Tag Archives: breakfast

Carrot and Courgette “Pasta” with Poached Egg

Ok, it’s not pasta. It’s peelings of carrots and courgette given the pasta treatment. I mostly followed this recipe for Zucchini “Pasta”, which is basically a raw mixture of zucchini, tomato, basil, garlic, oil and walnuts. I added carrots, and also cooked the garlic in the olive oil, then added the zucchini and carrots very briefly. I used pine nuts instead of walnuts, and added a poached egg and an avocado (because that seems to be what I do).

Would make again. Next time, I’d like to try the raw version with walnuts.

Recipe: Zucchini “Pasta”

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Winter Vegetable Breakfast Salad

I thought I’d start sharing my vegan breakfasts as I kick things up for the Healthy Vegan Breakfast Book. Today’s required some creativity with the veg box because I’m down to the dregs: a few carrots, half a swede (aka rutabaga to my American friends), a few broccoli florets, a head of cauliflower and a few lingering leaves of Batavia lettuce. Actually when I type it out like that it sounds like a lot of food, but I assure you the fridge looked sadly bare!

Cooked quinoa (leftovers)
Julienned carrot
Julienned swede (my new favourite use for swede?)
Red onion
Broccoli, diced into small florets
Currants soaked in boiling water for ~10 minutes
Batavia lettuce
Crushed red chilli flakes
A pinch of ground cumin
Tahini (~ 1 Tbsp) mixed with lemon juice (~ 1/4 lemon) and enough water to make a creamy dressing
Salt and pepper

This takes inspiration from American recipes I’ve seen for broccoli raisin salad, and this recipe for raw cauliflower “couscous” that really intrigues me and is the likely fate of the aforementioned cauliflower.

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Waldorf-Inspired Breakfast Salad

This has been breakfast the last few days, a sort of glorified vegan version of the classic Waldorf salad, inspired by this season’s apple harvest and a few stalks of celery lurking in my fridge. You could bulk this out with added quinoa, bulgar wheat, maybe a few raisins, or even a blob of yogurt, but I found this wasn’t necessary. As is, this was my idea of perfect breakfast: delicious food that satisfies without over-filling. Major feel-good factor here.

For one serving:

1 apple, chopped
1 carrot, grated
a few thin slices of red onion
2 celery stalks, sliced
10g walnuts
2 tbsp chopped parsley
a few little gem lettuce leaves
salt and pepper to taste
sliced green chilli (optional)
2 tsp dijon-based vinaigrette (mine was the House Dressing recipe from Arthur Potts Dawson’s Eat Your Veg, but any mustard-based dressing would do – I love this honey mustard dressing recipe)

Mix it all together and serve.

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Minted Pea and Watercress Soup

The watercress returns, because let’s face it, there are only so many watercress and apple smoothies one can drink. The rest went into this soup, adapted from this recipe on Channel 4: Minted Pea and Watercress Soup.

I used stock in place of soy milk, and didn’t bother straining out any solids: all hail the Vitamix and its ability to puree even the toughest of pea membranes and watercress stems into the finest puree. The soup is vegan, until you add the boiled egg, which makes it altogether awesome (I’m sure toasted sourdough croutons would also work a treat). On a whim, I also added some mixed seeds I toasted in a dry pan then tossed with a little soy sauce. This might be my new favourite soup garnish!

I particularly enjoyed this soup for breakfast, and as we move into winter, I expect to see more savoury breakfasts arrive in soup form.

Recipe: Minted Pea and Watercress Soup

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Mardi’s Savoury Clafoutis

I’m not sure if you’ve notice but I’ve been keeping up a little Posterous micro-blog called SmarterFitter Daily containing quick pics and notes about the foods I eat in my ongoing effort to feel awesome. Earlier this year, Posterous was acquired by Twitter, and over time Posterous has become more and more unreliable. So much so that I’ve decided to start doing these “Daily” posts (not necessarily posted daily!) here on my main blog. Welcome to a window on the world of my daily eats!

My first experience of clafoutis was a sweet peach clafoutis made by Kate Hill at the Natural Light Natural Food Workshop in Gascony earlier this summer (see My Food Story From Gascony). The recipe was inspired by fellow-student Mardi from Eat Live Travel Write who was on a blog-related peach mission in which clafoutis was the end result.

