breakfast

Quick take: Yogurt (yoghurt) cheese with garlic and olive oil

maki — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:04:06 +0200

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has an article about how to make yogurt (or as they spell it in the UK, yoghurt) in the Guardian. I did not want to go to the trouble of making yogurt from scratch, but I had a big pot of plain yogurt that needed to be used up so I made a sort of variation on the yogurt cheese balls further down on the page.

Yogurt cheese, in case you are unfamiliar with it, is just plain yogurt that has been drained of much of its liquid. To make it, just line a sieve with some porous cloth like cheesecloth, muslin, a coffee filter or even a couple of paper towels, spoon the yogurt in, and put the sieve with a bowl underneath in the refrigerator for at least a few hours. The more you let it sit, the drier it will become.

I strained about 2 1/2 cups of yogurt mixed with 1 teaspoon of sea salt from Friday evening to Sunday morning, by which time it had become the consistency of whipped cream cheese. I put this into a bowl, grated one garlic clove over it and drizzled on some extra virgin olive oil and mixed it up. It was the perfect spread for freshly baked hot savory scones.

I’ve never been a big fan of very sweet yogurt, so this savory yogurt spread may make more breakfast appearances.

Easter brunch bunny bao (steamed buns)

maki — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 16:16:59 +0200

For a planned Easter lunch, I wanted to do something in the brunch realm, but with an Easter theme. Brunch purists may insist on eggs and pancakes and croissants and champagne for brunch, but for me ‘brunch’ means an early lunch feast after little or no breakfast, and so dim sum is my favorite kind of brunch.

Putting Easter and dim sum together, I devised these bunny shaped bao, or steamed buns. (The inspiration for the shape came from a pair of fluffy white bunny slippers I saw at a flea market last summer.) They are quite simple really: tender steamed bun dough is filled and formed into an oval, and the ears are cut with scissors. The faces are optional - for a minimalist bunny, you could just leave them blank and unadorned. Or, you could go all-out and add whiskers with slivered green onion, or whatever strikes your fancy.

The bunny bao could be stuffed with any kind of steamed bun filling (see my roast pork filled steamed buns), but keeping with the brunch theme, I’ve filled these with an egg, bacon and chive mixture. It all makes sense - eggs, and ham, and bunnies, plus spring chives. So very Easter.

You could of course omit the bunny-shaping part if you want to avoid the cuteness.

Bunny shaped bao (steamed buns) with egg and bacon filling

Makes about 12 bunnies

For the dough:

400g / 14 oz. all-purpose white flour
1 packet (7g) dry yeast
2 Tbs. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
220ml / a bit less than 1 U.S. cup warm water
2 Tbs. vegetable oil (such as canola, safflower)
extra flour for rolling out

For the filling:

150g / about 5 oz (a few slices) bacon, speck or pancetta, cut into small dice
3 large eggs
2 tsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. mirin
3 Tbs. chives, finely chopped

Equipment: a pair of sharp scissors, a multi-tiered bamboo steamer, kitchen parchment paper

Make the dough. In a large bowl mix the dry ingredients together well. Add the warm water a little at a time, mixing all the time, until it forms a shaggy ball. Add the oil and knead in the bowl until the dough cleans the sides. Place on a board (lightly floured if necessary) and knead until smooth. Form into a ball, place back in the bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Leave until risen to about 2 1/2 times its original size, about 1 hour.

In the meantime, make the filling. In a dry non-stick frying pan, fry the the bacon bits until crispy but not too black. Drain well on a paper towel.

Mix together the egg, soy sauce, sugar and mirin. In the same non-stick frying pan, mix the egg around to make scrambled eggs that are firm but not hard (take of the heat while still soft, and they’ll continue to cook to the ideal firmness). Add the chives and the bacon at the end and mix well. Let cool to room temperature.

Punch down the risen dough, roll into a snake and cut into 12 equal pieces. Make each piece into a small, smooth ball. Cover with a dampened kitchen towel and let rest for about 15 minutes.

Cut the parchment paper into 12 10cm / 4 inches or so sized squares.

Make ready the steaming equipment.

Flatten a dough ball to about 12 cm / 5 inches in diameter, making the edges thinner than the middle part.

