A RECIPE: Porridge with instant raspberry jam

Being English, this is what I know about breakfast. A cooked breakfast includes any or either of the following: a soft boiled egg with soldiers, a fried egg with back bacon, sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes, fried bread and optional baked beans . A standard breakfast would entail museli/cereal with milk, toast with honey, marmite or jam, porridge and on Sundays you may be witness to a Croissant at the table. Pancakes of the scotch variety are eaten with butter at tea-time (because everyone knows that the clock stops at 4pm in England, so everyone can sit down for high-tea) and crepes are eaten on Pancake (Shrove) Tuesday or at the local school fair. Waffles are eaten for dessert or from a street vendor and French toast is made sans sucre, appropriately renamed eggy-bread and you may eat it for breakfast, but more likely for supper.

To cut a whole lot of waffling short, breakfast in England is savoury and what Americans’ choose for breakfast we eat for tea or pudding. A few weeks ago at work we had a recipe for creme brulee french toast- country white bread, soaked over night in sweetened cream and Grand Marnier mixture sat on top of a butter and brown sugar sauce. My stubborn British palette nearly had a taste-bud fit when I realised that this recipe was intended for breakfast! Call me crazy, but this recipe had all the components of a decadent bread & butter pudding, minus the custard to serve. It’s not because I lack a sweet tooth that I found this shocking- on the contrary, I have a reputation for looking at the dessert menu before the dinner menu. But I grew up believing that sweet things came only after you had finished what was on your plate and breakfast was savoury- perhaps with sweet accompaniments but savoury nevertheless. And of course, all this talk of breakfast got me thinking about my favourite meal of the day. Some girls daydream about new shoes or the cute boy in their office but for me- I daydream about breakfast (and that makes getting up in the morning a whole lot easier).

I get fixated on breakfasts in an obsessive compulsive sort of way- so much so that I’m looking forward to the next days breakfast before I’ve even finished the one I’m eating. My latest breakfast craze is porridge, a breakfast that I think is so frequently overlooked because it’s either been made with cheap oats and water or because its made so carelessly it looks like gruel. Obviously, for those of us porridge-connosieurs out there, we know that porridge is more than just add-hot-water-and-stir. Oh, yes, there is technique and proportions involved in making good porridge- I’m suprised Delia hasn’t caught on to this already. The key is to use Rolled oats. Yes, they take longer to cook, but we’re talking a matter minutes and you’ll make up those minutes because they’ll fill you up for much longer and you won’t be thinking about your lunch an hour after breakfast. I also recommend using some milk (soy or rice will do), there’s something in the milk that makes the oats less gluey and more creamy and flavourful. Now, how many more hours are there to go until breakfast?

A Recipe: Nut & seed refrigerator bars

It seems to me that a large majority of my family and friends have eating intolerances/allergies/diets that frequently give way to them sucking their teeth followed by “Ooo…does it have wheat/dairy/eggs/cheese/nuts/carbs/meat/shellfish/fat/salt/sugar/calories in it?” when I offer them samples. Usually I reluctantly respond yes and then take it as a personal offense to my cooking. When I was in school and college, none of my friends vilified food groups this way- an allergy was when you broke out in hives and your tongue swelled so much that you couldn’t talk and an intolerance was when you spent the night in agony on the loo praying that the toilet wouldn’t overflow when you flushed it for the fifteenth time”. I’m sure that these more recently developed dietary predispositions are highly credible – (I can speak from first hand involvement of Don’s dairy drawbacks) but they do make cooking dinner a painstakingly, infuriating process. “What do you mean you don’t eat pork anymore?!”

On the positive side, however, a series of intolerant guests has caused the little elves in my brain to start cranking the the creative juices again. Trust me, you have the elves too, they just have a tendency to only come out when you’re in dire straights. These are desperate times. Don thinks that these same elves clean the house and hang up his bathroom towels, but I assure you, that’s all me. And so it is that I’ve been trying to put more thought into my recipes to avoid putting wheat/dairy/eggs/cheese/nuts/carbs/meat/shellfish/fat/salt/sugar/calories in without creating the sense that you’re biting into cardboard. Baking, is of course the biggest challenge of all- but I am pleased to report that I am making slow headway.

20 Reasons British food ain’t half bad

1. Marmite (not just yeast extract on toast)

2. Heinz baked beans (canned food has never tasted this good)

3. Birds custard mix (foolproof and fail safe. There’s no other way to eat crumble)

4. Atora vegetable suet (you can’t make a steamed pudding without it)

5. Anchor butter (toast, crumpets, scones you name it, it goes with it)

6. Cotswold Legbar eggs (beautiful tinted blue shells and a yolk so yellow it’s orange)

7. Jamie Oliver (bringing sexy back to cooking)

8. Green & Blacks Chocolate (take a seat Hershey’s, you never stood a chance)

9. The Metric System (grams are more accurate than ounces. period.)

10. Bubble and Squeak (the only way to use up Sundays leftovers)

11. Sunday Pub Lunch (booze, roasties and football- what better ways are there to spend Sundays?)

12. Back bacon (more meat, less fat- isn’t that what we all want?)

13. McVities Hobnobs (perhaps the greatest biscuit of all time)

14. Porridge (oats, milk and water = cheap, healthy and satisfying breakfast)

15. Hula hoops (what other crisp can you nibble off of your fingers?)

16. Sausages (hands down better than any American Weener)

17. Jam Doughnuts (firstly, the spelling is better and secondly the jam)

18. PG-tips tea (voted Englands best tea served with milk, I travel with bags of the stuff)

19. Waitrose (the finest supermarket shopping experience you will ever have)

20. Maldon Sea Salt (crispy flakes of salt that melt in your mouth)

A RECIPE: South African rusks

I came across this recipe whilst sorting through stacks of scribbled papers headed for the recycle collection last July. I then proceeded to spend the rest of the warm months (which are quite a bit longer on this side of the pond than I’m used to) longing for the cooler months to arrive if only so that I could leave the oven on all night in order to bake these crunchy little South African biscuits. Now of course I’m desperate for the summer months to break the cold so that I can buy decent tomatoes again and discard my North Face Eskimo-style coat. I put the recipe in a ’safe’ place but low and behold it managed to get lost in the wire-works a second time during our move in November. I tore my hair out(and the little that Don has) over what disorganised lives we lead and in doing having torn through every notebook and file I own, I noticed it right in front of me- posted to my pin board. Fortunately, this was prior to my recent lovers tiff with my oven, which resulted in its tragic and untimely death by cookies I managed try this recipe for rusks (phew). I can only urge you to do the same before the summer comes or worse yet your oven has enough of all the hard work it does and ups and leaves you too.

Don’t be deceived by the name, which makes these biscuits sound like something you would eat to get your bowels moving and I assure you they are not (healthy that is- I won’t comment on the results of their fiber content). Think of them as the biscotti of Africa- though a little less sweet and rough at the edges. Of course, you can add more sugar, raisins and nuts but for me plain and simple dunked into a steaming cup of PG tips is the best way. The recipe was given to me by the chef at the Tuningi lodge we stayed in in Madikwe Game Reserve, who I haranged all week in order to get a copy. The measurements were a little funny so I simplified them and I cannot tell you how smug I felt when these came out tasting just how I had remembered them! For some reason my Thai and Indian culinary ventures haven’t come out with the quite the same authenticity.