Breakfast #35: Raisin Bread French Toast with Maple Butter Apples

In my foresight, I wisely did not promise to avoid posting recipes similar to each other this year. After all, having resolved to make more breakfasts and use more leftovers, I knew I would be spending many a morning with French toast. Not that I am complaining. Buttery-crisp on the outside, pillowy-soft on the inside, bathed in the syrup/compote/coulis/et al of your choice, topped with cream and/or fruits, smeared with nut butter or Nutella…It’s just the thing to have in the morning to set you right and make you believe in the intrinsic goodness of mankind. And it is the best way ever to breathe new and vibrant life into old, stale, depressed bread.

I never throw bread away. Aside from being loathe to throw any food away (even writing “throw food away” makes me cringe), there are so many uses for those retiring loaves that there is really no need to. You can cube them and turn them into croutons for soups or salads. You can toast the bread, break it apart, and stick them in your food processor to make bread crumbs. You can make bread soup (sopa seca to my mum). You can make bread pudding (still have to try my abuelita’s delicious recipe…soon!). And if it’s a dreary little morning that has you in need of a little cheering, and not much time or energy, you can make French toast.

Raisin Bread French Toast with Maple Butter Apples

• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1 apple, peeled, cored, and chopped into 1/2 inch cubes
• 2-8 slices old raisin bread*
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 egg
• A generous pat of butter for the pan

- Make the maple butter apples. In a skillet that will fit all the apples in one layer, melt the butter. Add the maple syrup and stir. Add the apples and simmer until the apples are soft and the sauce is sticky, stirring occasionally. This will take about 15-20 minutes. Set aside to cool.
- Whisk the egg and milk together until they are fully combined.
- Soak your bread slices in the milk/egg mixture for a half a minute on each side (I did mine in two batches).
- While your bread is soaking, melt a pat of butter in a non-stick skillet. When the bubbles subside, place your bread on the hot butter. Cook until golden brown and toasty then flip and repeat with the other side. Remove from pan.
- If your maple butter has separated just stir it vigorously until it becomes homogenous. Pour on top of your French toast with joy and abandon.

Not much time? Yes! French toast is ridiculously easy to make, and provided you keep the accoutrements simple, can even be whipped up on a workday morning. Here’s what you do: the night before, have your bread sliced and ready in a flattish bowl in the fridge. Measure the milk out in a jar. The next morning, crack the egg into the jar, twist the lid on, and shake until incorporated (like making a salad dressing). Pour egg mixture into the bowl with the bread, heat a pat of butter in a pan, and you will be ready to get down with some French toast in minutes!

Now, this recipe is not a work-week recipe. This is a Sunday morning recipe. A Sunday morning when you can take the time to enjoy the slow simmering of apples in butter and maple. When you can watch the glossy golden bubbles and smell the irresistible fragrance of melted butter, without worrying about unanswered emails and eye-numbing statistics. When you can nudge the apples into soft submission while reflecting on what is right in the world. The intrinsic goodness of mankind? Oh it does exist…especially over breakfasts like these. I think we could all benefit from a quiet morning with bread, butter and maple syrup don’t you?

*I love using raisin bread for French toast! With no extra effort on my part, I have a ready-flavored French toast infused with raisins and cinnamon. The amount of slices will depend on the size/diameter of your loaf. Mine was small, a jelly roll shaped loaf of about 3 inches in diameter and 2 inches in height and I could make 8 slices with this recipe. If your using a big loaf with extra thick slices (as my aunt likes to do) this will probably be good for 2 slices. Anything in between would make, well, anything in between.

Breakfast #34: Banana Muscovado Oatmeal

I love January. Clean slate, resolutions, and new beginnings aside, what I love most about this month is the weather. I know this isn’t exactly a well-loved month for the majority, nor well-loved weather, but over in my little corner of the world January is a blessed respite from the tropical heat. During our (non-existent) “winter” the air is a touch cooler, the breeze a little less steamy, and you can sometimes pass a whole A/C-less day without a single bead of sweat forming. Even in the cramped city I inhabit, where the hot, humid air is usually trapped between the buildings and the smog, I blissfully open my windows (a risky operation at best for fear of the dust and pollution) to let in the much welcome morning chill.

Another thing I love about this weather is that I can actually justify making all the “cold-weather” food I enjoy. Long-simmering braises, hearty soups and stews, and warm bowls of oatmeal. I love these foods, and will cook and eat them any time of the year, do not doubt it. Even in the heat of summer, if my cravings so dictate, you will find me nursing a pot of slow-cooked something or the other. But in January, ah blessed January, it has the extra pleasure of feeling so undeniably right.