What is clafoutis? My Mac’s Dictionary.app says: “a tart made of fruit, typically cherries, baked in a sweet batter.” Or in this case, think peaches baked in a sweet eggy custard. It’s pretty yummy and appeals to my love of both eggs and fruit-based desserts.

This week, Mardi has upped the clafoutis ante and turned the tables on this conventionally sweet dish. Enter her savoury ratatouille clafoutis. Once I saw this I knew I had to make it. The custard batter includes polenta, which settles to the bottom of the ramekin in a crust-like effect that I really enjoyed. Here’s the comment I left for Mardi:

“I made your recipe this afternoon with some leftover grilled vegetables (red peppers, green beans, onion and sweetcorn, plus a little raw tomato and fresh basil tossed into the mix). Mr. Neil is correct in that the polenta does pool at the bottom, but I LOVED this effect! I felt like I was eating a polenta pie – and the polenta dust on the edges [of the ramekins] gets nice and brown and is yummy when scraped off the sides of the ramekin. Also, the polenta worked VERY nicely with the sweetcorn. If anything I felt this could have used more salt (my fault entirely). This was very easy and infinitely adaptable (I’m thinking rosemary needs to be involved next time). Will make again, and I look forward to enjoying my leftover clafoutis for breakfast tomorrow.”

Indeed I did enjoy my leftover clafoutis today, and it was badass. Arguably even better the next day?

Visit Mardi’s recipe: ratatouille clafoutis.

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Breakfast Club: Leftovers for the Win

“Breakfast Club: Because breakfast should be more interesting than tea and toast or coffee and cereal.”

If you follow me on Twitter, Flickr or SmarterFitter Daily then you know I’m all about awesome breakfasts. People have wondered how I have so much time for some of my early morning creations. My answer: leftovers. I’m always turning leftovers into breakfasts. Add a poached egg here, or a tortilla there, and boom: last night’s dinner become an easy but wonderful breakfast.

So why am I talking breakfast leftovers? This month I am hosting the Breakfast Club for my friend Helen at Fuss Free Flavours. The theme for this month is – you guessed it – LEFTOVERS. I want to hear all about your amazing ideas for turning leftovers into awesome breakfasts.

To kick things off, here’s a few of my ideas for turning leftovers into great breakfasts:

Take leftover lentils, chilli, or any kind of bean dish and add a poached egg on top. Fagioli all Uccelletto (pictured above) is perfect for this. Add a bit of good crusty bread and you really have it made.
Poached eggs also work nicely on any leftover vegetables, particularly roasted vegetables or, my current favourite, braised carrots.

When I’m cooking a lunch or dinner that involves sauteed veggies, I always sauté extras and use this in the morning for a quick omelet, or added to scrambled eggs (or tofu, or fish) for breakfast tacos. Case in point: vegan breakfast tacos, awesome with good salsa and avocado.

Indian food is a favourite, particularly dal, to which you can easily add whatever veggie you like while you’re heating up the veggie. I like to think of this as savoury breakfast porridge. This yellow pea dal is one of my favourites for this purpose, and it’s a real treat if I have chapattis and pickles on hand to go with it.

Lately I’m cuckoo for Kadhi, a spicy, yogurt-based soup that’s super adaptable to any and all matter of additions – be it vegetables, rice, potatoes, paneer, and so on. The yogurt factor makes it feel especially breakfast-like. That and its inherent yumminess.

Keep boiled potatoes around. They’re super handy, sauteed with onions and eggs (or tofu!) for a quick breakfast hash.
I also like to use leftover boiled potatoes and fish for a quick breakfast salad.

Another recent favourite is using leftover rice or other grain to make a quick salad with fruits, nuts, herbs and anything else I feel like.

Add those leftover grains to some leftover roasted veggies and you have something pretty special. Case in point: this butternut, cranberry and bulgur salad.

For me, one of the keys to making leftovers exciting is to serve them a bit differently than I did for dinner, so as to create a whole new meal rather than something that sounds as boring as “leftovers”. So if I had chilli the night before with cornbread, I’ll have it in the morning with tortilla and avocado. Or if I had grilled fish and boiled potatoes for dinner, I’ll put the leftovers in a salad to create an entirely different dish.

