Pink Grapefruit Pancakes | You've Got Meal!

Weekend breakfast is probably my favorite meal of the week. I wouldn't actually call breakfast what we have during the week ( a fruit, a yogurt or a healthy juice to name the best choices) so, for me, having a nice breakfast with hubby during the weekends it feels like a special occasion. I LOVE my eggs and bacon or any other egg breakfast for that matter, but I also appreciate a sweet meal from time to time.

Am I the only one that finds making pancakes so relaxing?

This last weekend I woke up with one thought in my mind: I have to make a breakfast that included some fruit and I want pancakes. The only fruit we had were pink grapefruits. I love the recipe for buttermilk pancakes, but I only had some Greek yogurt, so I decided to try a version with grapefruit juice and Greek yogurt.

I used:

• 3/4 to 1 cup flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup grapefruit juice
• 1 egg
• 150 ml Greek yogurt (5 oz)
• 1 drop red food coloring (optional)

 

Making the batter:

1. Stir the yogurt just for a bit to make it creamier.
2. Pour the egg on top of the Greek yogurt and mix well, until the egg is beaten and perfectly incorporated into the yogurt.
3. In the same bowl, add the grapefruit juice and mix.
4. At this point you can add the dry ingredients one at a time and you can even use a hand mixer to get the job done faster.

 Method:

1. Cut some tiny pieces of grapefruit and put aside.
2. Brush a skillet with oil / spray it with cooking spray and when the oil is heated pour with a small ladle the batter to form one pancake at a time.
3. Add some pieces of grapefruit  on top of the pancakes before turning it on the other side.
4. Serve with powder sugar for a nice twist.

Enjoy,

Oven Baked Whiting with Fennel Fondue

We bought this fish for the 1st time and wanted to see if it’s worth keeping it on our sights. The price was a reasonable one and the fish proved to be a quite tasty one, so we will be cooking it again for sure.



When trying new types of fish, I tend not to overdo it, just keep cooking to a minimum, so I can really taste the meat, in a very natural form, without overshadowing it with too many flavors.



So I just cleaned the fish (we had 2 whiting fish, about 250 grams each), drizzled it with some olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper and I popped in a hot oven, in a tray with some oven proof paper, for around 10 minutes. For the fennel, I used 1 onion, 1 fennel (reserve the leaves for garnishing), 3-4 cloves of garlic, 200 ml of dry white wine, in this case a 2010 Chenin Blanc form South Africa, some lemongrass, 75 grams of butter, salt, red pepper, sugar, lemon, cream (optional).



Start of by melting the butter and cooking the sliced onion, fennel, and garlic on high heat for 2 minutes, then turn the stove down to a minimum, add the sugar, lemon grass, salt and pepper and cook for another 3-4 minutes. Add the wine, and let it reduce. After that you can add some cream and mix for another minute, but I preferred to do this without it. Plate the fish and the fennel, sprinkle generously with lemon juice and fennel leaves.



Enjoy,

Spicy Chicory (Endive), Bacon and Egg Pasta

And many other things! Seriously, I’m proud of this recipe for a simple reason: it is our 1^st original (I hope, the internet is big and I’m too lazy to search it all) pasta recipe, and we love pasta. So let me get cracking. 

For our home made spaghetti (3 portions), we used 

2 chicories, 

250 grams of smoked bacon, 

2 eggs, 

4-5 medium hot chillies, 

3 garlic cloves, 

3-4 peaches, 

parsley, 

salt & pepper, 

olive oil, 

parmesan.

This needs a couple of things to be done at the same time, but you can always cook those ingredients in advance (like 30 minutes or an hour, not the day before). So, start of by frying the bacon cut into cubes for 5 minutes, then add the chicories (slice them however you want, but remove the middle, I, at least, found it too bitter for my liking) and sliced garlic. Cook for another 4 minutes.

. Remember when I said that you can have things cooked in advance? Well, for the chillies, you need to roast them and you can do that in advance. After you remove their burned skin, remove the seeds if they are too hot and cut the roasted chilies into strips. Also, the peaches need to be grilles, so cut them in halves and then into 3 each half and grill them on an ultra hot grill for 2 minutes on each side. The fruits will get some very nice grill marks and, because of their sweetness and delicate flavor, will balance with the bitter taste of the chicory. Make sure the fruits aren’t all that mushy, keep them firm.

So, mix the bacon, chicory, garlic, chili, peaches, salt, pepper on the fire for another minute. Add the pasta, cooked al dente, about 50 ml of the pasta cooking water. Meanwhile, poach the eggs and have them ready to be placed on top of the plated pasta, after you’ve sprinkled some parmesan, olive oil and parsley on them. The idea behind this is that the soft yolk will also serve as a sauce that binds the spaghetti together.

So, there you have it, my 1^st try at a recipe and, I have to say, it couldn’t have been anything else except pasta. The result was an interesting dish, with flavors that combined pretty nicely. I guess you can add or remove things from this, but, overall, we were happy with the outcome.

Have a great day,