Savory Dutch Baby — Wandering Boston Eater

Here’s the thing: I always thought a recipe had to be perfect before I decided to post here on my blog. As I experiment and post about what I cook on my Instagram and now TikTok, I realize that perfection isn’t necessary, and also is a façade because I am not a master of the dish dedicating my life to learning how to cook. Everything I make is a work-in-progress because at the end of the day, I am someone who enjoys cooking at home in between my pharmaceutical day job, but that doesn’t mean I can’t learn or appreciate the art of the craft or ingredients. While pandemic living is still a thing, I will continue to share my learnings of cooking for myself, a woman who lives alone with her dog, than in a communal dining setting.

What does this mean? It means I will try to maneuver through ingredients so I don’t have a surplus of food leftover, and that I won’t necessarily have serving sizes down, but I can tell you what happens after I take the photo of whatever I cook.

After my 29th birthday, my friends and I rented a cabin in Maine for a weekend. It was a bit of a getaway, and a nice hoorah with friends before I’d say goodbye and move to San Francisco. Since we were in a more rural area, and also did not want to make multiple trips to get groceries, we had a shared spreadsheet of all of the foods we wanted to cook and eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, and snacks, and had a video call dedicated to agreeing which meals we should eat, what ingredients we needed to buy, and who was in charge of procuring which ingredients. It was a whole operation (which is funny since many of us in this group work in operations in varying industries) for us to figure out our weekend’s menu and who would be the main lead for cooking and preparing what.

For one of our brunches, my friend (meatmaster) Michael prepared a corned beef hash, and then taught me how to make a Dutch baby. We referenced NYT Cooking’s Recipe, and it was so delightful to see this Dutch baby puff up and expand in the cast iron. This was going to be the sweet addition to counter the savory corned beef hash in our brunch meal, but I told myself that day in July that I would eventually try to make a savory Dutch baby of sorts.

And that is what I did this weekend. It was a bit of a rainy Sunday, and my dog had been sick throughout the weekend, and I have been trying to get out of a depressive slump. One of my favorite things to do to start my week and get into a more neutral to positive mindset is to have Sunday brunch. I wanted to try to make a savory Dutch baby of sorts.

Specific flavors I wanted to incorporate into my meal: garlic, nuttiness of parmesan.

I used the NYT Cooking Recipe as a base, but what I realized was that I didn’t have milk, only oat milk, and I didn’t want to go out and buy milk just for half a cup, so I worked with what was in my fridge. I preheated my oven to 425°F. While my oven was heating up, in my Nutribullet, I blended 3 eggs, 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup Extra Creamy Chobani oat milk, a pinch of salt - almost 1 tsp I’d say, and 1 reasonably large-sized clove of garlic - minced. When my oven hit 425°F, I put 4 tbsp unsalted cold butter in my cast iron and chopped up two stalks of scallions and mixed with some leftover shredded parmesan I had in my fridge - probably about 1/8 cup of parmesan. Once the butter melted, I took the hot skillet out of my oven, quickly poured the batter mixture, and then topped with the parmesan + scallion mix and let it bake for 20 minutes. After the 20 minutes were up, without opening the oven because I didn’t want to let out any heat, I lowered the oven to 300°F and took out the skillet after 5 minutes.

While I waited for this experiment to bake, in my carbon steel pan, I prepared two slices of bacon and two sunnyside eggs.

What came out of the oven wasn’t quite a Dutch baby, but smelled delicious. It didn’t puff and crisp up the way a Dutch baby would - possibly it was the milk I used, or maybe it was because I sprinkled on toppings that would weigh down the batter. Regardless, what resulted was spongey and airy in texture with a crisp, crunch bite on the outside.

I sliced myself a triangle of this not-quite Dutch baby and dressed it with some ricotta, spinach, and Sekali Boston chili crisp, and was going to start putting this on a separate plate to transfer the eggs and bacon onto this plate. But why move four items (the bacon and eggs) when I could move one (the slice of Dutch baby-ish). I ate out of my carbon steel pan with a lit candle, some freshly brewed ice coffee (because I am of New England spirit and drink iced coffee all year round), while staring out the window into the rain.

It wasn’t quite a Dutch baby, but it was still a delicious meal. What happened to the rest of the Dutch baby? I ended up snacking on it throughout my Sunday in lieu of any other meals while I sat on my couch, pet my dog, and played Stardew Valley on my Nintendo Switch. Productive, am I right?