Morning apple-flavoured millet

This is not really a recipe, just a little breakfast idea 😉

I had some organic unfiltered apple-apricot juice on hand, but you could definitely use just plain apple juice. I usually make my morning millet porridge just with water in a 1:3 ratio, but now I switched the water for above mentioned juice, keeping the same ratio. It was incredibly sweet and delicious, more a dessert than a breakfast porridge! 😀 And so creamy….

I topped the grain with toasted chopped almonds!

 

Oil-free onion butter

I´ve been enviously watching my boyfriend making (already twice) a lovely onion butter, using recipes from Jessica Porter and Aveline Kushi, which both contain some amount of oil. Luckily, I found out that you don´t actually need any oil to make this yummy spread for your bread or rice cakes!! It´s soooo simple…it does take some time though so be sure you make the butter on a day when you are able to keep an eye on the stove for a couple of hours…

All you need to do is peel a couple of onions (I used nearly 4 larger onions, mostly red ones which are sweeter) and slice them thinly into half moons (you can still chop them up smaller, but I think it´s not important). Sautee them in a heavy stainless steel pot for a few minutes on a medium flame, on water covering them up until about one half of the layer. Add a generous pinch of salt, cover with a tight fitting lid, place pot on a flame tamer, lower the flame to the minimum and then just simmer….and simmer…and once in a while check they´re not burning (but avoid lifting the lid often or too much water will evaporate! the best is to have a glass lid). You can of course add water if needed but the onion comes out better if it´s as dry as possible – mine got all thick and gooey and caramel-y at the end 😀 I cooked mine for 4 hours, but 3 might do the trick…You can basically cook them really really long but it depends on your flame, flame tamer, water level, salt, onions etc. Anyway, you should end up with something fragrant and spreadable 😀

Let cool and store in a glass jar in the fridge.

Ume-cha-zuke

This recipe is slightly adapted from Wieke´s cookbook, and it is supposed to be a breakfast meal, but I can easily imagine it eating it for lunch or dinner, with a side of veggies. Ume-cha-zuke is basically a brown rice porridge cooked with tea and flavoured with umeboshi. Sounds odd, but it´s really great and refreshing! You can use a green tea or a roasted twig tea (which has much less caffeine) such as kukicha, which is the one I used.

Bring to boil 2 small bowls of rice (I had a long grain rice/wild rice mixture leftover) with 3 bowls of fresh made tea (1 used a tablespoon of the twigs for this amount). Mix in about a teaspoon of umepaste diluted in a bit of tea. Let simmer for about 10-15 minutes. Most likely you will still have quite some liquid left – I took off the lid, brought the porridge to a higher temperature and let some of the liquid evaporate until I got a desired consistency. It should not be creamy, but also not very watery. Ume-cha-zuke is best served with chopped spring onion garnish and thin strips of nori seaweed (easiest is to cut up the strips with scissors). I also mixed in a 1/4 tsp of wasabi paste, yum!

I liked combining it with a small serving of snow nabe, made simply by simmering a few tablespoons of grated daikon with a pinch of salt, a sprinkle of lemon juice and small cubes of tofu (about one slice for two people is enough). And of course miso soup, as every morning 😀

My typical breakfast

Since starting my MB studies, I transformed my breakfast meal from a sweet porridge with a looot of nuts and seeds (I used to sweeten it with stevia or raisins or rice malt, and always used rice milk as well…) to a much healthier savoury version.

I always start my day with miso soup – honestly this has been the best step for me as of lately!! Such a great food to get you started. I make it less salty in the morning (just using half a teaspoon of miso per bowl). I try to use some form of daikon to induce discharge (either dried daikon or fresh, as in today´s soup), I always add wakame as is traditional in miso soups (I add a poststamp of it just a minute before turning the soup on low to simmer, that´s when you add the diluted miso). I often add carrot or onion, but not today – instead I finely chopped some ginger to give me extra warmth on this cold day. I add a garnish of chopped leek greens, or spring onion (as you can see in the pic).

Then I make a savoury porridge from leftover grain (today it was leftover quinoa/buckwheat mix), sprinkled with roasted seeds, with some pickle (sauerkraut and pickled gherkin are nice in the morning, they give extra live enzymes). Plus today I added a spoon of the arame dish from yesterday.

I don´t even miss my sweet breakfasts!!