Breakfast whatchamacallit

Oatmeal porridge is a traditional Swedish breakfast, and something my mother eats almost every day, as did her parents. Personally I can't stand its weird consistency and mealy flavour. We had to make it in home ec class in school, and to "make it more appealing" we were allowed to put like one tiny spoon of jam or applesauce on top. Yeah, still not appealing, thanks. Or like when we made our own müesli, which mostly consisted of oats, but could be "sweetened" with one teaspoon of raisins. Do you know how many raisins you can fit in a teaspoon? The anwer is about three, which is not nearly enough to make "müesli" made of dry and flavourless oats any sweeter. Now I'm digressing into rants about the making-people-hate-cooking-disaster which was home ec, so let's get back on track.

My distaste for oatmeal porridge - and dry oat-based müesli - aside, I do like to put oats in other stuff, like bread and cookies. And when I found a recipe for oatmeal breakfast clafoutis over at Clotilde's Chocolate & Zucchini, I was very intrigued, especially since the recipe contained the stuff that goes so well with oats in cookies: brown sugar, raisins and cinnamon.

I have never eaten a real clafoutis (but I need to, since I hear they are traditionally made with my favourite berry: cherries), and I don't know how I would categorize this dish. It's not a chewy bar, it's not a cake. My first thought when taking a bite was that the consistency was similar to that of "ugnspannkaka" (which is a traditional Swedish thick pancake made in the oven), but I'll go along with Clotilde and call it clafoutis. It's a bit too sweet for me to be a breakfast dish, but it's great as part of a brunch or, as I ate it today, a late morning snack together with a cup of tea. You can use different fruits and berries, dried or fresh (Clotilde's recipe has apples), and also add unsalted nuts.



Oatmeal-raisin and banana clafoutis
Adapted from Chocolate & Zucchini

2 3/4 cups oats (not the quick-cooking kind)
2/3 cups brown sugar
3/4 cups raisins
1½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp cardamom
Pinch of nutmeg
Pinch of salt
3 1/3 cup milk
2 eggs
1 banana, thinly sliced

Combine the oats, sugar, raisins and spices in a bowl. Whisk together the milk and eggs. Add the liquid to the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Pour the mixture into a lightly oiled baking dish, about 22*33 centimeters (9*13 inches). Place the banana slices on top. Bake in a 180°C oven for 55-60 minutes until the center is set and firm to the touch. Eat while still a bit warm.

I got 12 squares out of this. I saved one in the fridge for tomorrow morning, and wrapped the rest individually in foil and froze them. They can be thawed in the fridge overnight and then reheated carefully in the oven next morning.

My first time

Poaching eggs, that is. I found this salad in a Jamie Oliver cookbook, Happy days with the naked chef, that I got at the annual book sale a few weeks ago. I made a few changes, like omitting the garlic since I'm going to sit on a bus for four hours this afternoon and wanted to be nice to my fellow passengers. I had never poached an egg before, and I was a bit freaked out when I saw the surface of the water covered with coagulated egg white and I couldn't see what was below. A horrible inedible mess? Cthulhu? But it worked, and the salad tasted lovely: the crispy bread, the salty pancetta and parmesan, the perfect egg with the yolk still a bit runny... I'm probably freaking Markus out here because he hates eggs and would think that I have ruined perfectly good pancetta and parmesan with this, but if you do like eggs, try this, because it's great!



1 chunk of French or Italian style bread
Olive oil
Flaky sea salt
3 strips of pancetta
A handful of mixed greens
More olive oil + white wine vinegar
1 egg
A small piece of parmesan cheese

Take the chunk of bread, remove the crust and tear it into bite sized pieces. I used organic French country style bread made with stone ground rye, but ciabatta or a baguette would work as well. Sprinkle olive oil on top and season with some sea salt. Put in the oven at 200 degrees C for 8-10 minutes, until the bread is crusty. Cut the pancetta in smaller pieces and place that on top of the bread. Put in the oven for another 4-5 minutes until the pancetta is crispy as well.
Place a handful of mixed greens on a plate and drizzle some olive oil and vinegar on top. Put the bread and pancetta over the salad. Now, poach the egg. Bring water to a simmer in a pot, and crack the egg into the water. Don't stir, don't do anything, just let it boil for 4 minutes (more if you don't like your yolks runny). You will probably end up with a lot of coagulated egg white on top of the water, but when you remove the pan from the heat and lift up the eggs with a perforated ladle, you will find that the white has surrounded the yolk and that all your worries were unfounded! Place the egg on top of the salad, and finish off with some shaved parmesan. Enjoy!

