The Best Mushrooms on Toast

My biggest problem with savory food is I never measure or write down the ingredients. I am always tossing food into a pot and refiling through the fridge half way through because its just not quite right. For example I have a tomato based pasta sauce I make a lot, every time I make it though I take something that I didn’t love about the last one out and try something else. It’s been pretty amazing a couple of times but I can’t remember how much I put of what in it! Oops.

Of course starting the blog has meant I have had to start measuring things so I can post them.

So thankfully I know what went into this.

Yup. That just happened.

I used to love mushrooms on toast for breakfast but for some reason I have not had it for a while. When I make it, its not just straight up mushrooms on straight up toast. Oh no. If I am having mushrooms on toast I want it to involve, butter, bacon and garlic. Mushrooms should always involve those things don’t you think?

The Best Mushrooms on Toast

Serves One

Ingredients

1/2 Brown Onion. chopped
1 tsp Butter
25g Shittaki Mushrooms, sliced
1/2 Portabelo Mushroom, Chopped
50g Button Mushrooms, sliced
2 Rashers of Bacond, sliced
1 tsp lemon pepper spice mix
Sesoning
1 slice of turkish bread
Butter to spread
Crushed garlic to spread
Parmesan Cheese

Method

Turn on you oven grill to heat.

In a pan melt the teaspoon of butter, stir in the onion and cook for about half a minuet before adding the mushroom and cooking until you mushrooms have started to darken and shrink.

Next add the bacon, lemon pepper and season to your liking, then cook until the bacon is golden and your mushrooms are completely cooked. The mushrooms will be nice and dark.

While the bacon and mushroom mix are cooking slice your Turkish bread in half and pop under the grill. Keep an eye on it, when it’s toasted on one side to your liking flip and then remove once done. Butter the bread and scrap on some crushed garlic immediately so it melts in.

Top the bread with the mushrooms and sprinkle with Parmesan.

Oh My God. Yum

My favorite thing about this is it’s easy to remember so after you have made it once you can pick up the ingredients from the supermarket without needing a list!

It’s also an easy one for when you have guests over, no trying to poach 8 eggs at once happening here.

Ode to Coffee (Or two recipies to get your fix for breakfast)

I love coffee  I love good coffee.

Its the one thing I allow myself every day without feeling guilty, is it good for me? Who knows. Is it bad for me? Not as long as I am sticking to  a cup or two a day. A work collegue of mine was telling me recently that she had to cut down her coffee intake, apparently she was drinking 9 cups of black coffee a day. She would brew a big plunger first thing and then microwave it when it got cold (If I had emoji emoticons right now you would be seeing a little horrified face… actually wait a sec…)

There we go, thanks google. I think I actually made that face when she told me this story, I might have even gone blue from the forehead to my eyebrows.

In the end this collegue of mine started getting migraines and heart palpitations. Which in the great big list of ‘signs your coffee habit is killing you’ is up there with a big flashing sign over your 9th cup. Don’t even get me started on the dehydration that must go hand in hand with that, yikes.

Anyway, back to how much I love coffee. In moderation, we are talking two cups at most.

Another thing I love are rolled oats. Which I have been told is very very boring as far as things to love go but rolled oats are probably one of the most versatile bases for breakfast I have come across. If you can drink it, you can probably turn it into porridge, if you like cake, you can probably make a baked oat version, if your in a hurry first thing overnight oats work a treat. Basically I am saying oats are the god of breakfast food… At least they are in my kitchen. I’m thinking about having a little shrine, do you think my housemate would mind?

Recently I have been mixing these two things together to make a wonderful breakfast of chocolatey, coffee goodness. Its all the enjoyment of a Mocha plus the added benefit of lasting you till your mid-morning snack.

Mocha Morning Oats

Serves One

Ingredients

1/2 Cup Brewed Coffee
1/2 Cup Milk of Choice*3 Medjool Dates
1/2 tsp Vanliia Essence
1/3 Cup Rolled Oats
2 tsp Chia seeds
1 tbs of Cacao Powder
Pinch of Salt

Method
In a blender combine the coffee, milk, dates and vanilla essence. Blend them until the dates are mostly chopped and mixed in. If you don’t have a blender you can chop the dates up very small and mix it all together, all the blending does is ensure even distribution of sweetness.

In a pot add the oats, chia seeds, cacao powder and salt then pour the coffee mixture in and stir. Turn you stove top on medium high and cook until most of the liquid has cooked in and it is quite thick.

This will re-heat quite well if you want to take it to work in the morning.

Note on Milk: I find with oats that the kind of milk you use will effect how sweet the recipe is. If you are using a non-sweetened almond milk or even a full fat dairy milk you may want to add and extra date. I was out of everything except soy when I made this so that is what I used and the soy milk we have is quite sweet on it’s own.

The second recipe is based on an old love affair of mine. In Australia we have a coffee house chain called Gloria Jeans, it basically destroyed Starbucks hopes and dreams of successful business down under. I honestly didn’t even know we had Starbucks until I came across a store in the city a couple of years ago.

In year 12 I had an obsession with Gloria Jeans Iced Coffee. I think I had myself convinced it was better for me then the frappes somehow even though it tasted like someone had dumped 1 cup of sugar into every glass.

