Posts tagged Breakfast

Unleashing the Quiche!

Recipe March 22, 2012 3 Comments

Quiche was first introduced to me in more or less the following words:

Leftover pie

And I can understand where it’s coming from – it’s a very economical way to use up leftover ingredients…provided you have spare pastry and spare dairy (read: cream) lying around. After making my favourite pastry recipe at the moment, I’ve been on a quiche bend, meaning that Sean and I have plenty of quick breakfasts that we can grab on the way to work! Happiness all around.

I guess the idea is that you can fill a quiche with pretty much anything you like – I always feel like if you like the combination, who’s to judge? (I do have a rant about that, but more about it later) There are also many different quiche mixes on the net, but I’ll just share what I use and just feel free to mix and match!

Quiche Mix
4 eggs
400g pure cream
50g milk
pinch of salt

Preheat 165C.

Line 12 muffin tins with pastry.

For this lot, I filled the quiche with leftover spinach, cream cheese, bacon, and then thoroughly mixed up the eggs, cream and salt and pour it over the filling till 1/2 mm from the top of the pastry.

Bake till the tops are brown.

Let cool on a cooling rack, and then upend the tray onto a cookie sheet.

I find that if you tip it out while it’s too warm, there is some warping in the shape of the mini-quiches. But it’s still cute! And your tummy won’t know what shape it’s in. 😉

Meanwhile, I’ve got some leftover pastry that I’m not sure what to do with. Any ideas?

Leftover Pizza!

what i ate October 10, 2011 2 Comments

Not that the pizza was leftover…rather it was pizza made out of left overs.

One weekend I really felt like olives and roasted red peppers. I thought, “Hmm, why not make a sandwich with all those toppings? Ooh I could make them like little pizzas. But wouldn’t they be too small. I could make pizza dough and make real pizzas instead!”

So I made pizza dough. My train of thought always gets me in trouble.

It was quite a bit of effort, but on behalf of everyone who ate it – Sean and myself – it was really worth it effort. And there’s something about kneading dough that makes me happy.

I simply used this pizza dough recipe from Taste, and covered the pizza with tomato paste and with whatever leftovers I had in the fridge! I had:

Roasted red peppers – I bought red capsicum in bulk and chucked them all in a 200C fan-forced oven till they were all blackened. I then covered the tray with foil and let it cool. After it cooled, I just peeled off the skin and took out the stem with seeds. Then, I just put them into a sterilised jar and keep them in the fridge!
Thinly sliced onions
Finely chopped garlic
Chopped Bacon
Haloumi
Misc Cheese – I had some tasty cheese, a little block of parmesan and a teeny tiny bit of mozerella left over.
Olives

The recipe for the pizza dough yielded two medium cookie trays worth of pizzas, which means as much experimenting as you want!!

Just remember to oil the bottom of the trays before you stretch the dough onto them.

Yum.

Bacon Pancakes

Recipe October 3, 2011 5 Comments

After watching Man Vs Food – Season 3, Episode 2 where host Adam Richman goes to The Buff Restaurant in Boulder Colorado – I decided that bacon in pancakes was a really really good idea. There were a couple of things that I took away from the episode:

The bacon was first baked, not fried.
The pancakes were semi-cooked before pieces of bacon were pressed into them.
It was all then topped with a ‘basted egg’ which, from what I could gather, was a part poached, part steamed sunny side up egg.

So I decided to do a little experiment. I laid some bacon out on a tray, and put them in the oven. While that was in there, I decided to fry some bacon.

The fried bacon turned out curly, with more extreme caramelization.

The baked bacon seemed more evenly browned, and turned out flat pieces that were more easily pressed into the pancakes, and prevented the batter overspill that happened with the curly bacon. It’s all personal preference, really.

The pancakes used in the show were, I think, buttermilk pancakes. I used my own recipe for pancakes, but feel free to use whichever one you want.

Breakfast Pancakes:

1 cup self raising flour (or one cup plain with a teaspoon of both baking powder and baking soda)
1 tbsp sugar
1 egg
1 cup milk

Mix all the ingredients together, being careful not to overmix. Heat a pan to medium and lightly coat with oil. Ladle the mixture into the pan. When bubbles start appearing and the pancakes start setting, place cooked pieces of bacon onto the still-slightly-runny batter. Flip the pancakes.

Serve with maple syrup.

********

The final part of this awesome breakfast dish is, of course, the basted eggs. For this, you need a frying pan, a lid, egg, water, and a little bit of oil.

Basted Eggs

Eggs
Water

Preheat a lightly oiled pan to medium heat. Use butter for an extra richness. Crack an egg (or two!) into the pan. As the whites start to set, add about a teaspoon of water, and cover with the lid. I used a glass lid, which allows me to monitor the eggs, but my stove’s medium heat has my eggs done in about 30 seconds. This does take a little bit of trial and error, but it does pay off in the end.

