Chevre for Breakfast

Sometimes it only takes one ingredient to turn an ordinary dish into something extraordinary. This week that ingredient was chevre. After work on Monday, I stopped by the grocery store to pick up four items. Whether it was because I was hungry or because I had a serious lack of supplies at home, I quickly exchanged my basket for a cart, and loaded up for the week. One of my first unplanned purchases was a little package of the tangy goat cheese. Even before I got to the deli counter to pick up the week’s rosemary ham (a staple of R’s Wednesday lunches), there was a woman offering samples of a local chevre produced by Stickney Hill Dairy Farms. By chance, the cracker I tried was topped with a peppercorn chevre. It tasted good, so I picked up a small package of the stuff with no plan for how I would use it.

The next morning, I was contemplating a homemade egg McMuffin, but I was low on cheddar, which I needed to save for R’s lunch and the possible emergency quesadilla if W didn’t want whatever I was serving that evening. Then I spied the chevre. It was a more than perfect substitute. It brought the breakfast sandwich to life. In fact, I treated myself to the same breakfast on Wednesday morning as well.

This morning brought a slight but no less satisfying variation to the eggs and chevre breakfast. I sautéed a shallot, scrambled a couple eggs, then added chevre, sun-dried tomatoes, and leftover salmon. Served with a couple slices of ciabatta toast, it was a wonderful way to start the weekend. You could do worse at any number of restaurants.