Healthy choice

Buckwheat porridge with caramelized orange and figs

Another Sunday, and here is another idea for Sunday Breakfast! This time it is a well-balanced, healthy and very tasty buckwheat porridge, that makes a fantastic breakfast treat. I guess many of you need something special to pull yourself out of the bed in the cold autumn mornings, and this warm and cozy porridge does help you!

I used for it buckwheat flakes mixed with some oats. Do you know, that buckwheat grain provides a very high level of protein, second highest only to oats! It makes this porridge high in energy, so it might help you to do more housework during the day or just stay in a good mood! 😉 For those of you who not especially concerned with buckwheat nutritional benefits, it is also tastes delicious and has a delightful nutty flavour. Plus, I topped the porridge with caramelized orange slices and figs, now you can imagine how divine and irresistible it was! Some chopped almonds or hazelnuts add an extra nice and crunchy note to your morning breakfast bowl!

Buckwheat porridge with caramelized orange and figs

Servings: 2
Time: 15mins
Difficulty: very easy
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You may drizzle the porridge with honey.

Ingredients

Porridge

100g buckwheat flakes

50-60g oatmeal

100ml water

300ml milk (I used full fat)

a pinch of salt

1 tbsp white or brown sugar (to taste)

vanilla pod or 1 tsp vanilla extract

Topping

3-4 tbsp white sugar

2 large figs or 3 medium, cut into fourths

1 large orange, peeled and cut into 1cm slices

2-3 tbsp lemon juice

8-10 whole toasted almonds, roughly chopped

Method

Put the water and milk in a saucepan over a medium heat, when it just begins to boil, add buckwheat flakes, oatmeal and all other ingredients for the porridge. Stir to combine. Reduce the heat to low, simmer for 5-6 minutes, stirring occasionally. If the porridge is too thick add more milk or water. Turn off the heat, cover with a lid and leave for 4-5 minutes.
Meanwhile, put a pan with sugar on a medium-high heat. Don’t stir it, allow to become lightly golden. Add figs and orange slices, caramelize for 2-3 minutes on each side. Turn the heat off. Take out figs and orange slices. Add lemon juice to the pan and stir with all sugar and juices in the pan.
Spoon the porridge into bowls and top with figs and orange slices. Pour over the sweet juice from the pan. Sprinkle with almonds.

Enjoy warm and cozy breakfast!

Boyar Millet Kasha (Porridge)

Millet is a tiny and round-shaped grain, that usually has a yellowish color. It is edible (and it’s not only for feeding birds) and delicious grain with mild nutty taste. Millet is a quite popular grain in Russia, though not that much as buckwheat, but still it’s widely used and served as a savory side dish or breakfast cereal; and it is also good for adding to stews and soups.

Millet is more than just an interesting alternative to common grains, it is a good source of anti-oxidants and vitamins, especially folic acid, niacin, calcium and iron. Millet is high in fiber and contains no gluten. Moreover, it helps to regulate blood sugar level, which is helpful for diabetics and those trying to lose weight.

Have you ever tried or cooked millet? What’s you favourite way to consume it?

I called today Sunday Breakfast ‘Boyar Millet Kasha (Porridge)’. Boyars were members of the highest rank of the feudal aristocracies in 9-16th centuary in old Russia. They were immensely powerful people and occupied the highest positions in the government: boyars were the major legislators of old Russia, as members of The Boyar Duma (the advisory council to Tzar). Needless to say, it was extremely wealthy class with various privileges. I guess, their everyday food was diverse too, including spices and nuts (which were expensive and not affordable to the lower class), and they could enjoy this beautiful and delicious millet porridge. 🙂

Russian Boyar Millet Kasha (Porridge)

Servings: 3
Time: 30mins
Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

Millet

200g millet

400ml milk

300ml water

a pinch of salt

1 tbsp sugar

Topping

50-60g black or brown raisins

1 large apple

1 tbsp sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp vanilla, optional

50ml warm water

30g butter

2 tbsp sour cream, optional

2 tbsp chopped walnuts

2 tbsp honey

Wash millet thoroughly under running water.
Warm the milk and water in a medium saucepan, add millet, salt and sugar. Reduce heat to low, and simmer for 15-20 minutes or until millet is ready, stirring occasionally. The millet should be creamy, so add more hot water if it’s too dry.
Meanwhile, soak raisins in hot water for 5-10 minutes, drain.
Cut the apple into small cubes. In a small pan, add apple cubes, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, water and simmer over medium heat for 5 minutes or until apple soft.
Stir in butter and sour cream, if using. Stir raisins and apple into the millet (or top). Top with nuts, raisins and drizzle the millet porridge with honey. Serve warm.

Enjoy!