Don’t believe me?

Here’s the money shot.

The most perfectly runny, silky eggs ever.

Well worth the effort. =)

Comfort Eating 2

Recipe July 18, 2011 5 Comments

As some of you may know, I’ve been a little bit under the weather recently. And in those moments where I think the flu is going to get the better of me, I turn to some comfort eating!

For me, anyway, the best foods to have when I’m sick are semi-solids. I get the works in terms of the flu – burning lungs, solidly stuffed nose, pounding headaches – and eating (although always a priority) is not the most attractive thing.

So here is how I make my congee – a simple recipe that even the partner (who may not be the best in the kitchen!) can make.

Congee recipe

Cooking time: 30 min (roughly)
Ingredients:
1/2 Cup Raw Rice (long or short grain is fine. If you have broken rice, it’s better!)
Water (1L minimum)
1 tsp Sesame seed oil (optional)

Warm the sesame seed oil in a saucepan over medium heat (make sure that it’s big enough to accommodate the porridge!) and add the rice in. Once it’s fragrant and the rice starts to fry a little, start adding about 2 cups of the water.

Once the water starts boiling, stir the rice occasionally. For the rice to get to rice porridge stage, it first has to go through cooked-rice stage.

Once the rice grains have puffed up, add more water and reduce the heat to low. Simmer and stir occasionally till the porridge has become the consistency of oats.

You can have it a little more watery or a little thicker if you’d like, and it’s easy to add water to thin it out or cook it a little longer to thicken it.

And as with any sort of plain porridge, condiments are usually in order!

The first jar that I reach for is usually Olive Vegetables (橄榄菜）.

These salty black strands are a source of addiction for me. It has the common savoury taste of olives, and is quite oily. Use sparingly, as this is – as most rice porridge condiments are – incredibly salty. I would suggest, if you were going to get a bottle to try, trying a small amount on a teaspoon before you unload a whole lot into your bowl.

I also like Mushroom and Meat Sauce 香菇肉酱

Thick pieces of fatty-ish pork and mushroom sit in a slightly gelatinous chilli sauce. More people who haven’t grown up with congee tend to take to this particular condiment more easily than the Olive Vegetables. It is still on the salty side, and you can warm it before eating, if you’d like.

The two that I’ve mentioned are of course not the only condiments out there for congee, but it’s definitely the two that I always have around in the house. Some others include Salted Duck Egg with its luminescent yolk, and Fish with Salted Black Beans. These condiments are served like the Korean Banchan – many small plates dotting the table – and the more variety the better!

I hope that this helps widen the types of comfort food you can have when you’re sick (or not! I’d have congee any day, but more so when I’m sick)- I know that this often provides me with warmth and something really easy to eat.

Money for Jam

Review May 19, 2011 2 Comments

Lookee what I got in the mail!!!!!!!

I love food gifts. (Note: I bet you can already tell which one’s our favourite!)

Anathoth has very kindly sent me some very yummy jam, and given that I’m not a big jam person, IT IS YUMMY. Anathoth is a New Zealand company and also makes relishes and I’ve seen them making the rounds at food festivals like Taste.

So Sean and I decided that some toast was in order.

MAN was that Cherry Berry Jam a winner! We got sent both Cherry Berry and Rhubarb and Red Berry, but while the Rhubarb and Red Berry was a good jam, there was just something about the chunky, glossy, fruitiness of the Cherry Berry jam that made us want to devour the whole tub!!! As you can see in the picture above, what started out as, “Oh we’ll crack it open and have a taste”, turned into, “Oh goodness we need to leave some in the tub for the photo!!!!!”

Martyna from the Wholesome Cook even serves up the jam as a lovely accompanying sauce!

Swedish meatballs anyone? =)

Valentine’s Day Easy Breakfast

Recipe February 11, 2011 1 Comment

Seeing as how Valentine’s Day falls on a Monday this year, most people are going to be hard-pressed to spoil their loved ones on the day. So if you’re anything like me and want to make a day out of anything, you’re probably thinking, “Sunday brunch!”.

Well, because I believe that sometimes celebrating a romantic day with a loved one calls for something familiar and comforting – because it’s a day for you too. For the past couple of years I’ve been trying all sorts of fancy breakfasts and getting stressed out trying to get them right, so this year I’m trying for the familiar.

Sure-fire fluffy pancakes:

1 cup plain flour
3/4 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup milk
1 egg

This one’s easy.

Mix all the dry ingredients.

Make a well in the centre.

Mix in wet ingredients.

If the mixture’s a little runny, add a little more milk. You can use a ladle if you want, but I used an old, washed out pancake shake bottle to pour out heart shapes in my medium-heated pan.

Serve with hulled strawberries and yoghurt, with a maplesyrupgoldensyrupicingsugaranythingyouwant!

