/egg bundles in and tossed them around to brown a bit and warm up.

When everything was done, I placed the two cheese circles on a plate, then placed the prosciutto/egg skewers on top and dug in.

It was very tasty.

It made me think that I want a deep fryer. What I think would be an amazing appetizer would be a take on an egg sandwich, my favorite breakfast food. What I would do is this: boil an egg until it was still very soft in the middle--probably with some of the egg white still soft. Pull it out while it was still hot, then wrap it with prosciutto. I think the heat in the egg would ensure that the prosciutto would adhere to the egg. I'd then dip that in an egg wash and batter it, and drop it into the hot oil. The heat from the oil would finish cooking the egg, though I'd want to make sure that the yolk stayed soft. Meanwhile, you'd be grilling up some of these cheese discs and when everything was done, you'd put the egg prosciutto croquette on top of the disc of browned cheese, and then have some sort of tasty cream sauce on the side.

You'd have the crunchiness of the batter, the taste of great ham, an egg that's got a soft yolk that oozes all over the place, and then to top it all off, great grilled cheese. I don't think you could go wrong.

Yum.