Tag: Breakfast

wildrice and quinoa breakfast
Breakfast, Brunch, Gluten Free, Lunch, Meal, quick meals, Salad, Savoury, Snack, Sweet

Weekday Black Rice and Quinoa Meals

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    Today I am cooking with the intention to multi task a couple of ingredients.   I am working with my friend Ollie on a project to create simple, healthy and affordable meals.  As always, this is part of my food journey (and I am looking forward to the challenge within this) of preparing some basic items to make my weekday meals easier.   My struggle with preparing food in advance is that often when it comes time to eat it, it is not what I want  – brattish  I know!  My thoughts this week were to prepare something that could then transform into the flavours I did want on the day, be it sweet or savoury, breakfast, lunch or dinner.. Starting with this in mind I prepared Wild Rice (which isn’t actually rice at all) and  black quinoa.  Shop around for wild rice (it can vary in price a lot) and it is only recently that some  more affordable home-brand varieties have become available. The idea here is not that you have to use these two grains, you can absolutely substitute your favourite rice or grain, or better still use what you have in the pantry.  This is a great way to finish some of those half used packets.  I love combining grains, pulses and beans, which as I show below,  can form the base of all sorts of different meals.  Using a variety of grains, pulses and beans gives you a broader nutrition profile and more interesting textures to […]

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Breakfast, Brunch, Canape, Condiments, Gluten Free, Lunch, Meal, Salad, Spring

Mimosa Sauce and Spring Asparagus

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We are enjoying the beginning of the asparagus season here in my world – delicious, crisp, young spears to let us know that spring is really here.  I have been celebrating its arrival with an old world sauce that is new to my repetoire, but one that I am sure will become an old favourite. At the start of the season I like to savour my first bunches of asparagus, serving them simply, lightly steamed or blanched  with some good butter, salt and pepper and relishing the taste of each slightly salty buttery spear.  It is week two now and I am ready to add a little something more,  that said I am still looking for clean fresh flavours to enhance but not overwhelm the asparagus. Enter Mimosa sauce, a traditional accompaniment to asparagus that I had somehow missed.   Eggs and asparagus are a traditional combination always rich and delicious, and although I will never say no to hollandaise sauce, this delicious Mimosa sauce – which is almost an egg salsa – is somehow fresher and lighter for the start of spring.  With the red wine vinegar, capers and mustard this is a punchy sauce that offers lots of umami goodness. Mimosa Sauce is conveniently made up of  ingredients that are easy to come by, and often in our refrigerator anyway.  Parsley is one of the herbs that hopefully survive the winter somewhere in the garden, and although I haven’t done this I am sure you could sub the shallot […]

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white chocolate fruit muffins
Breakfast, Brunch, Desert, Snack, Sweet

White Chocolate Fruit Muffins for a Picnic

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Over the last couple of years I have spent a lot of time and energy coming up with aspirational recipes to share, recipes to channel my best self and to give ideas to maybe help you to do the same.  I love this and still want to continue this journey trying to live and cook for my best life. Moving on and a couple of weeks ago my son George sent a message from the other side of the world requesting a recipe for my muffins – I sent a quick recipe off the top of my head -forgot the sugar – doh….  Probably the best answer would be to think this through and put the recipe properly on the blog.  The stumbling block with this idea comes from a feeling that for my best self no white sugar or flour should appear on this blog, and because of this I have always discounted the idea of recording some of these home favourites here   Then over the last week or so I kept thinking about this and my reluctance to put the muffin recipe here on the blog.  Lots of wondering has bought me back to my original reason for the blog which was principally was to keep in touch and share with friends and family at home and around the world –  for me this means sharing my world as reflected in the kitchen.  So it seems that something I have cooked so often that no recipe is required, […]

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scrambled tofu
Breakfast, Brunch, Gluten Free, Spring

