My Breakfast: PANCAKES

THIS IS WHAT A GRIDDLE CAKE SHOULD LOOK LIKE, PEOPLE !

Here you see a whole-wheat wild blueberry pancake frying in the cast-iron skillet. I use freshly ground whole wheat from Richardson Farms in this recipe; also, we like our pancakes thin and somewhat crepe-like, so I don’t use any baking powder or other chemical leavening. Here’s the recipe (Makes enough for two people):

GRIDDLE CAKES

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/4 cup white flour

3 Tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

3 T butter

MILK: can be cow milk, buttermilk, soy milk, almond milk, half and half, or any other milk you have around. How much? Enough to make a batter that is as thick as you like it to be, which you will learn from experience. At the most a cup, but probably less.

Some blueberries, fresh or frozen. Lately I have been using frozen wild blueberries from WHOLE FOODS. If you use frozen, defrost them in the microwave before using them. This makes a little blueberry juice happen, but that’s OK, just pour it into your batter and it makes the batter blue, which is KEWL.

Step One: Mix the flours and other dry ingredients together.

Step Two: Crack the eggs into the bowl and, using a whisk, stir it up. It will make a gummy ball. A gummy ball that is stuck in the middle of your whisk.

Step Three: Turn the heat on under the cast-iron skillet, and melt the butter in it. When it starts to fizzle, turn the gas off. Don’t let it brown if you can help it. (If it DOES brown, you can still use it though, as long as you don’t BURN it.)

Step Four: splash some milk into the gummy ball of gunk in your pancake bowl. Whisk. Keep adding and whisking until the gummy ball frees itself from it’s whisk prison. Add more splashes of milk until the consistency looks right. Add the melted butter and whisk some more.

Step Five: Add the blueberries and juice. LOOK ITS BLUE

Step Six: Turn the flame on under the cast iron skillet sort of medium high. Pour about half a cup of batter into the pan and tilt it around so that the batter is rather evenly swirled in a biggish circle on the bottom of the pan, but not all the way out to the sides, because that would be TOO BIG. After a bit (but BEFORE you smell burning!) flip it over.

As the pancakes are done, immediately place them on the plates of the waiting people so they can be eaten while HOT AND CRISP. EAT IMMEDIATELY OR YOU ARE MISSING OUT!! NO WAITING!!!  NO BEING POLITE !!  The cook eats their pancakes standing at the stove.

Never put more than one pancake on your plate at a time if you can help it, because they get slightly soggier and it is an affront.

If you don’t have or don’t want blueberries, just leave them out and you will have PLAIN griddlecakes.

Baked Oatmeal: This is THE way to make Oatmeal.

Baked Oatmeal, seen here with brown sugar and heavy cream.

My friend Christine and I went to Bouldin Creek Coffee House a while back, and she ordered their Baked Oatmeal with Apples. I was really taken with its great texture, flavor and appearance, and decided on the spot to check out recipes for baked oatmeal and give it a try. I am always looking for ways to get more oatmeal into our diets, because it is so good for cholesterol levels and health generally, plus, have I mentioned, I LOVE BREAKFAST?

Also, I like to use McCann’s Steel-cut Irish Oatmeal (Big Surprise, right?) and since it takes 45 minutes to cook, I am always looking for ways to make it that don’t require stirring oatmeal on the stove for that long. I have worked out a few ways, but they never get quite as dry as I would like.

I found a couple of recipes on the internet, and after fooling around with them a little I came up with this recipe:

BAKED OATMEAL WITH DRIED APPLES

1 1/2 Cups of McCann’s Oats

1/2 Cup walnuts

big handful dried apples

1/2 cup or so other dried fruits (I used dried apricots and cherries)

1 cup of milk (any kind including soy)

2 eggs

T coconut oil

t cinnamon

salt

STEP 1: The night before, put the oats and walnuts in a bowl or pot and cover with filtered water with a little salt. They will soak up most of the water. Set on the counter or on the stove.

STEP 2: In the morning, turn the oven on to 350˚. Grease a shallow baking pan with butter.

STEP 3: Mix together the milk, eggs, coconut oil, and cinnamon. Beat them together with a whisk, or put in a mason jar and shake them up. The coconut oil will be solid, don’t let that worry you.

STEP 4:  Drain the oatmeal mixture in a sieve. Dump into a biggish bowl and add the egg and milk mixture and stir it up nicely. Add the dried apples and other dried fruits. Pour into the buttered baking dish.

Step 5: Bake for around 45 minutes. This makes enough for four adults; it reheats beautifully though, so you can just throw the remainder in the fridge if you don’t eat it all, and reheat it quickly another day for an awesome repeat.