Boyar millet porridge with apple and black raisins

Radish-Cucumber salad

Many of you already greeted the autumn season and began to bake various apple pies and cook hearty dishes. Autumn signs have been also trickling into Dubai, but slowly and it is still summer-like days here with plenty of strong sunshine during the day-time. Mornings and days, though still warm and sunny as usual, have been followed by lovely and cool evenings. Despite of all hot days, it’s a big advantage of living near the Gulf: we can enjoy the sea and sand any time over the year long. That’s what we did one afternoon – went to a beach. But before the joy of swimming in the sea, I prepared a very simple, light and fresh, and crunchy salad. It needs only few ingredients including beautiful radishes, which I found at local supermarket and just couldn’t resist picking up a huge bunch.

As you can see, the recipe is V-E-R-Y simple: all you need is love, fresh sliced cucumbers and bright radishes, chopped spring onions, some seasoning and sour cream!

I like this salad. It reminds me summer holidays: staying at parents house, fun of gardening and eating lots of fresh veggies and berries. And for that reason I decided to mix up vegetable slices with traditional Russian dressing – sour cream, instead of olive oil. Simple and well-loved. Be generous with spring onion! You may also add some chopped dill, if you wish.

Radish-Cucumber salad (with sour cream dressing)

Don’t be sad if the summer is over in your place, I will post autumn recipes soon {more pie recipes are on the way..} Thanks for reading and Stay turned! 🙂

Sunday Breakfast: Syrniki with fresh blackcurrants

Syrniki are Russian cottage cheese pancakes, that are made thick and have a roundish shape. I love having them on breakfast, topped with a sweet condensed milk and some fresh or frozen berries. I already posted the recipe once (click here), today recipe is similar to the previous one but with a delightful touch: these syrniki were prepared by my mum during my summer holidays in Russia. 🙂 My suggestion was to add a special ingredient – fresh blackcurrants, which were picked up that day in parent’s garden. So, we mixed in lots of fresh and juicy blackcurrants. Blackcurrants have enough natural sweetness, and we didn’t put sugar at all.

If you haven’t still made syrniki you should immediately go to your kitchen and cook them! Really! They are so delicious, plus cottage cheese contains lots of calcium, which is great for bones.

Syrniki with fresh blackcurrants

Servings: 4-5
Difficulty: easy
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If using frozen blackcurrants do not defreeze them, add straight from the freezer.

Ingredients

600-700g tvorog/cottage cheese (I used 0% fat)

2 medium eggs

2-3 tbsp white sugar (or as much as you like), I didn’t put sugar this time

150-170g fresh blackcurrants

100g plain flour

icing sugar, for garnish, optional

some fresh blackcurrants, sour cream/sweet condensed milk, for serving

Method

In a large mixing bowl, mix cottage cheese with a folk. Add eggs and sugar if using, stir to combine.
Sift the flour into cottage cheese mixture, mix to combine. If the mixture is too wet, add a bit more flour.
Sprinkle fresh blackcurrants with flour, carefully fold into cottage cheese mixture.
Sprinkle working surface with flour. Take a tablespoon of the mixture and shape flat patties (approx 6cm diameter).
Arrange syrniki on a greased baking sheet. Bake in preheated 200C oven for 30 minutes or until golden.
You can also fry them. For that, in a large frying pan heat sunflower oil, add syrniki and fry for 2 minutes on each site.
Sprinkle with icing sugar, if desired. Serve warm with sour cream or sweet condensed milk and berries on side.

Enjoy!

Sunday Dairy Breakfast

September 6, 2015
milkandbun
10 comments
berries, breakfast, cooking, dairy, delicious, food photo, food styling, milk, photo, recipe, Russian, Russian dish, Russian recipe, RussianFood, Sunday breakfast

Do you remember I told you last Sunday that better not to skip breakfast? And I do hope you have eaten something every morning! Have you? 😉 Was it something tasty? Mmm May be pancakes.. I made onion-chilli cookies twice this week (the recipe here). Once with spring onion, another with leeks, both times they were so good! I love gentle hit from chillies, it helps me to stay awake for a long time!

Yesterday I didn’t have a plenty time, and my choice was quick-but-healthful breakfast: Greek yogurt with raspberries and honey. But on the picture, you can see another delicious thing – Russian prostokvasha with colorful raspberries and blackberries. Prostokvasha is a dairy product, similar to thick yogurt, which is made from a fermented milk (milk prepared by bacterial fermentation). When it’s prepared from a regular milk it has a pale milky color, but prostokvasha can be also made from baked milk and thus it has beige color, similar to “coffee with cream” (as on the photo). Baked milk is called ‘toplenoe moloko’ in Russia, it’s traditional Russian dairy product. For this milk, regular milk is boiled, and then simmered for a long time to get a special color, taste and smell. Originally it was prepared in Russian pech, nowadays all milky produce can be bought in any Russian store. I do love toplenoe milk and prostokvasha for its unique taste, so I ate it every single day while I was on holiday..