Cafe Style Scrambled Tofu Breakfast

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Today I feel like I am trying to channel my inner Yotam Ottolenghi – my flavour, food styling, all round food hero! I am collaborating with a friend on a project which involves a gluten free dairy free breakfast.  I have added my own challenge to this by deciding it was time to make friends again with tofu and hopefully make some new converts along the way.  I have definitely spent the week pondering my breakfast, wanting it to be something I would want to eat – and eat again – and be good enough to share with you… I am also hoping for my breakfast tofu to be a contemporary adaptation, not a fringe dwelling remnant of the sixties or a meal more reflective of other cuisines and cultures. So I sit here eating my breakfast at 1 o’clock on a Sunday afternoon in food heaven – (disclaimer -I did have a first breakfast so that is not just a matter of pure hunger!) This is a great cafe style comfort food combo which – I think – doesn’t involve quirky ingredients or time consuming procedures. It is simple to make for one person or easily extended to cater for a crowd. Like similar egg dishes – seasoning is the key, so think about and taste the tofu while adding the salt and pepper.  The asparagus and tomatoes are both umami rich vegetables and worked amazingly to bring this together, and when teamed with my seedy nutty daily bread, […]

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chocolate breakfast cereal
Breakfast, Brunch, Gluten Free, Sweet

Chocolate Breakfast Cereal

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Todays story is about a chocolate laden, seed, coconut and nut filled – not so sweet –  breakfast cereal. This same cereal might just as easily be an afternoon snack or a sprinkle for ice-cream.  Sometimes in the depth of winter (and possibly even on a bright summer morning) we need the comfort of something that seems richer, brighter and a little naughtier. it maybe brings reminders of childhood coco pops, but just as importantly, something that will sustain us through the morning.  Knowing we all start the day with different food needs and rituals, in recent times I have become a fan of something with loads of seeds and nuts (aka My Daily Bread). This cereal offers a chance for me to change it up but still enjoy that nutty goodness. In the process of experimenting with this, I was excited to finally tried and have success with the crazy concoction called aquafaba.  This is chickpea water beaten to form a foam similar to that of beaten egg whites.  I have seen it using canned chickpeas but as I love to cook my own chickpeas I hadn’t been sure if the technique would transfer, happily it did. My method, as always, was to soak my chickpeas overnight and rinse and drain them. I then cooked the chickpeas in lightly salted water – making sure that by the end of the cooking they were just covered in water.  I drained the chickpeas and cooled the liquid before beating.  I managed to get […]

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socca crepes
Breakfast, Brunch, Canape, Meal, Salad, Savoury, Snack

Simple Versatile Socca Pancake Mix

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I have been listening to people and the media talking about food.  Two phrases that have caught my attention lately are to do with the idea of either – breakfast for dinner and or salad for breakfast.  I love these ideas and their seems to be something comforting about them that implies ease and simplicity.  Even better they can translate to either, family feasts or simple meals for one. To make this idea work today I have been cooking simple but delicious chickpea flour pancakes called Socca or Farinata, a traditional recipe idea originating from Nice and the neighbouring Italian coastline.  These incredibly versatile pancakes can form the base of an array of meals – breakfast, lunch, pre prandial or supper – they can be folded and used as a scoop on the side of your plate, rolled with your favourite mix of fillings traditional pancake/crepe style, cooked with fillings such as teaspoons of pesto and or mozzarella or feta, and basil in the batter before flipping (see the photos at the bottom of this page), or even poured and baked in the oven and used as a simple pizza style base, and if you have some left over, keep turning them in the pan until they dry and crisp, or bake them in the oven as you would for crostini and use like a cracker.  The batter can be used after sitting for half an hour, or, it will be even better for you after soaking overnight and using […]

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shakshuka
Breakfast, Brunch, Condiments, Gluten Free, Meal, Snack

Zhoug – spicy-green-delicious

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Zhoug, shakshuka, labna, all words my computer would rather I changed, but which offer a delicious look into another world of  vibrant and exciting foods and flavours. Today it is all about Zhoug. This spicy middle eastern condiment,originally from Yemen and now a favourite in Israel, had somehow missed my food radar. Happily Lily, an inspiring young work colleague – knowing my love of middle eastern foods –  bought me a small jar of both a red and a green zhoug that her father had made.   I was immediately hooked and needing to be able to make this myself, I turned to my ridiculously large collection of recipe books – (it is always good to have an excuse to justify the purchase of more though!) – and found this sauce in a number of my middle eastern recipe books.  After some further reading and research, (reality says – lying around, thumbing through recipe books and surfing the food files of the internet), I have been happily giving these recipes a try! I am sure the real deal is different in its nuances, but I am so happy with the results that I think you should give it a try too.  It will warm up just about anything you wish to eat and will be something you are happy to find in your refrigerator – my friend Lily said you can even freeze it!  Most importantly, this isn’t all about the chilli, it is a whole palate of flavours giving this […]