Place about 1 teaspoon of the filling in the middle of the dough circle. Don’t try to overfill or you will have trouble closing up the dough.

Gather up the dough around the filling, pinching to seal well. The dough should be moist enough to form a good seal, but if not brush the edges with the tiny bit of water and pinch closed again.

Flip the bun over, and form into a longish oval shape, rounding out any bumps if needed. Look at the bun and decide which end looks best as the ‘face’ of the bunny.

Lay a pair of clean, sharp scissors almost flat against the top of the bun lenghwise. The points should aim for about 1/3 from the ‘face’ end of the bun. Snip two ‘ears’, taking care not to cut through the dough so the filling is exposes.

Here’s how the bunny should look after the ears are snipped. If the ears are too round, flatten them carefully with your fingers.

To make the eyes, poke small holes with a chopstick end and poke in a piece of chive in each hole. Don’t go too deep! (If you are in a hurry, just poke the holes and skip the chives.)

Place each bun on a piece of parchment paper, and place in a steamer well apart (they will puff up to about twice the size, and any touching parts will not be smooth). Steam for about 20 minutes. Eat while piping hot.

Notes

The dough here is a bit more delicate than the basic one I gave for steamed buns previously. The trick to making the bunnies smooth and cute is to not overhandle the dough, and to keep the surface moist when letting them rest. Don’t use bread flour - use all-purpose, or even cake flour. (The dough recipe comes from a fantastic book in Japanese called Peking (Beijing) Style Flour Cooking by Wu Wuen.)

To make ahead, steam them, let them cool a bit and put into plastic bags and freeze. You can steam them from frozen for about 20-25 minutes until hot.

You can also make plain unstuffed bunnies. Plain bao make a great accompaniment to Chinese meals, instead of the usual rice or noodles.

England, part 1: Breakfast and sausages

maki — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 19:10:21 +0200

The first of several essays about my recent trip to England.

The rather large lady sat down with a sigh at the table next to ours with a sigh. Laying down her walking stick, she looked around appreciatively at the sunlit room, decorated tastefully in pale yellows to match the vaguely Edwardian architecture of the hotel. Beyond the large windows, we could see the waters of the Channel sparkling in the morning sun.

“I want a proper breakfast” she declared to her husband, who nodded without any questions and trotted off obediently to the breakfast bar. He returned shortly with a large plate laden with the Proper Breakfast: a mound of scrambled eggs, several strips of bacon, some slices of black pudding, a couple of links of pork sausages, fried bread, and sauteed mushrooms and tomato halves. The lady tucked in happily. “Oh these sausages are lovely”, she mumbled.

I glanced discreetly at their table, where her husband was deep into a similar plate, and then stared down at my own modest plate of English Breakfast Food. I’d assembled it based on the nostalgia I had for such food - in Switzerland or the U.S., I never eat breakfast like that (unless it’s for a sunday brunch),. The black pudding was not bad. (Black pudding is a sausage made of congealed pig’s blood, lumps of lard, pig’s liver, and other ingredients. It’s served sliced and fried, in yet more lard or butter or oil. It is related to the French boudin noir.) I’m not sure I’ve ever had a “good” black pudding, but these didn’t totally disappoint - they were crunchy on the outside, mysteriously velvety or liver-y on the inside, and made me feel properly carnivorous. But the sausages were something else. Contrary to that lady’s opinion, they weren’t a bit lovely.

I have fond memories of sausages, English sausages. When I was quite little and we lived in Berkshire for a few years, I loved to hang around our local butcher shop, listening to the convival banter between the large, genial butcher and his customers. When the flow of customers slowed down, he liked to do what he called “knitting” - which meant, stuffing and twisting marvelously neat bunches of fat little sausages. More often than not, I’d beg my mother to buy a pound or so, which she’d fry up for our supper.

Since then though, I’ve have countless sausages. The standard sausage in New York was the Italian sausage, either mild or sweet, flavored with fennel and maybe some oregano or marjoram and such, always meaty and tasty. Switzerland does great sausages, of all varieties: roughly ground Bratwurst made from pork, veal, venison or even chicken; finely ground Cervelat (or Stumpen); Schüblig, and many more. Most are burstingly meaty, juicy, and for the most part best when grilled. As I write this, the whole neighborhood is filled with the smell of sausages grilling on outdoor barbeques.

