Shakshuka

During weekdays I often browse through possible breakfast and brunch foods to cook in the weekends. I was not familiar with Israeli brunch food shakshuka until I bumped into this and this recipe. The pictures were so beautiful that even though I was doubtful about tomato sauce combined with eggs I wanted to give it a try.

And yes it worked. I think eggs are always a must at brunch, in form or another. With tomato sauce they again have a different flavor than when eating scrambled or fried. And as the original recipes say, this dish is extremely adaptable! I also did not follow the recipe, but made it my own version based on what we happened to have at home. This recipe works perfectly like that, as you can mix in different vegetables, different cheese and for example beans, lentils or even sausage of your choice. I had English cheshire cheese in my fridge, but you can as well use feta cheese, cheddar, goat cheese or ricotta, for example.

A friend of mine who lived in Israel told that shakshuka works even better with hummus spread on the sides of your pan. Wipe the hummus and shakshuka with a piece of fresh bread and enjoy the flavors together. Sounds really worth a try!

Here’s my adaptation.

Israeli Shakshuka (serves 2)

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 small green bell pepper, chopped in small cubes

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon sweet paprika

1 teaspoon chili flakes, or to taste

400g jar chopped tomatoes

1 tablespoon tomato paste

freshly ground black pepper and Himalayan pink salt

pinch of sugar

1 handful of baby spinach, roughly chopped

1 can of chickpeas, drained

50g English cheshire cheese, crumbled

4 eggs

fresh cilantro to garnish

Preheat oven to 200° C.

Sautée onion and garlic in olive oil over medium heat in a large skillet until the onion softens and gets transparent color. Add cubed bell pepper and sautée for a few minutes more.

Add cumin, paprika and chili and stir to incorporate.

Lower the heat to medium-low. Mix in chopped tomatoes, tomato paste, salt, pepper and sugar. Add spinach and chickpeas and let bubble gently for a few minutes.

Move the mixture in two small oven-safe skillets or pans. Sprinkle with cheese crumbs.

Make two holes in the tomato mixture and carefully crack the eggs in the holes.

Place the skillets in the oven and bake until the eggs have settled. Mine got a bit over-cooked, don’t you let yours to do that ;-)

Top with cilantro and serve with freshly baked bread.

Eggs Benedict with Asparagus

Eggs Benedict, or Oscar Benedict, or my own version between those two. Good morning, it’s Easter Saturday! And only for celebrating the four-days holiday I decided to prepare a nice home brunch. Last night I made a dinner for me and S, the main course being Finnish whitefish and mashed potatoes with white wine sauce. The result was rather disappointing, I will tell you later about it. So my hopes were not that high when I started to prepare the brunch: poached eggs with hollandaise sauce and asparagus.

To be honest, this was my first time ever preparing the very original Hollandaise. I have made before something similar, with less chance to ruin it completely. But this time it was fo’ real. And it turned out perfectly! As did the poached eggs! S was on a computer doing stuff, and sometimes asking what’s happening in the kitchen when he could only hear happy shouts of joy - like “ahh! beautiful! deliccccciouussss! I made it!”

For both Hollandaise and poached eggs I used a video recipe by a Finnish daily newspaper. That helped a lot more than just reading the recipe, so probably would be a good thing to do if you’re not familiar with the preparation style.

So here’s my version of eggs benedict. With this I served a self-baked pita bread, even traditionally you should have your eggs benedict with an English muffin. Also toast would do!

Enjoy the Easter days with good brunches!

Almost Eggs Benedict with Asparagus (for 2)

A small bunch of green asparagus, washed and ends trimmed if necessary

salt

Bring water to a boil in a tall saucepan and add salt. Place the bunch of asparagus into the water, ends down. Cook asparagus (bound together with a rubber band) for around 2-3 minutes. Serve immediately.

Poached eggs:

2 liters water

1 dl spirit vinegar

2-3 eggs

Bring water almost to a boil in a wide saucepan. Keep the heat relatively low, if you let it boil, you will get scrambled eggs instead of poached. Add vinegar.

Crack each egg into a cup individually. Don’t break the yolk. 

Create a whirlpool in the saucepan by spinning the water around for a few rounds with a wooden spoon. 

Place the cup with an egg very close to the surface of the water and drop the egg at once in the middle of the whirlpool.

Keep giving the water a gentle spin every now and then, so that the egg keeps slightly moving all the time. It’s ready when the egg white is set, for a few minutes. The yolk is supposed to be runny so don’t overcook.

Lift the eggs out of the pan and place on a paper towel to drain.

Repeat with the rest of the eggs.

