Breakfast

Once in a while I like to mix things up a bit at breakfast time. I don't eat the same breakfast everyday anyway, but I do have quite a narrow repertoire - muesli, yoghurt and fruit, eggs on toast, porridge (in the winter), or toast and jam. It seems to work just fine, requires mininimal thought when half asleep and fuels me through the morning.

However, every now and then I get bored. This was one of those weeks, so summoning some Scottish inspiration I made oatcakes to have for breakfast.



Boiled eggs, smoked salmon (well, trout), and homemade oatcakes. I must grow some chives - they would be good with this.



I know that this is not going to set the world on fire with its inventiveness, but it was enough to satisfy my need for something new!

The oatcakes were a little less crisp than the ones you buy in shops, and I imagine they will be very well suited to jams and honeys as well as the savoury accompaniments.

Here's how to make them:

Oatcakes
Mix together 50g fine oatmeal with 50g plain flour (white, wholemeal or a mixture) and a pinch of salt.
Rub in 30g chilled butter.
Mix to a dough consistency with water.
Roll out and cut into shapes, or do as I did and form golf ball sized lumps and flatten them with a rolling pin. I added a scrunch of black pepper to the top at this stage.
Heat a heavy frying pan and dry-fry the coatcakes until starting to go golddn at the edges, flip over and bake the other side. Set aside to cool as you cook the rest.

Rise and Shine!

Breakfast - they say its the most important meal of the day.

I tend to agree - if I don't eat breakfast I'm STARVING for the rest of the day. Its my favourite meal too. Good bread, a lovely cup of hot coffee, time to savour it and gradually emerge from the dozy feeling. Lovely.

However, breakfast is a meal I rarely tinker with. Eggs on toast, porridge, muesli, yoghurt and fruit: these are my standard choices.

This week, purely by chance, I branched out a bit. No massive leaps - I won't be having miso soup or wheatgerm for breakfast any time soon - but I tried my oats soaked in juice instead of made into porridge, and we had American pancakes for breakfast at the weekend (Jamie Oliver's recipe - find it here).

Having declared himself not very hungry Dan wolfed down 3 blueberry pancakes with enthusaism. They were dead easy to make, you just need to ensure than you have enough oil in the frying pan to stop them from sticking. My first one stuck, but after that I got the hang of it.

I swear my pictures are getting worse as time goes on, but these give you the general idea:


Batter in the pan - I was surprised by the consistency of the batter - it was much thicker than a normal pancake batter; more like cake mixture really (makes sense when I think about it - the pancakes are cakier than normal thin pancakes afterall).




The finished thing - they may not be all that neat at the edges, but they tasted lovely with a drizzle of honey.