The baked oatmeal in the baking dish. This is a rather small dish, only a little larger than the stove burner

It smells just HEAVENLY, and the texture is Perfect! Dry, yet creamy. I like my oatmeal with butter and brown sugar on top, but you don’t need to add much because the dried fruits add plenty of sweetness. I was hesitant at first to put a whole teaspoon of cinnamon, but when I used a half teaspoon, it wasn’t enough. I imagine that over time I will refine this recipe more and more (I have only made it once, after all), so I will post updates as they occur.

Tomorrow is supposed to be freezing and rainy, with a high of THIRTY-SIX (after yesterdays EIGHTY-TWO!) (Now THAT is a Blue Norther), so it sounded to me like a perfect day for Baked Oatmeal. Plus, in my Victorian house, heating up the cast iron cookstove goes a long way towards getting the house warmed up, too!

My Breakfast

Look at the Gorgeous Dill!

One of my AMBITIONS is to start a thing where I show my avid public what I have for breakfast everyday. Partly because I L*O*V*E B*R*E*A*K*F*A*S*T, and partly because I have this really hardcore I-will-bore-you-to-death-with-this view that AMERICANS, particularly American Women, don’t bother to eat breakfast anymore and this breakfast-skipping is a terrible terrible idea that undermines  health and intelligence, while slowing down metabolism and causing everyone to do poorly at school and at work.

(It is not at all unlikely that this breakfast-skipping is directly causing the decline of America!)

See? I TOLD you I will bore you to death with this topic!  I am like a cranky old Crank standing on a soapbox in the park, haranguing the mob while they laugh at me….EVEN THOUGH I AM RIGHT.

It is my hope that reading about MY BREAKFASTS will inspire you to go to the trouble of making yourself a little something before you head out, because, DAMN, breakfast looks so GOOD!

So, without any more ADO, here is what I had for breakfast today: a sesame bagel, toasted, with a little cream cheese, white onion, fresh dill, a cherry tomato, and about 2 ounces of lox.

Here is a view with the Lox. Usually I have a nice homemade cappucino or, in the summer, a Vietnamese coffee with this breakfast, but today I just had iced tea.

My Breakfast

A Texas French Bread Bagel, with jalapeno cream cheese, cippolina onions, cucumber, and smoked salmon remnants. "Way to stretch out the Lox, Dude!"

Cold Brewed Coffee

Cold-Brewed Coffee and Garden Tomatoes

I have read about the superiority of cold-brewed coffee before, but when I noticed that my favorite coffee shop, Fair Bean Coffee, was advertising that they are serving cold-brewed iced coffee, I gave the stories I had read more credence. I mean, if a coffee guru like Andres is behind cold-brewed as a method, it MUST be a great way to make iced coffee.

In Texas right now (the beginning of June) it is getting up to a hunnerd degrees right about now, AND, tonight, overnight it will only get down to 82˚.  Even first thing in the morning, here in Austin, it is too hot to want hot coffee.

I tried cold brewed coffee, and, it totally rules! It is a great way to make iced coffee. Normally, when I make Thai or Vietnamese-style iced coffee, the heat of the coffee melts the ice and makes it watery. With Cold-brewed, that’s not a problem.

Also, if you  like your coffee to have a creamy, toffee-like flavor, and less acid, cold-brewed will deliver that. Cold-brewing extracts 90% of the flavor components of coffee, but only 15% of the acids.

How to make Cold-brewed Coffee:

Coffee Grounds and Water in Old Jar

1) Grind up some coffee.

2) Get a jar out. A pint jar is too small; a quart jar is good. I use this old tomato jar, it is not quite a quart but it is the biggest jar I could find.

3) Place ground coffee in the jar. How much? I like my coffee strong, like fake espresso, so I used four gigantic spoonfuls. About a third of a cup of grounds, I would estimate.

4) Fill the jar up with water. Use filtered or spring if it is handy.

5) Put the lid on the jar. Let it sit out somewhere in the kitchen for 24 hours.

6) Strain it through a fine mesh strainer.

7) Then, let it drip through a coffee filter back into the jar.

To make Vietnamese style, stir in a few spoonfuls of sweetened condensed milk.

9) This makes enough coffee for me for three or four days!

Strainer and filter set-up. I have strained the coffee into the pink glass, then I filter it back into the original jar.

Iconic Iced Coffee

Balance

Because this week was a full calendar of “Eatin’For Free” (two restaurant reviews, the Farm to Table event, and two restaurant opening parties, and the Thai+Cocktail class), I have striven, when eating breakfast, to eat absolutely fat-free. liver-cleansing HEALTHY HEALTHY HEALTHY food. Here is what I had for breakfast yesterday: swiss chard, red pepper, and leeks braised in stock, topped with poached eggs. For an egg dish made without butter, it was more than tolerable.

Today’s Breakfast: Pancakes