Hollandaise sauce:

2 tablespoons lemon juice

3 egg yolks

150 g butter

salt, pepper

In a saucepan or microwave melt half of the butter. Collect the white whey off the butter so that it becomes clear yellow in color.

Place a small, thick-bottomed saucepan on a stove over a very low heat. I heated my electric stove for 10 minutes with the lowest heat and then turned it off, using the after heat to make the sauce. You can also use bain marie, but be careful not to heat it too hot. If you use too high heat the eggs will cook and the sauce curdle.

Add lemon juice and the yolks in the pan and start stirring constantly. Do not stop but keep whisking for 5 minutes or until the mixture starts to get thicker and is very light yellow in color.

Keep whisking vigorously and add first the melted butter in a thin string in to the pan. When all incorporated add the firm butter in cubes, still whisking (I know this asks for some muscles, eh).

When all is incorporated, let warm up a bit, then spice with salt and pepper and serve on top of toasted bread, poached eggs and asparagus.

Breakfast Pizza

I used to be a big fan of breakfasts. Actually, I still am but these days I’m rarely putting effort on cooking them. When we lived in our previous home it was a weekly tradition to cook in the mornings, try different things and new recipes. Now we mostly spend our mornings grabbing something from the fridge, reading news and browsing social media sites before getting into the things to do during the weekend. Both of us would like to change this though, so maybe in the future you’ll indeed see again more breakfast things in the blog.

The following recipe is adapted from the original recipe of Smitten Kitchen. I actually loved the pizza dough so much that I have used the recipe in my pizzas ever since. The particular thing in it is that you refrigerate it overnight, while it won’t grow big, but in the oven give you a perfectly soft and crispy pizza crust. It’s worth all the time it takes! Talking about pizzas, I love making them and I always - always - make my own dough and never buy the ready ones. I think this is essential for a good, crispy and chewy, wonderfully tasty pizza, don’t you? :-)

The original recipe didn’t call for tomato sauce but I used it in my pizza. I just slowly cooked together crushed tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, a pinch of sugar, salt and black pepper. It makes a perfect basic sauce when you let it boil on a low heat for an hour or so.

Here’s the recipe, I suggest you try it our tomorrow morning. A perfect treat for your slow Sunday! This amount makes two medium sized pizzas.

Breakfast Pizza

Dough:

250ml lukewarm water

1/2 teaspoon dry active yeast

5 dl plus 2 tablespoons bread flour, plus more for dusting

salt

Toppings:

tomato sauce, self made or ready bought

ripe cherry tomatoes

ham to taste, I used smoked turkey

50g grated Parmesan

5 dl grated mozzarella

6 large eggs

freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons minced flat-leaf parsley

2 scallions, thinly sliced

The night before prepare the dough.

Place lukewarm water in a warm bowl. Sprinkle in the yeast, stir and let sit for 5 minutes. Add the flour and 1 teaspoon of salt and knead around 5 minutes until it forms a firm dough. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface, divide into two equal pieces and form each half into a tight ball. Place the balls in separate bowls, cover with plastic film and refrigerate overnight.

One to two hours before baking, place the dough in a warm spot. Preheat the oven to 275 °C 30 minutes before you are ready to bake the pizza.

Then we’re ready to prepare the pizza.

Dip your hands and a ball of dough into the flour. On a lightly floured countertop, pat the dough into a disc with your fingertips, then drape the dough over your fists and carefully stretch it from beneath to form a circle.

Generously dust the baking sheet (covered with baking paper) with flour and place the stretched dough on it. Spread first a little bit of tomato sauce on the dough. Place the ham on the dough. Sprinkle on top half of the Parmesan, mozzarella and cherry tomatoes. Crack 3 eggs over the top (you can prevent the egg whites from running by forming “walls” of cheese around them) and season with salt and pepper.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, depending on your oven. It’s ready when the crust is golden, the cheese is melted and the egg yolks are cooked. Sprinkle half of the parsley, chives, scallions and shallot on top. Let cool for 2 minutes, slice and serve immediately. Prepare the second pizza in the same way.

Breakfast Granola with Mixed Fruit and Nuts

Last summer I lived in a flat that one girl had sublet for me for three months. While leaving the apartment into my good care she also left some of her things there. One of them being a big jar of homemade granola. It was my first touch to this delicious breakfast treat, the American muesli as I call it. Actually, I couldn’t help but secretly have some of that delicious but simple granola. I hope she never noticed there was something missing, ugh!

I’m generally not very good breakfast eater, as during the week I wake up at the last possible minute to get to work, and therefore never have time to have a proper breakfast. Usually my breakfast consists of a big bucket of coffee and that’s it. Lately though a colleague of mine has been challenging me to start my days with a 30g protein portion, (which is said to be good for your figure and appetite - as I complained being slightly out of shape these days). I’m considering this…but while I do, let’s get back to granola.