Now I drink my coffee black. No sugar, no milk, just black. Earlier this week however I had a craving for something sweeter and decided to re-create a healthier version of my old Gloria’s favorite.  You will notice similarities between these two recipes, like I said, if you can drink it, you can turn it into porridge so feel free to do that with your iced coffee.

 Not Gloria’s Iced Coffee

Makes One Large Iced Coffee

Ingredients

3/4 Cup of Concentrated Coffee (I’ll explain bellow)
1 Cup Almond Milk (Or milk of choice)
4 Ice cubes
1/2 tsp Vanilla Essence
4 Medjool Dates

Method
To make the coffee concentrate I combined three heaped tablespoons of ground coffee with 2 cups of boiling water in a jar overnight and then poured it into a plunger so I could filter out the grains before pouring it back into the jar to keep. Your brand of coffee and how much you use will affect the taste of this drink so you may need to play with that. I did not want mine extremely strong.

Once you have your concentrate, combine all the ingredients in a blender and blend very well. It may take a while for the dates to break up. It will help if you soak them overnight.

Then pour into a glass, add some ice and drink.

I have decided that brown food is very hard to photograph.

Particularly with such pour lighting in my apartment and a very old camera….

Also at some point my neighbors are going to notice me taking photographs of my breakfast on a chair, with a shoebox on it in out little courtyard at 6:30 in the morning. You can only work with what you have right? hahaha!

Rustic Sweet Potato and Maple Oat Breakfast Bars

On Yoga days I eat two breakfasts… Well really its more like two big snacks but I like to think I am eating a second breakfast. I really don’t function without breakfast and I am definitely not managing any kind of exercise without it so I always have to have something before yoga, on the other side of the coin eating at 5:30am usually means I am hungry by the time I get to work at 8:30 so second breakfast was born.

Normally I just make myself a smoothy or grab some fruit but this week I felt like something a bit more substantial and so these bars where born. They are filling and dense, almost like fruit cake which I love considering the time of year (and because I think fruit cake is the cake of the gods…Assuming gods eat cake). They are not the prettiest thing I have ever baked but I kind of like the rough, wholegrainy sort of look, it always makes me feel like what I am eating is full of fibery goodness.In this case these bars are full of fibery goodness, they are basically a digestive broom with the oats and linseed (flax) which in my books is a great way to start off your day.

Rustic Sweet Potato and Maple Oat Breakfast Bars

Makes 12 large bars

Ingredients

1/2 Cup Oat Flour 1 Cup Rolled Oats
1/2 Cup Almond Flour (called almond meal in Aus)
1 tsp Baking Powder
3 Tbp Chia Seeds
1/2 Cup of ground Flax (Called Linseed in Aus)
1 Tbs Cinnamon
1 Tsp Nutmeg
1 Cup Sultanas
Pinch of Salt
1 1/2 Cup of Almond Milk (or milk of choice)
1/2 Cup Maple Syrup
2 Tbs Almond Butter
1/2 Cooked Sweet Potato
1/2 Tbs Vanilla Essence

Topping

1/2 Tbs Cinammon
1 Tbs Maple Syurp
1 Cup Pumpkin Seeds

Method

Before you start you will need to cook the sweet potato, to roast it quickly microwave it and then roast for 15 minutes at preheated 200 degrees Celsius. Once cooked set aside to cool.

Leave the oven on at 180 degrees and line a 28 x 18 cm baking tray and set aside.

In a large bowl mix the dry ingredients including the sultanas. If you do not have oat flour you can process 1 cup of oats down to the required amount of almond flour, don’t worry to much if there are still a few whole oats in it.

In a separate bowl add all the wet ingredients including your sweet potato. Make sure you remove the potato skin and break it up a little in the bowl. Using a potato masher or a fork combine all the ingredients until they are evenly distributed.

Pour the milk mixture into the dry food and combine.

Take your mixture to your prepared baking tray and spoon it in. Then smooth it out evenly, making sure you have pushed it all the way into the corners of the pan.

Now, a bowl combine the topping ingredients and mix thoroughly, they will be quite cinammony at this point… I don’t recommend eating them out of the bowl (yes I tried). Then spoon them over the mix and press them into the bar.

Once you are happy with your topping pop your tray in the oven for 35-40 minuets depending on your oven. The take them out, cut them up, let them cool and store them in an air tight container at room temp for when your racing out of the house next.

These a very nice served warm so if you can manage to pop them in the microwave for 20 seconds before eating it do.

Side note: Chia seeds, oat flour and almond flour can all be found at Woolworths in the ‘health food’ section, right next to your rolled oats. Good quality Almond milk can be found in the long life milk section, you are looking for a brand where the ingredients list it ‘almonds, water and maybe some kind of sweetener and one thickener at most’.

I should probably add this, because I know people will have noticed that I am not vegan or vegetarian even though many of my recipies will be. I like to cook that way as much as possible because I believe if I can make a recipe accessible to more people I should and I admire their commitment to a more sustainable life style, unfortunately my dabbling made me very unwell so for now I am neither of those things (maybe I was doing it wrong?). Milk and cheese can also be very hard on the digestion when mixed with other foods so I try to sub it out as much as possible.