The fat little sausages that sat on my white plate, with the sun shining on them, were suspiciously un-meaty. I cut them open to look at the sliced edge. The grind was very fine, which may account for the “smooth” mouth feeling. But veal wurst in Switzerland is also finely ground, but still tastes quite meaty. Something was wrong with this breakfast sausage.

A few days later, we engaged in one of my favorite activities while traveling: roaming the local supermarket. (Tescos in Stow-on-the-Wald, Gloustershire, in this case.) In the meat cases I found several packages of plump, short sausages, “knitted” the way I remembered them. I hesitated for several moments before deciding on one promisingly labeled “pure pork sausage”. We had rented a cottage for the week, so the sausages were going to be the centerpiece of our breakfast the next day.

Bright and early (10am on a holiday is bright and early) I heated up a frying pan and put in the sausages. There’s something about the size of English sausages that makes them so appealing; about 15 centimeters or six inches long, 1.5 cm (three-quarters of an inch) in diameter, they are about the size of the fingers of a large man’s hand. They are easy to roll about in a frying pan. I don’t think there’s any question that one pan-frys these types of sausages rather then grilling them or such.

In just a few minutes the sausages were ready, and I eagerly sliced into one. There was a promising little spurt of juices from within… But alas, the taste was still not lovely. Disappointed, I fished the wrapper out of the trash and looked at the ingredients. Ground pork was listed first, but there was also a list of things that don’t seem to belong in a meaty product. Oatmeal? Flour? Hydrogenated onions could be forgiven. Preservatives and color-enhancers or whatever may be inevitable in a supermarket product. But the oatmeal and other starchy fillers probably account for the non-loveliness. I sighed. Was my favorite butcher from my youth also using fillers? Do all English sausages contain starchy fillers?

We decided to forget about sausages and eggs for breakfast, and found a very nice muesli mix at Tesco’s. With fresh milk and strawberries picked at a pick-your-own farm near the cottage, it was quite lovely, in fact, if not too English a breakfast.

Stuffed bread

maki — Mon, 01 Mar 2004 16:38:36 +0100

This is the other thing served at at our Oscar-watching party. Since the show went on from 2 am to about 6:30 we were quite silly, so the food had to be low-stress, no utensils, and tasty. Both this bread and the soup (in the previous entry) were a hit.

This bread is a Jamie Oliver recipe, which I saw the other day on his "beach barbeque" episode. It's not exactly like his because I didn't write down the instructions but it's pretty close I think. I don't think he let the dough rise though, and I did since I think dough can always benefit from a preliminary rising. Like many Jamie Oliver recipes this is very easy and tasty. The bread dough is basically a focaccia or pizza dough, so if you can't be bothered to make it (though I do guarantee is is one of the easiest doughs you can ever hope to tackle) you can do it with store-bought frozen.

The stuffing could be varied to whatever you like. Jamie Oliver made two kinds on his show, one with the stuffing similar to what I did for this one, and a sweet variation with Nutella, sliced bananas and toasted hazelnuts, and served both with some yogurt before that for a brunch. (Personally I can't imagine eating something so substantial for breakfast...but I've put it in the breakfast category nonetheless.) I can also imagine it with some sautéed julienned vegetables, or sausage meat (I like sausage rolls but can't stomach that rich pastry too much), or even some char siu (Chinese roast pork) or something like that. Or simply with a sort of calzone filling of mozzarella, ham and ricotta.

Stuffed bread

The dough:

5 cups of white flour (regular or all-purpose flour: no need to get high-gluten flour for this)
2 packets of dry yeast
1 Tbs sugar
1 Tbs salt
About 2 - 2 1/2 cups of lukewarm water
1/2 cup of olive oil

Mix together the flour, sugar, salt, and yeast in a bowl. Gradually add the water, mixing with your hand or a wooden spoon. Add the oil. Add more water or flour as needed to make a dough ball.

Turn out onto a floured surface and knead for a bit until the dough is soft and smooth. Put the dough ball in a plastic bag, blow up and seal, and leave in a warm place for about 30-45 minutes. (You can also let it rise in a bowl covered with plastic, etc. I just prefer the bag method because it's easy cleanup.