After preparing this portion of granola I can just ask myself WHY I never did this before? It’s so sweet and crunchy and divine, especially with some agave syrup and full, fatty Turkish yogurt… It became an essential part of my weekend breakfasts and actually, I’m gonna have it just now! This recipe was invented by me so probably it needs still some fine tuning, but I figured it was a good start!

Sweet Breakfast Granola

3 cups rolled oats

1 cup mixed nuts and fruits (I used almonds, cashews, peanuts, hazelnuts, dark and yellow raisins)

handful of pecan nuts

handful of dried cranberries

30 ml canola oil

2 tablespoons coconut oil

1 heaping tablespoon honey

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons organic agave syrup

1 egg white

pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 150 C°. Line a medium oven pan with parchment paper.

Heat honey, brown sugar, canola oil, coconut oil and salt, and stir until sugar has dissolved.

Mix the oats and nuts in a bowl. Add the warm mixture of honey, sugar and oil to the oats. Add the agave syrup and stir to coat. The mixture should be moist so if necessary, you can add some canola oil.

Beat the egg white in a bowl until firm peaks form. Mix the egg white into the oat mixture and stir until everything is well combined.

Spread the granola evenly on your baking pan. Bake for approximately 40 minutes, but check the oven from time to time. The granola should be golden in color and feel dry when you poke it with a fork, and that’s when it’s ready.

Remove from the oven and let cool completely. Crumb granola into crumbs and mix the dried nuts in. Store the granola in an air-tight container up to 1 month. Just a word of warning: you will never be able to store it that long :-)

Apple & Cinnamon Pancakes

Hello dear friends, fellow home cooks, food lovers and everyone else! I am so deeply sorry to have kept the blog in silence for almost 6 months now. Oh I cannot believe it was actually so long! But now we’re back online, back in cooking and sharing the best recipes with you.

So many things have happened during the silent period: we have moved (still living in Helsinki) and we both, me and S have new jobs from the same field, which I could say is something like consulting/content/web/communication. Not much more about that though, because this is not a blog about my work life - just saying I really enjoy it, and have been happy to learn so much new already. And so is S. He’s doing great in his job, and I am extremely proud about that!

Anyway, the most significant thing about the new year, concerning this blog, is that I’m trying to find time to make it bigger and better. First of all I have already invested in it as we bought a new camera, which hopefully will make the pictures better than they have been. In Christmas I also got a book called Styling, Lighting and Photographing Food, which I’m gonna read throughout as I am still learning the secrets of great food photography. The next thing is to get proper lights for our tinier than tiny home studio (if anyone has any suggestions about how to best imitate daylight in darker conditions, I would love to hear), and then everything should be set. Except for the styling part of course, as at the moment I own quite a small amount of kitchenware and dishes to style the images with. So here I come, stores full of lovely stuff!

Today we woke up real late and I made us some pancakes. The recipe was found from my new site crush, Williams-Sonoma. I changed the way of doing the pancakes slightly: Instead of frying the apples straight with the pancake batter I first fried them with butter and sugar and then again under the pancake.

Fluffy Apple & Cinnamon Pancakes

2 eggs

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

2 cups plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk

50 grams + 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted

2 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 peeled green apples, 1 cored and finely grated, 1 thinly sliced

Baked Apple and Pecan French Toast Casserole

I used to be eager to try new things for breakfast every weekend possible. Great sides of student life! As I started to work I’ve grown lazier and lazier, and rather spend my late mornings sleeping than preparing luxurious brekkies to S and myself. 

While browsing through the memory card of my camera I came across with this breakfast dish I prepared already some months ago. It was a perfect breakfast in a sense that it took only a quick moment to prepare. Next time I would perhaps make it a brunch dessert, as it’s too sweet to be a breakfast dish alone.

In case you’re not a big fan of apples, I assume you could substitute them with pears, pineapple or peaches as well. Talking about peaches, I’ve been thinking of this supergood looking grilled peach dessert for some time now, and will do it sometime soon!

The basic casserole recipe was adapted from here. 

Baked Apple and Pecan French Toast Casserole

1 loaf brioche or French bread, sliced into 2cm thick slices

8 eggs, slightly beaten

500 ml whole milk

1,5 dl light brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 green apples, halved, seeds removed and rather thinly sliced

0,75 dl brown sugar (I used muscovado)

50g butter, softened

1 teaspoon cinnamon

handful of pecan nuts

+ butter to grease the baking dish

Preheat oven to 175 C°. Rub a medium baking dish with butter.

Place the bread slices on the dish, overlapping. 

