Showing posts with label breakfast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label breakfast. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Oat Crepes

Teaser of finished crepe with fruit

I stole the idea of Oat crêpes from Well Fed, Flat Broke, but the execution is fully mine. You see, Emily's recipe calls for 1/4 c butter and FOUR EGGS. I don't have any eggs right now, and that's a lot of cornstarch eggs to be dealing with. So I took my usual recipe of flour, 1 egg, some milk, and a buncha salt and adapted it to oats.
Unfortunately, oats absorb a lot more water than flour, so I ended up needing tons of milk after I started making them. I've adapted the recipe slightly, but please adapt it further to your needs.

Ingredients

1 c quick oats
1 1/2 c milk (at least)
1 tbsp cornstarch/1 egg
1 tbsp oil
1 tsp salt (at least)

Procedure

Put your dry ingredients in the blender. I put my cornstarch in, but you don't have to if you've already mixed up your "egg".
Blender with whole oats and cornstarch
My blender is from the 70's, I think. Possibly the 50's. I got it at a yard sale.
 Blender that up. Shoving the oats gently down towards the blade with a spatula will keep things going.

Blender with ground-up oats

Once the oats are all smooth, add your wet ingredients: milk, oil, egg/"egg".

Blender with ground up oats and wet ingredients unmixed

Blender that up as well. Remember that the oats will absorb a lot of the milk, so don't add more oats until after it's sat in the fridge for at least half an hour. You WANT it to be really soupy.

Blender with blended oats and wet ingredients

Let sit in the fridge for half an hour or so. Then give it another go on the blender and add milk or oats as needed. Go small on the oats, though.
Then grease a pan and heat it on medium until it's pretty hot. Otherwise, your first crepe will be a pale, oily thing.
Pour about 1/4 c of batter into a small skillet and tilt gently in a swirl to get batter in a nice, thin circle. This should not be stressful.

A crepe in the pan

Ignore the crepe until the edges pull up from the pan (or turn golden brown if they're too thick to pull away) and the surface is mostly cooked through. Flip gently.
Very gently, with oat crepes. They're a bit floppier than flour crepes, and take a while longer to cook, so don't rush things like I did.

Broken crepe in the pan

Below is what a nice crepe looks like. Your pan is all warmed up and heating evenly, and you've destroyed enough crepes to be patient.

Nicely browned, whole crepe in the pan

The second side to cook will always be spotty and paler than the first's nice, golden brown. Don't let this bother you. These are not like american pancakes. If it really, really bothers you, get a crepe maker or something.

Second side cooked of a crepe

Fill or top your crepe with whatever you want: peanut butter, jam, whipped cream, nutella, greek yogurt, fresh fruit, all of the above, whatever. All are good. Combinations are great. I'll do cream cheese and jam sometimes, peanut butter and jam, greek yogurt and jam, etc. I guess you could use butter, but crepes are thin and a little greasy, so they don't really need it.
I always put the goodies on the inside and fold the crepe into thirds around the filling, but some do a tight roll, some do halves, and some fold the crepe into thirds and put the goodies on the outside. Whatever strikes your fancy.

Filled crepe on a nice plate.
Fancy fancy crepe with greek yogurt and fresh raspberries from the community garden down the road.
I make crepes almost every Tuesday, usually in the evening, but that's because I love them so much. It's a very relaxing thing for me to do, especially since I usually have a lot due on Wednesday. It's a study break, a time to focus on nothing except the gentle swirl of the batter in the pan and the sizzle of cooking crepe. It's an exercise in patience, which I desperately need during heavy study times.
Also, be warned that this will make far too many crepes to eat by yourself (as will most recipes that claim to make 8. I think they want you to use a big pan or something). Invite your friends to share, or eat them for most of your meals for the rest of the week.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Fried Potatoes

Potatoes are as good a reason to get out of bed in the morning as any. I mean, french fries (properly done, that is, so they're a mix of crispy and tender and salty and smooth), potato crisps (by which I mean the kind that Frito-Lay sells in crinkly bags; Pringles apply as well), chips (as in "fish and", found primarily in England, does not refer to fries but rather a thick wedge of soft potato goodness), hash browns (shredded or cubed, loose or in a cake, whatever; tater tots fall into this category), garlicky mashed potatoes (that you make yourself with a weird old potato masher that your flatmate got from her boyfriend's dad, and that you guess on all the measurements), and, last but definitely not least, fried potatoes, preferably with onions.
I'll see if I can fit more commas into this post. It might be hard.
My potatoes, if made in the morning, are unlikely to contain onions because I don't have the time. By this I mean that I don't have the willpower to drag my sorry ass out of bed, scrape the sleep out of my eyes, and make breakfast like a real person.
The way I talk, you'd think I was Pinocchio or something. "I'm a real girl!" I hope this abates upon employment in the real world, which hopefully involves working more than three-hour shifts every three days or so. I'm holding out for a breakroom, and enough hours that I qualify for breaks. Not that I'll turn down a job that doesn't offer those.
This morning, I woke up way earlier than I had expected and made myself some fried potatoes with onions. The onions add what feels like forty five minutes to your cooking time, but let them cook slowly. It's not worth it to rush.

Fried Potatoes and Onions

4 baby potatoes or 1 big-ass potato per person
About 1/4 onion per person
Salt
Oil, butter, or other greasy substance that doesn't catch fire when heated

The night before breakfast, boil potatoes. If working with a big potato, peel (if you want) and cut into large cubes so it will cook in under two hours.
Put cooked potato in the fridge overnight. Use a covered container if you feel paranoid about your food drying out.

Boiled potatoes and way more onion than I used.

The morning of breakfast, about an hour before you want to eat (trust me on this one, guys. Onions take a long time to cook), cut your potatoes into small cubes, about half an inch at the largest. Peel if you so desire, but there's good stuff in the peels. Set aside. Have a small snack; this will take forever and you will be very hungry.

Cubed potatoes and all the onion I used.

Heat olive oil, or butter if you're blessed with low cholesterol, in a skillet.
Slice onion generously. Cut rings in half if you feel like it.

I consider raw onion to be potential deliciousness.
Caramelize onion slices/rings. Use plenty of oil; you'll need it for the potatoes anyway. This is probably the longest step, unless your onions go straight to burnt. Try to avoid burnt.

This is a good time to add potatoes.
 When onions are brown, but not black yet, add cubed potatoes and some salt.

If you used butter, the potatoes would be much more brown and golden.
 The amount of salt is entirely up to you. Start small; overly salty food is never pleasant. You can use pepper, too.
Fry potatoes and onions until potatoes are golden and crispy and the onions are just about burnt.

Breakfast of champions, by which I mean me.
It's a sweet-and-salty thing. The onions are very sweet, while the potatoes should be fairly salty to balance that. The onions are soft and caramelly while the potatoes should have crispy bits and be fairly dry to offset the onions.
I also recommend black tea with sugar and milk to complete your morning.