Banana Muscovado Oatmeal

• 1/2 cup old fashioned oats
• 1 1/2 cup water
• 2-3 teaspoons dark muscovado sugar
• 1 banana, peeled and sliced thinly
• 1-2 tablespoons milk

- Bring the water to a boil in a saucepan.
- Once boiling, add oats and cook until they have softened, about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Add the banana slices, saving some for topping, as well as 2 teaspoons of muscovado. Depending on the size of your bananas you may not use all of it. Stir the banana in – don’t worry about keeping the slices whole, some will break up and that’s what you want.
- Taste the oatmeal and add the remaining teaspoon of muscovado if you’d like more sweetness. If the oatmeal is too dry for your taste add the milk gradually until you reach your desired consistency.
- Remove from the heat, top with the reserved banana slices, and enjoy! Serves 1 (hungry breakfaster) or 2.

Despite relishing the cool weather, you can’t take the island out of the island girl, so this bowl of oatmeal is shot through with slices of sweet banana and the deepest darkest muscovado I could find. The muscovado gives this an awesome molasses-y flavor and the bananas add a tropical perfume. It's part homestead mornings under the duvet, and part lazy sarong-wrapped days. This is also something I’d love to have ready, warm and waiting, for little C…to fortify her for a day of exploration and discovery, her favorite activities.


I buy my muscovado at ritual, a charming little general store run by friends. They sell locally sourced, eco-friendly goods without plastic packaging. I love what they stand for and the positive vibe of the shop. Bringing your own containers is encouraged, along with slowing down for a coffee and a nice chat with the friendly proprietors. I like to buy black rice (from Nueva Ecija), sea salt (from Ilocos and Pangasinan), and of course the dark-as-sin muscovado (from Sultan Kudarat). They have a lighter muscovado as well but I love the deep flavor of the darker one. Especially in something as innocent as oatmeal, to which it adds a caramel-y complexity. Among the dusky grains are rough-hewn, solid chunks of hardened sugar. I like to sprinkle some of these gems on top of my oatmeal and let them melt into pockets of syrupy sweetness. The perfect breakfast for a not-quite-winter morning, to be enjoyed by both big and little people alike :)

Creamed Cabbage with Ham

Ok. So I am not exactly on the ball with my resolve to “post more often”. But let’s give a girl a little room to warm up shall we? I promise (oh fate-tempting word that…promise!) to do my utmost to gain momentum this month! Meanwhile, let me go ahead and progress on the “using more leftovers” front.

One of the most common holiday leftovers is ham. Even a dyed-in-the-wool pork lover like me finds herself on the other side of the holiday season with just little too much ham for comfort, and a spouse that is flatly refusing to have anything to do with it. Well, well, well, I wasn’t going to let a perfectly good last bit of smoked and cured pork go to waste, even in the face of of doubting husbands and laments of no-please-not-another-ham-sandwich! And I think I may just have found the perfect way to revivify it.

This is, without a doubt, up down and sideways, my kind of dish. I love cabbage. LOVE. Seriously. I can eat cabbage til the cows come home. I haven’t a clue why it has earned a bad reputation in certain circles. I will eat it in all manners of preparation and then some. But gently simmered in cream? With tender-toasty bits of ham infusing everything in a robust porky smokiness? Punctuated with sweet apple chucks all throughout? And a sly undercurrent of mustard giving the whole dish a saucy tang? Now that’s a whole different world of cabbage pleasures altogether (and believe you me, I am very familiar with the cabbage pleasure world, as exotic as it may sound to some). In fact, I liked it so much that, despite this dish being what I first thought to be a clever vessel for some leftovers, I would go so far as to actually buy ham to make it! And that’s not all…if you don’t have any leftover ham, or any ham in general for that matter, you can make this with (wait for it) bacon! Oh yes.

Creamed Cabbage with Ham

• Olive oil
• 1 white onion, sliced into half-moons
• 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 cup chopped ham
• 1/2 an apple, peeled and chopped (about 1/2 cup)
• 1 head of cabbage (about 500 grams), shredded or thinly sliced
• 1/4 – 1/3 cup cream
• 2 teaspoons mustard
• Sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper
• Nutmeg (optional)

- Heat a generous glug of olive oil in a pan large enough to accommodate all the cabbage.
- When the oil is hot add onions and garlic and sauté until the onions are soft and translucent.
- Add the ham and sauté until the edges are a bit toasty, then add the apple and toss.
- Add the cabbage and cook until cabbage softens, tossing to make sure everything is cooking evenly.
- When cabbage is soft add the cream and mustard and stir to coat everything. Let this simmer for 3-5 minutes, stirring occasionally, so the cream can pick up all the flavors in the pan. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
- If you’d like (and I do recommend it!) add a few good gratings of nutmeg.
- Serves 4.