In a small bowl, whisk together eggs, milk, sugar and vanilla. Pour 2/3 of the mixture over the bread slices.

Arrange the apple slices nicely on top of the bread and top with rest of the egg mixture.

Mix together brown sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle evenly on top of the apples.

Dot the surface generously with butter and pecan nuts.

Bake casserole for 30-40 minutes on a center oven rack. Let cool before serving and enjoy with some vanilla ice cream.

Parisian Potato Breakfast Omelette

Some months ago I took an objective to try new breakfast dish every weekend, as those days were the only ones we could spend a long time enjoying a breakfast together. I did that actively for some weeks, but then got lazy and the tradition ended before it even really started.

One of my favorite Spanish foods is tortilla española, a potato omelette, that I have some times also had for breakfast (not made by me, though). That is, however, a bit too much work for a morning, with all that peeling and cutting potatoes etc. In the weekends I wish to wake up in a slow pace, enjoying the morning moments with food, coffee and magazines, not spending a lot of time in the kitchen preparing stuff. So one weekend I came up with a solution to my yearn for a Spanish potato omelette: to do it of a ready potato product. Now I know, that it is not the same thing at all. I know those frozen potato products are full of fat and so on, but I will now admit: this was good. We at least were very happy to start a day after this breakfast, so unless you’re totally against using any ready products, try this! If you are, try the Spanish omelette instead :-)

Breakfast Omelette à la Pommes Parisienne

400g pommes parisienne

4 large eggs

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 small onion or half of a big one, thinly sliced

half of a red bell pepper, julienned

handful of mushrooms

1 teaspoon ground cumin

0,5 teaspoon sweet paprika powder

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

a few spring onions (green parts only), to garnish

Sautée the mushrooms on a dry pan over medium heat until they have lost their excess liquid and gotten some golden color. Keep stirring frequently so that they won’t stick in your pan.

Heat the olive oil in an oven-proof skillet. Add in all the vegetables and Parisian potatoes, and sautée over medium heat until the veggies are tender and the potatoes have gotten color. Season with cumin, sweet paprika, salt and black pepper.

Break the eggs on top of the sautéed vegetables, spice up with a little more salt and pepper and place the whole pan into the oven for 10-15 minutes, or until the eggs are cooked.

Garnish with chopped spring onions and serve on a sunny morning.

All-American Buttermilk Banana Pancakes

I’m a breakfast fan, and like I once said, aim to try new breakfast things each weekend (sometimes I’m lazy though and those mornings we have simply just eggs and toast with toppings). This Sunday we spent in a striking, self-caused nausea and slept reaaaallly late. I had promised good old all-American pancakes for breakfast, so despite my feeling I could not let my better half down.

There are probably thousands of different pancake recipes in America, and everyone has their own favorite. We in Finland have also our own type of pancakes, that are more like crepes, thin and crispy from the edges. This recipe here is actually from a Finnish magazine, so I’m not gonna say anything about its “American” authenticity. However, with it you can’t go wrong. These pancakes here are so simple to prepare, so fluffy, so delicious and they go well with all kinds of toppings. My favorites are berries with maple syrup but this time we had banana, some pecan nuts and syrup, of course. I actually have eaten these also with caramelized bananas and ice cream, so I will add the instructions here after the pancake recipe.

Happy mornings!

Buttermilk and Banana Pancakes

700ml buttermilk

2 eggs

50g butter, melted

500ml all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 tablespoons sugar or honey

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla essence/vanilla sugar

For serving:

1-2 bananas

6 pecan nuts, roughly chopped

maple syrup

In a large bowl, whisk together buttermilk and eggs. Mix flour, baking powder and soda and salt and add gradually into the buttermilk mixture. Keep stirring until smooth. Add rest of the ingredients, mix well and let rest for 5-10 minutes.

Heat a small cast iron skillet into medium low heat. Grease the skillet with a 1cmx1cmx1cm cube of butter. Once melted, scoop 100ml of the pancake batter into the skillet. Cook until bubbles start to form on top of the pancake and the bottom is golden brown. 

Flip the pancake and cook until golden from both sides. Fry all the pancake batter and keep the ready pancakes warm, wrapped in aluminium foil.

Slice the bananas and chop the pecan nuts. Gather on a serving plate the pancakes and top with bananas, nuts, maple syrup and some icing sugar.

Caramelized Bananas

2 unripe bananas

30g salted butter

2 tablespoons icing sugar

Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat. Slice bananas and add into the pan. Fry turning until they soften, around 2 minutes. Add the sugar to the pan and cook a couple of minutes more or until the bananas start caramelizing. 

Serve with pancakes or crepes and whipped cream.