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black rice and coconut breakfast
Breakfast, Brunch, Desert, Gluten Free, Sweet

Easy and Delicious Black Rice and Coconut Breakfast

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So easy and so delicious. This is creamy, chewy, sweet, and slightly exotic tasting – this is breakfast heaven.  I realise now that I am very late to the black rice breakfast idea, traditional in some cultures and popular on cafe menus, but now I have tried it I am a convert and I can see no reason why I am not going to eat this for desert as well. The black rice has an amazing flavour and natural perfume as it cooks, it is slightly sweet and even though this particular brand of rice is from Italy it is very reminiscent of Asian flavours.  I have cooked it today with cardamon as this is the flavour I had been wanting, but I love the idea of lemongrass, lime and ginger served with mango, or sweet cinnamon and nutmeg, or vanilla….  Go wild but  please let me know what  flavours you enjoy! The grains of this rice are slightly short and round with a  wonderful chewy quality that you find in brown rice, which makes it feel substantial enough to fuel your morning. I followed the rules as I read them (soaking my rice over night), this makes the rice easier to digest and faster to cook but is not absolutely necessary.  If you don’t soak the rice it will need more water and an extra half an hour or so to cook.  The cooking process is a little like risotto (but without the fuss), adding water and coconut milk […]

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cashew cream breakfast jar
Breakfast, Brunch, Canape, Condiments, Desert, Gluten Free, Snack, Sweet

Breakfast to Desert – Cashew Nut, Coconut Chia Cream

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I am struggling to decide where I begin telling you about this cashew, chia, coconut cream as I am so taken with everything about it. To start with it is amazing because it tastes soooo delicious, and isn’t that where we should always begin – “healthy” or not! Then it is also amazing in its versatility.  You can keep it as thick as when first made and it is spoonable enough that you could use it as a cream filling in a cake. Or you can thin it with a little of, your choice of milk, coconut water or and a little lemon juice and you  have a great yoghurt substitute. As a totally dairy free alternative it offers all the richness, mouthfeel and satisfaction of its dairy alternatives such as cream, greek yoghurt, marscapone cheese, cream cheese etc…   I love dairy products and happily include them in my diet, but it seems to me that more and more people are telling me they are intolerant to lactose or dairy.  As someone who wants to feed everyone and enjoy the widest variety of foods, I am very excited when I find delicious alternatives.  Especially alternatives that aren’t a lesser product and that taste amazing in their own right.  Anything that expands the variety of foods we eat, offers new options in how we cook and prepare our meals has to be a good thing. Lastly (I am definitely being hasty saying lastly, but for now lastly!),  it is so […]

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kumera,kale and corn fritters
Breakfast, Brunch, Gluten Free, Savoury

Kumera Kale and Corn Fritters

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Good morning breakfast I love you!  On a good day off,  if get up early enough I can even manage two breakfasts.  Actually I am hideously routine in my initial breakfast, and always start with a piece of the toast I featured on the blog a couple of weeks ago  https://freshkitchen.co.nz/my-daily-bread-and-crackers/ .  Although this is great, because of my early starts by mid morning I am ready for something else.  As luck would have it a second breakfast/brunch is the perfect answer, especially on a day off. These fritters are beautiful, the ones I made this morning for the photos I made with golden kumera,  but any kumera (purple NZ, orange or gold)  will work well. These are beautiful light, crispy, tasty fritters. I did try to make my fritter into one big rosti like cake the other day thinking I might simplify my fritter life.  This was no great success, the kumera doesn’t seem to have the same gluey qualities of potato and it was all a bit more like a kumera hash, delicious, but not my intention.  In my research, I found people lightly salting the kumera leaving it for a while and then squeezing out the liquid, along with giving the kale a quick steam I found this made the cooking process quicker and they held together better, especially as I did not want to use any flour in these fritters. I chose to poach the egg as I wanted to keep this healthier but you could fry […]

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