What Are You Having for Breakfast?

Poached eggs + bacon + peas.

I hope you will have an awesome week!

Green Sorrel Juice

A perfect morning pick-me-up. I don't have to mention this is healthy, do I? Sorrel is a good source of vitamin A and C, it helps with digestion and liver problems.
We used 1 handfull of garden or french  sorrel + 5 carrots + 4-5 apples + 1 lemon peeled, all in the juicer = salad in a glass.

Spring Vegetable Soup ( Sour, Vegetarian Recipe)

In East Europe soup has a very delicious and rather versatile sister, that I can only translate as “sour soup”. This kind of dish is different than regular soups (say, for example, vegetable, potato, broccoli, cauliflower, etc, that usually have a creamy consistency). Recipes vary, from chicken, beef, pork, game, or vegetable dishes, but they have in common the fact that, in the end, it is used a sour ingredient, like lemon juice, fermented cereals, vinegar or even the liquid from pickles to give it a strong, sour note.

For our recipe we used 200 grams of new potatoes (we had really tiny ones, make sure the potatoes have the same size as the tomato halves), 200 grams of cherry tomatoes (halved), 150 grams of green beans (chopped), 5 green onions (finely chopped), 4-5 baby carrots (diced), 1 medium green pepper (diced), parsley (finely diced), 100 ml of tomato sauce (basically tomato juice), 2 handfuls of chopped purple Orach leaves (also known as salt bush or Artiplex halimus, also finely diced), 1 liter of fermented cereal water (honestly, in Romanian this thing is called „bors”, no idea how to translate it, maybe this will help.

In a tall heavy base pan, heat up 2 tbs of olive oil, then saute the carrots and the onions for 3-4 minutes. Add water until it fills about ¾ of the pan. Let it boil on a medium high heat. You can use a lid and reduce the cooking time, it’s up to you. Taste one piece of carrot, when it’s cooked half way , add the beans, pepper and cook for another 10 minutes, after which add the potatoes and the cherry tomatoes. When the potatoes are almost cooked, add the tomato juice and the Orach leaves, let it boil for 5 minutes, then add the “bors” or lemon juice, reduce heat, simmer for another 5 minutes, then add the parsley and bring to another boil before removing from heat. This combination of vegetables was one of our tries, you can always mix it up, just remember that if you plan on using hard boiling vegetables (like celery root or parsnip) throw it in the pot at the beginning or sauté it first. And, of course,  add any delicate vegetable  in at the end (we made this one with baby lettuce and it was delicious, just added it with the parsley).

Enjoy!

Black Rice Mushroom Risotto (Vegetarian Recipe)

We made this dish during the last week of this year’s Easter fast, when we wanted to try something substantial but also smooth. 

For this recipe we used:

• 1 ½ cups of rice (black rice also known as Emperor's rice or forbidden rice), 
• 150 grams of honey agaric mushrooms, 
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped, 
• 1 medium eggplant, diced and 
• parsley (about one handful). 

You can always add some butter and parmigiano in the end and give this dish more depth, but I works just fine in its vegetarian version. Honey agaric is a wild type of mushroom, similar perhaps to the Chinese Mun mushrooms. You can substitute these with black chanterelle or golden chanterelle.

Start up by heating up 2 tbs of olive oil in a heavy base tall, pan, and saute the onions on high heat for 3-4 minutes, and add the diced eggplant, cook for another 3-4 minutes, and then add the mushrooms (i didn’t  chop or dice them, i liked to use them whole).  Let the mushrooms cook until they remove part of their water, then add the rice and cook it on high heat, for another couple of minutes, stirring ocasionally so the rice doesn’t stick. After this, add salt, pepper, 3 cups of water (or vegeatble stock), cover the pan, reduce the heat to a medium and let it cook for 15 minutes, checking from time to time so the rice doesn’t burn (feel free to add more liquid if necessary). After the rice is done, sprinkle the chopped parsley on top of it and serve.

We loved the taste of this black rice, fit for an emperor indeed. :)

Enjoy!