Breakfast Wellington

This is a fabulous looking and very tasty breakfast treat, again based on a recipe from Cuisine at Home magazine – you can do all the preparation the night before and then just pop it into the oven in the morning. It tastes as good as it looks, and it’s very easy to prepare.

Ingredients:

– 1 box puff pastry dough

– 2 T. unsalted butter

– 1 cup frozen shredded or cubed hash brown potatoes

– 1/2 cup onion , diced

– 2 T. minced fresh chives

(the above 2 ingredients can be substitued by 1 T. onion powder)

– 1 cup smoked ham or smoked salmon (optional)

– 12 eggs

– 4 oz. cream cheese, softened

– 2 T. orange juice (if preparing ahead)

– 1 T. water

– 2 T. Parmesan cheese, shredded or grated

Preheat oven to 400 degrees, thaw pastry according to package directions (around 30 minutes)

Melt butter over medium-high heat in a largish skillet. Add potatoes and saute until slightly browned, about 10 minutes. Stir in onion, saute until soft, then add ham/salmon.

Whisk 11 of the eggs together with the chives. Add them to the pan and scramble just until set. They should still be ‘wet’ – at this point, stir in the cream cheese and juice until blended. Refrigerate the egg mixture while you prepare the pastry.

Unfold a pastry sheet on a sheet of parchment paper. It almost always cracks at the seams, so wet your fingers and press at the seams to fix them up. You can roll it on a floured surface until it’s longer (about 12×10) to get a longer pastry, but it works fine unrolled as well. You need to trim and pre-cut it so it looks like this picture:

Glop about 1/2 of the egg mixture onto the pastry and start braiding:

After your pastries are braided they’ll look kinda funny. Don’t worry about it…

At this point you can refrigerate the prepared pastries in the refrigerator – lightly cover them with plastic wrap to prevent drying.

When you’re ready to cook them, combine the remaining egg and water, brush over the tops of the strudels. Sprinkle with parmesan and bake 25-30 minutes, or until golden. Enjoy!