Marita Says

The past couple of Friday nights we’ve headed over to Alexander’s sister and husband’s place for dinner and movies or games, making pizzas, spring rolls, satay and other fun dinners. We always end up spending the night and having breakfast the next morning before moving onto a new project like baking cake or attempting doughnuts.

Last weekend I tried a new way of making french toast after paging through the latest issue of Cook’s’ Illustrated. For this Saturday morning’s breakfast I decided to steer away from looking for a recipe, but rather look at the visually stunning Simply Breakfast (I’m sure most of you are familiar with this sight) for inspiration. The first picture I saw was the one that stuck with me while I was looking over her pages. A lovely poached egg, served on a slice of toast. See the picture below.

And so I decided to make poached eggs for breakfasts for the first time in my life. With the help of Julia Child. Alexander’s been reading about her a lot recently, and as his dad has several of her books on his shelves I decided to make use of her expertise. The recipe I used was from Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume One and it made the process go smoothly. Even I was impressed.

I served the eggs one slices of multigrain toast with oven baked roma tomatoes on the side. It was the perfect breakfast to start the weekend as well as our week of breakfast. More about that later.

I found out last night that today would be Alexander’s dad’s last day of radiation therapy. He started just before we arrived and left the house early each morning for his sessions, returning a little tired every time, but always trying to stay positive and take it in his stride. To celebrate his final session I decided to try my hand at clafouti again. The first time I made it was for an HHDD challenge and it came out a bit of wreck I think. Why I decided to make something I thought I was no good at for a special occasion I don’t know, I’m weird that way.

Luckily for me (and the other people at the breakfast table) it came out fine. A cake crust-like texture on top with the center the consistency of custard. I found the recipe at allrecipes.com and followed it exactly, only reading some of the suggestions afterwards. Again, I am weird that way. One person suggested adding more flour to the batter to ensure that the clafouti’s crust is nice and cake like and also do not fall after baking, which is what happened to mine, but just a little. But only when using fruit that’s more moist, like blueberries, if using cherries you’d probably be fine using the amount of flour used in the recipe.

So to make blueberry clafoutis you need to take out:

1 cup fresh blueberries (I added a couple of blackberries too)

3 eggs and 1 yolk at room temperature

1 cup white sugar

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup sifted all-purpose flour

a pinch of salt

And the process:

Heat the oven to 350F and grease an 8*8 inch baking dish. Arrange the berries in the dish and set aside.

In a mixing bowl, whisk the eggs and egg yolk until light and foamy, add the sugar and mix until the mixture starts thickening. One-by-one, add the milk, vanilla and flour, and salt, stirring between additions. Whisk until the mixture is light. Pour over the berries and bake in the center of the oven for about 45 minutes.

Let the clafouti cool slightly, dust with confectionar’s sugar, cut and serve right away for breakfast, or tea. Ours we enjoyed with some fresh strawberries on the side and plain yogurt. I think it was the perfect breakfast for a celebration!

I was trying to get back into reading blogs after the holidays three days ago and saw a recipe (and sublime pictures) for a tomato and quinoa bread on Cooking Books. Right away I knew I had to make it. Bread intimidates me something awful, but this one looked so good that I just had-had-had to try it.

But it is winter and you cannot go around making bread like this without having a bowl of steaming soup of some kind of vegetable to eat it with.  Tomato soup would be overkill, pea soup sounds too mushy, mushroom soup would be too creamy. I’m picky about soup, you see. My maternal grandfather would have soup for lunch 6 days a week, regardless of the season. During childhood summers on the farm, when it was in the high 30C’s outside, we’d be eating soup at his lunch table and had to keep quiet about it. Today the thought of soup as a meal is hugely off-putting idea to me, but every now and then I get a craving and then it has to be good.

I finally settled on a celery soup. Celery and tomato juice works well in a bloody mary so no doubt it will work well as a bread and soup combination.

I’m not going into the details of making the bread, Andrea did a great job of that, so head over there for the tomato and quinoa bead recipe. One thing I added to the dough was a couple of cubes of tomato flesh, without the seeds and juice, for some extra color and texture in the bread.

For the celery soup you need to collect:

– 500g of celery stalk, cut into about 1 inch pieces

– 1 medium sized potato (peeled and cut into cubes) or a cup of uncooked rice (brown would be a healthier choice)

– 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

– 1 medium onion, chopped

– 2 crushed garlic cloves

– 2 and 1/2 cups vegetable stock

– salt and pepper to taste

Making the soup:

Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the celery, onion and garlic. Cook until the the onion is light, then add the stock and the potatoes or rice. Bring everything to a boil, lower the heat and let everything simmer until the ingredients are soft, but not mushy. Remove the saucepan from the heat and allow the soup to cool. You’re going to blend the ingredients and blending hot soup can have very nasty results. I know from experience.

Once the soup has cooled a bit, blend it in batches until it reaches the consistency you like. I prefer keeping some chunks in my soup, so I blend just a little. Pour the soup back in the saucepan and heat until ready to serve.

Enjoy it with slices of fresh bread, tomato and quinoa in my case, at a sunlit table on a winter afternoon.