As you can see, the leftover thing does tend to be best suited for savoury breakfasts. But you can sweeten the deal with the dessert course. For example, these grilled peaches, served with panna cotta for dessert this weekend, were also terrific in the morning with yogurt and muesli.

Please let the world know of your breakfast leftover ideas by blogging about your recipes and sharing them with the Breakfast Club.

Here are a few rules:

Please indicate in your post that it is a Breakfast Club event, and add a link to the main Breakfast Club page.
All entrants must (1) link to this post on SmarterFitter, (2) link to Helen’s Breakfast Club at Fuss Free Flavours and (3) include the Breakfast Club logo (click here to download).
Entries can be sent to other events but must include the links detailed above.
Recipes that you have blogged before are fine, but they must be republished and the logo and links above added.
If you use Twitter please use #blogbreakfastclub and tweet your entry.
Be mindful of copyright if using recipes which are not your own.
Closing date will be 30th June and I shall post the roundup shortly after that.

When you have written your post and have linked to it as mentioned above, please add your post below so everyone can see your recipes. I look forward to being inspired by your clever ideas for breakfast leftovers.

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Sourdough Buckwheat Pancakes

In the last few months I’ve been practising making sourdough bread. This involves keeping a starter around that I feed from time to time with flour and water. A loaf of bread only takes a few tablespoons of starter to bake, so I end up with lots of leftover starter around.

It’s a common predicament for sourdough bread bakers, and many have come up with various ways to use it (see my previous post on sourdough buckwheat crepes, and Clotilde’s post on sourdough crumpets).

Last week I got a hankering for pancakes and Carl Legge pointed me to this wonderful recipe for sourdough buckwheat pancakes by Northwest Sourdough. The recipe turned out a real treat – simple, light, fluffy pancakes, perfect for a Saturday morning.

I just enjoyed some of these pancakes with fresh picked blackberries, homemade blackberry and plum jam and a bit of natural yogurt (creme fraiche with have been amazing). Purists would adore these with maple syrup, or perhaps strawberries and whipped cream.

And just look at the interior of these pancakes: beautifully bubbled and airy, speckled with lovely buckwheat.

I’ve tweaked the recipe just a tad from the original, using slightly less butter in the batter and maple syrup for sweetening. Next time I’d like to try mixing the flour, water and sourdough starter the night before to let things ferment a bit and bring out the sour flavour a bit more. I’d also like to try upping the buckwheat quotient. Then again, why tweak a recipe that’s already pretty stellar to begin with? Because I’m like that.

This recipe makes a LOT of pancakes so scale it down if it’s just one or two of you. Or don’t – they should freeze well, and who wouldn’t want a stockpile of yummy fluffy pancakes in the freezer?

Sourdough Buckwheat Pancakes

Adapted from a recipe at Northwest Sourdough. The recipe makes a LOT of pancakes. I like mine on the small size, about 3-4 inches in diameter, and this recipe made over 30 pancakes (yowza!). But the good news is they freeze well. Reheat in the toast and you have the ultimate pancake breakfast, available at your fingertips!

Ingredients

2 cups sourdough starter
1 cup warm water
1 cup milk
4 beaten eggs
2 Tbsp maple syrup
1/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
1 cup of buckwheat flour
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 Tablespoon baking powder
Butter for cooking

Method

In one bowl, mix together the wet ingredients (sourdough starter, warm water, milk, egs, maple syrup and butter).
In a separate bowl, mix together the dry ingredients (all purpose flour, buckwheat flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder).
Heat up a pan to just above medium – you want a fairly hot pan (sourdough likes hot temperatures according to Northwest Sourdough).
Just before you’re about to cook, mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients into the dry ingredients until just mixed.
Put a little butter into the pan and spread it around.
Pour dollops of batter into the pan (I use a 1/4 cup measure that’s about 2/3 full). As you first start to see bubbles in the centre (this will happen quickly), flip the pancakes. After a minute or so check the bottoms. When their nice and golden, take off the heat.
Repeat with the rest of the batter, adding more butter to the pan as needed.

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook time: 20 minutes

Yield: About 32 4-inch pancakes.

Per pancake: 77 Calories | 2.4 grams Fat | 12.5 grams Carbohydrates | 2.5 grams Protein | 0.7 grams Fiber

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