Tahini, walnut & dark chocolate banana bread – a variation utilising honey, olive oil, spelt flour and tahini for a nutty, wholesome morning tea treat that doesn’t lack flavour!  Jump to Recipe

Happy New Year! 

I hope you all had holidays filled with the those three big Fs – friends, family and food. Over here it’s been a blur of lazy mornings (that ultimate treat of not waking to an alarm) blending into slow summer days. The kind where hours slip gently past until 5pm hits and all you’ve done is turn pages of a book, skin still sticky with residual salt from a beach cool-off, and even contemplating dinner feels a bit much. Lazy meals of bright summer corn, bursting cherry tomatoes and smoky grilled zucchini, tossed through with the garden’s abundance of basil. Olive oil, lemon, flaky sea salt, pepper. Fishing expeditions courtesy of my younger brothers have supplied fresh fillets of terikihi, snapper and speared kingfish – hours-old fish is a whole different ball game to the dull, days (week?) old supermarket stuff.

I tried my hand at wood-fired pizza, inspired by the pizza oven at the rental bach. A few different dough recipes – Jim Lahey, Jamie Oliver, Peter Reinhart.  Still can’t pick a favourite. Toppings? Pesto, hot smoked salmon, capers, red onion, cherry tomatoes, basil. Fresh tomato pizza sauce, anchovies, chorizo, mozzarella, basil. And with the last few pizza bases, a finale of melty, gooey nutella calzone, dusted with icing sugar and laden with a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream.

There were endless uses for stone fruit – apricots combined with nutty pistachio frangipane and buttery shortbread, nectarines folded into flaky scones, peaches collapsing and tender under the weight of an oat crumble topping. Cherries all alone, because I can’t walk past the bowl without grabbing a fistful (seriously, zero self control).

A fair bit of morning running to enable all this, but when you’ve got the beauty of the New Zealand coastline at your doorstep, it’s not difficult. Isolated beaches are dotted only with jellyfish and a few surfers, the roar of the waves continues uninterrupted by cars, and rocky headland tracks gift soaring views over the horizon – a just reward for climbing all those stairs.

More books than I’ve read the entire rest of the year combined – would recommend Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (a vaguely frightening exposé on our food chain), Lilac Girls (think All the Light We Cannot See, but based on true events), Blood, Bones & Butter (Gabrielle Hamilton’s life journey traced through food), Force of Nature (slightly Girl on A Train-esque) and Orphan X (reminds me of Jack Reacher). I was given Salt Fat Acid Heat and am itching to get stuck into that, and am currently reading SweetBitter (so far enamoured).

So though I haven’t been short on time, I’ve been a bit absent from instagram and from this blog of late. But we’re back now, refreshed and refueled to hit 2018 running!

This tahini, walnut and dark chocolate banana bread wasn’t originally intended to be a blog post, but I got so many recipe requests after showing it off on instagram that I thought you all might like to try it too. Although I hate the word diet, am whole-heartedly against cutting out any foods (or food groups), and looove baking with butter and sugar (friends, not foes!), I have enjoyed experimenting with using more olive oil, honey and alternative grains in some of my baking – as much for the variants of flavour as for any nutritional benefit. The olive oil, tahini, honey and spelt flour here, combined with nutty walnuts, banana and a bit of dark chocolate (who could resist?!), make this a lovely morning tea banana loaf to have with your morning cuppa. Don’t worry, it doesn’t sacrifice even a little flavour or texture. I know I called it a bread, but let’s be real – it’s definitely cake.

It’s a very flexible recipe – feel free to change up the sweeteners and the flour depending on what you have available, or skip the dark chocolate if that’s not your thing. The tahini isn’t dominant at all – it simply adds a slight nutty, sesame backdrop. Enjoy!

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Miso caramel pear porridge makes one of my favourite desert flavours into a breakfast worthy indulgence. Tender caramelised pear, a quick honey-miso-butter sauce and toasted seeds for crunch. Jump to Recipe 

I used to hate porridge with a passion. Growing up, I did a lot of tramping (trekking? hiking? we call it tramping in NZ), and porridge was the staple breakfast of choice for most people – quickly made in a pot with milk powder and brown sugar. Not me. I’m not sure I actually ever tried it – I operated on the assumption that I hated milk and so would therefore hate porridge, that lumpy, gruel-like, gluey, usually burnt substance scarfed down outside a tent. Being probably more than a little precocious, I baked carrot & coconut muffins, brought along a stash of kiwifruit and survived on cabin bread and jam. Ugh. I feel like going back and shaking some sense into my 14 year old self. I sorely underestimated the humble bowl of oats.

