Breakfast of champions

Whilst at uni, I lived with a rather sweet guy who, despite being outrageously sociable, declined to share his treasured Saturday morning breakfast ritual with anyone. Between 9.00am and 10.00am every Saturday, he would disappear with a book to a little cafe around the corner from our place. I'm fairly sure that the staff stopped taking his order, because he ate exactly the same thing every week.

Since partaking in the rather distressing reality of full time work, Monday to Friday, 9 -5 (which, incidentally, it isn't anymore, it's more like 8 - 6), I understand his sacred Saturday routine. Lazy breakfasts at any time of the week are the first casualty when you step onto the career path. Lesson learned, I now reserve an hour or so for myself in the sunny spot in my backyard on a Saturday morning with the paper, a bottomless cup of tea and a plate of something tasty from my own kitchen. On today's menu was poached eggs with spiced beans and mushrooms on a toasted poppyseed bagel. I can't promise that Kurt Vonnegut Jr would endorse it, but it is damn tasty and makes a good start to the weekend.

Spiced beans and mushrooms

1 clove of garlic, crushed and chopped
1 tomato, diced
a handful of button mushrooms
1 little tin of mixed beans (around the 125g size)
1 tsp tomato paste
a couple of shakes of paprika
freshly ground pepper

Tip all of the ingredients for the spiced beans into a saucepan, mix well, and set over a low heat on the stove top. Let the mixture simmer for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. You may need to add a little bit of water to prevent the mixture drying out. This is a really flexible recipe that you can modify depending on what you have available. You could try adding chilli, fresh basil or coriander, baby spinach, haloumi, fried chorizo etc.

Poached eggs

Since this is about having a relaxing breakfast, don't go stressing yourself out over poaching the eggs. There are a couple of things that you can do to pretty much guarantee perfect poached eggs...

• A deep frying pan, or wide saucepan, is good for cooking a number of eggs simultaneously. Fill with water and set on the stove top, and bring the water to a boil. Splash in a tablespoon or two of white vinegar (this helps the eggs to hold together) and bring the water back to a simmer (it shouldn't bubble).
  
• Going one at a time, crack a cold, free range, egg into a cup or ramekin. Fresh eggs will keep their shape best.
  
• Stir the water to create a whirlpool in the centre of the pan and gently slide the egg into the whirlpool from the cup. The whirlpool helps to keep the egg in a nice shape and prevents the white from going straggly. Once the white begins to solidify, push the egg to the side of the pan, and add the next egg following the same method. If you are having any kind of bread with your eggs, now is the time to pop it into the toaster.
  
• Cook the eggs for approximately 2 minutes if you like a thick but runny yolk, and 4 minutes if you prefer the yolk hard. Whilst the egg is cooking, butter the toast and have it ready on the plate
  
• Use a slotted spoon to lift the eggs out and let the water drain off before transferring the egg to the toast. Add any sides (like the spiced beans and mushrooms) and serve, with a little freshly ground salt and pepper.

If that all seems a little too hard, you can always eat out. If you are in Melbourne or Sydney, this is a particularly good site for hunting down the best.

A burst of colour for a dreary Sunday

I'm not sure what it is like where you are, but the weather in Sydney today is miserable.

It might even be depressing if I didn't have a riot of colour to keep me cheerful. The poppies are blooming - take a peek...

My big fat greek style burger

Once upon a time there was an amazing little burger place called Burgerlicious on King St, Newtown. They made seriously tasty burgers with good quality ingredients. One dark day they sold out. The lovely waitress with the same name as me disappeared. They brought in fluorescent lighting. All of the good ingredients left in protest. I thought my short-lived fling with burgers was over, until a certain someone taught me how to fend for myself with this recipe. Menfolk, take note: the way to a lady's heart is through her stomach.

The ingredients
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500g lamb mince (buy the best quality lean meat that you can afford)
1 spanish onion, diced finely
2 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped
1 egg, beaten
1 heaped tablespoon of both mayonnaise (whole egg variety, preferably) and seeded mustard
a couple of shakes of garam marsala, ground cumin and cayenne pepper
a handful of fresh mint, chopped (optional)
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1 red capsicum
2 zucchini
1 eggplant
haloumi
rocket (baby spinach also works)
wholemeal buns (you could use any kind of bread - or none at all if that's your preference - but a bun is good for holding everything together whilst you eat it)
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The how-to

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees, or 160 degrees for fan-forced.

Mix all of the ingredients from the first section, using a large spoon, until just combined. To make sure that all of the ingredients, particularly the spices, are evenly distributed, knead and squeeze the mince mixture with your (clean and ring-free) hands.



You want the mixture to be quite sticky - you can always have your kitten come by and do a quality control inspection, Miss Molly (pictured above) is always obliging. Divide into six even pieces. Mould each of them into a palm-sized round, and don't flatten them completely. Pop them onto a grill tray (preferably a wire rack with a tray for catching the fat that will drip out underneath so that you don't make a mess of your oven) and set aside.