We had this as a side dish with some steak (oof…steak and creamed cabbage…not exactly New Year detox I know!), but I could have this on its own or with some hot white rice, or tossed with some freshly cooked penne, or even piled atop a thick slice of toasted country bread. Yes, I’d have this any which way and twice on Sundays thank you very much. The quantity for the ham is very flexible – I used what leftovers I had and so can you. Like I mentioned, you can substitute the ham with bacon, but I would suggest using less bacon than the amount of ham I indicated…maybe around 3-4 strips chopped.

If you are a cabbage-hater, firstly, why? Secondly, please try this. It’s a New Year and time to try new things. Give old foes a chance to make amends. And it will give you something to do with the leftover ham that stares balefully at you every time you open the fridge.

Some News!!! I mentioned earlier that, in line with my resolution to explore new ways to share food with all of you this New Year, I have a special surprise in Yummy Magazine’s January/February 2011 issue (in news stands now!)…My own column! Yummy Magazine has always been one of my favorite local food publications and I have written for them a number of times before, so when they asked me to write a regular column I was thrilled…not to mention giddily flattered! I’ll be sharing simple everyday dishes from my Family Kitchen every month :) Hope you like them!

Breakfast #33: Nutella Croissant French Toast

I am disinclined to start a new year with a list of resolutions. I lean more towards a general “all-year ideas and directions” than specific “New Year resolutions”. I know, I know, it’s simply a difference in timing. This may be just my silly self, but I feeling like I can never take the pressure of putting a definite list of goals (aspirations) out there. Like I am just setting myself up for the inevitable late-year scrambling to “lose-weight-get-organized-invest-wisely”. So I choose to quietly follow certain themes instead (for example – Simplify!) and I do this any time during the year, allowing for changes and adjustments along the way.

So why am I even contemplating a New Years to-do list on this sunny-but-cool, gloriously-slept-in, pajama-wearing January morning? A list that I am foolishly going to share here, online, for all the universe (including aliens bored enough to check out out internet) to see? Why indeed? I have no answer but this – It’s 2011 folks and anything can happen!

I still plan on my all-year-round ideas development. These are the directions that I hope will guide my actions after all. But here are a few humble ambitions*** that I hope to achieve this year:

• It goes without saying but I will go right out and say it – post more often!
• Make more breakfasts! I should be taking my blog’s name more seriously methinks…
• Use more leftovers – I think I have been pretty good about this last year and, to carry on avoiding waste and saving resources, I will take this even further this year…sharing a few more tips and tricks on this blog :)
• Explore new ways to share my love for food with more of you – I believe there are lots of people like me out there – regular yet fabulous people who strive everyday to strike a balance between home, work, and “me-time”. This year I hope to convince more of you that one doesn't need to be a knife-juggling/pastry-making credentialed expert to create deliciousness in the kitchen…and that you can have fun doing it too!
• Use my cookbooks and magazines more often – I don’t own a whole lot of either. But I do think I should still justify their expense by using them more!
• Give my blog a new/updated look – I changed my blog’s design last year…from one blogger template to another. This year I aim to give it a more non-template-ish look. At the very least a new header! I am not a techie person by a long shot so this will take some doing and most likely outside help (who will work for cookies and Britney Spears impersonations).

There you have it! Now on to the serious business of getting them done…

Nutella Croissant French Toast

• 2 croissants or 4 mini-croissants (day old, dried, or otherwise not fit for fresh consumption)
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon butter

- Slice each croissant lengthwise.
- Best egg and milk together in a flattish bowl.
- Melt butter in a skillet. Place croissant slices in milk-egg mixture while butter melts, turning so all sides are coated in the mixture.
- Once the bubbles subside lay each croissant on the hot butter, cut side down. Fry until golden brown and crisp on the edges. Flip and fry until the other side is likewise golden and toasted. Remove to a paper towel-line plate.
- While the croissant is still hot spread a good dollop of Nutella on each croissant bottom. Top with the top-half of the croissant. Serves two.

Hooray! Good headway here on posting more breakfasts and using more leftovers I’d say. Aside from the obvious fact that January 2nd started on a very crisp-buttery-croissant-warm-oozy-Nutella note – one of the best ways to start any day of the year in my book.

As for exploring new ways to share food with all of you…check out Yummy Magazine’s 1st issue for 2011! I hope you like what you see :) It’s something I am very excited about!

Happy New Year everyone! Here’s to a 2011 full of unlimited possibilities for awesomeness!!! And if we miss a few? Let’s just try to have a wonderful time trying shall we? ;)

***These are all food or blog related, if you haven’t noticed. Other personal ambitions (become more financially savvy, learn how to use my medical insurance, wear more make up) will remain personal for now :)