I eventually transitioned from my high school breakfasts of sugary bowls of cereal piled with berry yogurt. Baby steps – first to a slightly less-sugary bran based cereal with yogurt, which led to the discovery of bircher muesli, and then finally to a tentative attempt at porridge on a particularly cold morning. It’s now my staple, and my only annoyance is that it took me so long.

It’s simple, comforting and cosy. It’s hearty and healthy – full of fibre and complex carbohydrates, protein and minerals. It keeps me full all morning. And my favourite part? It’s the perfect vehicle for flavour and texture – it doesn’t have to be a boring oats + milk + brown sugar affair.  I fully admit to being a bit of a porridge snob (and a coffee snob – let’s get it all out there now!).  I regularly change up my grains, milks and toppings – something fruity, something nutty, something with crunch and always finished with dollop of greek yogurt. Twice while in London I sought out porridge at 26 Grains – probably the best I’ve ever had, and the first time I’d ever experienced butter on porridge, coupled with hazelnuts, grated apple and cinnamon sugar. A lesson on simplicity, and the importance of texture.

This miso caramel pear porridge is makes one of my favourite desert flavours – miso caramel – into a breakfast worthy indulgence. Tender caramelised pear, a quick honey-miso-butter sauce and toasted seeds for crunch. It’s worth waking up twenty minutes early for, I promise.

A few other favourites if you’re also a fancy porridge person:

• Carrot cake: grated carrot cooked in with the oats, a few sultanas, cinnamon, mixed spice, a wee bit of fresh grated ginger, sauteed pear chunks
• Rhubarb & strawberry compote, vanilla, pumpkin seeds, greek yogurt
• Coconut milk porridge with blueberry compote, mango and macadamias

Anyway. That’s enough of an ode to porridge for one day. At the moment (when I’m not at the hospital on placement) I’m tied to my desk and computer screen, attempting to revise (cough..relearn) the whole past four years of medical school – just as fun as it sounds. There have been some higher points: visiting the House of Dior exhibition, creating a chocolate-walnut-tahini-torched meringue cake for a birthday (want the recipe??), a couple of hours of straight laughter at the Pop Up Globe’s Much Ado About Nothing, and countless extra-hot flat whites from my local. The countdown in on – four weeks until exams!!!!

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Ottolenghi’s Cornbread with Maple Roast Peaches and Maple Mascarpone Cream – decadent, summery and perfect for a weekend brunch.  Jump to Recipe 

I have uncharacteristically poor time management when it comes to airport departures. Every. single. time. The morning of most recent departure for Melbourne was a case in point. I suddenly found myself unpacking everything, swapping bags and packing extra bags (still unsure quite how I accumulated a whole extra suitcase worth of stuff during my summer at home), visiting the bank, getting stuck in traffic attempting to buy sushi (for the trip, you know!), frantically copying down a few recipes to try, bubble wrapping extra plates for the trip back and generally being fairly disorganised. I’m not usually that way. Really, I’m a planner: a monthly plan, a weekly plan, calendars synced up on my phone and computer, an ongoing, ticked off to-do list. It just all repeatedly fails when it comes to packing.

Leaving for Cuba was another scramble. Photographs the previous day of a new pomegranate meringue recipe, decked out with strawberry sorbet and lashings of mascarpone cream, had not worked out. I was mostly packed – the sort where everything is within (or at least in the close vicinity) of your suitcase – so figured there was surely room for another try. Nope. It yielded yet more unsatisfactory photographs, a bit of a mess and a stressed rush around the house collecting chargers. By the time we were in the airport taxi, no one was positive that the bottom door of the house was locked, or certain the freezer had been extra firmly shut when that melty sorbet was abandoned. I mean, I was fairly sure. But when you start questioning it … well, you’d ideally like 100% sure when you’re not back for a month. That kind of doubt eats at you. We had a neighbour pop around in the end.

In future, the aim is to be completely, suitcase shut kind of packed the night before. Anyone have any other solutions?

The aforementioned mascarpone cream was the sort you could easily eat spoonfuls of, and would accompany any kind of dessert or cake. It’s almost like a cross between a tangy cream cheese frosting and whipped cream – making a fitting accompaniment for this not-too-sweet grilled cornbread with maple roast peaches.