Slice the egglant into thin rounds and sprinkle with salt. Set aside.

Slice off the four sides of the capsicum, working around the core. Put them skin facing up onto a baking tray covered with baking paper close to the element of the oven and grill until the skin is charred and looks blistered (approx 5 min). Take out and let cool. The outer layer of the skin should come away easily. Discard this, slice the capsicum lengthways and set aside.

Slice the zucchini lengthways, into pieces a couple of millimetres thick. Rinse the eggplant, shake dry and then lay the eggplant and zucchini slices onto the same baking paper-lined tray that you used for the capsicum. Put the vegetables and the mince patties in to the oven, with the vegetable tray above the mince tray. The vegetables should take approximately 10 minutes and the lamb should take about 20 minutes. Turn the vegetables after 5 minutes and turn the patties after 10 minutes so everything cooks nicely on both sides.

Once the vegies and meat are cooked pull them out and let them rest a couple of minutes. Start to assemble your burger with some of the lovely grilled vegetables, a lamb pattie and some fresh rocket. Once everything else is ready, slice as many pieces of haloumi as you need - two per burger is about right - and fry in a pan heated with a little olive oil. You want it to be soft and golden brown on both sides. The haloumi should be left til last because it is best eaten whilst hot - it starts to harden as it cools after being cooked. The haloumi can go straight from the pan and onto the burgers.

This is lovely as is, the grilled vegies are really flavoursome and the lamb is quite juicy, but you can also add any kind of condiments that you like - mayonnaise, chutney, pesto, sauce - and then serve it up.



As you can see in the picture, this goes quite nicely with a cheeky drink or two...

P.S. Vegetarians, don't despair!

This is a good meal when you are catering for a group with a variety of food preferences. It is easy to replace the lamb patties with more of the grilled vegies and haloumi. Also, avocado, grilled mushroom and olives are good extras for the vegetarian version.

'Poppies...poppies. Poppies will put them to sleep'

Today's blog comes from my bed, to which I have been ordered by the doctor (in the least fun way imaginable). It turns out a prognosis of suspected swine flu has its perks though, like these lovely flowers that my friends delivered before making a hasty exit for the company of someone less infectious.



Jonquils, lavendar, poppies.

'Where are the poppies', I hear you say? Well my friend, they are the ones that at this stage still look like - and I quote the kind givers of the bouquet here - 'hairy balls'. People can be a little hard on late bloomers.

I am quite content to wait for these hairy balls to develop into something prettier. That could have something to do with the limitations upon amusement during bed rest. Come back in a day or so for a picture of the poppies once they have popped, or read on for ways to keep flowers flowery. Meanwhile, I am going to wish for myself a Dorothy-style slumber. The Wicked Witch armed with opiates would trump swine flu, right?

Tips for making lovely blooms last longer...

1. Choose a vase: if you don't have a vase, large glass jars make a nice alternative, and can be prettied up by tying a ribbon around the neck, or wrapping decorative paper around the outside. Just make sure whatever you are using is clean.

2. Fill it up: half fill your chosen receptacle with lukewarm, rather than cold, water, as most flowers will find this easier to drink. If you have it (some florists provide a commercial mix with bouquets) add flower food as directed. Otherwise, make your own by dissolving a teaspoon of sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice to each litre of water. This mix will help to feed and preserve the flowers.

3. Prepare the flowers: remove any leaves from the lower part of the stems, as leaves immersed in water will rot quickly, contributing to the hastened demise of the flowers, a rather gut wrenching stench and an odd gooey substance that no one will want to clean from the vase.
Take a pair of super sharp scissors* and cut about 2 cm from the base of the stems, on a 45 degree angle. Think back to highschool biology - this creates a larger surface area for the take up of water. Once cut, get the flowers straight into the water.
*Blunt scissors can damage the stems and impede the take up of water to the blossoms.

4. Display: flowers like a cool space, out of direct sunlight and away from any heat sources. Although flowers and fruit might look sweet on the same table, avoid putting cut flowers near the fruit bowl. Flowers are aged quickly by the gas produced by ripening fruit.

5. Maintain: prolong the loveliness by changing the water completely every 2-3 days, or when it gets cloudy. If you have made your own flower food, the old water can be reused on your garden. While you have the flowers out, give the vase a clean, then repeat steps 2 and 3, taking particular care to remove dead or damaged petals and leaves. At the very end, wilted flowers can go into the compost.

Alice in Bloggerland

'Curiouser and curiouser' said the least tech-savvy girl you never knew, when one day she found herself on the edge of the blogosphere.

Moving kitten off the laptop keyboard, she peered closely at the screen and made an uncharacteristically swift decision. A couple of key strokes and touch pad clicks later, she fell down the rabbit hole and found herself amidst her first blog entry.

Hopefully there is a tea party in here somewhere.