Breakfast after the day before International Women's Day

So, Jenny continued on partying yesterday, attending a five course ladies dinner at out old student's nation. There's usually some heavy drinking accompanying the heavy eating, and she had the foresight to order a day-after breakfast from me before leaving. Seeing as today is International Women's Day, I was happy to oblige. The requested breakfast consisted of

• Bärry Körsbär (a brand of cherry flavored yogurt)
• Grilled sandwich with mushroom sauce and bacon
• Raspberry smoothie
  
• Ramlösa (a brand of sparkling water)
• Potato crisps (real ones, not Pringles) and dip

Most of the list could more or less be bought, and that I did. The grilled sandwiches and raspberry smoothie had to be made, and that I did too, so here are the recipes:

Grilled sandwich with mushroom sauce and bacon
Makes about 7 sandwiches

Mushroom sauce
(make the day before and store in the fridge)

½ Onion
250g Mushrooms
~2 tbsp Red Wine Vinegar
1 dl Crème Fraîche
1 dl Milk
Butter to fry in (quite a lump when doing mushrooms)
Salt
Pepper

Finley chop the onions, and dice the mushrooms (I like them to be identifiable as mushrooms, so quite coarse). Fry them in butter at heat 5 (out of 6). When they start getting some color: add the vinegar and let it reduce. Add the Crème Fraîche and milk, and let it reduce until very creamy. Add salt and pepper to taste. I like the taste of black pepper with mushrooms, so I used quite a lot, letting the pepper be a part of the taste of the sauce.

Assembly and grilling

for each sandwich you need:
2 slices Toast Bread
Cheese to cover them
2 slices Bacon
Mushroom sauce from above

Fry the Bacon. Cover the Toast Bread slices in Cheese (I used cheddar). Add the mushroom sauce to one of the slices, and the Bacon slices to the other. Put them together and grill in a sandwich grill (or equivalent) until done.

Raspberry Smoothie
Makes two tall glasses

1 Banana
2 dl Frozen Raspberries
2 dl Filmjölk or yogurt
1 dl Milk

Mix it all togeather in a blender. Usually, you need ice cubes for a smoothie, but the frozen berries make up for that by being, well, frozen.

That'll fix anyone right up!

Pancakes the day after

We celebrated a friend's birthday yesterday, and got home quite late after quite a bit of wine. There wasn't much breakfast in the house this morning, but we did have ingredients to whip up some American style pancakes. I got the inspiration for these through a book called Waffles and Pancakes by Kate Habershon.

These pancakes have a fresh and sophisticated taste. The grapefruit adds tang and the poppy seeds a certain crispiness and a little nutty flavour. I never get my pancakes to be small, round and pretty-looking and I know that the picture below is badly composed and shows unevenly fried pancake lumps, but do you think I had time to arrange a nice-looking photo when there were pancakes drenched in maple syrup waiting to be devoured?!



Pancakes with blue poppy seeds, grapefruit and banana

2½ dl flour
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
barely ½ dl light muscovado sugar or raw sugar
½ dl blue poppy seeds
1 egg
1 tbsp honey
3/4 dl sour milk (or crème fraiche)
1 dl milk
Zest from one grapefruit
1 banana, sliced

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. In another bowl, whip the egg, honey, sour milk and milk together. Add the grapefruit zest and then the dry ingredients. Mix into a uniform batter without any lumps. Add the banana slices and stir carefully. Heat a skillet with some butter. Place a small amount of batter (or a big amount if you're impatient like me and don't care about appearance) in the skillet. Fry over medium-low heat until the downside is golden brown and small bubbles are appearing on the surface. Turn the pancake over and fry until the other side is golden brown. Keep the pancakes warm under foil while you fry the rest. Serve with maple syrup.