And, if you have the cookie cutters/cupcake moulds, you can go nuts with the usual – bacon, eggs, sandwiches. Just remember to have a good day and enjoy yourself too.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!!

Cheap eats.

Review January 19, 2011 5 Comments

Sometimes you’re so hungry, you need something cheap and quick. And especially when you’re in a place like Ikea – I never want to leave! – cheap food is an absolute find!

I had the smaller breakfast option ($2.95). Baked beans, poached tomato, bacon, sausage, hash brown and scrambled eggs all piled unceremoniously onto a plate. Hey, I never said it was gourmet, but it is cheap and the food is very decent.

Sean went for the option that included meatballs ($5.95).

In all, Ikea food is pretty much like its furniture – nothing flash, very minimalistic, but very good value. Especially if you want to spend the first half of the day at Ikea – get in early and get the breakfast!

On the Sunny Side of the Street

Recipe December 20, 2010 2 Comments

It’s less than a week to Christmas!! In honour of making something festive, I decided that a sunny Christmas-sy breakfast was in order. I present to you:

Sunny Side Up Eggs with Candy Cane Grissini and Cinnamon Salt

Eggs
Grissini (Recipe below)
Prosciutto
Tomato Sauce

The night before, make the grissini and shape them into cane shapes. Meanwhile, make the tomato sheets. Spread the tomato sauce either in a dehydrator, or on a piece of baking paper set over a baking tray. If using the dehydrator, use according instructions. If using the oven, set the oven to a fan-forced 50 degrees. Dehydrate till you can peel the tomato sauce off in a sheet.

Fry the egg (s) in a gingerbread man cookie cutter. Make sure the cookie cutter is stainless steel or can take heat.

Place the egg onto a plate, and wrap strips of prosciutto around the grissini. Carefully cut the tomato sheet into long strips and wind that around the grissini too. Sprinkle with cinnamon and a touch of sea salt.

Et voila! Novelty Christmas breakfast. =)

Grissini Recipe (Tweaked from Group Recipes)

1 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp yeast
1/2 tsp brown sugar
1 tablespoon olive oil
100 ml lukewarm water

Mix the dry ingredients together. Make a well in the centre, and add the wet ingredients. Knead till smooth. Cover with cling wrap and set aside in a warm place to rest.

Preheat the oven to 180 C.

When the dough has doubled in size, start rolling out little balls of dough into long strips. Alternatively, you could use a pasta machine and the fettucine cutters to ensure a more accurate end product. Personally though, I prefer having not-so-perfect looking grissini. =)

Bake till crispy and golden brown, and then wrap with tomato and prosciutto!

It really tastes like tomato and bacon on toast haha. Great as an entree. =)

Happy munching!

Breaking Dawn

Recipe November 12, 2010 6 Comments

I’m not often awake early, but when I am, I like to get industrious with breakfast!! People say that it’s the most important meal of the day and yada yada (no really. It’s important.) but I love it just because I think bacon&eggs is the best combination EVER!

Here I’ve got an egg baked in a tomato, covered in diced bacon, with a side of a yoghurt parfait with dried cranberries and cereal.

Eggs en cocotte de tomat (An original recipe):

Ingredients
Eggs
Tomatoes
Basil
Bacon
Salt and Pepper
Olive Oil

Preheat your oven to 220C.

Carefully cut off the top of the tomatoes (I would use 1 or 2 per person) and scoop out the insides. (You don’t need the insides for this, but don’t waste it! I would suggest making your own ketchup. :)) Please make sure that you scoop out enough flesh – I didn’t for the first one and there was egg spilling out everywhere! Put a basil leaf in the bottom on the tomato, and crack some salt and pepper into the tomato shell. Then crack an egg into it and place into an oven proof tray. (On hindsight, I would’ve used muffin trays, cause it was a little finicky trying to get the cooked tomatoes off the tray.)

Drizzle the filled tomatoes and tops with olive oil (don’t ‘cap’ the tomatoes first!) and bake for about 5 min, or until just set. Then cap the tomatoes and bake for a little while longer, till the yolks are the way you want them.

While the eggs are baking, fry up some bacon.

When the tomatoes are done, serve up with yummy salty bacon!! =)

Yoghurt parfait:

Yoghurt
Cereal of your choice
Dried fruit of your choice

This one’s pretty easy. I just layered thick yoghurt, dried cranberries, weetbix, and oatmeal in a washed out jar. Et voila! Simple, and I think the jar looks super cute as little serving cups. heh heh.

The closest yoghurt to what I used would be a Greek style yoghurt (I made my own), but remember that not all yoghurts are sweetened, so taste them first! I do think though that the slight tartness of Greek yoghurts are a good foil to the sweetened dried fruit. But really, use whatever you want! =)