I’ve actually never eaten cornbread in any capacity prior to this – corn tortillas, grilled street corn and even sweet corn ice cream was abundant in Mexico, but cornbread seems to be more of a southern US staple. Probably more commonly used in savoury dishes than sweet, but I’m sure some of you know much more about it than me! I’m normally more a sweet breakfast french toast kind of girl (hence the THREE separate french toast recipes on this blog), but this recipe in Nopi looked too golden, syrupy and decadent to pass over. It’s perfectly seasonal, with sweetcorn and juicy local peaches in abundance, and only requires a smidge more effort than regular french toast.

The cornbread itself is studded with toasted fresh sweet corn and finely ground polenta, then lightened with separately beaten egg whites folded through the batter. Cooled slices of bread are fried in a tablespoon of butter until crisp at the edges and the pale yellow slices are transformed with golden swirls. It’s really not like frying cake: the sugar is limited to a tablespoon of honey, and it’s balanced with milk and yogurt. Meanwhile, peaches are roasted for half an hour than broiled for charred edges, the skin wrinkling up and sinking into the maple cooking syrup. A dollop of mascarpone cream and a scatter of blueberries finishes it off. What could be better for a summer weekend brunch?

Cook’s notes:

• You can make the cornbread the night before (maximising your sleep-in!), or the morning of.
• If you had extra cornbread the next day that was a little stale, you could try cooking it like french toast by dipping the slices of bread in a milk-egg mixture to overcome any dryness.

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Almond-Crusted French Toast with Cinnamon Apple & Creme Patisserie – golden, eggy slices of bread coated in almonds, with caramelised apple & strawberries.  Jump to Recipe 

French toast, pain perdue. Considering it isn’t certain whether it originated in France at all, the latter does seem fitting – meaning “lost bread”, a way to reclaim stale, or unwanted loaves. As a child, early on Sunday mornings, while the house was gradually waking up (this was before early morning sport training and events), Dad would make us french toast for breakfast – I don’t even know how old I was. It was a weekend treat, a lazy brunch hosted at 8am, because we’re not the best at sleeping in around here. Later, I would duck down the road to the shops, the streets devoid of cars at that hour, to grab a fresh loaf from the local bakers delight. Better that than to not have french toast at all. Then we got busier, and busier – and french toast kind of dropped off the radar. I still loved it though, and it was my favourite after Saturday morning swim training – golden, rich slices of whatever bread was left-over, surrounded by generous pools of sticky maple syrup. But that gradually stopped too – one of those things that you can never put your finger on what changed or when, only that it was no longer there.

I rediscovered it at Melbourne cafes after moving here – french toast with all the bells and whistles, transformed into a sophisticated brunch dish. Twice baked and paired with creme patisserie and poached rhubarb at Three Bags Full, coconut crusted with pineapple, lime curd and coffee caviar at Industry Beans. Banana bread french toast with pears and salted caramel at Sardi. The over-the-top Elvis french toast at Seven Seeds, with banana caramel, whipped peanut butter and house cured bacon. Infinite possibilities, really. It was back on my mind, and back on the breakfast table.

But with all these fancy versions, I must admit – french toast shouldn’t really need a recipe. It’s something that should be pulled together from the basics of egg and milk, left-over day-old bread and whatever else you feel like putting in it on the day or can find in the fridge. It’s a not-recipe, like food52’s latest app. I still don’t really measure my french toast custard mixture – a few eggs, a splash of milk and a pinch of cinnamon, whisked and dunked.

Although this blog is based on the premise of recipes, of making a certain dish in a certain way – with timing and measurements and temperatures – I still believe that it is an essential skill to be able to cook without one. To have some idea of flavours that might work together, to know the basics of sautéing and oven-roasting times, to be able to adapt recipes to what you have on hand, and to be able to make simple recipes like french toast, or scrambled eggs, or a tomato pasta sauce – purely off the top of your head. If everyone left school able to make 10 basic, healthy recipes from scratch, the current global health problems of obesity and diabetes wouldn’t be such an issue.  A spaghetti bolognese, a stir-fry, healthy burgers…they don’t have to be intimidating. I loved a quote that Traci published last week, by Harry Balzer, a prominent food researcher: “Eat anything you want; enjoy all of your food. Anything you want. Have an apple pie, cookies, ice cream… have all you want. I’m just going to ask you to do one thing. Make all of it.”

