I could rave about time saving at Christmas. I really learned that this Christmas, so much more relaxed and awesome. Frozen berries, yep, frozen… but if you stew them a bit well what is the point in buying four punnets for four times the price the day before in a rush?

Serves:4
Prep: 7 min
Cook time: 10 min

Berry Sauce Ingredients:
300g of frozen mixed berries
¼ cup of sugar
1/5 cup of water

Crepe Ingredients:
1 cup flour
3 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 cup milk

Filling:
½ cup of ricotta

Berry sauce
1. Light the stove and put the sugar and water into you saucepan and heat until dissolved. Then add the berries until they are defrosted. Take your time with this, on a low heat- and by doing so you will have plenty of the juices dissolving into the sugar water. Yum!

Crepes
1. Place a cup of flour in a bowl and create a well in the centre. Add the eggs, salt and milk to the well. Wisk until smooth and all lumps are gone.
2. In a pan, melt a small dob of butter. When dissolved, ladle one crape at a time into the pan. Turn when the base of the crape begins to brown and lifts off the pan. It won’t need as long on the other side. Continue until all of the crapes are made.

Assembly
1. Place one crape flat on a plate and line down the centre with ricotta. Fold over both sides and top with berries. Done. Munch.

I’ve eaten these for a few weeks now. Easy as pancakes and very satisfying for my love of lemon, sour, sour lemon. <3

Serves: 1 or 2
Prep: 3 min

Cook time: 10 min

Ingredients:
1 cup wholemeal self raising flour
1 tablespoon of sugar
1 egg
1 cup milk
Butter for frying
Sugar and lemon to serve

1. Sift flour into a bowl and create a well
2. Crack the egg and add the milk and sugar into the well
3. Whisk until smooth, or blend if you prefer
4. In a pan, heat a teaspoon of butter when melted ladle one spoon into the pan and cook for a minute or so on a medium to high heat then turn. It should shuffle around the pan with a shake easily, bubble slightly on top before you flip it and then cook very quickly on the next side. Adjust the cooking time if necessary. Usually the first pancake isn’t as good as the following. But do them one at a time adding a little more butter each time.
5. Butter them while hot and sprinkle with a little sugar, I like to do this once the next one is in the pan it makes the production quite fast and furious.
6. When you find the time, perhaps between every few cover in lemon juice and serve.

This is really simple. I won’t write up a full recipe. I just chopped onion, mushrooms and cherry tomato’s into smaller than bite sized pieces then heated in a pan. When they were ¾ cooked I threw the egg on top and slowly moved around so that the lightly scrambled eggs weren’t too well mixed. Then serve on toast with rocket.

At Gioan, Hoi An I was taught a really quick method of making pho – but from this I know what I would do if I was to ramp it up a little bit and make it more special by making my own stock and stuff like that. This method really only took about 10 – 15 minutes and was delicious.

Serves: 2
Cook time: 15 min

Ingredients:
100g of beef
2 teaspoons of veggie stock powder
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon of sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon of chili paste (sweet and spicy)
1 tablespoon of veggie oil
2 cloves of garlic (crushed)
1/2 liter of boiling water
100g of rice noodle
100g of bean sprout
1 tablespoon dried coriander powder
1 tablespoon fresh mint
1 tablespoon of dry fried onion
Pinch of pepper

1. Marinate beef in a bowl with veggie stock, sugar, sesame oil and chili paste
2. Add vegetable oil to a pan and bring up the heat until medium hot.
3. Add garlic and cook for 30 second, then add the beef to cook for a minute (the beef should be cut into small thin pieces)
4. Add boiling water and dry coriander to the pan and bring to the boil. Once it has reached the boil – turn off heat.
5. In a bowl add rice noodles and bean sprouts before serving the soup on top.
6. Garnish with fry onion, mint and pepper.

Serves 2
Prep: 15 min
Cook time: 10 min

Ingredients:
1 cup plain flour
2 eggs
¾ cup of milk
2 tablespoons of melted butter
Fruit, in this case – pineapple, pear and kiwi fruit

For people who like to eat a tin of pineapple for breakfast.

