We had a very special guest this week-end, and we decided to treat her like she deserves: sharing with her our favourite food and food places. I might write in more detail about some of these, but for now, here is the summary:
Foodie week-end
“English baking” workshop at the Bread Ahead baking school
We attended this afternoon workshop at their Borough Market baking school a few weeks ago. It was actually my Christmas present, but we have been so busy lately that we could only find time in March to do it!
It was really fun, the teacher was absolutely phenomenal and enthusiastic, and I am really embarrassed to admit that I did not remember her name, but thank you, Teacher!
I was a bit scared about baking because I have tried to bake breads in the past and they always ended up really flat and tough. But the workshop helped me realise what my main issues were:
- not enough time or the wrong environment for the yeasts to do their business,
- often, the capital sin: adding more flour instead of kneading more when the dough is sticky.
- I wasn’t really kneading!
And now I’m not terrified about baking anymore! 🙂
Continue reading ““English baking” workshop at the Bread Ahead baking school”
Chickpea omelette
This morning, I was wondering what to have for breakfast when I remembered I had a bunch of chickpeas leftover from yesterday’s dish: rice with Swiss chard. And I had an idea: why not have a chickpea omelette?
Like that dish, this is also a very economical dish, and quite easy to make. The hardest skill required is to know how to flip the omelette without breaking it, although I gave some tips for that on the herb omelette recipe.
Ingredients (for 2-3 portions)
- 6 eggs
- 1 onion
- 1 garlic clove
- Parsley
- Half a 400g tin of chickpeas, drained
- Olive oil
Preparation
Takes about 45 minutes.
- Mash the chickpeas using a fork or a mashing accessory
- Peel and thinly chop the onion
- And the garlic clove
- Place some olive oil on a pan, set on a high heat and start frying the onion and garlic
- Crack the eggs and pour them on a bowl, and whisk them
- Wash and chop the parsley, add to the bowl
- Add a touch of salt
- Add the chickpeas to the bowl and mix everything vigorously so there are no lumps of chickpea paste – this is how it’d look like:
- When the onion and garlic are fried (onion soft, garlic golden), add a touch more oil to the pan and then add the egg, chickpea and parsley mixture to the pan, and mix everything together
- Set to a high heat, and cook the first half
- Then using the tricks on this post, flip the omelette and cook the other side
- Serve and enjoy!
This is a dish which is often cooked with the leftovers of a popular stew called “cocido”, instead of using tinned chickpeas or specifically cooked chickpeas. That makes the omelette even tastier, as the veggies have all the flavour from the stew! Plus also the tinned chickpeas are a bit too hard for this dish and it takes longer to mash them.
When using stew leftover, you end up with a more colourful dish as it might contain all sorts of vegetables: potato, carrot, green beans, cauliflower, cabbage… and it’s fairly common to actually make vegetable croquettes with these.
It just occurred to me that this could also work very nicely with a touch of spice on it to add some ‘heat’ – perhaps some red chilli.
The other great thing about this dish is its versatility: you can have it for breakfast, or in your lunch box (as it keeps and warms up nicely), or even for dinner – it’s a very common Monday dinner (as you might have had the stew on Sunday).
Banana porridge
After a dine out experience that gave us a sort of funny tummy, we were feeling in dire need of a soothing breakfast, so I figured that a porridge would be a good answer to that need!
Ingredients
- 40-45 grams of oats per person
- 250 ml of liquid (milk, coconut milk, or any type of “mylk” or “m*lk” you like) per person
- Half a ripe banana per person
- Cinnamon
Optional toppings:
- Coconut
- Hazelnuts
- Chia seeds
- Dried cranberries
- A dash of kefir
- Sugar or syrup or sweetener
Preparation
This will take about 30 minutes, depending on how many people are you cooking for.
- Place the milk and oats on a pot, and turn the heat on to a high setting
- Bring to a boil
- Allow to simmer for about 15 minutes, or until the oats are fairly ‘swollen’. Perhaps add more liquid during cooking if they have absorbed too much of it! Stir frequently so nothing gets stuck to the pot, and the result gets creamier.
- In parallel, you can peel and slice the banana(s)
- Place on deep bowls or dishes.
- Add sweetener to taste – I added a dash of agave syrup on top. Since you’re using cinnamon and banana, which is naturally sweet you don’t need to add a lot of sugar to the oatmeal
- Add cinnamon… and any other toppings you fancy!
Once you have the base, this is all about adding whatever you like (or have handy). For example, I added the sliced bananas, then a bunch of dried coconut, some hazelnuts, dried cranberries and chia seeds which look really cool and in theory have a lot of protein but there’s so few of them they can’t really make much of a difference 😜
I’ll admit I normally I cook porridge in the same bowl, with the microwave, but if you’re cooking for two (or more) it’s just easier to use the stove. Plus, it allows you to better control the dryness of the mixture and you can correct on the spot if it’s getting too dry 🙂
Bacon and egg muffins
My partner surprised me this morning with this breakfast experiment!
They were very tasty and now we want to experiment with other fillings: mushroom? cheese? spring onions? spinach? perhaps something sweet? We’ll see!
Ingredients
- Eggs (2 per person)
- Bacon
- Pepper
- Milk
Preparation
Takes about 30 minutes.
- Turn the oven on to about 180C
- Slice the bacon rashers in small pieces, and fry in a pan
- Beat the eggs with a dash of milk so it’s a bit more liquid than an omelette
- Add some pepper
- Mix in the fried bacon
- Mix everything thoroughly
- Place in the muffin cases – we used silicon cases but I reckon it should work with any other type of case!
- And place in the tray
- Put in the oven
- Bake for about 20 minutes or until you see they start to get colour
- Take them off the oven and the cases and serve.
We had them with a slice of toasted bread and a cup of STRONG breakfast tea 💪🏼
Also, even if they look very tall in the picture, they will deflate really quickly as they cool down. Just like other egg souffles…
Funny fact: I had been meaning to bake this type of muffins for a while, and I finally got round to buy these cases this week, but I hadn’t had time to even unpack them yet. And there goes my partner this morning searching for a suitable recipient for the experiment… and voilà! I produce these cases out of my bag, as if per ✨magic✨!
How serendipitous!