Morning glory

I love porridge always, but here in the north of Scotland the thing takes on its own mystique. It makes such good sense, like melons in Spain in August, or pipas during a football match.

Here I´ve discovered pinhead oatmeal, the Rolls Royce of oats, but I´m happy with the garden variety porridge version, too.

The rice cooker is great for this. I know it´s not hard to do it in a normal pan, but I appreciate anything hands off, specially in the dark of a winter morning.

Just measure your oatmeal, then add two and a half times that in water, press cook, and let it be.

For the pinhead oatmeal it´s best if you stir it once or twice, which is not hard to juggle with making tea and feeding a toddler her Cola-Cao and a baby his milk. Both will later be glad of the porridge, even if the two year old refers to it as "rice pudding".

For a special burst of energy, a spoonful of chunky peanut butter stirred in does wonder. And as a special treat, maple syrup elevates it to giddy heights.

Exhibition

Tomorrow is the opening of my show, and I am in that marvelous state where I am either staring blankly at the wall or snapping at whoever has the misfortune to speak to me. I can´t eat, or I am ravenous. I feel there are a million things I must do, but can´t think of any. Very much like pre-wedding nerves, except on that day I knew what I was going to wear, and had only to make sure I fit into it.
Since I have no idea what I will be looking like tomorrow, I have instead cooked myself a beautiful, decadent breakfast: pancakes with sauteed pears.
I´d never made pancakes for one, because one egg makes too much batter, and if I make the whole batch intending to freeze some it´s more than likely that I will eat all the pancakes anyway. But Marion Cunningham says you can keep batter in the fridge, and if that is true, well then, we´re home free.
I made three panckaes from this batter and sauteed a pear in butter and brown sugar in another pan, and it all took fifteen minutes, including one phone call to J to apologize for having snapped before, and another to my mother to schedule Pía´s morning.
Why don´t we make pancakes every morning?

Granola

The past week has been kind of tough. The crayfish incident gave a chance to my sister for her directorial debut, but I, after Melissa´s comment, had to check under my bed for lurking monsters. Thanks, pal, I hadn´t done that since 1981.
And it only came last in a list of soul-searing experiences. There was the pâté de campagne on Wednesday, which turned out fine, but took its toll. Note to self : don´t grind meat on that otherwise wonderful machine, the Thermomix. Tuesday had me confront a cauliflower I´d overlooked and turn it into a soup that was clearly channeling glue.
One little accident after the other, so yesterday I refused to go into the kitchen. I wanted no truck with a room connected with snapping claws and rags of gristle embedded in rotor blades. J was put in charge of producing banh mi-ish sandwiches with the remains of the pàté.
After a fall, it´s back up on the horse quickly, though. Everybody knows that. So I looked about me for a recipe that wouldn´t try my nerves, with ingredients that wouldn´t freak me out, and, in fact, would fit a "many of my best friends are mosquitoes" mood.
Something important in these moments of post-traumatic disorder. I plumped for granola, for which I´d bought the ingredients and then enver done.
I know it sounds daft, making your own cereal, but, well, here are some reasons, apart from the general deliciousness of the thing:
1-Control. In every commercial granola there´s at least one product you´ll hate. I used to have to pick around the dried banana very carefully. Not any more.
2- Sweetness. Again, I find commercial brands rather too sweet.
3. Interior decoration. Ok, I´m not saying this a good reason, but it´s a reason. Granola looks stunning in a jar on your counter, and if you make your own, it can be customized. I´ve added dried cranberries to my mix, so that it matches the red kitchen wall.
4-Smugness. Ignoble feeling, yes, but who doesn´t like feeling like a competent housewife for once?
5- Aromatherapy. The house smells wonderful with the fumes, all nutty and spicy.
6- Of course I don´t like to point this out, but (whisper) health. Read out the label on a box of Jordan´s Country Crunch and think again.
7. It´s really, really easy to make.

All you do is toast oats and nuts in a low oven with some honey or syrup or both, and once it´s cool, add dried fruits. So it´s not so much a case of giving a recipe as of saying: choose your favourites.

My choice was 500g rolled oats, 1/4 white sesame,1/4 black sesame, 100g flaked almods,1/4 honey, 2 teaspoonfuls of golden syrup, 1/4 a cup brown sugar, a pinch of salt, and a dusting of cinammon.
Later I went with 100g dried cranberries and 100g chopped dried apricots.
I think next time I´ll probably skip the black sesame, which floats to the top and looks like bugs swimming in the milk.