1. Disolve the sugar into the melted butter
2. Mix in the flour, two eggs and milk blending with a bar mix until there are no lumps. This will create some air bubbles so you may want to rest the mixture for ten or so minutes to prevent tearing. I banged the bowl onto the bench which seemed to knock out quite a few.
3. Melt butter in a pan for cooking and spoon the mixture onto the pan. Once the mixture has hit the pan you need to be quick and angle the pan to spread the mixture as much as you can so that you have thin crepes.
4. As they begin to firm shift slightly in the pan to prevent sticking, but cook until it begins to become golden on each side before turning.
5. Serve with fruit, mint, honey or cream if you like.

Do I keep talking about sexy breakfasts? This is another sexy breakfast.

Serves: 1
Prep: 2 min
Cook time: zip

Ingredients:
150g Plain deli yogurt (no option for alternative here)
1 tea spoon of honey
½ a tea spoon of ground cinnamon.

1. Mix
2. Drool… um, ah and try to stop!

Makes: 3 slices
Preparation: 10 min
Cook time: 5 min

Ingredients:
3 slices of Vienna loaf
One egg
A dash of milk
Half an Orange
Mint
A teaspoon of sugar

Simple dishes’ lend themselves nicely to variation on the theme and this dish is sure to inspire.

1. To make the French toast, crack the egg and mix a dash of milk into a bowl.
2. Making sure your pan is just hot enough to cook on, dip the slices of bread into the egg mixture, evenly coating them. Put the egg coated bread directly into the pan and cook on a medium heat until golden brown on both sides.
3. Halve the orange and with one half, juice it and heat through in a saucepan with the teaspoon of sugar.
4. With the other half of the orange segment for serving.
5. To serve, place the cooked French toast on the plate topping with the warmed orange sauce, orange segments and sprinkles of mint.

Serves: A treat for two.
Preparation: 10min
Cook: –

Ingredients:
An orange
A handful of strawberries each
A dollop of ricotta each
Two passionfruit
A few sprigs of mint
Sugar

Oh er – get in touch with your sensual side…

1. In a bowl stir in passionfruit and a teaspoon of sugar dissolved in a small amount of warm water which has cooled.
2. Remove the skin of an orange and cut segments from the husk
3. Top and halve strawberries
4. Arrange the orange and strawberries on a plate with ricotta and pour the passionfruit on top.
5. Serve with mint.

Quite some time ago Vera made me scrambled eggs and they were amazing. I have to admit that I anticipated a bit of humble learning about some of the basics that morning. We got talking about all of the different ways that the scrambled egg can be done. Vera said that her mum used to cook them dense and hard – so did mine (I exclaimed)! Well it turns out that is a messed up omlette – not a scrambled egg!

Like once the baguette was the biz of breadland so too have scrambled eggs moved through firm but light, sloppy and dense or whipped to high heaven phases. There are famously herby numbers, flavours to add and of course different ways to serve.

This entry is about the subtleties to a good scramble.

Prep: 5 min
Cook time: 10 min
(cook time varies… I recommend relaxing and being very poor with time efficiency when it comes to breakfast)

Ingredients:
3 eggs per person
Butter
A dash of cream per person(or milk- but not as primo)

As in life – only the mindfully scrambled achieve.

1. Ok now. All scrambled egg recipes begin by cracking the eggs into the bowl but you have to choose whether to lightly break up the yolks, whip like crazy or somewhere in between. Vera taught me the latest fashion craze and we decided to go with lightly breaking the eggs.

2. Add that dash of cream.

3. In a medium pan cook the eggs slowly using an egg flip to scrape along the bottom. If you cook the eggs too fast here you are likely to get fluid separation which results in the watery but firm egg which was never in fashion. Or if you whip them around in the pan to quickly – you lose your lightly broken effect.

4. As the egg cooks it will begin to come together. When almost cooked to your liking turn off the heat and allow for the pan to finish off the job. You don’t want to much heat and risk over cooking it.

5. Yippe perfection.

On this particular morning we added sprinkles off feta… anything goes… as long as the basics are well done.

Later that morning I brought this nutty number from the Turkish lady up the road. It is an example of how food can hold me in awe. It is by Kasro.