In the meantime, prepare the filling, and preheat the oven to 200° C / about 400° F.

The filling:

6 - 8 boiled eggs (1 per serving. Try to soft-boil the eggs so that they don't turn blueish around the yolk when they are baked.)
A jar of sundried tomatoes marinated in olive oil, well drained
400g / nearly 1 lb of cheese: in my case I used sliced mozzarella and grated Grana Padano. You could use any combination of cheeses you like.
Fresh basil leaves, or dried herbs (I didn't have fresh basil so I used some Herbs de Provence)
200g / about 1/2 lb of proscuitto or similar dried raw ham. I used a Spanish ham which was quite good .

Punch down the dough, and roll it out into a long rectangle. Line the middle of it with the ham. Line up the eggs on top of that, evenly spaced out. Fill in the gaps with the sundried tomatoes, herbs, and cheese.

Bring the dough up to encase the filling, being careful not to pull too much and tear the dough. Seal the edges quite firmly. Bring the ends of the big sausage together to form a ring, and seal the ends together. You'll end up with something that looks like a very ugly huge doughnut.

Sprinkle a baking sheet with some flour and/or cornmeal. Very carefully place the big doughnut on the sheet. Brush the surface with olive oil.

Bake in the oven for about 40 minutes, until golden brown.

Sunday Breakfast Fry-up

maki — Sun, 30 Nov 2003 06:33:00 +0100

One of the strangest habits of the Brits is the Fry-up. A fry-up is consumed for breakfast, is supposed to be a great hangover cure, and is a big greasy mess. Here is a rather sedate version. I've seen ones with fried kidneys, blood sausage, and more too.

I sort of wonder how the British got into the habit of consuming this lethal mixture of fat, protein, and more for breakfast while throughout the rest of Europe people settled happily for bread and coffee.

Once in a while though, like for a late Sunday breakfast that's really lunch, a fry-up is not so bad. I can't take the idea of cooking sausages and bacon though (eating it on holiday is another matter), so I prefer another form of crunchy stimulation. That comes from the crispy spicy potatoes. Again this is a free adaptation of a Nigella Lawson recipe (I do love that woman), using spices that are always on hand in our kitchen. Bacon can be added. I draw the line at sausages unless they are of the right kind - relatively small and very crispy, with most of the fat rendered out. Since it is impossible to get sausages of that kind here in Switzerland, we don't have sausages until much later in the day, if we do at all. (Let's forget all about kidneys and such.)

Recipe: Eggs and spicy potatoes (aka a Sunday Morning Fry Up)
Per person, you need:

2-3 fresh eggs

1-2 potatoes, depending on size. A firm variety for boiling or salads (not baking potatoes)

peanut oil

a mixture of all or some of the following spices: cardamon, turmeric, chili powder, red pepper flakes, cumin seeds, caraway seeds, curry powder, poppy seeds

Wash, peel and cube the potatoes into about 1 cm / 1/2 inch cubes.

Heat up oil in a frying pan or wok. Rapidly throw in the spices. Here you can put in as much or as little as you like, the more of the hot spices you throw in the hotter it would be of course. Add at least some sort of seeds for the texture. Stir it around just a bit - don't burn it - then throw in the potatoes. Toss toss toss until it's all coated. Then lower the heat and put on a lid. Peek in occasionally and turn.

Depending on how bit your cubes were, the potatoes will be done in about 20 minutes. You want the outsides to be quite crunchy, insides cooked through and soft. When it's done season with salt to taste.
Keep the potatoes hot and cook the eggs. Put some oil in a frying pan, or use a non-stick. (non-stick with a little oil gives you the best of both worlds - relatively low fat but that nice crunchy bottom). Cook over medium heat, then lower heat and put a lid on for a couple minutes until yolks are set. If you want to do over easy, flip the eggs at this point. I like a slightly runny yolk. Sprinkle with a touch of salt.

Server both piping hot. If you must , add some toast with jam to this.

Variations: add tomato slices, fried in pan. (I personally dislike sauteed or fried tomato slices.) Add sauteed mushrooms.(Mushrooms taste too much like "dinner" rather than "breakfast" to me.) Add fried bacon slices. (Now, crispy fried bacon on white toast with lots of strawberry jam is a real treat.)