Breakfast pancakes

I used to think that breakfast stacks of pancakes, dribbling maple syrup down the sides, were things that only happen to Americans, like junior proms, or the right to bear arms.
Sure, there are plenty of recipes for the things, and I´ve even tried my hand at them now and then. But they seemed like a big deal. No matter that they always begin with some words about how easy it is, and how it takes less and no time, and how you can do them for a weekday breakfast. I always ended up a nervous wreck surrounded by bowls and scales and meassuring devices, with bits of flung about pancake in my hair. The things themselves would be unrecognizable in their shape, and either black or milky white.They still dissappeared fast into J´s mouth, but that´s nothing. The man will eat anything.

I decided they were a myth. From now on, I´d only have them when going seriously cold turkey, and it would be the Spanish way. Three big pancakes, with whipped cream and caramel, in the afternoon, at Vip´s.

Mark Bittman saved the day again. He did a column, and one of those videos, and I must say it looked easy. Very. Specially because there was precious little meassuring involved. Which is all to the good if it´s breakfast we´re talking about, when one is groggy and carefully tipping flour into a bowl until it reaches the 125 gr. mark can be a bit much.
I was still a bit sceptic, though. It couldn´t be as easy as it looked, surely? Well, beleive me, my European friends and neighbours, it was. Wonderful.
So, here´s the video. And the recipe, so easy that it can be memorized:

One cup of flour, one of milk, one egg, one teaspoon of baking powder, one tablespoon of sugar, one pinch of salt.
Mix it in a bowl ( maybe the milk and egg first in another, it´s no big deal), easy does it, with a whisk. No electric devices needed, they´ll only make the thing gluey later. In a few seconds the thing looks like a real batter, it´s magic. Then, here´s my favourite bit, cut a knob of butter and spear it with the point of a knife. Smear the pan with it, so it melts, and there´s perfection for you, a think film of butter on which you now pour the batter. Use a spoon or a small ladle to put it in the pan, where it will make neat little circles all by itself! And in a few seconds they´ll bubble up, and now is when you turn them. A little flip should be enough. In a couple of seconds the other side is done, and voilá.
Go on like this and in a few minutes, I promise, you have your very own stack, just like in the movies. And there won´t be a shoot-out in the diner.
You won´t have free refills of coffee, though, because that is a thing that really only happens to Americans.

Dickensian mornings : porridge

We are cursed with the alarm clock, but blessed with breakfast, don´t´ you think? After caffeine and a bit of wasting time reading the news, I want food. But I don´t want anything too in-your-face. Blandness is key. And what´s more bland than porridge?

Most people I know don´t like porridge, which is Spanish is called gachas de avena, an unappetizing name, really. Not that it looks any good. I must admit, the first time I saw it, at boarding school in England, I thought I´d strayed into the Oliver Twist scenario from hell. It turned out not to be so bad, though. The porridge was dickensian, but the school wasn´t, and I was allowed to stick to toast for the whole year I was there.

And that was that for a long long time, until this summer in Estonia I came across it again, everywhere, from the smallest b&b to the swankiest hotel. I fell in love, and had it every day, with bilberry jam (oh, the North and its berries, how exotic)

I started with Quaker´s oats, but soon switched to organic, and they´re so much better, they really are. I still keep the Quaker´s label stuck to the glass jar, though. Respect design classics.

The recipe is adapted for a Thermomix from The Ballymaloe Cookery School.
Porridge was traditionally stirred with a spurtle. It sounds like a Quidditch term, but it´s only the wooden stick used to stir porridge. I´ve decided that we could call the Th the Electric Spurtle. You don´t have to stand and watch your pot when your brain is only half awake. The Th takes care of all that, and then beeps. Neat, uh?

I don´t know why I bother to give this recipe, because inside Spain nobody eats porridge, and outside nobody seems to have a Th, but anyway, here goes:

Boil 500 ml. water, which is approx 4minutes at Varoma, speed 1. With the machine still on, sprinkle 80 gr. of oatmeal, then turn the heat down to 90º, cover, and program 11 minutes. Sprinkle some salt in, and scrape into two bowls. Don´t leave out the salt, otherwise it will be bland beyond belief, and it´s pretty bland even with it.
Inmediately, fill the machine with water. Dried porridge is no fun to clean.

Since my other half doesn´t eat breakfast, I stash the second bowl in the fridge, covered in clingfilm. It looks revolting one it´s cooled, Goldilocks had a point. But she didn´t have a microwave, which makes it perfect next day, and truly instant, and would have solved many a problem at the house of the bears.

I like to eat it with a splash of milk and plenty of brown sugar. I´m telling you, it makes up for all the alarm clocks in the world.