But if you want, and if you have the time – this almond-crusted french toast with cinnamon apple & creme patisserie is my current favourite. The almonds add a nuttiness and a crunch to the french toast that is otherwise missing, the creme patisserie a creamy, not-too-sweet layer soaking into the golden, egg soaked bread. Apple is sizzled in butter, brown sugar and cinnamon until tender and just caramelizing, and it’s all topped with fresh strawberries and another drizzling pool of maple syrup (treat yourself with top quality, it’s worth it.) Breakfast of champions, right?

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Brûlée Bircher Muesli with Ginger Poached Pear and Tamarillo – creamy, crunchy and healthy with a crackly creme-brulee-like topping.  Jump to Recipe 

Fact of the day: bircher muesli was first eaten by patients at a hospital in the Swiss Alps, dreamed up by physician Maximilian Bircher-Benner around the turn of the 1900s. He was a little ahead of his time – I wonder what he would think of today’s raw food movement and versions of his muesli featuring heavily on cafe menus around the world. He also banned coffee and chocolate, however – not such a fan of that idea.

I’ve always been a morning person. My body clock seems to have been permanently scarred by years and years of 5am starts for swim training – groggily crawling out of bed, eyes still half closed, a sleepy trip to the pool and the abrupt shock of cold water. The smell of chlorine and the beep of an alarm still brings it back – a little jolt of familiarity and nostalgia mixed with a hint of relief at the reminder that it is no longer a six-mornings-a-week training thing, and more of a whenever-I-want-to-enjoyment thing. It does mean my brain is now wired for early wake-ups. Even after a late night, or a full on week of university, sleep is frustratingly elusive after about 730am. WHY?!?

Breakfast is never optional. It’s a little monotonous, though – barring the odd weekend brunch out or french toast in, it has been cereal + yoghurt + fruit as far back as I can remember. How do we not get bored of it? I’m almost positive that if I ate the same thing for lunch or dinner for even a week I wouldn’t want to touch it again for a while, yet breakfast is somehow exempt. Growing up it was always a mission to time my breakfast and shower to ensure the newspaper would be available. With six of us it wasn’t always possible, though the boys always went for the sports section and Mum was nice enough to settle for any part (or maybe she just couldn’t be bothered having a child reading over her shoulder, just waiting for her to be finished). Just Right for years, then a swap to Sultana Bran after realised that my serving of the former contained something like 15 teaspoons of sugar (oops), topped with kiwifruit, pineapple and whatever else is in season. No milk, because plain milk freaks me out (I know, I know – the story goes that as soon as Mum tried to swap me from a bottle to drinking milk from a glass, my stubborn toddler self never touched it again). Not porridge, because it was always too mushy and milky.  I always assumed I wouldn’t like overnight oats for the same reason – cold, milky, oaty, plain, not sweet enough…you name it. 

It proved the ultimate cliche that you should always give something a chance before judging it too critically – because bircher has grown on me. It’s overtaken any other. And through some experimentation and research, this is my go-to, mix-up-the-night-before recipe. Thick natural or greek yogurt is essential for a creamy texture, grated granny smith apple adds texture and a tangy sweetness, and the cinnamon brings everything together. The night in the fridge softens the oats and thickens the mixture, ready to be topped with extra yogurt and lots of fruit in the morning.

This brulee bircher muesli with ginger poached pear is my favourite version thus far, with the pear & tamarillos poached in a cinnamon & ginger honey syrup.  If you haven’t heard of tamarillos, they are a winter fruit widely available in New Zealand (thought I have no idea about other parts of the world). Though mouth-puckeringly sour when raw, a quick 6 minute poach leaves them still tangy, but not so painfully acidic. Top the bircher with the reduced spiced fruit syrup and extra nuts and seeds for crunch, then if you’re treating yourself on the weekend, grab a blow-torch and brulee the yogurt. It’s that satisfying sugary crackle and crunch of creme brulee –  but at breakfast time.

BREAKFAST GOALS, you guys.

I change up the bircher toppings all the time though – other ideas are:

• Caramelised banana
• Roast or poached stone fruit
• Sauteed apple in a teaspoon of butter, cinnamon & a drizzle of maple syrup
• Poached rhubarb 
• Mango & pineapple (use coconut yogurt for extra tropical flavour)

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